Draupadi Murmu is the new President of India. The Native American and former teacher gets more than half of the state and federal legislative votes.

New Delhi – Indian MPs have elected a female president for the second time in the country’s history.

64-year-old Draupadi Murmu of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP’s ruling Hindu nationalist party won more than half the vote of the nearly 5,000 state and national legislators, an election commission official said. The official announcement of the election results is still pending.

The Murmu are ethnically one of the indigenous people of India. Indigenous people make up 8.6 percent of India’s population of about 1.3 billion people. She was the first indigenous woman to hold the highest office in India. The head of state fulfills – similar to the Federal President of Germany – above all representative duties, power rests with the prime minister. The president is elected every five years.

Murmu is a former teacher and then governor of Jharkhand state. As governor, he campaigned, among other things, for the rights of India’s indigenous peoples. Indigenous people in the country are often poor and marginalized – even if, among other things, some government positions are reserved for that ethnic group. Traditionally, they live in or near forests, where they live as hunter-gatherers. Many are also active as farmers.

Previous presidents have also been among the marginalized: Ram Nath Kovind is a Dalit, that is, a member of the lowest-level caste system that was once considered “untouchable”. The situation of the Dalits did not change much during his presidency. Dalits continue to experience a lot of discrimination in India. dpa