Ram Nath Kovind, a 71-year-old lawyer and politician formerly with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, will take office next week as India’s 14th president. The position is largely ceremonial—executive power rests with the prime minister—but nonetheless symbolically important. The president is India’s head of state, its first citizen, so to speak.

Mr. Kovind’s comfortable election Thursday—about two-thirds of an electorate of roughly 4,900 state and central legislators picked him over his opposition-backed rival—underscores...