Bharat Ratna absurdities

End political jockeying for state awards by abolishing them

It has been reported that the Union home ministry has placed an order for five Bharat Ratna medallions, fuelling speculation that the new government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), intends to hand out several of India's highest civilian awards. This has, predictably, led to absurd degrees of jockeying. It was suspected, for example, that Subhash Chandra Bose would be given the Bharat Ratna. It had been offered to him before, in the early 1990s, when it was turned down by his family. However, in response to the latest reported move, Bose's great-nephew, the Trinamool Congress parliamentarian Sugata Bose, has indicated that it would be an insult to Bose's memory to give him the Bharat Ratna, and not an honour. This is because Mohandas Gandhi has never been given the Bharat Ratna, implying that he is above such awards. If Gandhi is, then so should Bose be, runs the logic.

This ridiculous jostling and comparison of incommensurate historical legacies happen when such national awards are handed out and seen as indicators of national pride or orientation. After all, if Bose, who died before independence, is to be given a Bharat Ratna, why not Bal Gangadhar Tilak? Or Rabindranath Tagore? Or Akbar? The current government will justifiably claim that the list of Bharat Ratna awardees is heavily biased towards the Congress establishment. This is presumably because the Congress was the establishment for so long; the BJP, now that it is the establishment, will want to install its own icons, real or adopted. The Congress awarded three members of the Nehru-Gandhi family Bharat Ratnas - two while they were still alive. The BJP can justifiably argue that giving it to Atal Bihari Vajpayee merely begins to restore the balance. It would no doubt also want to add to the pantheon at least one member of the founding generation of Indian republicans who was unquestionably a Hindutva figure. Who better than Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, as its ally, the Shiv Sena, has suggested? This will, of course, create a piquant situation, in which Gandhi has not got India's highest honour, but a man tried for his murder has.

As if the historical claimants are not enough - the Congress has demanded a Bharat Ratna for figures as disparate as Kanshi Ram, the founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party; Syed Ahmed Khan, the founder of Aligarh Muslim University; and independence movement activists Lala Lajpat Rai, Annie Besant and Rashbehari Bose. And then there are also all the various sporting figures to be considered. Sachin Tendulkar has already got the Bharat Ratna - but many feel very passionately that Dhyan Chand should have got it first. Ramachandra Guha, the historian, has declared on Twitter that Vishwanathan Anand deserves it more than any other sportsman. Given that fans can dispute the greatness of one sporting hero as opposed to another for hours and reach no conclusion, it is absurd to assume the government can. There is only one answer to this imbroglio and the dispute that recurs year after year. It is to abolish all state awards. The transparent political calculation and the faulty historical comparisons that underlie these awards should not receive the backing of the Indian state.