Why Vajpayee deserves a Ratna

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Maloy Krishna Dhar started life off as a junior reporter for Amrita Bazaar Patrika in Calcutta and a part-time lecturer. He joined the Indian Police Service in 1964 and was permanently seconded to the Intelligence Bureau.

During his long stint in the Bureau, Dhar saw action in almost all Northeastern states, Sikkim, Punjab and Kashmir. He also handled delicate internal political and several counterintelligence assignments. After retiring in 1996 as joint director, he took to freelance journalism and writing books. Titles credited to him are Open Secrets-India's Intelligence Unveiled, Fulcrum of Evil – ISI, CIA, al-Qaeda Nexus, and Mission to Pakistan. Maloy is considered a top security analyst and a social scientist who tries to portray Indian society through his writings.

January 26 reminded us again that we had given ourselves a Republic with democratic and secular dispensations, based on the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.

India was the Jewel in the Crown of Britain too. In fact, it was studded with modern age jewels like Lal-Bal-Pal, (Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal), Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru, who ushered in an independent Indian homeland.

India rediscovered the Indian Jewels in 1954, when the civilian awards like Bharat Ratna, Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri etc., were instituted during the Presidency of Rajendra Prasad.

Bestowing civilian honours recognises illustrious personalities and inspires people to emulate them. Though inherited from the feudal and imperial past, the civilian award conferring system has a very high democratic content.

Such awards do not confer titles such as Mansabdari or zamindari and status of distinguished lords like Rai Bahadurs and Khan Bahadurs, but recognise the sacrifice, service and contribution towards nation building.

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Since 1954, forty illustrious sons and daughters (five including Mother Teresa) of the country and two foreign personalities have been honoured with the Bharat Ratna.

But here’s the catch: politicians and bureaucrats make the choice. Which is perhaps why 22 of the 40 awardees are politicians (including freedom fighters). Only eight artists and scholars, one industrialist (JRD Tata), five scientists/engineers/educationists, one philosopher-statesman (Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan) and two foreigners have made the grade.

So, it can be deduced that in our national perception, top politicians are the best nation builders. Yes, political personalities across the country, irrespective of ideological hues, played cardinal roles in steering the freedom struggle. Yet, of the 22 political giants, 19 belong to Indian National Congress, and only three, including Baba Saheb Ambedkar, to other parties. The other nonconformist, Subhash Chandra Bose, was awarded the Bharat Ratna but it was withdrawn, as the authorities could not conclusively prove that the eternal rebel had definitely died in the alleged air accident.

Statistics do not normally lie. So would it be irreverent to describe the Bharat Ratna award as a Congress gravy train?

It is, therefore, not surprising that a tactically shrewd L K Advani, representing, in US lingo, “the right reactionary Hindu nationalist party” let a ferocious cat out in the holy congregation of Congress pigeons, who alone claim to be the custodians of the great secular country. The cat is none other than Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a veteran contemporary of other towering figures like Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi – all belonging to the same political and family clan.

Images: The great Bharat Rat(na) race

But obviously, in the Congress, Left and other ‘secularist’ (read casteist) perceptions, a “right reactionary Hindu nationalist” has no claim to the nation’s highest honour. Only “secular brand” Hindus belonging to the Congress and a rare Buddhist leader (read Ambedkar), a Tamil ally (read M G Ramachandran) and a renegade socialist (read Jayprakash Narayan) qualify to make the grade.

The real jewels of India, who have earned national and international recognition by excelling in their respective fields, are seemingly hard to come by. To become jewels in the eyes of our blinkered miners, you would have to either belong to a special political clan, earn international recognition, or reign over the hearts of the people: like Lata Mangeshkar, Satyajit Roy, Ustad Bismillah Khan and a Nobel laureate like Amartya Sen.

A B Vajpayee is a political untouchable, and cannot claim entry into the Congress-brand secular stable. Which isn’t surprising when someone in the Congress suddenly proposed the name of Jyoti Basu, the doyen of Left politics in West Bengal, with a view to putting the first brake to the Vajpayee rath. But the stout denial from the Left exposed the raw machinations of the Congress.

The cacophony was later joined by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati (who wanted Kanshiram to be honoured), Lalu Prasad (Karpuri Thakur) and Ram Vilas Paswan (Jyotibha Phule and Mohammed Rafi). Loud murmurs from the south echoed the name of M Karunanidhi.

Another Congress stalwart, Babu Jagjivan Ram is waiting for belated, posthumous recognition. Important personalities like V P Singh, I K Gujral and R Venkataraman have joined voices with Meira Kumar, Jagjivan Ram’s daughter, for his inclusion. Someone also butted in for Kisan leader Chowdhry Charan Singh.

So, why did a “tactless Prime Ministerial candidate of the right reactionary Hindu nationalist party” made the foolish move? Is he really as foolish as some political commentators would like to believe?

Actually, Advani has made this move with great political calculation. By letting lose the “communalist cat amongst the secular pigeons” the BJP leader has again exposed that in India, the jewels mostly come from the “secular” mines of the Congress and its peripheral allies. They are not found in “Hindu seams” of the nation’s jewel bearing mines.

This message was not missed by those who recently sent loud messages to the Congress and others that “communal Hindu baiting” does not really pay; not at this juncture of Indian history.

This non-secular truth requires scrutiny and examination, and a fresh appraisal of the national spectrum is necessary to allocate some space to the “right reactionary communal Hindus”. Perhaps no one can afford to dream that the Hindus have ceased to be the strongest building blocks of the nation; that includes Advani-Vajpayee brand of Hindus too.

It should also not be forgotten that the “right reactionary Hindu party” during its tenure in South Block, had given the Ratna award to only one politician (Gopinath Bordoloi), one economist (Amartya Sen) and three artists – Ravi Shankar, Lata Mangeshkar and Ustad Bismillah Khan. They did not honour Shyama Prasad Mukherjee or Deen Dayal Upadhyaya.

Moreover, the country should not forget that Vajpayee had creditably piloted the country against Pakistan’s treacherous attack in Kargil and he was the leader who thawed the frozen Indo-Pak relationship by initiating the peace process. Perhaps this one “communal Hindu leader” does deserve the country’s recognition.

Should we not pay a little more attention to the real Jewels of India, and not see them through the prism of a particular brand of politicians? Should our political masters not start believing that jewels also exist outside the pale of politics and bureaucracy? Has not such undue weightage to political jewels ignored the real jewels in the fields of science, technology, media, education, social reformers, environmentalists, artists and other segments of nation builders? Are there no jewels among the Aam Aadmi of Bharat?

Those who are fortunate to catwalk the ramps of North and South Block and State government secretariats, flaunting their assets and moneybags, know how the ant-army of Shri, Bhushan, Vibhushan and Ratna seekers persistently pursue the givers of the coveted civil honours of the country. The members of the Padma Award Committee are also invaded by the crooning honeybees. As a live witness to such power-ramp walking, I happen to know some of the Padma recipients and their manoeuvres.

One Padma recipient claimed rather proudly that there was nothing wrong in stalking the power-ramps coveting a civil honour in a country where everything could be purchased. His wisdom is eternally Padmasambhava.

This time around, some electronic news channel had floated a few names like Ratan Tata, M F Hussain etc. for electronic voting. There are other pioneering industrialists in India, including Lakshmi Mittal and the late Dhirubhai Ambani, who have brought glory to India. Most of them deserve to be the Jewels of India.

The IT industry has placed India on the global map, and secured a place for India in the “future world economic transformation”. Should we not look into this new, expanding horizon and assess the contributions of people like N R Narayana Murthy? His Infosys Technologies is the first Indian multinational information technology company that is not owned by any family. Statistics aside, a personality like Narayana Murthy has transformed the dreams of millions of Indians. Did he deserve only a Padma Vibhushan?

Should we not look at jewels beyond the narrow confines of politics; that too of certain specific brands? Should we not recognise that “reactionaries and communalists” like Vajpayee also reign over millions of hearts? Should the nation be divided by the Congress and its allies on each and every issue, raising the ghost bogey of stale secularism?

The Jewels of India do not grow only in the political stables and bureaucratic cubicles.

Will the Padma Award Committee and its masters gather the courage to select two really Sarvhara Indians, and say that next year’s Bharat Ratna would be awarded to the Aam Aadmi, who lives in the dungeon of poverty and hunger? Are they not the real masters of the political and bureaucratic stable dwellers? Do not they carbonise the mine-seams of so-called Bharat Ratnas by their silent suffering, starvation, deprivation and death?

The author can be reached at maloy_d@hotmail.com

The views expressed in the article are of the author’s and not of Sify.com.

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