Vajpayee deserves the Bharat Ratna, but then so does PV Narasimha Rao
by R Jagannathan Dec 24, 2014 14:28 IST
The announcement of the Bharat Ratna to Atal Behari Vajpayee and Madan Mohan Malaviya by the NDA government will partly be seen as the BJP’s effort to pander to its favourite heroes – one living, one long dead.
Neither name is a surprise (their birth anniversaries being 25 December), but if the BJP truly wanted to make a mark with its political choices for Bharat Ratna, it should have named PV Narasimha Rao as well. Rao’s was the hand the steered India out of economic bankruptcy in 1991. But that is another story.
While Vajpayee’s name will be seen as less controversial given his avuncular, “secular” image, Malaviya’s choice will inevitably be seen as linked to the Sangh parivar as he was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha which espouses Hindu nationalism. He was also founder of the Benares Hindu University.
The award to Vajpayee is non-controversial, but Malaviya’s name will surely raise hackles in the “secular” crowd.
Modern historian Ramachandra Guha has already tweeted his dissent, though he posed the argument as one about living and dead awardees. “Giving Bharat Ratna to Vajpayee is fine, but one should not award it to people dead or long dead. Awarding Malaviya is a mistake”, he tweeted.
But then, by this yardstick we should not have awarded BR Ambedkar, Sardar Patel or Maulana Abul Kalam Azad either, for they were towering personalities of pre- and post-independence India who made huge contributions to nation-building.
In fact, the award of the Bharat Ratna to living legends – or non-legends – can equally be questioned, especially given the varying quality of awardees over the years.
What is worrying is that the award has been tweaked for political ends from the time of Jawaharlal Nehru and worthy awardees have been consistently mixed up with not-so-worthy ones.
For example, nothing beggars the mind more than the fact that Nehru awarded himself a Bharat Ratna in 1955, when he was Prime Minister. This sucks.
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The award to Indira Gandhi in 1971 also happened when she was Prime Minister; the only reason why it didn’t seem so bad then was because of her stellar role in the creation of Bangladesh, for which Vajpayee himself called her a “Durga”.
Rajiv Gandhi, whose achievements in one term as PM can be written on the back of a postage stamp, got one in 1991 because he died a terrible death at the hands of an LTTE suicide bomber. It was his death that got him the award, as the country mourned him for the way he died. He was worthy of national mourning, not a Bharat Ratna.
What this shows is that the nation’s highest award is often given for reasons of hubris, politics or sentimentality. In fact, politics is also the reason for denying some equally worthy candidates of the award like the late Narasimha Rao.
If we want to move away from this situation, the award procedure has to be taken out of political hands and a permanent body of eminent persons set up to figure out the right criteria for a short-list from which the government can take a final pick. One could exclude dead persons, or create another category – a Bharat Jyoti, maybe - for honouring those who did not get their due when they were alive.
Coming to the Vajpayee-Malaviya awards announced today (24 December), it is obvious that Vajpayee truly deserved it as he was one of India’s best non-Congress prime ministers, with respect flowing to him from across the political spectrum. With his genial exterior and easygoing ways, Vajpayee steered the country ably from 1998 to 2004 – a period of economic turbulence following the Asian meltdown, the post-Pokharan sanctions, the post-dotcom bust, and the Kargil war. Vajpayee’s government enabled both reforms and economic rejuvenation in difficult circumstances as head of an unwieldy coalition.
As for Malaviya, his selection is the BJP’s tribute to its Hindu constituency and not unlinked to Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency – Varanasi.
You can rubbish this selection or praise it, but if we accept political decisions on the Bharat Ratna as legitimate, you can’t also say that the BJP has no right to honour its own heroes.
However, a truly political – and genuine – act the BJP could have done (as we noted briefly earlier) was to add Narasimha Rao to the Bharat Ratna list this year. Maybe, this can be rectified next year.
If any prime minister post Nehru, Indira and Shastri deserved this award, it was Narasimha Rao (apart from Vajpayee). A churlish Congress party will never honour Rao, with the Gandhi family even denying him a cremation in Delhi.
The BJP would have done yeoman service to the nation by honouring Rao – which would have both made sensible politics and genuine recompense for services rendered to the nation.
by R Jagannathan Dec 24, 2014 14:28 IST
The announcement of the Bharat Ratna to Atal Behari Vajpayee and Madan Mohan Malaviya by the NDA government will partly be seen as the BJP’s effort to pander to its favourite heroes – one living, one long dead.
Neither name is a surprise (their birth anniversaries being 25 December), but if the BJP truly wanted to make a mark with its political choices for Bharat Ratna, it should have named PV Narasimha Rao as well. Rao’s was the hand the steered India out of economic bankruptcy in 1991. But that is another story.
While Vajpayee’s name will be seen as less controversial given his avuncular, “secular” image, Malaviya’s choice will inevitably be seen as linked to the Sangh parivar as he was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha which espouses Hindu nationalism. He was also founder of the Benares Hindu University.
The award to Vajpayee is non-controversial, but Malaviya’s name will surely raise hackles in the “secular” crowd.
Modern historian Ramachandra Guha has already tweeted his dissent, though he posed the argument as one about living and dead awardees. “Giving Bharat Ratna to Vajpayee is fine, but one should not award it to people dead or long dead. Awarding Malaviya is a mistake”, he tweeted.
But then, by this yardstick we should not have awarded BR Ambedkar, Sardar Patel or Maulana Abul Kalam Azad either, for they were towering personalities of pre- and post-independence India who made huge contributions to nation-building.
In fact, the award of the Bharat Ratna to living legends – or non-legends – can equally be questioned, especially given the varying quality of awardees over the years.
What is worrying is that the award has been tweaked for political ends from the time of Jawaharlal Nehru and worthy awardees have been consistently mixed up with not-so-worthy ones.
For example, nothing beggars the mind more than the fact that Nehru awarded himself a Bharat Ratna in 1955, when he was Prime Minister. This sucks.
'Atalji a living Bharat Ratna': Who said what on award given to Vajpayee, Malaviya
Former PM Vajpayee may be chosen for Bharat Ratna
LK Advani backs Bharat Ratna for former PM Vajpayee
The award to Indira Gandhi in 1971 also happened when she was Prime Minister; the only reason why it didn’t seem so bad then was because of her stellar role in the creation of Bangladesh, for which Vajpayee himself called her a “Durga”.
Rajiv Gandhi, whose achievements in one term as PM can be written on the back of a postage stamp, got one in 1991 because he died a terrible death at the hands of an LTTE suicide bomber. It was his death that got him the award, as the country mourned him for the way he died. He was worthy of national mourning, not a Bharat Ratna.
What this shows is that the nation’s highest award is often given for reasons of hubris, politics or sentimentality. In fact, politics is also the reason for denying some equally worthy candidates of the award like the late Narasimha Rao.
If we want to move away from this situation, the award procedure has to be taken out of political hands and a permanent body of eminent persons set up to figure out the right criteria for a short-list from which the government can take a final pick. One could exclude dead persons, or create another category – a Bharat Jyoti, maybe - for honouring those who did not get their due when they were alive.
Coming to the Vajpayee-Malaviya awards announced today (24 December), it is obvious that Vajpayee truly deserved it as he was one of India’s best non-Congress prime ministers, with respect flowing to him from across the political spectrum. With his genial exterior and easygoing ways, Vajpayee steered the country ably from 1998 to 2004 – a period of economic turbulence following the Asian meltdown, the post-Pokharan sanctions, the post-dotcom bust, and the Kargil war. Vajpayee’s government enabled both reforms and economic rejuvenation in difficult circumstances as head of an unwieldy coalition.
As for Malaviya, his selection is the BJP’s tribute to its Hindu constituency and not unlinked to Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency – Varanasi.
You can rubbish this selection or praise it, but if we accept political decisions on the Bharat Ratna as legitimate, you can’t also say that the BJP has no right to honour its own heroes.
However, a truly political – and genuine – act the BJP could have done (as we noted briefly earlier) was to add Narasimha Rao to the Bharat Ratna list this year. Maybe, this can be rectified next year.
If any prime minister post Nehru, Indira and Shastri deserved this award, it was Narasimha Rao (apart from Vajpayee). A churlish Congress party will never honour Rao, with the Gandhi family even denying him a cremation in Delhi.
The BJP would have done yeoman service to the nation by honouring Rao – which would have both made sensible politics and genuine recompense for services rendered to the nation.
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