| January 17, 2008 | Thursday | Muharram 07, 1429 |
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An award or a requiem?
THERE is nothing really wrong about lobbying for a coveted award as Al Gore did for his Nobel. But when India’s prime ministerial hopeful Lal Kishan Advani proposed the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian prize, for fellow BJP politician and former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, many of his admirers cried foul.
Some saw in it a ploy by his adversaries to firmly and finally retire Vajpayee from years of public life by giving him a political requiem as it were.
That would make Advani’s chances for the prime minister’s job in the next elections a lot surer. Others feared the move was a way of giving national approval to a rightwing ideology that Vajpayee represents. Many more claimants joined the Bharat Ratna tea party. Only the Marxists said a firm no to an offer to decorate veteran communist leader Jyoti Basu with the award. Earlier his late comrade E.M.S. Namboodiripad had turned down an offer for a similar distinction.
The award was instituted seven years after independence when it was given to the world famous scientist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman. Since then it has been given to many Indian dignitaries. A naturalised Indian citizen, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, better known as Mother Teresa (1980) and to two non-Indians —Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1987) and Nelson Mandela (1990) received it. Former prime minister, Morarji Desai, remains the only person to have been decorated with the two rival awards – the Nishan-i-Pakistan as well as the Bharat Ratna.
Eyebrows were raised though when Pakistan gave its highest award later to Indian movie actor Dilip Kumar. The Shiv Sena protested menacingly in front of his house in Mumbai.
Like all such awards, a potential Bharat Ratna recipient is short-listed by a committee of individuals that is required to include persons of excellence in a wide variety of areas. It is inevitable; however, that the decisions are made by a subjective choice for there is no known yardstick to measure, say, musical talent. When South India’s singing enchantress M.S. Subbalaxmi was given the Bharat Ratna everyone rejoiced and some even thought the award for her had come a little too late.
But there was a resounding sour note when Sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar became its recipient and not his infinitely more talented brother in law Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, the legendary sarod player, who now lives in virtual seclusion in California. (Do notice how the secular Indian state continues to stress the communal description of Pandit and Ustad for Hindu and Muslim musicians, a legacy of the feudal courts, which it still applauds.)
Similarly, why was Lata Mangeshkar, one of the finest playback singers no doubt, given the award and not Mohammed Rafi who, many would say is just as good if not better? But who are we to quarrel with subjective choices if we cannot produce objective criteria ourselves for who deserves an award and who doesn’t. Dalit politician and cabinet minister Ram Vilas Pawan seems to disagree. So he has added the late Mohammed Rafi as a key candidate for the next Bharat Ratna recipient.
If anyone asked me, I would say the Bharat Ratna though too small a prize for the great martyr Bhagat Singh should nevertheless decorate his memory. There are friends who want Begum Hazrat Mahal and Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar to be considered. If heeded, that would be some way to celebrate the 150th anniversary of India’s anti-colonial revolt of 1857 we are supposed to be observing this year.
There was a time when Indians lived for their new and independent nation and cared not a whit for decorations and rewards. I have a picture of about three of four dozen doyens of Indian classical music during an annual tea with India’s first President Rajendra Prasad. You can imagine the stature of those gathered in the sprawling lawns of the Mughal Gardens by the fact that Ravi Shankar and Vilayat Khan, two of the outstanding sitar players of our times, were relegated to the second row in the group photo. Among those who were seated with the president was the late Ustad Haafiz Ali Khan, father of the current sarod guru, Amjad Ali Khan.
Rajendra Prasad asked Haafiz Khan during a quiet moment if there was anything he could do for the ustad. Anyone else today would have sought a piece of land to run a school or two or some such thing. Not Haafiz Ali Khan. I have heard his reply from various sources, and he said: “Sir, it would be greatly rewarding for the world of music if you could instruct All India Radio not to play (the late night raag) Darbari Kanada in the mornings.”
Of course there are still greater chances that those who have rejected state honours or returned them in protest have become bigger heroes than ones who clamoured for the awards. Rabindranath Tagore and John Lennon endeared themselves to their admirers when they returned the British awards, one in protest against colonial laws and the other against the Vietnam War.
Lennon wrote to the Queen: “Your Majesty, I am returning this in protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam, and against (my song) Cold Turkey slipping down the charts. With love. John Lennon of Bag” (Nowadays potential recipients are contacted by Downing Street to confirm in writing whether or not they wish to be put forward for an honour well before any public announcement is made. Therefore those who now decline an honour when it is announced have already indicated acceptance beforehand.)
No such discretion in our patch. As a senior columnist noted the “floodgates had been opened for demands – not recommendations or suggestions – for the Bharat Ratna to start pouring in.” Dalit leader Mayawati, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and an avowed aspirant for the office of prime minister shot off a letter of her own to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saying the Bharat Ratna must be conferred posthumously on her political mentor and founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party, ‘Manyavar Kanshi Ram’. She lost no time in reading out this missive at a hurriedly summoned press conference.
From Tamil Nadu started coming subtle whispers that the best candidate for the highest award was the five-time chief minister of the state and patriarch of the DMK, M. Karunanidhi. Not to be left behind, aides of Steel Minister Paswan, a Congress ally, released on his behalf a list of three, including the 19th-century social reformer, Jyotibha Phule, and of course his favourite singer Rafi.
Let no one think that the Congress is acting coy. This year happens to be the birth centenary of the long-serving minister and Dalit icon, the late Jagjivan Ram. His daughter, a Congress minister, wants the award to go to him. The Bharat Ratna is acquiring some features of a state-sponsored requiem.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in New Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
