dna edit: Chinks in honour

For quite some time State-sponsored national awards have been fraught with controversy. The lists of awardees are routinely scrutinised by various lobbies and political parties, each one of them busy running down some awardee or the other, in the process pitching their own candidates who they believe to be more deserving than those honoured by the government of the day. But the ongoing controversy around Bharat Ratna appears more unseemly than the usual variety of spats, if only because of the timing and its close proximity to the 2014 general elections. The air is rife with politics and even the most inconsequential of actions or words tends to take on electoral colour. All political parties  are engaged in the frenetic exercise of name-calling and giving each other red faces.   Amid this shrill electioneering and continued verbal duel between the ruling Congress and the opposition, the BJP, came Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement, followed closely by the announcement that the government has conferred on him the highest national civilian award of the land.  Barely did this news sink in that a clamour emanated from several quarters. Given that  the BJP rarely lets go of an opportunity to embarrass the Congress-led UPA, the party’s belligerent response is not surprising. The BJP has demanded to know the government’s reasons for not bestowing the same honour on former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The Janata Dal (United) and the National Conference too have lent their support to this demand, as has the UPA’s own minister Pallam Raju. Not to be outdone, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief Chandrababu Naidu has demanded that NT Rama Rao be given the Bharat Ratna for his contribution to Indian politics and films. That’s not all. The latest name to be dragged into the controversy is the hockey legend, the late Dhyan Chand. The question raised is: Shouldn’t Dhyan Chand instead of Tendulkar have received the Bharat Ratna?It’s difficult to deny that State/government-sponsored awards are more often than not essentially political in nature. Rarely do governments honour their critics — even if they scale the heights of excellence in their respective fields. The critical measure of eligibility here is of loyalty to a particular regime or a brand of politics, or of propelling one’s own kith and kin to fame. Behind-the-scenes lobbying is always hectic on such occasions. Over the years, these State-sponsored awards — Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, Bharat Ratna — have lost their sheen due to competitive lobbying, string-pulling and nepotism. Many talented personalities — even those genuinely deserving of the honour — have chosen to not accept the award. Some of these names include sitar maestro Vilayat Khan, kathak dancer Sitara Devi, billiards ace Michael Ferreira, litterateur Kanak Sen Deka, historian Romila Thapar. The list of people refusing to accept the Padma awards has got longer by the year. Thapar declined saying she had made a decision to accept awards solely from academic institutions or from those associated with her professional work. In a letter to the then President APJ Abdul Kalam, she said it was ‘a purely personal decision and does not reflect on other recipients of State awards’. Kanak Sen Deka, the president of the Asom Sahitya Sabha, said that accepting Padma Shri ‘the lowest among the three, including Padma Bhushan and the highest Padma Vibhushan’ would dim the prestige of the awards he had received so far. It’s perhaps time to restore glory to such national awards.