Assam prays for Bharat Ratna to Hazarika,Centre takes it up

The demand for a Bharat Ratna is nearly a decade old with Dilip Kumar Saikia,then AGP legislator,raising it in the Assembly in 2003. The state government assured it would take up the matter with the Centre; in March last year,the AGP got the Assembly to adopt a resolution to press New Delhi.

This month,the demand received a fresh impetus with several organisations pressing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,who incidentally is an “ordinary resident” of Guwahati. Local estimates are that at least 100 individuals,cultural bodies,student groups and political parties sent identical memorandums to the Prime Minister as the state observed Hazarika’s birthday this month.

“A Bharat Ratna to Bhupenda is long overdue. If sportspersons and singers can be chosen,why not a multi-faceted genius like Bhupenda?” asks Suryya Hazarika,author and publisher who has brought out a dozen collections of essays by Hazarika and published a three-volume “complete works”.

“A prodigious genius,he had written and sung his first song when he was just 10. His contribution towards music,cinema,culture and society spreading over more than seven decades is simply enormous,” says Arun Sarma,award-winning author and playwright who feels that not much research has been done on Hazarika’s music,films or prose.

Hazarika,who was conferred the Dadasaheb Phalke award in 1992,has won almost all awards that a musician,lyricist and author (he was elected president of the Asam Sahitya Sabha in 1993) can win within Assam. He was bestowed a special award called “Asam Ratna” by the state government in 2009.

In the Rajya Sabha,the AGP MP said,“Here is one person who is not just a singer or musician,but one who has been relentlessly pursuing the cause of the Northeast at the national level and that of Indian culture in the global arena,thereby helping in achieving emotional integration of India with the Northeast during the last 70 years.”

Author Mitra Phukan described Hazarika as “a bard of contemporaneous events”,“a singer for all seasons” and “a poet and lyricist whose vision has always been uncompromisingly humanistic”.