The Union government’s decision to posthumously name Bihar politician Karpoori Thakur as Bharat Ratna has once again turned the spotlight on the politicisation of the nation’s highest civilian honour. The late Karpoori Thakur, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi noted, was known for his modesty and simplicity. There are, however, many such Gandhians in public life who have lived the life of Karpooriji. But then, not many whose honouring would have political benefits for Modi, that too in a state like Bihar. The PM should be complimented for his transparent honesty in drawing attention to the political qualifications and social origins of Karpooriji.
The Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour, is the one award that the President and Prime Minister have the power to personally name an individual for. There is a procedure for the selection of all other Padma awardees. A group of officials and non-officials, the latter being ones regarded “reliable” by the government of the day, sit for days to put together a list of all Padma awardees. The President and Prime Minister can suggest names to this committee of officials before their list is forwarded to the PM for approval and subsequent forwarding to the President. This procedure has been made more elaborate over the past decade with the public at large being invited to name a person for a Padma “through proper channel”.
There have been instances when the President of India took the initiative to select a name for the highest honour. The first such case was when in 1955 President Rajendra Prasad chose to name Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Since the announcement of the award and its handing over is made by the Rashtrapati, Prasad had to wait till he was no longer Rashtrapati for Prime Minister Nehru to name him.
That the Bharat Ratna is an honour bestowed directly by the President and the PM has made it special. The award honoured itself with its first ten awardees that included physicist C V Raman, engineer M Visvesvaraya, Indologist P V Kane, educationist, social reformer and fighter for women’s rights D G Karve, Gandhian P D Tandon, philosopher S Radhakrishnan, and the first governor-general C Rajagopalachari. The first posthumous awardee was Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. He earned the honour after his handling of the 1965 war with Pakistan.
The first time a selection for this honour may have raised eyebrows was in 1975 when V V Giri was named. He was a prominent labour leader before becoming President but one could argue he was not in the same category of eminence as the first ten awardees. The first time the Bharat Ratna became purely political was when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi honoured her former party President and Congress Party leader from Tamil Nadu, K Kamaraj. Kamaraj was undoubtedly a popular politician and a genial person, but his greater contribution was to his party rather than the country.
Indira Gandhi redeemed herself in her second term naming Mother Teresa and the Gandhian Acharya Vinoba Bhave. Rajiv Gandhi blotted his record naming M G Ramachandran posthumously. That was a blatant politicisation of the award since the Congress party sought to maintain its alliance with the AIADMK.
Interestingly, short-term PMs with just about a year in office made better use of the opportunity. This may well have been their way of seeking public approval for themselves. Consider the choices of Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar — B R Ambedkar, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Morarji Desai, Rajiv Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, the only non-Indian to be so honoured. No controversy there.
The Bharat Ratna regained its glory during the tenure of Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao. His list was a who’s who of eminent persons — Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, J R D Tata and Satyajit Ray. Prime Minister Rao was the only PM to name an industrialist as Bharat Ratna when he named JRD in January 1992. JRD’s choice was significant not only because he was the first and only business leader to be so honoured. It was also New Delhi’s message to Mumbai in the wake of Rao’s “New Economic Policies” and the liberalisation of the economy.
JRD had become a symbol of the movement for “free enterprise” during the era of the “licence-control-permit Raj”, having played a key role in the launching and financing of the Swatantra party. No other business leader has since been named as Bharat Ratna, even though the family of industrialist Dhirubhai Ambani lobbied hard to secure that honour posthumously for him. In 2016, Dhirubhai’s friend and benefactor, President Pranab Mukherjee named him for a Padma Vibhushan.
The Bharat Ratna acquired glory during the tenure of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee whose choice of both politicians and artistes was impeccable — M S Subbulakshmi, C Subramaniam, Jayaprakash Narayan, Amartya Sen, Gopinath Bordoloi, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Lata Mangeshkar and Ustad Bismillah Khan. Though Prime Minister Manmohan Singh continued this tradition of keeping the honour largely non-political by naming Bhimsen Joshi, Sachin Tendulkar and scientist C N R Rao for the honour, he regrettably ignored the legitimate case of his political mentor P V Narasimha Rao.
Historians, economists and foreign affairs analysts will long remember the policy legacy of Narasimha Rao. He not only provided political leadership to a fundamental shift in economic policy that has stood the country in good stead but also led India out of the difficult geopolitical environment of the post-Cold War world. Rao’s economic policies not only saved the country from an ignominious external payments default but also stimulated the rise of private enterprise. Not surprisingly, one of India’s few truly self-made billionaires and a distinguished business leader N R Narayana Murthy recently called Rao the architect of India’s economic rise. “In 1947 we won political freedom,” said Murthy, “In 1991 we won economic freedom.”
Neither Singh nor Modi, both of whom can claim to have taken the economy forward on a path laid out by Rao have bothered to use their decade in office to honour their distinguished predecessor. Many in Rao’s home state of Telangana see a bias against South India in this political judgement of Delhi’s leaders. Was Karpoori Thakur’s contribution to nation building greater than that of Rao?
The writer was member, National Security Advisory Board (1999-2001) and Advisor to the Prime Minister of India
