Many years back, a man called jean paul Sartre refused the nobel prize for literature. He openly refused to be on the side of the west in the endless confrontation between the west and the east. His act effectively put the nobel prize in its proper place. Only nine years later in 1973, the nobel committee vindicated sartre’s act by awarding the prize to the greatest peace monger of them all, henry Kissinger. Wow and, what a genius of a man. It was not the first time in the history of mankind . butchers always solve the brutal suffering of the lambs, by killing them. they are the ultimate purveyors of human charity.
An award has always been a political event . the giving, the accepting or the occasional refusing – all these three acts anoint the event with a politics that we do not want to discuss. And our intransigence to discuss the underlying politics ensures that the award becomes the ultimate scale to measure a personality. Very rarely, though , the personality measures the award. What if albert Einstein had not won the nobel prize for physics ? would another physicist have respected the physics nobel after that..i doubt it..(i am personally of the idea that the nobels for the sciences are still worthy of the name. But myself being a layman, could provide just an amateur view)So with the premise that an award is not just the measure of someone’s performance , we are obliged to explore as to what other components are signified when a person receives an award.
May be
- The person is of the same political camp as the award giver
- The awardee ignores the negatives of the award giver
- The awardee is perfectly non political and excels in the field of his interest
- The award giver wants to send a symbolic message to the opposite camp
Beyond this , there is one rare possibility that the awardee is a figure loved by people from all walks of life. The political implications of the act of giving creates a space for the discourse for its counterpart. The act of refusing. Refusing an award is a symbolic rejection of the legitimacy of the awarding authority’s right to measure a person ‘s contribution . It is in itself as much a political act as it is a demonstration of self confident and assertive heroism.
Milkha singh refused the padma shri for the same reason. His defiance was an indictment of the pro cricket politics of the Indian government. Subhash Chandra bose’s family refused the posthumous bharat ratna awarded to him, which can be considered as a criticism of the privileged few who treat bharat ratna as an essential familial commodity.
These are precisely the reasons why one feels compelled to drop his own worthless opinions into the boiling broth of the debate on “who should be given bharat rathna ?”
“For me as a sports minister this is one of the biggest days of Indian sport and next biggest day I think will be the day when any sportsperson is named as an awardee of Bharat Ratna,” this is what the minister of sports ajay maken had to say when the decision to throw open the award to sportsmen was taken(.this will enable sachin to get bharat ratna. )Politically i am wrong, ‘sachin and dhyan chand’. One tends to wonder of the innocence of the Indian politician and lobbyist who have suddenly and naively , ‘discovered’ dhyan chand. When dhyan chand died of liver disease, he was a bitter man , penniless and largely forgotten. And i am sure, if there was no wiki pedia, most Indians would have had no one to answer for them , the perennial question of Indian sports ,”who is dhyan chand” ?
I have expressed my opinion too many times about the greatness of sachin that i do not wish to risk additional physical injuries for my thoughts. So i want to go into the mind of the lobbyists who want to award sachin tendulkar the highest civilian award of the nation. The case is made out as though it is inconceivable that a person of sachin’s stature is without a bharat ratna. That irks somewhere in a nation where the professional footballers clean the seats of the cricket stadia to get some extra pocket money. What does it mean to lobby for an award ,for a person, even if he had clearly proved his dominance in his field of work , when there are more pressing issues in the same field and the person is quite young himself? What kind of cunning calculation allows somebody to dig out the legend of dhyan chand and project it side by side as a sort of legitimizing act for the former crass9obviously) suggestion? It means a lot. It requires a mediocre mind , of which we have aplenty. However, it also means a politics of purposely projecting a hero in the Indian mind , linking sports with national honour and a contrive association of greatness with patriotism.
It is also necessary to make out the beneficiaries of such a move. As sure as anything else, the corporate houses for which sachin has been the relentless poster boy, will gain a big boost. More incentives for the unrecognised cricketers , chicken soup for the cricket industry, (!) more and more advertisements , felicitations , huge placards , flexboards, commemorating the feat, and also subjugation of other sports beneath the overpowering weight of the skyscrapers of BCCI. And they are the ones who parade for tweaking of the rules to help sachin tendulkar get his rightful due. I wonder why everyone does not see the irony of reading out sachin tendulkar anecdotes seriously . after all we are the ones who enjoy a good hearted laugh about rajni kant’s version of chuck Norris facts.
But strangely, men in india are not all that naive. There has been a marked criticism of this lobbying by people of noted reputation such as the respected judge markandeya katju. However, in this regard, i differ with him because he has not taken into account the fundamental politics behind all award giving. His tireless promotion of the ‘right kind of heroes’ who need to be brought back into the deculturised public perception, is an utopian vision of the ageing generation- a generation that has rightly observed the decadence of values in a sea of consumerism .
However, the politics of award has a logic of its own. Everyone and every faction has a perception of the ‘right kind of ‘ heroes they want to promote. I do not doubt for one instant people like mr katju would revive in the dusted corridors of public memory the forgotten and un recognised personalities whose relevance to the current world is altogether obvious. on the other hand, take for instance, the persons , a bjp government would prefer as the ‘right kind of heroes’. Their politics would point to someone like v d savarkar; Shyama Prasad mukerjea; this would develop into an awarding game of bizarre proportions in an already pestilential environment of acknowledgements.
Nay, sir. India needs heroes . but they are not present in the yellowed pages of history, but in the sweaty soils of the present. Have you ever heard of a person as selfless as dr binayak sen? A rare gem of a doctor who chose to work in the tribal villages of central india after an education ,extraordinarily intelligent persons would die to lay hands on, he has been a person who stands for civil liberties to the tribals. His political stand is one reason why he was not given even a padma shree when lobbyists like sant singh chatwal get padma bhushan. (chatwal has recently been alleged of malfeasance). But then , the chattisgarh government had decided dr.sen should wear the crown of thorns-perhaps because that is the only laurel truly righteous men deserve to get- and had him behind bars.
Another dimension ; how far would the ‘right kind of heroes’ stay in public discourse because of a bharat ratna award. How many of us remember the last bharat ratna awardee.? To me, the angst of justice katju can only be solved when children in school, are taught history with the same passion as they are taught computers.
The contrasting images of those historical men who were rebels in their contemporary societies and the pathetic members of ' generation next' lingering inside the golden bars of a dangerously' near- true' digital world need not be stressed upon too often. I now remember with regret the ground floor kid who is in his tenth standard, who replied with indifference , that he does not know who bhagat singh was . Believe me, he has not even heard of him. He knows the life history of sachin tendulkar upside down. He can talk at length about steve jobs and suresh raina and create powerpoint presentations in a jiffy.
I do not want to be seen as the vendor of pessimism , but reality hits very hard . justice katju’s lofty ideals are something that i would recall with nostalgia when thinking of these times, thirty years from now. By then, sachin tendulkar would have been knighted .
And if we are lucky enough, he might be the president of india . there would be an award in the name of saibaba. I only pray the latter award does not replace bharat ratna as the highest civilian award.
p.s. the oscar is an euphemism for all the awards here- if that clarification is required for those who want to be obsessively right..
