Bharat Ratna

Bharat Ratna is highest civilian honour of our country. This award along with Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan were started by Govt of India in early  50s. The idea behind these awards was to honour Indian people for their service to mankind and nation. Slowly these awards and specially Bharat Ratna started taking political colour, and it all started depending upon the ruling govt at centre, whom to give the award. Also Central govt to please some political parties started honouring their departed leader or even some forgotten leader from their own party.

There are only 43 recipients of Bharat Ratna Award till date, I am putting below the list of recipients decade wise and ruling govts at Centre during that decade

1. 1950-59— CR Rajagopalachari(1954), S Radhakrishnan (1954), CV Raman (1954), Bhagwandass (1955), M Visvesvariya (1955), Jawaharlal Nehru(1955), Govind Vallabh Pant(1955) and Dr DK Karve (1958). Out 0f 8 recipients 5 were from political field, although S Radhakrishnan was not apolitician but at that time he was Vice President of the country. Central govt was headed by Jawaharlal Nehru of Congress party.
2. 1960-69—BC Roy (1961), Purshottamdas Tandon (1961) Rajendra Prasad (1962) Zakir Hussain (1963), PV Kane (1963), Lalbahadur Shashtri (1966-Posthumous). Out of 6 recipients 5 were politicians.  Central govt  of Congress headed By Nehru, Shastri & Indira Gandhi
3. 1970-79— Indira Gandhi (1972), VV Giri (1975), K Kamraj( 1976-P). Central govt of Congress under Indira Gandhi and Janata Party under Morarji Desai but Janata Party at that time disbanded these awards. All 3 recipients were politicians.
4. 1980-89—-Mother Teresa (1980), Vinoba Bhave (1983-P), Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan (1987), MG Ramachandran( 1988-P). Central Govt headed by Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi of Congress,  VP Singh of Janata Dal.
5. 1990-99— BR Ambedkar(1990-P), Nelson Mandela (1990), Rajiv Gandhi (1991-P), Sardar Patel (1991-P), Morarji Desai (1991), Abdul Kalam Azad (1992-P), JRD Tata (1992), Aruna Asif Ali (1997-P) APJ Abdul Kalam (1997), MS Subalakshmi (1998), C Subramaniam (1998), Jaiprakash Narain (1999), Amratya Sen (1999), Gopinath Bardolia (1999-P),  Ravi Shankar (1999). Out of 15 recipients (most in a decade) 8 were politicians.  In this decade there were many PMs VP Singh, Chandrashekhar of Janata dal, Narsimha Rao of Congress, Deve Gowda  and IK Gujral of Janata Dal and AB Vajpayee of BJP. So in this decade all the politicians who were forgotten by Nehru/Gandhi family were honoured.
6. 2000-09 —Lata Mangeshkar (2001), Bismillah Khan (2001), Bhimsen Joshi (2008). Central Govt headed by AB Vajpayee of BJP and Manmohan Singh of Congress. This was the first decade where no politician was honoured.
7. 2010-till now— Sachin Tendulkar (2014), Prof CN Rao (2014), AB Vajpayee (2015),  Madan Mohan Malviya (2015). Central Govts headed by Manmohan Singh of Congress and Narendra Modi of BJP.

You all will notice from above that these awards really had political colour, and the decade of 90s saw that the different PMs honoured the politicians whom the Congress party had forgotten, One thing really bothered me that why Sardar Patel was not honoured earlier, is it because Nehru never liked him , so subsequent Govts of Nehru/Gandhi family also never bothered about him, but the fact is it was Narsimha Rao’s regime which honoured forgotten leaders like Sardar patel, BR Ambedkar, Morarji Desai amd Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad.  C Subramaniam, Gopinath Bardolai and Jaiprakash Narain were honoured by Vajpayee..

Now there is news reports that few hockey players and family of Dhyan Chand is demanding that he should be also honoured with Bharat Ratna award posthumously. This demand had started earlier also when there was speculation that Sachin Tendulkar might get Bharat Ratna Award. I agree that Dhyan Chand’s contribution to hockey was great but his exploit were during the British Raj and Bharat Ratna was constituted in independent India. I do not understand why  persons should be given award for some thing  they did during British rule. On this basis Aruna Asif Ali’s contribution to independent India was not award worthy. If you start giving this honour to people of that era, then what is wrong in honouring Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and other freedom fighters also. There are some award winners here who denounced Indian citizenship, why then they should be given India’s highest civilian award. a There are some politicians who were given award after their death, according to me they never deserve the Bharat Ratna award, for example  Rajiv Gandhi, what his contribution in nation building except that he was ex PM’s son and was assassinated by Tamil terrorists. Even award given to MGR was also for political reasons, the reason being Rajiv Gandhi wanted Anna DMK’s support. I fail to understand that if Lata Mangeshkar can be given Bharat Ratna then why not her equally/better talented sister Asha Bhosle and Mohd Rafi .

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