The announcement that the late socialist leader Karpoori Thakur has been accorded India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, has triggered a refrain that the Narendra Modi government has done so keeping in mind the social justice legacy of the late leader and the electoral battle in Bihar, but a look at state honours of the last decade show it is of a pattern.
In the last decade or so, the Narendra Modi government has given out six Bharat Ratnas, in contrast the three awards, the two UPA governments between 2004-2014, had announced. In the six awards under the Modi government, there has been a clear messaging of intent as well as recognition of contribution to public service.
Conferring of the awards on the former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, founder of the Benaras Hindu University Madan Mohan Malviya and senior RSS ideologue and social worker Nanaji Deshmukh (the latter two awarded posthumously) was clearly aimed at recognising ideological underpinnings of the Modi government.
The award to musician Bhupen Hazarika (also given posthumously), was a nod to the BJP’s political ascent in Assam, the State from where Hazarika hailed as well as an acknowledgement of his iconic status in the State. This was the second Bharat Ratna with significance for Assam being given by an NDA government, with former Chief Minister of Assam, Gopinath Bordoloi (posthumously) awarded in 1999 by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.
The case of Pranab
Late president Pranab Mukherjee, elected to the post under the UPA, but awarded by the Modi government is an interesting case. His five decades-long career in public service of course was a consideration, but also the fact that for many he also represented a Congress that wasn’t there any more — economically Left, but socially and culturally Right of Centre, and very much the kind who also reached across the ideological aisle, in his visit to the RSS headquarters in Nagpur in July 2018, after he had ceased being the President of India.
In all the talk of the Bharat Ratna being awarded to the late Karpoori Thakur as solely a political project aimed at the electoral dividends in Bihar, there is also the pattern that Mukherjee and Thakur are not the only exceptions of the Modi government according state honours to ideological rivals. From Sharad Pawar (Padma Vibhushan in 2017), to Muzzffar Baig of the People’s Democratic Party (awarded Padma Bhushan in 2020), to the late Tarun Gogoi, former Chief Minister of Assam and Congressman to the end (awarded Padma Bhushan in 2021), the Modi government has covered the political spectrum.
In fact, the late Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav’s investiture with the Padma Vibhushan in 2023 evoked a strong internal response from the Sangh Parivar which holds him responsible for the police firing on kar sewaks heading for the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, in the aftermath of the Ram Rath yatra in November 1990.
The strong impulse for these choices, apart from the political messaging, then appears to be to find convergence across the spectrum of public life in India, and in the sharp reactions from ideological rivals to attempts at appropriation of various legacies, a political instinct that takes no prisoners.
