Maha Bharat: Episode 46

Civilian Awards: How many are there, who decides the winners and what is the politics?

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Growing up in India, it was always a dream instilled in us to one day, be awarded the Bharat Ratna, or the Padma awards. These are the highest civilian awards in our country, and the list of awardees are some of India’s best and brightest.

But do you know how many awards there are? who decides the winners and what is the criteria used?

This episode talks about exactly that!

Show Notes

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Links to clips used in this episode —

Full Transcript of Episode 46 –

Every year, the month of January is special. It is in this month, around Republic Day, the government announces the winners of the prestigious Bharat Ratna and Padma Awards. Jise hum Civilian Awards ya sarvochh nagrik samman kehte hai. Many of these are awarded to recipients after their death, to honour their life. A posthumous award, as we call it. Many of our freedom fighters and leaders have been awarded the Bharat Ratna in this manner. 

Aise hi ek January mein, in 1992, the government announced that the highest civilian award in the country. The Bharat Ratna, would be awarded to Satyajit Ray, J.R.D. Tata — who were alive at that time — and to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, posthumously. Matlab, unhe maranoparant puraskar pradan hoga. But Netaji’s family refused to accept the award. PILs were filed, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. In fact, all Civilian Awards were stopped for three years. Why? 

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was an Indian Nationalist, a member of the INC who had led a militant movement against the British rule in India. In 1945, it was reported that Netaji was killed in a plane crash in Japan. However, this was not accepted by many of his supporters and even his family and the government continued to investigate for years…

So, as Netaji’s family explained, how can the government confer a posthumous award to someone, when they haven’t even declared (ghoshit kiya) that he is dead?

And this is only one of the controversies that has attached itself to the Civilian Awards over the years. It’s worth wondering (sochne ki baat hai), why something as prestigious as awarding the citizens of India for their work has so many controversies and politics attached to it. And that’s our question today: what are the civilian awards, who decides the winners, and why is it so controversial?

Civilian awards, quite simply, are awards given to civilians, or samaan nagrik of the country for exceptional work in their fields. Civilian iske liye kaha jaata hai, that the other category of awards is conferred to personnel in the armed forces — these are called Gallantry Awards. So, these are the two categories of awards for the citizens of our country. 

There are two types of civilian awards: The Bharat Ratna and the Padma Awards. There is a certain hierarchy of these orders, that tells you how important the award is. Sabse pehle hai Bharat Ratna, which is the Highest Civilian Award in the country.

[We hear a narrator speak about the Civilian awards]

To speak in exact terms, the award is conferred to individuals who have displayed “exceptional service of the highest order in their field” — yaani, apne kshetra mein oonche se ooncha kaam karne ke liye, unko ye puraskar diya jata hai. But doston, the award wasn’t conferred for achievement in “any field” when it started. Until 2011, the Bharat Ratna was only awarded to achievements in arts, literature, science and public services. So, what changed in 2011? 

This was a time when there was a loud demand from the citizens of the country that Sachin Tendulkar should be given the Bharat Ratna. But the field of sports wasn’t within the criteria of this award. At this same time, Ajay Maken, who was the Sports Minister in the Congress government at the time, wrote a letter to the Prime Minister and Home Minister, requesting to include sports in the list of fields of achievements. Finally, the government decided to open Bharat Ratna up to every field of human endeavour – including sports. In 2013, Sachin Tendulkar was conferred the prestigious award. He became the first recipient outside the field of arts, literature, science and public services to receive this award.

But the most interesting bit about this story is that in 2013, Activist Subhash Chandra Agarwal filed an RTI with the Home Ministry to find out more about this decision. The reply to this RTI revealed that the government actually opened the award to all fields only so that Sachin Tendulkar could be honoured with the Bharat Ratna! 

As you can imagine, this sparked a controversy. What were people complaining about? Well, first, that Sachin Tendulakr does not “deserve” the award, as he received it through political connections. Secondly, the fact that Major Dhyan Chand still has not received the Bharat Ratna despite being a hero in the field of hockey. As we’ll find out later, this demand is still alive.

To this day, Sachin Tendulkar is the youngest recipient of the Bharat Ratna. Some of our country’s most honourable civilians are on this list: including Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Dr. Abdul Kalam, Pandit Ravi Shankar. But one interesting thing to note here is that after Tendulkar, no one from the fields outside the initial list of science, arts, literature and public service has been conferred the Bharat Ratna!

Bharat Ratna ke baad ata hai the Padma Awards. There are three padma awards, in the order of importance: Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri awards. All three awards are conferred to individuals for distinguished service in their field, but the scale and impact of their service marks the difference in the awards. For instance, inme se sabse ooncha puraksar, Padma Vibushan has been conferred to some great names such as Satyajit Ray, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Ustad Bismillah Khan. After this award is the Padma Bhushan — more than 1200 Padma bhushan awards have been conferred to this day. The third award Padma Shri, has been awarded to more people in number, from big and small parts of the country, who have made a difference in their fields. 

The history of these awards goes back all the way to January of 1954 — when the Indian media received communication from the office of the President, similar to a press release. It said that the government has instituted two awards for Civilians: Bharat Ratna and Padma Vibhushan Awards. The Bharat Ratna would be the highest award, a round medal of gold. And the Padma Vibhushan awards were divided into three: Pehla, dusra and teesra varg. 

We’ve come a long way since then. The Bharat Ratna medal is now in the shape of a peepal leaf, with the emblem of India and the words `Satyamev Jayate’. The pehla, dusra and teesra varg were renamed in 1955, and today we call them Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri awards. 

In 1955, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister of India. In the same year, Pt. Nehru was also conferred the Bharat Ratna. A few decades later, in 1988, the Rajiv Gandhi government conferred Superstar and much-loved politician M.G. Ramachandran or MGR with the Bharat Ratna, posthumously. In the coming years, political leaders who were conferred the award often had an association with the leading political party of our government. 

As you can guess, most of these instances were met with criticism. And that’s understandable, right? Awards as prestigious as the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Awards should be awarded fairly, without political bias. So the question here is: who decides the recipients for the civilian awards?

In the case of the Bharat Ratna awards, the procedure followed is that the Prime Minister nominates a maximum of 3 names and the President chooses the winner. This has been the convention since the very beginning, which is why controversy erupted — and continues to this day….

[We hear news about Bharat Ratna awarded to Pt. Nehru]

A prime minister nominating himself for the Bharat Ratna is certainly controversial, but let me tell you the entire story. 

In 1954, the government made an announcement in our gazette, announcing a new list of civilian awards — as I told you. But this announcement did not mention anything about how the award recipients are selected. The practice of the Prime Minister nominating civilians and the president choosing the winner became a social convention)…but it was never the law. Perhaps this is why in 1955, the President at the time Dr. Rajendra Prasad decided to confer the Bharat Ratna award on Pandit Nehru without consulting him or the Cabinet of Ministers first. According to a Times of India report in 1955, Dr. Prasad wanted to keep this a secret – he announced it as a surprise in a banquet. So, while it’s not true that Pandit Nehru conferred the Bharat Ratna upon himself, I’ll leave you to decide whether he should have accepted it at the time. 

Mudde ki baat toh yeh hai, that what we understand from this is that the procedure to select Bharat Ratna awards is more of a convention than the law. The final decision, as per this convention, lies with the President. But the process is a little different when it comes to the Padma Awards. 

Every year, the Prime Minister forms a committee – the Padma Awards Committee. This committee is headed by the Cabinet Secretary, and includes the Home secretary and Secretary to the President. Apart from this, 4-6 other eminent persons are chosen as the members by the Prime Minister. So, what happens is: the committee receives a lot of nominations every year. It looks into the people nominated, their work, the impact they’ve made. The committee narrows it down to a list of recommendations — the President and Prime Minister choose the final recipients of the awards from this list. 

Sounds pretty straightforward, right?

But this process hasn’t been without controversies, either. Let me tell you why. 

When it comes to the Padma awards, I’m sure you heard news such as this: one out of every five Padma Awards is awarded to someone from Delhi. Ruling parties are accused of awarding the Padma Shri as a personal favour. The awards seem to be biased to recipients from North India, as opposed to South India. And there is some truth to all of these claims.

A part of the reason that the Padma Awards are filled with bias is that the process of nomination of civilians for the awards was different before 2015. Only State Ministers, Chief Minister, Governors and Members of Parliament could nominate names for the awards to the Padma Awards Committee. And in this case, you can imagine that the entire process included a lot of lobbying — matlab, influencing these ministers to get a nomination. For instance: in 2010, the Indian National Congress was in power, the hotelier and business Sant Singh Chatwal was awarded the Padma Bhushan. 

But this was right after Chatwal had helped finalize a nuclear deal between India and the U.S. — of course, this move was criticized by the opposition and the public. Similar controversies arose against every ruling party that was in power. 

But in 2015, there was a change.

[We hear a news report about a change in the Padma awardee nomination process]

This change was welcome everywhere. From 2016, the government set up a system where you can nominate civilians for the awards yourselves — your friends, family, members of the society who have worked in public service. This made it possible for many ‘unsung heroes’ from all walks of life to be recognized by the government and awarded the Padma awards in the coming years. Like Trinity Saioo (ट्रिनिटी साईयू), who led 800 women from Meghalaya to cultivate a unique variety of turmeric, or Arunoday Mondal (अरुणोदय मोंडल), who travels six hours every weekend to treat patients in the Sundarbans free of cost. Both of them won the Padma Shri awards in 2020. Just a couple of months ago, we heard about the list of Padma Awardees for 2021. Among the 129 awardees is the Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who will receive a Padma Vibhushan award, making him one of the few foreign citizens to do so! Unke saath saath, late S.P. Balasubramanian is also on the list.

The final decision of who wins is still in the hands of the Padma Awards committee and the President and Prime Minister — but in a way, the process of nomination of these names has been democratized. 

But let’s remember that the Bharat Ratna award doesn’t have a process of nomination by the public — and perhaps this is why it still stirs controversy. 

[We hear news reports about the Bharat Ratna being demanded for multiple personalities]

Demanding the Bharat Ratna for beloved figures is no new practice — it has been happening for years. And…we can understand this, right? Indian figures like P.V. Narsimha wasn’t only the Prime Minister of India, or the father of Indian Economic Reforms. He was the first major Telugu leader, and thus loved greatly by his community. Of course, they want to see him recognized and appreciated by being given the Bharat Ratna. In fact, the Telangana State Assembly passed a resolution to this effect!

In fact, people have been demanding a Bharat Ratna for Major Dhyan Chand ever since the Bharat Ratna nominations were opened up to all fields in 2011. We just heard Chandrapal Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi party urge Rajya Sabha members to support him in his demand for a posthumous Bharat Ratna for Major Dhyan Chand, India’s legendary hockey captain. 

This demand has been not been limited to the Parliament : in 2016, former captains Ajit Pal Singh, Zafar Iqbal, Dilip Tirkey and Dhyan Chand’s son Ashok Kumar, all gathered in front of the Jantar Mantar to demand that Major Dhyan Chand be awarded the Bharat Ratna. A few months ago, former hockey players put up a demonstration outside Jantar Mantar for the same demand. The question here is: why is the government shying away from awarding Major Dhyan Chand the Bharat Ratna. He led India to three olympic gold medals…in fact, in 2013, the government declared Major Dhyan Chand’s birthday as the National Sports day — on August 29. But still no Bharat Ratna: why?

Sportspersons who are protesting feel that this is an example of the  government’s negligence towards sports. And while many ministers and even Dhyan Chandji’s son Ashok Kumar have lobbied for a Bharat Ratna, it hasn’t happened yet. Again, the sports community at large demands to be appreciated, just as in the case of P.V. Narsimha Rao.

Doston, wouldn’t you agree that the Civilian Awards…and especially the Bharat Ratna, are not just awards? For the citizens of the country, these awards act as a token of recognition to the people they look up to. Something they fight for.

So what if I tell you that there have been demands — even legal demands — to not confer the Bharat Ratna to a civilian?

I know, this is a bit confusing. What I mean is that there have been instances which are the exact opposite of what we’ve been talking about so far. 

The demand has been the Bharat Ratna should not be conferred to those Indian citizens who are so brilliant, that they are above the Bharat Ratna. Conferring the Bharat Ratna to them would be an insult. 

Who are these citizens? That brings us to a controversy that suspended the Bharat Ratna award for three years.

Remember how we started the episode? I told you about the time that the government decided to confer Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose with the Bharat Ratna in 1992. At this time, P.V. Narsimha Rao was our Prime Minister. As we know, the Prime Minister nominates civilians for this award and the President chooses them. So, when it was decided that the Bharat Ratna in this year would be conferred finally to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, this was met with a lot of opposition from the public. 

But not just the public. Anita Pfaff, Netaji’s daughter, declined the award. Like I said in the beginning, there was objection to the award being conferred posthumously because the Indian government had not formally acknowledged Netaji’s death. But not just this — Netaji’s family felt that conferring the award to him so late, after so many others, is a “slight to his memory”.

This sentiment was shared by the public. So strongly, in fact, that a Public Interest Litigation was filed in the Calcutta High Court by Mr. Bijan Ghosh, a Supreme Court Lawyer. At this time, the government withdrew the Bharat Ratna for Netaji, and his name was dropped from the Gazetteof India — jisme is tarah ki announcements hoti hai. But because of these events, the award remained suspended for three years.

Doston, has it crossed your mind that Mahatma Gandhi has never received the Bharat Ratna award? Isn’t this unusual?

It’s not, if you think about it along the same lines of Netaji. In fact, in 2019, a PIL had been filed demanding a Bharat Ratna for Mahatma Gandhi. This time, it wasn’t Gandhiji’s family or the government who made the final decisions: it was our Supreme Court. 

In fact, the Supreme Court didn’t even entertain the PIL. It said that people of the nation hold Mahatma Gandhi in high esteem, and he is beyond any and all awards — even the highest civilian award of the country. As Justice S.A. Bobde said, “what is the Bharat Ratna for Mahatma Gandhi?”

The court dismissed the PIL at once. 

Over the years, not conferring the civilian awards to some people has brought controversy, and conferring them on some people has also brought controversy. We understand from this that the awards are considered important not just by the citizens in general, but also cultural and professional communities, who want to be recognized. 

For many, these awards become part of their identity…I’m sure you have seen people use the title ‘Padma Shri Mr. so and so’ or ‘Bharat Ratna Ms. so and so.’. But doston, did you know that this is actually not allowed? In 2019, the government clarified that using awards as titles is not permitted by the constitution. And if someone does this, their award can even be taken back! 

Anyway, this is just another example of how much weight the civilian awards carry. And it is for this reason that the intermingling of politics into it causes such ho-halla. The step to open nominations of the padma awards was certainly a positive one…but it cannot be denied that the lobbying and favours still come into play at a later stage. Even years of protesting has not ended in a Bharat Ratna for Major Dhyan Chand. The civilian awards are a mixed bag — one with its own virtues and faults, as we have found. 

That’s it from me for today! I hope we learnt something new today, as always. See you next week on a brand new episode of Maha Bharat.

Credits

Narrated by – Dhruv Rathee
Producer – Gaurav Vaz
Written by – Anushka Mukherjee and Gaurav Vaz
Edited by – Medha V
Title Track Design – Abhijith Nath
Audio Production – Madhav Ayachit