Forgotten and bitter, there were hardly any takers for thenation’s Milk Man during his twilight years in Anand. Some say because he waspompous. Well, he wasn’t young at 90, but he was hardly senile! The truth is hewasn’t worth any TRP. That’s probably why he made it to the initial list of“Greatest Indians” on CNN-IBN, but never made it to the Top Ten. SachinTendulkar and Atal Bihari Vajpayee (both still to get the Bharat Ratna, by theway) did! There was also risk aversion. Advertising bucks from Kurien’sprotégé-turned-enfant-terrible Amrita Patel were part of the blackout calculus.
But all of a sudden, among several others, Rajdeep Sardesai,the chief editor of CNN-IBN, has sent out the regulation tweet that Kuriendeserved the Bharat Ratna.
Is this anything but a crude attempt to ride on the nation’snostalgia? We saw it when Field Marshal SHFJ Manekshaw passed away.
My argument against Kurien’s Bharat Ratna is based on threepoints:
1. A posthumous Bharat Ratna is becoming a force of habit.Out of 41 awarded so far (42, if we include the “posthumous” one to NetajiSubhash Chandra Bose in 1992, which the award committee had to withdraw afterfailing to satisfy the supreme court), 13 were given during the primeministership of Jawaharlal Nehru.
Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad was offered the Bharat Ratna beforehe died in 1958, but he refused on moral grounds and the investiture was donein 1992: 34 years after his demise. Also, outside the scope of this essay,though not for any reasons of fairness, Nehru forgot at least three giants:Vallabhbhai Patel (recognized only in 1991: 40 years after his demise), SubhashChandra Bose (detailed above) and BR Ambedkar (recognized in 1990, thirty fouryears after his demise in 1956).
Remember, Nehru’s was a time when the doyens of the freedommovement were alive. Many like Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bhagat Singh hadn’t dieda century ago. If he had rolled the clock back forty-fifty years, like hissuccessors were to do, the list of Bharat Ratna would have had several hundredtoday lie in oblivion. That was another time and the PM too much of arationalist to be honouring the dead.
Politicization picked up soon after. Unwittingly, one mightadd. Lal Bahadur Shastri got the Bharat Ratna posthumously, in 1966, amidst awave of public grief over his unexpected demise during a trip to erstwhileUSSR.
Then, Indira Gandhi helped herself to one in 1971, riding onthe military victory in Bangladesh (Manekshaw, her chief of army staff, didn’t;he was, in fact, promoted to the five-star general position of Field Marshalfor 14 days and then eased out, perhaps on account of trying to hog too much ofthe credit).
By then Bharat-Ratna politics had lost most of itspost-Independence innocence. VV Giri got his five-minutes of fame in 1975, fiveyears before his demise, surprising many on what he did to deserve the honourthat Patel, Bose and Ambedkar hadn’t. In 1976 came the Bharat Ratna to KKamraj, a sworn nemesis of the PM, but now safely in heaven! The one to MotherTeresa was non-controversial and happened 17 years before the angel’s demise in1997.
Honouring Kurien thus, if he’s deserving of being in thisclub, should have been done when he was alive. Today, it’s a plainafterthought, hardly of inspirational value to a life of serving `Bharat,’ thatmass of India that remains submerged in marginal farming, survival stillhinging on vagaries of the monsoon, and poor quality of livestock.
2. Kurien has already received a Padma Vibhushan in 1999,preceded by a Padma Shri and a Padma Bhushan. A sudden Bharat Ratna doesn’thave compelling evidence of sterling work post the PadmaVibhushan. Thanks tointernal politics with the men and women he created, the fact is that the last13 years don’t have all that much to show.
An emotional “upgrade” to the Bharat Ratna would also mean aquestion mark to the claims of other builders of modern India. I merely mentionE Sreedharan in mass-urban transportation, Vikram Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan inspace, and M S Swaminathan in ushering the green revolution (see completelist).
It may interest that Homi Bhabha, the father of our nuclearprogramme, and a favourite of Nehru, didn’t go beyond a Padma Bhushan, thethrid-highest honour, what to speak of the Padma Vibhushan or Bharat Ratna.
3. A man like Kurienneedn’t be remembered via tokenism. His passion and ability was to set up atemplate for a milk cooperative in a land that depended on the rains, whosecattle was barely average in yields, and whose farmers hardly in the reckoningfor their literacy and progressive approach.
Can we, instead of meaningless debates on a Bharat Ratna, dosomething about bringing his ideas into states that have far better resourcesthan Gujarat, Kurien’s original catchment?
