It’s a matter of historical record that when Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was offered the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award, he refused to accept it. It was his considered view that serving member of the cabinet were able to exert ‘control and authority’ over such decisions, which he then was as Education Minister, and should therefore stay away from such ‘temptations’. We, the people of India are tempted to applaud that decision. Instituted in 1954, the Bharat Ratnas were possibly inspired by Mughal Emperor Akbar’s navratnas a term used for nine extraordinary people in his court.
It is also a matter of historical record that Jawaharlal Nehru himself became a recipient of the Bharat Ratna in the year 1955 barely a year after its institution. Nehru had just returned from a tour of Europe and the Soviet Union. As prime minister he was clearly in a position to exert ‘control and authority,’ to use the Maulana’s words, over the decision to award him a Bharat Ratna. His acceptance of the award was therefore not in keeping with the eminently sensible views of Maulana Azad. Those who seek to protect Nehru’s legacy argue in his defence that Dr Rajendra Prasad, who was the President of India at the time had taken a ‘suo moto’ decision to present the award to Nehru, and the prime minister did not have any role in it.
If true, it is certainly a mitigating factor, but overall the argument does not wash. Pandit Nehru has made immense contributions to this nation which no one can deny or ever take away from him. He would, however, have further risen in stature had he refused to accept the Bharat Ratna. Why accept an award which you yourself instituted only a year previously and when you are in the clearly privileged and powerful position of prime minister? There is a wonderful English saying that ‘justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done.’ Appearances are therefore hugely important. Prime Minister Nehru may not have initiated the award – let us give him the benefit of the doubt in this regard – but he always had the option of refusing to accept it.
There is another, related issue of propriety here. Dr Rajendra Prasad was appointed as President in India in 1950. Even if we accept that he awarded Pandit Nehru the Bharat Ratna of his own volition and that the prime minister had nothing to do with it, the timing for doing so was not appropriate. Dr Prasad’s term would have been expiring after five years in 1955. The renewal of the presidency would have been coming up. As it happens, in 1957 he was reappointed to the presidency becoming independent India’s longest serving president for around twelve years. Not only was it a mistake for Prime Minister Nehru to have accepted the Bharat Ratna, given that a President was due to be appointed it was inappropriate for the President to have proposed the name of the prime minister for a Bharat Ratna. So, twice inappropriate?
The case of Subhash Chandra Bose is more complex. For many years, decades even, his contributions to the cause of India’s independence were ignored by the powers-that-be. Much belatedly, in 1991, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao decided to address that historical omission and recommended that Subhash Bose be awarded a Bharat Ratna posthumously. Bose’s family and many others took umbrage at the use of the word ‘posthumous’ arguing that there existed no conclusive proof that Subhash Bose had died in an air crash at Taipei, and refused to accept the award on his behalf. In doing so, they may not have paused to consider the sentiments of the rest of the nation for surely Bose belongs to us all, not only to his family or even to Bengal. The matter went up to the Supreme Court. On 4 August 1997 the apex court determined that since the award had not been officially conferred it could not be officially revoked. The press communique could simply be treated as cancelled.
Fast forward to the present. In January 2024 the Supreme Court heard a petition from one Pinaki Mohanty from Odisha requesting the apex court to issue a declaration to acknowledge Bose’s role in the freedom struggle. Dismissing the petition, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and NV Viswanathan observed: ‘Who does not know a leader like Netaji? Everyone in the country knows him and his contributions. You don’t need a declaration from the court of his greatness. Leaders like him are immortal.’
It is ironical that former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao who nominated Subhash Bose for a Bharat Ratna should have eventually received one himself while the latter never did. It has been raining Bharat Ratnas this year, with some arguing that the stature of the award itself has thereby been lowered. A Bharat Ratna was awarded this year to L K Advani, Mr Karpoori Thakur and the Jat leader Chaudhry Charan Singh.
At the end of the day we have to ask ourselves: does it really matter if someone like Subhash Bose received a Bharat Ratna? After all Mahatma Gandhi also did not receive the Bharat Ratna. In 2020 a petition was filed before the Supreme Court urging the court to direct the government to award a Bharat Ratna to the Father of the Nation, but the then chief justice had dismissed the petition with the observation that Mahatma Gandhi was much above the Bharat Ratna. Not only Mahatma Gandhi but the great poet, intellectual and patriot Rabindranath Tagore too was never awarded the Bharat Ratna. More than a century has gone by since the Nobel Prize for Literature was bestowed on Tagore in 1913. Subhash Bose, we can therefore say, is in excellent company.
Rajesh Talwar, the author of 40 books spanning multiple genres, has served the United Nations for over two decades across three continents. His next book due to be published this month is titled ‘Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge: The Past, the Present and the Future of Excellence in Education’