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India Honors Pygmies, Bad
Pygmies
WSN Bureau
India is giving
an out and out criminal and killer of innocent Kashmiris one of its
most prestigious award. One prestigious award is going to Sant Singh
Chatwal, notwithstanding the fact that he has criminal cases pending
against him and his voice on any substantive issues of human rights
or even on those concerning his own community is never heard of.
Indian elites
hanker after recognition from the American dominated world, but they
have debased their own awards. They are now often given for services
rendered to the powers that be. What does this hankering tell about
the Indian establishment?
We do not know
if you are interested in the native scene of the “awards”. If you
are not, it is perfectly understandable. The Oscars and the Mann
Booker awards must keep you busy on the
question. After all every other year some non-resident Indian author
or an intellectual in south Delhi is vying for it. If there is no
one else there is an aspiring immigrant
providing us with a substantial amount of nostalgia that (s)he wants
to leave behind. It is usually a case of selling the Kerala monsoon
and humidity or the Kolkata splendour at the
New York
book market. These are of course the postmidnight children. They end
up getting some award anyway. And why shouldn’t they? If Rushdie is
to be believed they alone are writing worthwhile “Indian”
literature.
If that is the
case, they deserve all the awards that they get and, of course, the
royalties in hard currency. We have heard this comment ourselves
with a piece of advice that we should try our hand with English
writing!
Now, we have in
our country too a series of awards. The most well-known are the
Jnanapeeth awards and the much celebrated Padma awards. The former
are intended for litterateurs. How come in Punjab, there is one
Jnanapeeth awardee? he too, say many, got it because of the good
blessings of Namvar Singh, a litterateur known for his hold on the
awards scene in India. Whatever happened to the best of the pen
pushers?
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In a
country where the Home Minister is interested in using the army to
crush an uprising of the poorest of the poor, and calls it Operation
Gree Hunt, it is almost expected that the men and women it honors
will forever be tainted with the stamp of official recognition. One
only understands why great souls like Badal Sarkar and Krishna Sobti
refuse these awards year after year. |
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The various
Padma awards Shree, Bhushan, Vibhushan, etc, are given out quite
liberally and generously every year. Usually they go to artists,
poets and writers, retired bureaucrats and politicians, dead or
alive, among others. Every year the lists are announced on the
occasion of the Republic Day.
The only people
who look forward to these awards are the ones who are want them, or
have hopes of getting one few years down the line. The awards have
lost the imagination of the people. People take a cursory look at
the lists and forget them.
In the
America-dominated world, honours emanating from there would matter
to Indian elites who are so completely satisfied that we have
finally seen the centrality of America.
The best example
of our extraordinary new-found love for America is the Padma award for a
restaurateur of Indian origin who is obviously good at lobbying with the Americans
and is supposed to be a close friend of the
Clintons.
Many are enamoured of his contribution to the lobbying for the
Indo-American nuclear deal.
A Rajya Sabha
member of Parliament has, in fact, lamented that he should have
started a restaurant business in the United States (US) rather than
wasting his time in, what he no doubt considers to be, services to
India and the Indian people. He thinks that he should have got an
award too.
Why is it that
India does not recognize the real heroes? Instead, it prefers to
throw them in jail. It wants that someone like Binayak Sen should
rot in jail. We will not be surprised if Maninderjit Singh Bitta is
someday given some high honor. After all, has India not heaped
platitudes on men like Ajit Singh Sandhu, the killer of many
innocent Sikh boys?
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The
Indian civil society must stand up and be counted. It must clearly
speak out its mind on the debased awards. It must rather come out
with its own awards. We must honor men and women who are fighting on
the forefronts of the many battles in many spheres that human rights
activists are fighting. |
In a country
where the Home Minister is interested in using the army to crush an
uprising of the poorest of the poor, and calls it Operation Gree
Hunt, it is almost expected that the men and women it honors will
forever be tainted with the stamp of official recognition. One only
understands why great souls like Badal Sarkar and Krishna Sobti
refuse these awards year after year.
It is time for
the Indian civil society to stand up and be counted. It must clearly
speak out its mind on the debased awards. It must rather come out
with its own awards. We must honor men and women who are fighting on
the forefronts of the many battles in many spheres that human rights
activists are fighting.
Instead of
Operation Green Hunt, India’s civil society must force its political
parties to take a clear stance. Sweeping a huge problem of
marginalization of the tribals and the poor and the landless under a
carpet called naxalism will simply not do. India wants to become a
super power, but remains a deeply fragmented and fractured society.
It wrongs its people, and then awards and honors those who commit
such grave wrongs. What was Muma Kaana doing in the Padma awards
list? Will Indian President not be ashamed when Kaana will go up to
receive the award? The man is saying on national TV that he helped
the police kill hundreds of Kashmiri youth in fake encounters.
So India honors
murderers, self confessed-ones, and it honours restaurateurs.
The national
awards had never fallen as low as they are today. Sant Singh
Chatwal, the restaurateur
in the US, may have rendered great service to the present
government.
Lobbying must be
his second nature. His skills must have been useful to the new
Americana that the Indian government so passionately loves.
One does think
of the great leaders and thinkers like B R Ambedkar, for example,
who were conferred the Bharat Ratna. Now these Bharat Ratnas have to
share the dais, so to speak, with the Chatwals of the world.
10
February 2010
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