New Delhi: Noted historian Ramachandra Guha has described the government's decision to confer Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, to Mahamana Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, founder of Benares Hindu University, "a mistake".
Guha tweeted: "Giving Vajpayee a Bharat Ratna is fine, but one should not award it to people dead or long dead. Awarding Malaviya is a mistake".
The historian said: "If Malaviya, why not give Tagore, Phule, Tilak, Gokhale, Vivekananda, Akbar, Shivaji, Guru Nanak, Kabir, Ashoka, Bharat Ratnas too?"
Guha says, Malaviya passed away a year before India's independence, and if he was given the nation's highest civilian honour, then even Swami Vivekananda and Guru Nanak deserved the same honour.
Guha further tweeted: "The more I think of it, the more the award of the Bharat Ratna to MM Malaviya strikes me as parochial and indefensible..
"The Prime Minister tweets that Malaviya got the award for his scholarship and patriotism. In both spheres, there were far greater Indians.."
"Gokhale, Tilak, Kamaldevi (Chattopadhyay), Bhagat Singh, contributed far more than Malaviya to the freedom struggle, Tagore far more to education/literature."
"But Gokhale/Tilak/Bhagat Singh/Kamaladevi/Tagore and other such stalwarts did not work or live in the Prime Minister's constituency."
"That said, I hope from now on there no more posthumous Bharat Ratna, so that such rampant politicization is at least minimized."
