In ‘Bharat Ratna’ Karpoori Thakur, Modi govt may have another winner

IN ITS sixth Bharat Ratna nomination in nearly 10 years in power, the Narendra Modi government on Tuesday chose former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur for the country’s highest civilian honour.

While the Padma and Bharat Ratna awards have always been a way of political messaging, apart from recognition of a person’s contribution, the Modi government has been particularly astute in its choices. Including in the case of Thakur, the pioneer of OBC and EBC reservations, at a time when the Opposition has been hoping to build its demand for a caste census into a plank formidable enough to take on the BJP’s post-Ram Temple Hindutva fervour.

The other five conferred Bharat Ratna since Modi came to power include educationist, freedom fighter and once-Congress president Madan Mohan Malviya; ex-prime minister and BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee; former President and Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee; Assamese singer and musician Bhupen Hazarika; and RSS leader Nanaji Deshmukh.

The honour for Malviya and Vajpayee came in 2015, within a year of the Modi government’s formation.

While Malviya was part of the Congress and served as its president for four terms, he has always been considered by the Sangh Parivar as closer to its ideology. In the freedom struggle, Malaviya was midway between the Liberals and the Nationalists, the Moderates and the Extremists, as the followers of Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Bal Gangadhar Tilak in the Congress were respectively considered.

Malviya was also the founder of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha (1906) and Banaras Hindu University, serving as the university’s vice-chancellor from 1919 until 1938. The Bharat Ratna was an endorsement of the Sangh’s view that Malviya did not get his due under the