Who decides a freedom fighter is our ratna?

So some people are up and fighting again because some others have been awarded? It's got to be the Bharat Ratna. Oye PK, welcome to India. We are so predictable, yaar.

So, who all got it? Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Madan Mohan Malviya. And no, dear Delhi teen, shut that shocked mouth; Madan Mohan is not the music director who lived in Malviya Nagar in South Delhi. He was a freedom fighter and educationist who established the Banaras Hindu University, or BHU.

He was born on December 25, 1861. Yes, that's 156 Christmases ago.

Right, then, who next? Sher Shah Suri, for building the Grand Trunk Road, where all the overrated dhabas have ganged up today to give you tasteless and overpriced fare in the name of dhaba food? Or, perhaps, Muhammad bin Tughlaq, for fiddling with the inflation figures, attempting to tame the stock market and trying out the world's first controlled economy, a.k.a. pre-Marx socialism? Or, wait, Chandragupta Maurya, perhaps? For all the good and great things he did for India before it got a visiting card made in that name?

No, do not read me wrong. This is not an attempt to run down anyone, least of all the man who has just become our next Bharat Ratna (though going by news TV and debates, it seems only Vajpayee has been accord the honour — and only for his prowess with speechification).

And no, Malviya isn't even the oldest of the 43 Bharat Ratnas before today's announcement. Dhondo Keshav Karve, conferred the honour in 1958, was born three-and-a-half years before Malviya, and Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, honoured in 1955, a year before.

Agreed that age is hardly any logic to award or not award an award to a person. But someone somewhere has to look at a bit of logic, right? For one, you cannot award a man born 156 years ago an award that a 40-year-old received almost exactly a year before; and that, too, within hours of retiring from what he excelled at. Yes, dear Delhi teen, that's Sachin Tendulkar. And he had just about played his last match, and delivered an emotional speech.

This is not to say Tendulkar is any less big or great than Malviya, who in turn may or may not be as great or good as Abul Kalam Azad, who might be at the same, equal or a lower level than APJ Abdul Kalam, and all of them mathematically, logically and emotionally standing a chance to be greater than, lesser than or equal to Lata Mangeshkar. All of them, needless to say, excelled in what they did, and are, in want of a better term, as different from each other as chalk is from chutney.

Which brings us to a second point, how do you quantify what someone like, say, Madan Mohan Malaviya did? A freedom fighter, for instance. How can we say one is bigger, better, mightier than the other? And that one is more ripe for an honour — any honour, and not just the nation's highest civilian honour — than the other? In fact, should you even try doing that?

Which, then, brings us to a third, somewhat related point: across categories, what is the benchmark for zeroing in on a name for the country's biggest award? A Tendulkar or a Mangeshkar is understandable, though still debatable; at least you can say with a certain amount of certitude that they are the "best" in their field. How do you rate a freedom fighter, a scientist, an economist or an educationist, only for examples, to decide that they have made the cut?

Yes, Nobel, too, does that. And just as surely, Nobel prizes are one of the most controversial decisions. Each year. Every year. Do we want the same fate for Bharat Ratna? Confer it on someone, and then let a thousand debates spawn around it?

I do not know what should be the criterion, or criteria? But what I do know, and I am sure many in the dear Delhi teens brigade would agree with me here, is the idea of giving Bharat Ratnas posthumously should be scrapped. For another, the award is one given by the "Indian" government, which came into being after the burra sahibs left. So it should be conferred on people who have worked in independent India. The men and women who fought for our freedom were/are too big for puny us to decide that they, too, could be a jewel in the Indian crown — and that, too, decades after they got us what we have. Not the prime minister, not the president, not even any courts or specialist judge and jury — they are all insignificant in front of  those men and women. So let us rest them in peace, and not drag the likes of Madan Mohan Malviya into needless controversies.