The largesse shown by the Narendra Modi government in announcing 5 Bharat Ratnas in the matter of a fortnight in the initial months of this year is unprecedented and a record in itself. The consecutive announcements generated mixed reactions across the political aisle as well as the polity at large. Supporters of the ruling regime rejoiced at deft political master strokes by the Prime Minister who yet again checkmated his political rivals by bestowing the highest civilian recognition of the nation on a cross-section of personalities, with clear political overtones.

The impact was instant as two major cross-overs happened right after the announcements: the first being the Janata Dal-United (JDU) return to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) fold soon after the Bharat Ratna was announced for the reservation icon Karpoori Thakur, and the second being the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which announced its decision to join the NDA soon after former Prime Minister Charan Singh joined the hall of fame.  

Critics, however, frown over many aspects of the proclamations – the timing before the upcoming general elections, the numbers (5) that surpass the reported cap of 3 Bharat Ratnas a year, the choice of personalities which were seemingly intended to sting the opposition, particularly the Indian National Congress (INC), and the consequent politicisation of the highest civilian award that was overtly exhibited in the exercise.  

A brief political history of the award

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not the first to politicise the Bharat Ratna or such civilian decorations, nor will he be the last. Senior journalist Sanjaya Baru, who was the press advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, points out the numerous instances of the past when the choice of the ‘Ratnas’ started from meritorious selections to overt politicisation, which, later turned pure and blatant.

Baru flags the instances of PM Indira Gandhi conferring the award to then President V.V. Giri (1975) and K. Kamraj (1976) as initial instances of politicisation creeping into the process, which stuck with subsequent regimes. While PM Rajiv Gandhi conferring the award to M.G.R. raised eyebrows, most other Prime Ministers since and other than Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi abstained from obtrusive politicisation as seen in the latest instance. 

However, the culture of patronisation seems to be evident from the outset when President Rajendra Prasad conferred the award on incumbent Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1955 and the latter returned the favour by awarding the former in 1962 on relinquishing office. The same trend seems to have repeated in 1971 when President V.V. Giri conferred the award to incumbent PM Indira Gandhi, for her role in the liberation of Bangladesh, and the PM responded in kind to the former in 1975.

While the choices of Kamraj and MGR raised allegations of political appeasement on the eve of elections, it took the initiative of the later day prime ministers like V.P. Singh and Narasimha Rao to correct at least some of the historic wrongs by belatedly conferring the award on some of the founding fathers of the nation including B.R. Ambedkar (1990), Sadar Vallabhbhai Patel (1991), and Abdul Kalam Azad (1992). Rao followed up the trend by also recognising some of the true ‘ratnas’ of the nation including J.R.D. Tata and Satyajit Ray in 1992. Rao’s attempt to elevate Subhash Chandra Bose to the highest civilian honour, however, fell flat as the matter reached the court with questions over Bose’s posthumous status and contention that he is bigger than the Bharat Ratna.

It might sound ironic, as pointed out by Baru, that Rao had to wait for 33 years to gain similar recognition for his role in the country’s grand economic transformation and shift to a realist grand strategy. It might be equally ironic that PM Modi, while choosing to name Rao did feel a similar political expediency in conferring the award on V.P. Singh, the actual reservation messiah, as Karpoori Thakur, with deeper OBC linkages, seemed a better political bet. 

If the Congress could use over 6 decades of being in office to confer the award on its legacy leaders and three of its prime ministers, all of them incidentally from the Nehru-Gandhi family, it could be unfair to blame PM Modi, who has far greater control over the constitutional apparatus, for using the award to pursue abject political objectives.

The fact that independence movement icons like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Subash Chandra Bose, Abdul Kalam Azad and Ambedkar were even considered for the highest civilian recognition more than four decades after the birth of the nation is in itself a poor reflection on the Congress leadership before Narasimha Rao in failing to engage the country’s highest distinction with the fairness and virtues it deserved. 

A colossal list of the legendary personalities involved in nation-building in various fields who were omitted from this distinction could be easily drawn. However, the inability, or the disinclination, of successive governments to bestow the highest civilian award on a few personalities who gave unmatched contributions to India’s nation-building, in its formative years, remains an enigma.

Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai – two stalwarts of nation-building

The failure or refusal of successive leaderships to honour Dr Homi Bhabha, the father of India’s nuclear programme, and who founded the space programme with Dr Vikram Sarabhai, with the highest civilian distinction casts a shadow over what should have been a pious affair of national honouring and celebration of nation building.

Bhabha’s sway went beyond nuclear: Homi Bhabha should not just be revered for laying the visionary foundations of India’s nuclear as well as space programmes but also for anchoring the scientific establishment coinciding with the birth of the nation. Together with the likes of S.K. Bhatnagar, Meghnad Saha, and others, Bhabha was instrumental in setting up the base infrastructure and framework for science and technological development in the newly independent India. Their efforts provided form and substance to Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision for what was termed as “temples of modern India.”

Bhabha’s note on “Organisation of Atomic Research in India” of April 1948 laid the seeds of the national atomic energy programme. His efforts, however, had started a few years earlier, before India gained independence. His appeal to Sir Sorab of the Tata Trust in 1944 led to the creation of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), which was the cradle of the nuclear programme. That the Atomic Energy Establishment (AEC) was established in 1948, a year after the independence under the Department of Scientific Research (and elevated to an independent commission in 1958), with Bhabha at the helm, followed by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) in 1954, were instances of how atomic research galloped faster than the general industrialisation in the country.

Quite relevant to how the nuclear programme was conceptualised was the vision of a three-stage programme that Bhabha blueprinted right at the outset. Bhabha envisioned a programme that could be self-sufficient when the country could have produced enough plutonium from the first state to run the fast-breeder reactors for the second stage which could irradiate the abundant thorium resources available in the country in a manner that could power the third stage resulting in self-reliance and abundant electricity generation. It is another matter that the country is just at the cusp of the second stage, after years of struggle, and is stuck at around 7000 MW generation capability from its nuclear plants.

At the core of these early advances was not just the pioneering role played by Bhabha but also the relationship he maintained with PM Nehru. That the physicist addressed the prime minister as ‘Bhai’ underlined the close personal affinity shared between them, which, in fact, seemed to have greatly helped Bhabha’s initiatives. This unique personal bonding helped create the earliest templates for science and technology research and development in the country.

Bhabha ensured that the Atomic Energy Commission reported directly to the Prime Minister and not any other ministries, which allowed for the least bureaucratic control or intervention in the affairs of the nuclear programme. Furthermore, by designating the AEC Chairman as the analogous Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Bhabha ensured that the administrative wing of the government that oversaw the nuclear programme was also under the control of the Commission, in other words, its chairman.

The ‘Commission’ model was replicated for the space programme as well which too gained from the management structure with scientists in control over the whole programme and directly reporting to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). In fact, former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Dr G Madhavan Nair had pointed out to The Polity that it was this unique model that has ensured the success of both these strategic programmes.

A notable reason for the early strides attained by the nuclear programme, including the first test reactor in Asia (excluding the Soviet Union), was not just on account of Bhabha’s camaraderie with Nehru but also the extensive international contacts and personal relations he had, particularly with the likes of Neils Bohr, John Cockcroft, Glenn Seaborg, among others. This network of friendships greatly helped the Indian nuclear establishment to grow from its nascent stage by harnessing the benefits of international cooperation through the coveted Atoms for Peace programme.   

Bhabha played a significant role in structuring the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which was established to oversee international cooperation in nuclear energy. His formula for representation of members ensured that India attained a place in the Board of Governors of IAEA through the category of “most advanced in the technology of atomic energy including the production of source materials,” despite not being a nuclear weapon state. The significance of Bhabha’s role in shaping the frameworks for global nuclear cooperation, and carving out a space for India in the global nuclear architecture, was most evident after his untimely death in a plane crash on 24 January 1966.

Despite playing a proactive role in the negotiations at the Eighteen Nations Disarmament Committee (ENDC) for a Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) between 1965-68, and a global diplomatic campaign to get the nuclear powers to agree on providing nuclear guarantees, India found a discriminative non-proliferation treaty and numerous regime emerging in the post-Bhabha years.

Bhabha’s untimely death also complicated India’s nuclear policy in ways that took years to untangle. While Bhabha internationally upheld the Nehruvian position against nuclear weapons, there have been numerous articulations that indicated the inclination to develop this capability if security considerations demanded so. American military engineer Major General Kenneth D. Nichols, for instance, claimed that during an interaction between PM Nehru and Bhabha in his presence, Nehru had asked Bhabha about the time needed to develop a nuclear bomb, to which the latter responded as one year. Nichols claims that Nehru concludes the conversation by telling Dr. Bhabha, “Well, don’t do it until I tell you to.”

Bharat Karnad had cited historical evidence to claim that Nehru had conceived of a two-tier nuclear programme, (civilian-cum-military programme christened Janus-faced) and that Bhabha had requested permission to undertake a nuclear test after the 1962 war with China. Bhabha had famously declared in an All India Radio address on 24 October 1964 that a nuclear weapon could be readied in 18 months.

Dr M.G.K. Menon, who succeeded Bhabha as head of the TIFR, had talked about Bhabha indicating the possibility of joining the Indira cabinet. He referred to this possibility in their last conversation on the preceding evening before the fateful Air Indian 101 flight that crashed over the Swiss Alps, which, incidentally, happened on the same day when the Indira Gandhi government was sworn in. It was inferred in many quarters that had Bhabha joined the ministry, he could have initiated the nuclear weapons programme as a response to the Chinese nuclear test. More importantly, such a step, coinciding with the NPT negotiations, could have ensured that India could have fulfilled the 1 January 1967 cut-off to be designated as a nuclear weapons state.

While these are now in the realm of counter-factual, Indira Gandhi’s tribute to Bhabha aptly reflects what the nation lost in his untimely death:

“I am deeply grieved to learn of the tragic air crash. To lose Dr Homi Bhabha at this crucial moment in the development of our atomic energy programme is a terrible blow for our nation. He had his most creative years ahead of him. When we take up the unfinished work he has left behind, we will realize in how many fields he served us. For me, it is a personal loss. I shall miss his wide-ranging mind and many talents, his determination to strengthen our country’s science and his enthusiastic interest in life’s many facets. We mourn a great son of India. Recent events have compelled us to explore the fullest possibilities of technological self-reliance; how to replace from domestic sources that materials we import, the engineering services we purchase, and the knowledge we acquire from abroad …There is the shining example of Dr. Homi Bhabha and the achievement of the Atomic Energy Establishment. The path shown by Dr. Bhabha will remain an inspiration.”

Sarabhai took the legacy forward: Though it was the partnership with Bhabha that enabled Vikram Sarabhai to establish the foundations of India’s space programme in 1963, he had laid the seeds for the mission right in 1947 with the setting up of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad. Much like how TIFR grew under Bhabha’s leadership, Sarabhai also used his associations with the likes of Bhatnagar and C.V. Raman to engage in institutional building and advance preliminary work on space research, including cosmic rays and ozone measures through research faculties built around the PRL.

Incidentally, Sarabhai had got Nehru to open the PRL campus in Ahmedabad in 1954, the same year when the foundation stone was laid for the TIFR campus in Colaba. Nonetheless, it was Sarabhai’s friendship with Bhabha that enabled the PRL to be recognized as a research and development centre and Sarabhai being appointed as a board member of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1961. This was followed by Sarabhai’s appointment as the Chairman of the Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR), which eventually transformed into the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

From setting up the space programme at a church in Thumba, a fishing hamlet in Thiruvananthapuram, to the first sounding rocket launched from Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) in 1963, Sarabhai had meticulously built the foundations of the space programme brick by brick, which has been eloquently narrated by G Madhavan Nair in the Long Conversation series with The Polity.

However, what makes Sarabhai’s role and contribution invaluable is how he took stewardship of the nuclear programme at the time of Bhabha’s death and continued to steer both the nuclear and space missions through a challenging period. On the one hand were endeavours to expand the space programme through parallel initiatives involving rocketry, satellite applications, propulsion systems, launch facilities and so on. On the other were advancements in the nuclear programme which witnessed preliminary progress in power production through the agreements for Tarapur nuclear power plant and Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (RAPS), the fast breeder reactor plans which were then being conceived, the development of Pressured Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs), and so on.

This might be a rare instance when a scientist was called to steward two critical national programmes of this gravity and effectively managed to handle both with elan. Sarabhai’s contribution, though, was not restricted to managing both missions. Rather, he also played the pivotal role in shaping India’s nuclear policy and holding fort amidst hectic action on the global nuclear scene in the form of NPT negotiations, the quest for security guarantees, debates about peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE), continuing Chinese nuclear and missile tests, and much more.

The Sarabhai Plan and India’s strategic policy: Despite being a peacenik with a strong anti-nuclear stand, Sarabhai had crafted the paradigm shift in India’s approach towards building a nuclear capability.

Before doing so, Sarabhai had already indicated India’s position that it will seek suitable options to address its security requirements. In April 1967, Sarabhai remarked to the US Defence Secretary, Robert McNamara, that “if disarmament is not going to be the next step, then India is reluctant to give up the option of building the bomb." In a discussion with the US Ambassador in Delhi in March 1968, Sarabhai insisted that India has the right to under PNEs. This was done at a time when the US had opposed, at the NPT negotiations, PNE rights to non-nuclear weapon states citing the thin dividing line with a weapon capability. 

Rarely discussed in the discourse on India’s strategic history is the significance and existence of the Sarabhai Plan and how it shaped India’s nuclear, space and missile policies since the 1970s. Announced on 25 May 1970, Sarabhai provided a blueprint to build an advanced infrastructure of nuclear, space and electronics, all with clear implications of dual-use. These include projects like advanced thermal reactors to lower the cost of plutonium production, fast breeder reactors, heavy water facilities, gas centrifuge technology, development of uranium mines, construction of facilities for solid propellant, rocket fabrication and in-flight guidance, and communication and remote sensing satellites.

The fact that many of these capabilities later ended up in the strategic as well as the integrated guided-missile development program (IGMDP) is a testament to the origins of this nuclearisation phase in the late 1960s, charted through a common vision of Bhabha and Sarabhai. The doyen of Indian strategic affairs, K. Subrahmanyam, who reproduced this blueprint in a 1968 publication of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), titled A Strategy for India for a Credible Posture against a Nuclear Adversary, described this as part of a multi-faceted strategy that was to define India’s nuclear policy from the 1970s. Among others, the blueprint included a weapon programme or a programme of ‘peaceful’ or a plutonium explosion, and R&D concerning atomic energy, space and electronics to reach a ‘balanced weapons capability’ as early a time as possible.

It is only natural that exactly four years later, India undertook a peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE), which invariably demonstrated a nuclear weapon capability. While the IGMDP launched in the 1980s harnessed the know-how of rocketry attained by the ISRO programmes, India was known to have decided in favour of weaponization by the late 1980s though the eventual action came only in 1998.    

It is also then natural that various conspiracy theories circulated about the untimely deaths of Bhabha and Sarabhai, to the extent that there were numerous reports and speculation about an external agency hand in the Air India crash over the Swiss Alps.

Inviting Prof Satish Dhawan to head the Space Commission, formed soon after Sarabhai’s demise, PM Indira Gandhi remarked thus:

“Vikram’s sudden and tragic death has deprived our entire space research programme of leadership. You are aware of the heavy investment we have made in it. The Ten-year profile of the Development of Space shows the extent of our commitment. We cannot afford to allow the entire organization to crumble. I would like you to accept the stewardship of our Space Organisation which I am proposing to separate from the AEC.”

How India failed these legends

Notwithstanding such lofty tributes to both Bhabha and Sarabhai, PM Indira Gandhi failed to use her time in office to honour these nation-builders. Her time in power saw many of her political colleagues including V.V. Giri and K. Kamraj bestowed with the award besides she being the only other serving prime minister besides her father receiving the Bharat Ratna while in office.

While her government bestowed the award on Lal Bahadur Shastri immediately after his death, Indira Gandhi did not consider a similar gesture for either Bhabha or Sarabhai. Neither had later day Congress prime ministers considered honouring these unique nation-builders with the recognition they received. The Rao government, for its part, had attempted some historical course corrections by belatedly recognizing Sardar Patel, Abdul Kalam Azad, J.R.D. Tata, Satyajit Ray, and remarkably even Morarji Desai, who was Indira Gandhi’s bete noire. However, the Manmohan Singh government startled the nation by overlooking Bhabha and Sarabhai when it proclaimed the Bharat Ratna for C.N.R. Rao whose credentials were clouded by various allegations. 

The non-Congress governments too share the blame for overlooking these doyens. While V.P. Singh as prime minister attempted some symbolism by proclaiming Bharat Ratna for B.R. Ambedkar as well as Nelson Mandela, a rare instance of a non-citizen being bestowed with the highest civilian recognition, I.K. Gujral repeated this trend by announcing the award for former prime minister Gulzarilal Nanda and Aruna Asaf Ali during this brief time in office.

The irony is about how the successive BJP leaderships, despite their proclaimed nationalistic sloganeering, had failed to follow up on such pietism when it came to honouring the founding fathers of India’s nuclear and space missions. While PM Vajyapee had significantly altered the course of India’s strategic policymaking when he decided to cross the Rubicon and go nuclear in 1998, he also missed out on a historical opportunity to bestow the highest civilian awards on the doyens who made the 1998 feat possible.

What aggravates this irony, however, is the approach of the Narendra Modi government, which has not lost any opportunity to celebrate the advances in the strategic missions, particularly the recent successes of the space programme. Under PM Modi’s watch, the space programme has seen giant leaps which include the landing of Chandrayaan on the Moon, the Gaganyaan programme, the Aditya mission, the setting up of a new launch station in Tamil Nadu, the opening up of space launches to the public, the massive opening up of the space sector to private players and start-ups, framing of a space policy, and the decision to set up a space station of India’s own. 

PM Modi had seen to it that he was part of every major space-related event and had led the nation in celebrating space successes. Yet, his government has, surprisingly, not seemed to have considered the need to bestow the Bharat Ratna on Sarabhai and Bhabha, the two founding fathers of this national mission.

The letter to the Prime Minister

Relevant to mention in this context is the letter of 12 October 2017 by The Polity’s A. Vinod Kumar addressed to the Prime Minister in which he appealed for Bharat Ratna in the 70th year of independence to Dr Bhabha, Dr Sarabhai and Dr M.G.K. Menon, who, besides playing crucial roles in both the nuclear and space programmes was also the key player behind India’s electronics mission.  

The text of the letter was as follows:

The question of why Dr Homi Bhabha, who is acclaimed as the father of India's nuclear programme, and Dr Vikram Sarabhai, who heralded India's space programme, have not been honoured with Bharat Ratna remains an enduring puzzle for the nation and its polity.

The nation should be grateful to these men of the highest scientific standing for not just conceiving magnificent technological visions for the nation, but also facilitating the ecosystem that nurtured subsequent generations of scientists and technocrats who had worked to bring glory to our nuclear and space programmes.

That the nation saw a league of extraordinary leaders of science - including Dr Satish Dhawan, Dr Brahm Prakash, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Dr Chidambaram, Dr Arunachalam, P.K. Iyengar and many more - is indisputably owed to the remarkable steps fostered by these two legends with an immense sense of patriotism. Besides creating the scientific cradles (TIFR and NPL) that could nurture and retain talent for these national missions, they were instrumental in encouraging many promising minds to return from their foreign Alma-maters to contribute to our nation-building.

This could be best reflected in the PMO files (17/39/72 Vol-I and II ), available at the National Archives of India, which illustrates how Dr Satish Dhawan was requested to take over the space programme (and soon-to-be-formed Space Commission) following Dr Sarabhai's demise, and how Dr. Dhawan left his assignment in California to take over the space programme with the vigour and sense of duty, which also reminds us of the circumstances in which Dr. M.G.K. Menon took over TIFR following Dr. Bhabha's untimely demise. (It also reminds me of the current state of many national institutions which are bereft of visionary leadership despite the best efforts and support given by your government.)

In this context, one could also reminisce about the contributions of Dr M.G.K. Menon who fostered a similar founding role (like Dr Bhabha and Dr Sarabhai) for the Electronics mission and was ready to run the space programme (and its extraction from DAE) as an interim arrangement until Dr Dhawan took over. It is only natural that Dr Menon showed the same sense of responsibility and commitment while guiding and mentoring many science and technological initiatives in subsequent years. Dr Menon, who departed for his heavenly abode in recent months, also deserves the pride of place of being among the Bharat Ratna of this great nation like Dr Bhabha and Dr Sarabhai.

I humbly request you to consider this matter with all the passion that it deserves and take immediate steps to rectify this gravest mistake that we as a nation have done to these legendary men. I hence hope you will answer this historical calling by bestowing this honour to these visionaries in the 70th year of independence.

Some months after the letter was sent, the status update showed it being forwarded to a Deputy Secretary in the Department of Space (DoS) in Bengaluru. The eventual ‘action’ came only on 21 February 2019 which said that the “grievance was disposed of” as it came under the category of a suggestion.

A letter from an ordinary citizen, whether seen as a ‘suggestion’ or a ‘grievance’ need not move mountains in the establishment or prod thinking on a particular matter. However, what became evident from this exercise is the realization that the decision not to consider Bhabha or Sarabhai for the highest civilian recognition is a result of conscious thinking within the governmental set-up, which might have been upheld by successive political leaderships irrespective of their ideology. The mandarins certainly did not seem to convey some perceived message, to the nation or the rest of the world, that could have accrued by granting the highest national honours to these national builders.

In the last few weeks, The Polity tried to reach out to many personalities in the space and nuclear missions as well as the leading political parties to gauge their views on this matter but found general reluctance to comment on this matter. A senior retired scientist, who was known to have barely missed the ISRO chairmanship, had the following comment to offer:

“…awards by our government are decisions of a few who are in power. Do you agree? A common man cannot comment on such awards including Bharat Ratna…Also, what is its value in our country?”