The reported disappointment of the badminton player, Saina Nehwal, at not receiving the expected Padma Bhushan highlights one of many differences between India and most Western societies. While Indians still yearn for official recognition, Westerners tend to dismiss such baubles as the product of partisan lobbying.
History’s most famous rejection is sui generis. In 1657, Britain’s Parliament offered Oliver Cromwell the Crown. After six weeks of agonising, Cromwell announced that having once been abolished, the monarchy should not be restored. There’s no comparison between that repudiation and the recent rejection by Thomas Piketty, the French economist and author of the bestselling Capital in the 21st Century, of the Legion d’Honneur except that both indicate an absence of personal vanity.
Some might suspect that the late Nikhil Chakravartty, founder of Mainstream, was not particularly deficient in that respect when he famously declined a Padma Shri with the witty remark that accepting an official decoration and still claiming to be an independent journalist was like wearing a chastity belt in a brothel.
What we are witnessing worldwide today is a growing lack of respect for authority and those who exercise it. Piketty’s refusal is especially significant because of his dismissive attitude to his own government. Other French dignitaries have also spurned the Legion d’Honneur. The husband-and-wife radiology pioneers Pierre and Marie Curie did so. So did the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Similarly, the cartoonist Jacques Tardi turned down France’s top award last year. But in asserting the right not to accept an award no one has yet questioned the government’s authority to give it. This is what makes Piketty different. He denies the state’s right to bestow honours.
The two main beliefs with which he is associated are that if the rate of return on capital exceeds the growth rate of the economy, it will mean a return to 19th century conditions when wealth was inherited rather than earned and also that wealth inequality threatens democracy. Now, Piketty has added the third argument that it’s not the government’s job to decide who is “honourable”.
The government’s job is growth promotion. Those who see wealth generation as the sole purpose of economic activity could have pointed out that the two functions are not incompatible. A government committed to universal and equitable growth might also find it useful to encourage and reward those who help its efforts.
Other reasons for rejecting honours are easier to understand. Early in history, a number of Britons didn’t want baronetcies because they suspected there was a price tag attached. My friend Geoffrey Goodman thought he could be of more help to the British Labour Party as a journalist than a life peer. The writer, Roald Dahl, didn’t accept an OBE because it wouldn’t make his wife Lady Dahl.
John Lennon, the Beatle, caused a media sensation by sending his chauffeur round to Buckingham Palace with his medal in its original case and a pert note that read “Your Majesty, I am returning my MBE as a protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against Cold Turkey slipping down the charts. With love. John Lennon of Bag.” Others also turned down British honours because the government supported the US war in Vietnam.
Ambitious to be remembered as history’s Great Commoner, Winston Churchill disdained the Dukedom of London. Lord Mountbatten’s father feared he wouldn’t be able to afford the lifestyle of an English duke and so settled for a marquessate. Offered a marquessate, Maharajah Duleep Singhji (son of the great Ranjit Singh) is believed to have reminded Queen Victoria that he was born a king and any other title would be a demotion.
S.R. Das, Law member of the Viceroy’s Council, declined a knighthood to wait for the promised higher rank of KCSI or KCIE but died before a vacancy occurred. Rabindranath Tagore returned his knighthood in protest against the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre (as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi did his Great War medals) but the British continued to call him “Sir Rabindranath”.
Two other Indians, the Maharajkumar of Vizianagram (“Vizzy” to cricket enthusiasts) and Sir C.P. Ramaswami Aiyer, the dewan who tried to make Travancore independent, resigned their knighthoods as a matter of principle (that forgotten virtue) when India became Independent. A tearful Sarita Devi refused a bronze medal at last year’s South Korean Asian Games because she felt her boxing deserved silver if not gold.
There is an underlying pattern to this mixed bag of responses to authority and its gifts. Time was when Britons revered the monarch as the fount of all honours and gratefully received whatever recognition he or she was gracious enough to bestow. The Crown is no longer held in that respect, and the realisation has spread that most monarchical distinctions are actually decided by Prime Ministers who are open to political pressure and financial persuasion. The same growing contempt for politicians explains increasing French disillusionment with decorations like the Legion d’Honneur which were once highly prized.
Indians are the exception. We may despise the government but not what it can give; we privately scorn politicians but publicly honour them for their power. Deprived of Rai Bahadur and Khan Sahib, we invent Mahatma, Netaji or Shaheed. We hanker for Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan as handles like Sir or Lord. The government disapproves but no government can eliminate the raja-praja divide that defines Indian society.
Occasionally, however, private dignity can contradict official rank. Thus, when the distinguished Calcutta lawyer, Sachin Chaudhuri, became finance minister, a relative lamented that the paterfamilias whom they had always revered as raja had become a mere mantri. That fine sense of hierarchy protects India’s status quo from revolutionary change.
The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author
