Tamil Nadu And Remaking Of Padma Awards - The Indian State Finally Honours Real Heroes

Barring a motley bunch of people comprising the fringe Tamil nationalists and Periyarist pamphleteers, the rest of Tamil Nadu welcomed this year's Padma Awards list with delight. For the first time, an impressive array of accomplished achievers from the state were honoured by the Union government. Consider the people who were awarded Padma from Tamil Nadu this year. Hailing from diverse fields, their accomplishments in their chosen field of work are testimony to the tremendous depth of human capital that Tamil Nadu can be justifiably proud of.

Yet, for the outsider,s and even for many Tamils, Tamil Nadu has tragically come to be defined by two film actors and almost nothing else. The inspired Padma Award choices from the state is a huge tribute to the richness of Tamil culture, which is not only a part of the greater Indic cultural matrix, but has also contributed immensely to what it is today, and which in turn was nourished from very early times by Indic cultural protoplasm.

Bestowing the Padma Vibhushan on Illayaraja, the musician extraordinaire and arguably India's greatest movie music composer, garnered the maximum attention and rightly so. His is an astounding story of a true musical genius. Coming from a deeply impoverished background and rooted in people's music of Tamil villages, Illayaraja burst upon the Tamil music scene with his immense talent. Soon, the entire world would recognise and bow before his achievements. By giving him the second highest state award,the Padma Vibushan, as Illayaraja himself pointed out, the Narendra Modi government has honoured all Tamils.

Dr R Nagaswamy, who was conferred the Padma Bhushan award, is widely regarded as a guru for a generation of archaeologists in Tamil Nadu. A great field archaeologist, epigraphist, conservator of heritage and a relentless warrior for cultural literacy among Tamils, he has been a prolific writer, producing several scholarly works. Any archeologist or epigraphist after him, even when he or she differs with him ideologically, acknowledges his influence. His contribution in bringing back the Pathur Nataraja statue alone deserved recognition.

By awarding the Padma Shri to V Nanammal (98), the oldest yoga teacher from Tamil Nadu, the contribution of the state towards development of this Indic system, from the time of Thiurmoolar, if not even before, has been recognised.

If Illayaraja brought musical streams of Tamil villages to the movie realm and popularised it with the masses, acclaimed folk-art exponent Dr Vijayalakshmi Navaneethakrishnan, ushered in the vitality and aesthetics of Tamil village songs to an entire generation. Dr Navaneethakrishnan, who was honoured with the Padma award, has dedicated her life towards the collection, preservation and documentation of Tamil folk and tribal music. Deity invocations in her songs underscore the organic unity of our culture. By her documentation of the village songs, setting them right in the context of their socio-cultural milieu, Dr Navaneethakrishnan has made a tremendous contribution in removing the cultural literacy imposed on Tamils by Dravidianists.

Romulus Earl Whitaker, the renowned herpetologist, made studying science his life's passion. His books on snakes removed many misconceptions and made a generation of nature enthusiasts look with empathy and understanding at reptiles like snakes and crocodiles which are otherwise often looked upon with fear and aversion. He is also the founder of the Madras Snake Park, The Andaman and Nicobar Environment Trust, and the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust.

A perusal of this year’s Padma awardees list makes it clear that this celebration of genuine grassroots achievers is not limited only to Tamil Nadu. Across the states, transcending the ideological barriers, the really talented positive contributors to society have been honoured by the Modi government. A Left-leaning writer from Tamil Nadu and a feminist (who is even today definitely anti-Modi and anti-BJP) told this writer that the women who have been recognised this year are people who are real contributors and who ought to have been known outside the circle of their contributions.

For instance, this writer himself was pleasantly surprised to see science populariser Arvind Gupta being recognised, again transcending the narrow ideological barriers. A brilliant communicator of science, particularly principles of physics, to children through his innovative creations of cost-effective toys, Gupta is also a leftist and lent his support to the 'march for science' movement run by a section of scientists imitating the US-based movement.

There was a time in India when the sitting prime minister would honour himself with the highest state award. Of course, there are Nehruvian apologists who argue it was not he but others who decided to confer the award on him. But Jawaharlal Nehru, who had consistently threatened any hostile democratic consensus in his party with emotional tantrums and threats of quitting, could have easily done the same here instead allowing himself to set a bad precedent. Later, Indira Gandhi would follow her father's footsteps. And even Rajiv Gandhi, with his track record of silently presiding over the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms, facilitating the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits and sending our army to what became known as ‘India’s Vietnam’ in a premature and prejudiced manner, was given Bharat Ratna posthumously. The Nehruvian process aimed to make India a dynasty fiefdom while mouthing high sounding principles like secularism and socialism. If unchecked, it would have turned India into a banana republic.

Nevertheless, the long democratic tradition of India along with the strength of the Indian Constitution has checked the Nehruvian process. It is not an accident that the main challenge to the paradoxical dynasty-democracy commenced by Nehruvian establishment has come from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), often perceived as traditionalist. After all, Indian culture is democratic in nature and any party that stands by Indian culture becomes naturally a main challenger for any anti-democratic tendency. The change in the selection procedures of Padma awards, making them more democratic, more people-participatory and more transparent by the 'chaaiwala' government needs to be seen in this historical context of democratising and hence de-Nehruvising India. People-based interactive nomination that we see today has brought to our own awareness the great work done by people living amidst us whose existence we are unaware of because of the high decibel din of establishment media.

Given the fact that in every party, irrespective of ideology, the money-mafia and dynasty cults rule, the democratic cleansing that Modi government is doing at all levels, from closing all major venues of corruption as much as possible to making the Padma awards people-centric and transparent, is going to benefit good elements in all parties, left, right or centre. Today, the opposition to this government comes from the 3C alliance – casteist-communal-corrupt forces – which have been sucking the life out of India in the post-Independece day. Let us hope 2019 will demonstrate to the world the will of Indians to continue to this democratic fortification of their nation.