An award for God

The campaign demanding Bharat Ratna for Sachin Tendulkar hurts the cricketer more than it helps.

Tendulkar is undoubtedly one of the greatest in cricket. He was also fortunate to enjoy the sort of career he has had. He got selected to play for India pretty early and has been in the national team for long with record breaking performances to match.

Thanks to that very same long tenure and probably the overdose of cricket in India to the detriment of other sports, Tendulkar is increasingly a tired theme. He isn't a sportsperson from back of beyond who struggled to find support and sponsors. Tendulkar's earnings, houses, cars, his businesses and the company he keeps ranging from fellow cricketers to film actors and the Ambanis have been in the news as much as the cricket he plays.

TOO MUCH TENDULKAR

After so many years of Tendulkar and more Tendulkar, you would forgive me for admiring athletes, footballers, hockey players and boxers instead. Additionally you have of late seen the ascent of more easily accessed activities like running and cycling, which are far more personal in impact than being merely a spectator in a televised arena urging a chosen gladiator to win. When you run every morning, you are the gladiator, the goal-setter; you are your own Tendulkar. Well into Tendulkar's career, it is now possible not to be a cricket fan and yet be alright.

Against this backdrop, the campaign for Tendulkar's Bharat Ratna progresses like a desperate road roller. Every now and then we hear somebody new join the chorus; another politician, another cricketer, so on. Given his popularity, people are in a fix on what to say for fear of becoming unpopular.

The best solution is to join the bandwagon. In some ways, it is a bandwagon long in the making. There was originally the Tendulkar story itself with its engaging narrative of a person evolving before our eyes into perhaps the world's greatest cricketer. Then there was the considerable media attention making him larger than life. Closer to the present, the media was complemented by social media transforming larger than life individual into God.

BHARAT RATNA BANDWAGON

Can you deny God a Bharat Ratna? That's the troubling question.

At first sight, this predicament seems a non-issue, for the candidate is somebody whose achievements make us seem nothing in comparison. When it's God should you even hesitate? Yet, look at it from the point of view of adequate breathing space to decide the award, and the compulsion built up makes you uncomfortable. If awards are cherished as much for the quality of jury and selection process as it is for the candidates, then this is one Bharat Ratna that is best handed out later, once the Tendulkar legend has cooled down to human size and we relate to him without the hype of the associated bandwagon. It is a formidable bandwagon comprising political parties, sponsors of cricket, media and legions of cricket fans. None – sponsors of cricket, the media playing to the gallery and political parties fearing anything that could spurn votes – will risk questioning.

Viewed thus, the Bharat Ratna demanded sounds less like recognition for Tendulkar and more like a business or vote multiplier for opportunistic hangers-on. They all want to be seen endorsing his Bharat Ratna.

If we give in, then we subvert the idea of selection replacing it with an award wherever popular sentiment, political dividend, capital and media converge to demand it. Tendulkar probably deserves the Bharat Ratna. But not like this, bandwagon in tow. That is not to say that such awards haven't been subverted before. The cricketer would do the nation a service if he corrected the trend. That's what God is for.

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