It announced on Sunday this year’s Padma awardees and included in the list eight religious leaders. That is one more religious leader than the previous National Democratic Alliance government had honoured in its whole tenure, and as many as all Congress regimes combined had honoured.
Six of the eight religious leaders in this year’s list are Hindu swamis. One is the late Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, former leader of the Bohris, a Muslim community that supports the Modi government. The eighth is Theg Tse Rinpoche, a lama and an Arunachali politician.
Two controversial names, Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, were not on the list. Both had declined the honour on Saturday after a version of the list was leaked in the media.
Saffron tint
The Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri are India’s highest civilian honours after the Bharat Ratna. Given to individuals for distinguished service in their field, they are announced on the eve of the Republic Day each year. The awards, as observers have pointed out for decades, have been a means for the reigning establishment to reward supporters.
The Padmas have defined categories for which they can be awarded, including literature, civil services, medicine, public affairs and social work. Religion is not one of the fields. On the infrequent occasion when a government does feel it necessary to award someone whose primary accomplishment is in the area of faith, it resorts to shoehorning them into the category of social work or public affairs.
That is until now.
Only one of the eight religious leaders on this year’s list comes under the social work category. Veerendra Heggade, administrator of Karnataka’s Dharmasthala temple, had received his 2000 Padma Bhushan from the NDA government. In 2015 his Padma Vibhushan is in the same category.
Everyone else is in the Others category. Swami Rambhadracharya is a Vishva Hindu Parishad leader with an extensive body of work in Sanskrit. Shivakumara Swami is the head of the Sree Siddaganga Mutt in Karnataka. Both Swami Satyamitrananda Giri and Jagatguru Amrta Suryananda Raja, who is a Non-Resident Indian in Portugal, have worldwide followings. Vedic guru David Frawley, who goes by the name of Pandit Vamadeva Shastri, is American.
The United Progressive Alliance government had used the Others category in 2014 to honour, for instance, yoga exponent BKS Iyengar. This year, Jadav Payeng from Assam, who has assiduously been reforesting a part of the Brahmaputra, got the Padma Shri in that category, as has Chewang Norphel, a civil engineer who has seeded 12 ice glaciers in Ladakh.
Not unexpectedly, the list of Padma awardees has already begun eliciting criticism. In a press release, Bohra reformists pointed out that Burhanuddin’s tenure as Syedna was marked by autocratic control and systematic suppression of dissent that is now playing out to its end in the succession battle between his son and brother.
Old trend
Of course, religious leaders need not be defined solely by their faith and it is possible that they do such considerable social work that would merit a Padma award for them. Nevertheless, some people have been given Padma awards for the sole reason of being religious leaders.
The Congress began the trend in 1966, when it gave Cardinal Valerian Gracias the Padma Vibhushan after he was elevated as India’s first cardinal in 1953. In 1982, the Congress gave Swami Kalyandev, a sect leader, the Padma Shri.
The NDA continued this trend briefly when it came to power. It was cautious at first in 1999, with only Padma Vibhushan each for Nanaji Deshmukh, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader, and Pandurang Athavale, a spiritual leader who promoted the cause of the Bhagwad Gita.
Swami Kalyandev was awarded the higher ranked Padma Bhushan in 2000 by the NDA. That year, Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, a reformist Sunni, and Veerendra Heggade received the same award.