The Hindu : Another day, another President

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Feb 27, 2003

National

National

Another day, another President

By Harish Khare

New Delhi Feb. 26. The Opposition parties are naturally disappointed that the President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, did not heed their prayer to stay away from the Savarkar portrait ceremony today.

Perhaps, they were asking too much of the President when they themselves could have put a spoke in the saffron wheel.

Nonetheless, it is possible that another day and another President in the Rashtrapati Bhavan could have exercised his Presidential discretion and acted differently. In fact, not long ago another president did act differently in the matter of Savarkar.

In 2000, K.R. Narayanan as President had suggested to the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, that the Shehnai maestro, Ustad Bismillah Khan, be given the Bharat Ratna award.

The Prime Minister promptly wrote back, accepting the President's idea but he also proposed that Savarkar also be posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna.

Mr. Narayanan was not the one to be stampeded into agreeing to the Bharat-Ratna-for-Savarkar-idea.

He exercised the safest — and some time the wisest — option available to a President: sit on it. No Presidential response for months and the Prime Minister got the message.

On December 25, 2000, when President Narayanan visited the Prime Minister's residence to wish Mr. Vajpayee on his birthday, the Prime Minister reportedly told him that the recommendation of a Bharat Ratna for Savarkar be deemed withdrawn. That is how Mr. Narayanan deflated the Savarkar move.

President Kalam could have dissociated himself from the Savarkar issue in the Central Hall stratagem, without any prompting from the Opposition. After all, on July 26, 2002, soon after taking oath as President, he made a pilgrimage to the Rajghat; in the visitors book, he wrote: "I today take a vow to spread the message of peace and non-violence among children."

Dr. Kalam lost sight of that vow when he associated himself with a ceremony that was meant to consecrate someone who is a father figure to those who believe neither in peace nor in non-violence.

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