Justice Markandey Katju’s assertions, most of which I suppose are picked up by media these days, are too big for his petite table in the press council of India office. The ludicrousness of his statements augurs, if not demands, a bigger role for the man. This time he has demanded Bharat Ratna for Mirza Ghalib and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. No, a Nobel demand for Shakespeare is not to be equated with this just to trash the justice’s argument.

The agent provocateur for his latest statement came from the government modifying rules to pave way for the eligibility of sportspersons for the highest civilian award of the country amid a countrywide clamour for Bharat Ratna for Sachin Tendulkar. In a signed article in the Indian Express ('Bharat Ratna Ghalib'), Katju says, “Giving it to people who have no social relevance, like cricketers and film stars, is making a mockery of the award.” So it is clear that your lordship doesn’t like the ilk of Tendulkar and Dev Anand — he minced no matters in criticising the front page coverage of the veteran actor’s demise. All said and done, the former judge’s argument still deserves a fair examination.

Bharat Ratna for Gahlib isn’t that bad a demand only if we know who it will benefit - the poet, his fans, the award itself or the country? The poet won’t benefit for sure. His fans, as far as I know, are sensitive enough to spare a long dead poet who peacefully sleeps in his grave in a city he loved the most. Ghalib lived amid the vestiges of the Mughal empire when Delhi’s rule over the country didn’t go beyond Palam. A popular saying of the times goes like this: Dilli se le kar Palam, badshah shah-e-alam (the rule of the king of world — a sobriquet for the Delhi rulers — doesn’t extend beyond Palam). Ghalib’s short stints at Lucknow, Hyderabad and Calcutta were not very meaningful for the poet who got the real love of people only in his beloved Dilli. So, a Bharat Ratna for a poet who lived long before Bharat itself came into being is a little difficult to explain.

Justice Katju also writes in the same article: “How many people in our country have read Ghalib and Sarat Chandra? People are talking of giving the Bharat Ratna to cricketers and film stars. This is the low cultural level to which we have sunk. We ignore our real heroes and hail superficial ones.” This intellectual arrogance in Katju is not superficial though. He must have acquired it during his stint at Allahabad University, which at one point of time was referred to as the Oxford of the East. (Justice Katju topped the merit list of the Allahabad University’s LLB examination in 1968.)

But then, if he really owes his arrogance to his alma mater, why did he not demand Bharat Ratna for Firaq Gorakhpuri, who taught at the university? Or for Harivansh Rai Bachchan? The reason for Katju’s lack of sensitivity for these celebrated and loved poets is perhaps in the city only. The typical Allahabadi perspective, only a man from UP would know, is to take offence at all the wrong times and keep grinning when offence is actually caused. No wonder then this attitude led to fall of the city’s grace and the Oxford of the East lost out to Lucknow University and BHU long, long ago. Other than a bevy of bureaucrats whose sole contribution to the country has been to corrupt the entire administrative machinery, the university has produced no original thinker (except in the field of politics, where originality of course can always be invented), at least in the last five decades, which include the one when ‘your lordship’ was studying there. The university’s and the city’s time was earlier: the 1930s, the 40s and the 50s.

But, all said and done, Katju is a learned man, not a typical Allahabadi only. He may have not made path-breaking decisions during his stint in judiciary, post-retirement he is determined to make it big. His assertions are just beginning of a glorious career. We are waiting, your honour, for your next.