The Bharat Ratna for Vajpayee and Malaviya is a signal from the Modi government that it is looking for its own icons to honour on the national stage

The timing of the announcement of the Bharat Ratna for Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya could not have been better for the BJP and Narendra Modi. For 2014 is the year when the BJP finally came into its own, 10 years after the Vajpayee government had to bow out after unexpected electoral defeat.

Vajpayee, beyond doubt, is the biggest icon ever produced by the BJP – or even the Sangh. Thus far, the BJP has had to honour borrowed icons like Sardar Patel, but now it has created space for its own original icons - as is clear from the other icon it chose for the Bharat Ratna: Malaviya.

So far some 43 people have been conferred the Bharat Ratna, each for a different reason, but this is the first time an icon from the Right of the spectrum has been chosen. And it comes at a time when the secular-communal debate has just begun to heat up. That both Vajpayee and Malaviya were born on 25 December, Christmas day, is fortuitous coincidence.

The Modi government must have chosen the names with care – since, in theory, the Bharat Ratna can be announced anytime. By conferring it on Vajpayee, Modi has sent out a message that he cares for the seniors who built the party, no matter how his critics perceived Vajpayee’s own attitude to him. By conferring it on Malaviya, Modi is emphasizing that he is looking for national heroes beyond the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty. It also deepens his association with his home constituency, Varanasi.

When Modi first visited Varanasi to file his nomination papers for the Lok Sabha, he landed at the Benares Hindu University (BHU), an institution founded by Malaviya, where Modi garlanded his statue. Malaviya’s grandson was one of the eight persons who filed Modi’s nomination papers. The BHU founder’s heritage value for Varanasi is both sentimental and real.

The awards come just a day after the BJP won elections to the Jharkhand assembly and made headway in J&K, a state of great emotional value to the BJP. Reason: one of the party’s founders, Shyama Prasad Mookerji, died in Kashmir to bring the state into the mainstream. This has added to the party’s celebratory mood.

The Vajpayee government, during its six-year stint in power from 1998-2004, had done its bit to honour right-wing political icons. It named Port Blair airport after Veer Savarkar, who was incarcerated by the British in the cellular jail there. The government also put up an eternal flame in the jail to honour the originator of the idea of Hindutva. This was also done to challenge the leftist and centrist narration of India’s freedom struggle. The move was contested and criticised after the UPA came to power.

But Vajpayee’s Bharat Ratna is different. He is one name from the saffron ranks which has few detractors even outside the parivar. The outgoing chief minister of J&K, Omar Abdullah, against whom the BJP fought a bitter electoral battle, also pushed for a Bharat Ratna to Vajpayee.

The only regret Vajpayee’s supporters will have is that he is getting it at a time when his health is very poor – in more or less a vegetative state. He does not talk and is said to express his feelings largely through facial expressions. He, incidentally, had dismissed demands for awarding him the Bharat Ratna when he was PM with his characteristic one liner: how can someone honour oneself?

Modi has now done the honours, but the man himself may be past caring.