The SSH-Stories!: The "Ratans" of INDIA 🏅

📖 The Case of the Missing Deputy Prime Minister...

Source: https://share.google/images/ovxpW2aojfFsMIIQQ
Credit: (Bhandari, 2024), India TV

While scrolling through a popular competitive exam platform the other day, I stumbled upon a well-designed post — “Bharat Ratna Award 2024”. It had elegant borders, a patriotic font, and a perfectly aligned grid of four dignitaries. Below it, in a small footnote, it read:

“Shri L.K. Advani also received Bharat Ratna Award 2024 🇮🇳.”

Source: (Testbook.Com, 2024) https://share.google/images/IngutFxornkvmJHhs

Also.

A tiny word with a gigantic irony.

Here was India’s former Deputy Prime Minister, founder-architect of the Bharatiya Janata Party, an orator who once mobilized an entire generation — remembered, not with a photo, not with a profile, but with an “also.”

In our age of algorithmic education, where exam facts are packaged in reels and infographics, this digital omission feels almost poetic. The “deputy” in title seems to have turned “secondary” in memory too.

Out of curiosity, I did a modest Google search. For others — Narasimha Rao, Charan Singh, Swaminathan, Karpoori Thakur — their Bharat Ratna citations spoke of economic reforms, farmers’ welfare, scientific revolution, and social justice. But for Advani ji, the digital footprints mostly led me to political turning points — the Rath Yatra, Ram Mandir movement, and the shaping of BJP’s ideological core.

So, how does one explain this to students or debate it in a classroom?

Perhaps, by reminding them that history isn’t written only in textbooks or online slides — it’s also curated through silences. Recognition may come through an award, but remembrance comes through reflection.

Maybe Advani ji’s Bharat Ratna forces us to ask: do we honour legacies for their political influence or their public contribution? Or are the two forever intertwined in the Indian context?

In the end, it’s less about who deserved it more — and more about how conveniently our platforms (and our minds) edit out what doesn’t fit the current narrative.

A perfect case, perhaps, for a GK quiz titled —