There are many living traditions of honouring the dead that are woven into the fabric of religious and secular life in India. So, when the State chooses to honour eminent Indians with its civilian awards, it usually selects awardees who are alive, even if they have retired from their respective spheres of achievement. The Bharat Ratna and the Padma awards were originally conceptualized to exclude posthumous honourees. But, with the former, exceptions began to be made to this rule from a little more than a decade after they began to be awarded in 1954. And now, posthumous awards seem to have come into the sphere of the Padma awards as well. There were as many as four this year, and although three of the awardees died last year, lending to their awards the necessary immediacy, the award that is being talked about most might strike some as rather too posthumous. Padma Vibhushan Dhirubhai Ambani died more than a decade ago, and although his contribution remains largely undisputed, it is difficult not to wonder how far posthumousness might be stretched for someone to be deemed award-worthy?

It is true that B.R. Ambedkar died in 1956 and was given the Bharat Ratna in 1990, and that Vallabhbhai Patel died in 1950 and was given the same award in 1991. But a case might be made for both as 'founders' of the nation. Even then, it would be better to maintain the criterion of immediacy, by which, say, Rajiv Gandhi was awarded the Bharat Ratna the same year as his death. Honouring the 'long dead' quickly became a norm with the Bharat Ratna, and care should be taken that the Padma awards should not go the same way if they are to retain some of their credibility and aura. Ultimately, in a culture so acutely and reverentially aware of the past, and especially the ancient past, the need to see the history of the present going back to a chronological vanishing point is not easy to resist. If no limit is put on this, one might find the Buddha in the next year's list.