Name is important

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday took a very important decision of renaming the nation's highest award for sports from Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award to Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award. This is indeed a very bold decision through which the country's highest sports award is being finally named after one of the greatest sportspersons of the country, he being recognized by the entire world as the Wizard of Hockey. It was because of the leadership of Dhyan Chand that hockey came to be established as a major international sports event, simultaneously also etching the name of India on human history as a giant sporting nation as far as turf games are concerned. Instituted in 1991-92, the Khel Ratna Award was named after the late former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and India's chess prodigy Viswanathan Anand was its first recipient. Some others who have been conferred this award include Geet Sethi, Pankaj Advani, MC Mary Kom, Sachin Tendulkar, Abhinav Bindra, Vijay Kumar, PV Sindhu and Sushil Kumar. It is a fact that a section of people – belonging to a particular political party – has criticized this decision of the Prime Minister, and social media is rife with caustic remarks against Narendra Modi for having allegedly caused injury to the memory of a former prime minister after whom the country's highest sports award was named. It should have been that in the very first place, when the country's highest sports award was instituted in 1991-92, that it should have been christened after the memory of India's greatest-ever sportsperson. Not naming it so in itself was gross injustice to both great personalities – Major Dhyan Chand as well as Rajiv Gandhi. Those who had instituted this award should have at that very stage at least looked at how other awards in different fields are named. The highest film award of the country, instituted in the name of India' pioneer filmmaker Dhundiraj Govind Phalke – who was popularly known as Dadasaheb Phalke – should have been remembered or taken as a precedent, if names of other awards had not come easily to their mind. Just to recall in justifying renaming the Khel Ratna award, the highest award of the country in the field of science and technology is given in the name of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, who was a great Indian colloid chemist, academic and scientific administrator, apart from being the first director-general of CSIR, and revered as the "father of research laboratories" in India.