Born in upper Assam's Sadiya in 1926, Hazarika has been conferred the country's highest civilian award seven years after he passed away. The maestro, who lent his voice to numerous Assamese songs , was earlier awarded Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan.
Earlier, Tej Hazarika had hailed the government's decision to confer Bharat Ratna on his father is a victory for humanity, diversity and India's secular character. An e-mailed statement issued on January 26 had quoted Tej, who lives in the USA, as saying: "In his songs, blueprints for the youth and future of India can be discovered." In his songs he celebrated the richness of indigenous people not only of the Northeast but all of India and he advocated their inclusion in the Indian experience as essential to the success of Indian civilisation as a whole, Tej had said.
Earlier this month, Veteran Manipuri filmmaker Aribam Syam Sharma said that he would return the Padma Shri as a mark of protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016, terming it "anti-Northeast". The 83-year-old director, known for Manipuri films such as "Olangthagee Wangmadasu", "Imagi Ningthem" and "Ishanou", was bestowed with the country's fourth highest civilian honour in 2006.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, passed by Lok Sabha on January 8, seeks to grant nationality to non-Muslims who fled religious persecution from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and entered India before December 31, 2014.
Protests against the bill have rocked the entire northeast over the past seven weeks, with several organizations and political parties claiming that the bill threatens the identity, language and culture of indigenous people.
While student bodies in Assam and other northeastern states have intensified their protests against the Bill and vowed to continue it till it was scrapped, the political parties who are constituents of the BJP-led North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) have also decided to oppose the Bill.
The developments have come at a time when the country is barely two months away from the Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP, which had been gradually making its presence felt in the region after the party's victory in Assam in 2016, is eyeing at least 21 of the total 25 Lok Sabha seats in the eight northeastern states including 11 of the 14 seats in Assam alone.
The BJP has a strong presence in six of the eight northeastern states. It is in power in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Tripura and is part of the ruling alliances in Meghalaya and Nagaland. But the party has been facing stiff opposition from the beginning over the Bill. The opposition picked up momentum from January 8 when the Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha.