Times of India: Denying Dhyan Chand Bharat Ratna is injustice: Dhanraj Pillay
By Shweta Singh
AHMEDABAD: While former India hockey captain Dilip Tirkey was at the ‘Path of Protest’ in Delhi on Sunday along with some other former hockey greats demanding Bharat Ratna honour for the legend Dhyan Chand posthumously, his teammate and another former skipper Dhanraj Pillay has extended his support to the demand.
A great hockey player himself, Pillay was present in the Sports Authority of India (SAI) campus in Gandhinagar recently, and the 48-year-old Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna awardee termed ‘dada’ Dhyan Chand as a legend and said the demand to honour him with the highest civilian award has been an old one. “He is an inspiration to not only hockey players but every sportsperson in the country. It’s a grave injustice to him that he has been denied Bharat Ratna,” said Pillay, who helped India win the historic gold medal in the 1998 Bangkok Asian Games.
When asked to comment on the debate that dada should have been the first sportsperson to receive the award, ahead of cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar, the Padmashri awardee said Sachin is a legend and fully deserves the recognition. “But dada too stands in the same category,” Pillay said, adding, “The government should have given Bharat Ratna to both of them in 2014 itself or, at least, conferred the same on dada the very next year.”
Pillay, who works for Sports Authority of Gujarat (SAG) as hockey expert, said that after travelling across the nation, he had prepared a pool of 70 talented players (40 boys and 30 girls) of which three belonged to Gujarat.