When Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk turned down the coveted title of "state artist" recently (if he accepted it, he said, he could not "look in the face of people" he cared about), I was reminded of a veteran leftist editor in New Delhi, Nikhil Chakravarty, who similarly declined an official decoration some years ago. To accept it and still claim independence, he said, would be "like wearing a chastity belt in a brothel."

Writers and journalists being essentially in the same boat, the question of whether our work should be rewarded--and, if so, how and by whom--provokes contrary views. Did Pamuk's claim that "the state does not have clean hands" mean all states, or are some cleaner than others? "If you accepted a prize from the White House during the Vietnam War," he went on, "that would of course have political implications." What about a White House that is not embroiled in foreign military adventure, hard though it is to imagine? The implication seems to be that some states are permanently taboo and others only sometimes. Not everyone is as squeamish. Mahatma Gandhi and India's Nobel laureate for literature Rabindranath Tagore, sturdy patriots both, received honors not just from the government but from a colonial government, returning them in fury only when the British indulged in a brutal display of force.

Media dynamics make for an additional anomaly. Press magnates seldom conceal their political loyalty; they openly campaign for their preferred party and no one thinks the less of them for being rewarded with titles or ambassadorships. Some British newspaper proprietors have even been offered Balkan crowns. But the editors and reporters who work for these committed moguls are generally seen--and see themselves--as incorruptible paragons of impartiality. Hence the frisson of disapproval that rippled the British media's favorite watering holes in 1981 when, as the wits said, Queen Elizabeth turned day into knight with a tap of her sword. The victim (or beneficiary) was television anchor Robin Day, distinctive as always in polka-dot bow tie and matching handkerchief, whose integrity had never previously been questioned. His knighthood may have paved the way for Margaret Thatcher later to shower honors on a host of supportive editors whose Asian equivalent is to be found in the Malaysian media's Tuns and Datuks.

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