Bharat Ratna | History, Award List, & 2024 Winners | Britannica (original) (raw)
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Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India. Bharat translates to “India” and ratna to “gem” or “jewel.” Instituted by the government in 1954, the Bharat Ratna is given in recognition of “exceptional service” or “performance of the highest order” in “any field of human endeavour.” Although the Bharat Ratna is usually limited to a maximum of three awards per year, in 1999 the government deferred that restriction and awarded the Bharat Ratna to four people, and in 2024 five recipients were announced. The Bharat Ratna awards were temporarily suspended between mid-1977 and early 1980 and then between mid-1992 and 1995, following changes in the federal government and some lawsuits, respectively. Also, the Bharat Ratna is not necessarily awarded every year. Since its inception, there have been years when no Bharat Ratna has been awarded.
Recommendations for the award are made by the prime minister to the president of the country. Bharat Ratna recipients are awarded a medallion and a certificate (sanad) signed by the president of India.
Award recipients: 1954 to 2019
The Bharat Ratna award is not limited to Indian citizens: in 1987 and 1990, respectively, Pashtun leader Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Nelson Mandela , the first Black president of South Africa, received the award. Other recipients include activists who led India’s freedom struggle and worked for social causes, notable musicians who brought India to the world stage, an athlete who is considered an all-time great, and individuals who helped the country progress in the fields of science, medicine, and engineering. The recipients of the Bharat Ratna award between 1954, the year of the award’s inception, and 2019 are listed in the table.
| recipient | award year | about the recipient |
|---|---|---|
| Chakravarti Rajagopalachari | 1954 | Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (born 1879, Hosur, India—died December 25, 1972, Madras [now Chennai]) was the only Indian governor-general of independent India. He was a founder and leader of the Swatantra (Independent) Party in 1959. |
| Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan | 1954 | Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (born September 5, 1888, Tiruttani, India—died April 16, 1975, Madras [now Chennai]) was a scholar and statesman who was president of India from 1962 to 1967. |
| Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman | 1954 | Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (born November 7, 1888, Trichinopoly, India—died November 21, 1970, Bangalore [now Bengaluru]) was an Indian physicist whose work was influential in the growth of science in India. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930. |
| Bhagwan Das | 1955 | Bhagwan Das (born January 12, 1869, Varanasi, India—died September 18, 1958) was an educator and a reformer known for supporting the education of women. Das cofounded the Kashi Vidyapith (now Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith) in 1921 and was an independence activist. He was one of the key figures in the formation of the Banaras Hindu University in 1916. |
| Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya | 1955 | Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya (born September 15, 1861, Muddenahalli, India—died April 14, 1962) was one of India’s most eminent engineers and was diwan of Mysore (now Mysuru) from 1912 to 1918. He played a key role in the planning of the city of Mysore and was chief engineer of the Krishna Raja Sagara dam on the Kaveri River, which provides drinking water to the cities of Mysore and Bangalore (now Bengaluru) and irrigation to neighboring areas. He was one of the key people who helped design a flood-control system for Hyderabad. |
| Jawaharlal Nehru | 1955 | Jawaharlal Nehru (born November 14, 1889, Allahabad, India—died May 27, 1964, New Delhi), one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the 1930s and ’40s, was the first prime minister of independent India (1947–64). He established a parliamentary government and became noted for his neutralist (nonaligned) policies in foreign affairs. |
| Govind Ballabh Pant | 1957 | Govind Ballabh Pant (born September 10, 1887, near Almora, India—died March 7, 1961, Delhi) was a social reformer, independence activist, and politician who became the first chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and later served as home minister of India (1955–61). |
| Dhondo Keshav Karve | 1958 | Dhondo Keshav Karve (born April 18, 1858, Sheravali, India—died November 9, 1962, Poona [Pune]) was an Indian social reformer and educator noted for supporting the education of women and for organizing associations for the remarriage of Hindu widows. |
| Bidhan Chandra Roy | 1961 | Bidhan Chandra Roy (born July 1, 1882, Bankiporei, India—died July 1, 1962, Calcutta [Kolkata]) was a physician, philanthropist, and political leader. He was the second chief minister of West Bengal (1948–62). Known as a visionary leader who helped in the modernization and development of West Bengal after independence from British rule, he established the Indian Medical Association and the Medical Council of India and set up some of the leading medical institutions in Calcutta. |
| Purushottam Das Tandon | 1961 | Purushottam Das Tandon (born August 1, 1882, Allahabad, India—died July 1, 1962, Allahabad) was an Indian politician and a prominent figure in the Indian National Congress [Congress Party] in its early years. He was an enthusiastic campaigner for the use of Hindi as India’s national language. |
| Rajendra Prasad | 1962 | Rajendra Prasad (born December 3, 1884, Zeradei, India—died February 28, 1963, Patna) was an Indian politician, lawyer, and journalist who became the first president of the Republic of India (1950–62). He was a comrade of Mahatma Gandhi early in the noncooperation movement for independence and was president of the Indian National Congress (1934, 1939, and 1947). |
| Zakir Husain | 1963 | Zakir Husain (born February 8, 1897, Hyderabad, India—died May 3, 1969, New Delhi) was an Indian statesman, the first Muslim to hold the position of president of India (1967–69), and vice chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University (1926–48). |
| Pandurang Vaman Kane | 1963 | Pandurang Vaman Kane (born May 7, 1880, in Ratnagiri district, Maharashtra, India—died April 18, 1972) was a noted Indologist, lawyer, and Sanskrit scholar. He is known for his work on the religious and civil law of ancient and medieval India, History of the Dharmaśāstra, published between 1930 and 1962 in five volumes. |
| Lal Bahadur Shastri* | 1966 | Lal Bahadur Shastri (born October 2, 1904, Mughalsarai, India—died January 11, 1966, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, U.S.S.R.) was an Indian statesman and independence activist who served as prime minister of India from 1964 to 1966, after Jawaharlal Nehru. |
| Indira Gandhi | 1971 | Indira Gandhi (born November 19, 1917, Allahabad, India—died October 31, 1984, New Delhi) was an Indian politician who was the first female prime minister of India, serving for three consecutive terms (1966–77) and a fourth term from 1980 until she was assassinated in 1984. |
| Varahagiri Venkata Giri | 1975 | Varahagiri Venkata Giri (born August 10, 1894, Berhampore [now Brahmapur], India—died June 24, 1980, Madras [now Chennai]) was an Indian statesman who was president of India from 1969 to 1974. |
| Kumaraswami Kamaraj* | 1976 | Kumaraswami Kamaraj (born July 15, 1903, Virudunagar, India—died October 2, 1975, Madras [now Chennai]) was an Indian independence activist and statesman who rose from humble beginnings to become a legislator in the Madras Presidency (an administrative unit of British India that encompassed much of southern India), chief minister (head of government) of the successor Madras state in independent India (now largely occupied by Tamil Nadu state and also including portions of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala states), and president of the Indian National Congress. |
| Mother Teresa | 1980 | Mother Teresa (baptized August 27, 1910, Skopje, Macedonia, Ottoman Empire [now in Republic of North Macedonia]—died September 5, 1997, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India; canonized September 4, 2016; feast day September 5) founded the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to the poor, particularly to the destitute of India. She was the recipient of numerous honors, including the 1979 Nobel Prize for Peace. |
| Vinoba Bhave* | 1983 | Vinoba Bhave (born September 11, 1895, Gagode, Bombay Presidency [now in Maharashtra], India—died November 15, 1982, Wardha, Maharashtra) was one of India’s best-known social reformers and a widely venerated disciple of Mahatma Gandhi. Bhave was the founder of the Bhoodan Yajna (“Land-Gift Movement”). |
| Abdul Ghaffar Khan | 1987 | Abdul Ghaffar Khan (born 1890, Utmanzai, India—died January 20, 1988, Peshawar, Pakistan) was the foremost 20th-century leader of the Pashtuns (Pakhtuns, or Pathans; a Muslim ethnic group of Pakistan and Afghanistan). He became a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and was called the “frontier Gandhi.” Khan opposed the partition of India and chose to live in Pakistan, where he continued to fight for the rights of the Pashtun minority and for an autonomous Pakhtunistan. |
| Maruthur Gopala Ramachandran* | 1988 | Maruthur Gopala Ramachandran (born January 17, 1917, Kandy, Ceylon [now Sri Lanka]—died December 24, 1987, Madras [now Chennai]) was a prominent actor, politician, and philanthropist in Tamil Nadu, a south Indian state. MGR, as he was popularly called, was idolized by his fans, and his popularity helped him win over the masses as a politician. He founded the All Indian Dravidian Progressive Federation (AIADMK) party in 1972, and from 1977 to 1987 he was the chief minister of Tamil Nadu. Such was his popularity that his death in December 1987, though after prolonged illness, sent shock waves through the state and led to riots and chaos on the streets of Tamil Nadu. |
| Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar* | 1990 | Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (born April 14, 1891, Mhow [now Dr. Ambedkar Nagar], India—died December. 6, 1956, New Delhi) was a leader of the Dalits (Scheduled Castes; formerly called untouchables) and law minister of the government of India from 1947 to 1951. He took a leading part in the framing of the Indian constitution, outlawing discrimination against untouchables. |
| Nelson Mandela | 1990 | Nelson Mandela (born July 18, 1918, Mvezo, South Africa—died December 5, 2013, Johannesburg) was a Black nationalist and the first Black president of South Africa (1994–99). His negotiations in the early 1990s with South African Pres. F.W. de Klerk helped end the country’s apartheid system of racial segregation and ushered in a peaceful transition to majority rule. Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993 for their efforts. |
| Rajiv Gandhi* | 1991 | Rajiv Gandhi (born August 20, 1944, Bombay [now Mumbai], India—died May 21, 1991, Sriperumbudur, near Madras [now Chennai]) was an Indian politician who rose to become the leader of the Congress (I) Party (a faction of the Indian National Congress established in 1981) and served as prime minister of India (1984–89) after the assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi, in 1984. He himself was assassinated. |
| Vallabhbhai Patel* | 1991 | Vallabhbhai Patel (born October 31, 1875, Nadiad, India—died December 15, 1950, Bombay [now Mumbai]) was an Indian barrister and statesman and one of the leaders of the Indian National Congress during the struggle for Indian independence. During the first three years of Indian independence after 1947, he served as deputy prime minister, minister of home affairs, minister of information, and minister of states. |
| Morarji Desai | 1991 | Morarji Desai (born February 29, 1896, Bhadeli, Gujarat province, India—died April 10, 1995, Bombay [now Mumbai]) was prime minister of India from 1977 to 1979 and was the first leader of sovereign India not to represent the long-ruling Indian National Congress party. |
| Abul Kalam Azad* | 1992 | Abul Kalam Azad (born November 11, 1888, Mecca [now in Saudi Arabia]—died February 22, 1958, New Delhi, India) was an Islamic theologian and an independence activist against British rule in the first half of the 20th century. He was highly respected throughout his life as a man of high moral integrity and was popularly known as “Maulana Azad.” |
| Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata | 1992 | Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata (born July 29, 1904, Paris, France—died November 29, 1993, Geneva, Switzerland), popularly known as J.R.D. Tata, was an Indian businessman and aviation pioneer who created India’s first airline and oversaw the dramatic expansion of the Tata Group. |
| Satyajit Ray | 1992 | Satyajit Ray (born May 2, 1921, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India—died April 23, 1992, Calcutta) was a Bengali motion-picture director, writer, and illustrator who brought Indian cinema to world recognition with Pather Panchali (1955; The Song of the Road) and its two sequels, known as the Apu Trilogy. As a director, Ray was noted for his humanism, his versatility, and his detailed control over his films and their music. He was one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century. |
| Gulzarilal Nanda | 1997 | Gulzarilal Nanda (born July 4, 1898, Sialkot, British India [now in Pakistan]—died January 15, 1998, Ahmadabad, India) was an Indian politician who served briefly as interim prime minister twice—in 1964, following the death of Jawaharlal Nehru, and in 1966, upon the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri. Nanda was known for his work on labor issues. |
| Aruna Asaf Ali* | 1997 | Aruna Asaf Ali (born July 16, 1909, Kalka, India—died July 29, 1996, New Delhi) was an independence activist and educator who was at the forefront of the Quit India Movement in 1942 during India’s freedom struggle. Known for her fierce sense of independence, Asaf Ali raised India’s flag at the Gowalia Tank Maidan during the Quit India movement, started an underground radio station while in hiding from the British administration, and edited Inquilab, the Congress Party’s monthly magazine. Asaf Ali became Delhi’s first elected mayor in 1958. |
| Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam | 1997 | Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam (born October 15, 1931, Rameswaram, India—died July 27, 2015, Shillong), popularly known as A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, was an Indian scientist and politician who played a leading role in the development of India’s missile and nuclear weapons programs. He was president of India from 2002 to 2007. |
| Madurai Shanmukhavadivu Subbulakshmi | 1998 | Madurai Shanmukhavadivu Subbulakshmi (born September 16, 1916, Madurai, Madras Presidency, British India [now in Tamil Nadu, India]—died December 11, 2004, Chennai), popularly known as M.S. Subbulakshmi, was a legendary Indian classical singer who became the face of Carnatic music, making it popular in India and in the Western world. She was the first Indian musician to receive the Ramon Magsaysay award and the Bharat Ratna and also the first Indian who performed in the United Nations General Assembly in 1966. |
| Chidambaram Subramaniam | 1998 | Chidambaram Subramaniam (born January 30, 1910, Coimbatore, India—died November 7, 2000, Chennai) was a lawyer, independence activist, and politician and was perhaps best known for paving the way for the green revolution in India as the country’s agriculture minister in 1965. Subramaniam transformed India’s agricultural production by introducing high-yield seeds that increased the production of food grains. He also served as the governor of Maharashtra state between 1990 and 1993. |
| Jayaprakash Narayan* | 1999 | Jayaprakash Narayan (born October 11, 1902, Sitab Diyara, India—died October 8, 1979, Patna) was an Indian political leader, activist for independence, and theorist. |
| Amartya Sen | 1999 | Amartya Sen (born November 3, 1933, Santiniketan, India) is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory and for his interest in the problems of society’s poorest members. Sen is best known for his work on the causes of famine. |
| Gopinath Bordoloi* | 1999 | Gopinath Bordoloi (born June 6, 1890, Raha, India—died August 5, 1950) was an independence activist and statesman from Assam state. He was the chief minister of Assam twice (1938–39 and 1946–50). Soon after he became chief minister for the first time, his cabinet resigned during the outbreak of World War II in opposition to India’s forced participation in the war. He was admired for his progressive educational and industrial policies and was instrumental in establishing a number of educational institutes in the state, including Gauhati University. Bordoloi was given the title of lokapriya (“loved by all”) by Jairamdas Daulatram, governor of Assam. |
| Ravi Shankar | 1999 | Ravi Shankar (born April 7, 1920, Benares [now Varanasi], India—died December 11, 2012, San Diego, California, U.S.) was a renowned Indian musician, player of the sitar, composer, and founder of the National Orchestra of India. He was influential in stimulating Western appreciation of Indian music. |
| Lata Mangeshkar | 2001 | Lata Mangeshkar (born September 28, 1929, Indore, British India [now India]—died February 6, 2022, Mumbai, India) was a legendary Indian playback singer noted for her distinctive voice and a vocal range that extended over three octaves. Her career spanned eight decades, and she recorded songs for the soundtracks of more than 2,000 Indian films. |
| Bismillah Khan | 2001 | Bismillah Khan (born March 21, 1916, Dumraon, British India [now India]—died August 21, 2006, Varanasi, India) was an Indian musician who played the shehnai, a ceremonial oboelike North Indian horn, with such expressive virtuosity that he became a leading Indian classical music artist. His name was indelibly linked with the shehnai. |
| Bhimsen Joshi | 2009 | Bhimsen Joshi (born February 4, 1922, in Karnataka, India—died January 24, 2011, Pune) was a Hindustani classical vocalist known for the khayal form and devotional music and for bringing his own distinctive style to the Kirana gharana (communities of performers who share a distinctive musical style). |
| Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao | 2014 | Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao (born June 30, 1934, Bangalore, India), popularly known as C.N.R. Rao, is Linus Pauling Research Professor and Honorary President of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, which he founded in 1989. He is a renowned Indian scientist and an authority in solid state and structural chemistry. Rao served as chair of the Scientific Advisory Council to the prime minister of India and has honorary doctorates from more than 70 universities in India and across the world, in addition to fellowships in many major academies in the world. Rao’s most recent area of interest has been nanoparticles and he has been instrumental in getting the government of India to launch the Nano Science and Technology Initiative (NSTI). |
| Sachin Tendulkar | 2014 | Sachin Tendulkar (born April 24, 1973, Bombay [Mumbai], India) is an Indian professional cricket player, considered by many to be one of the greatest batsmen of all time. In 2012 he became the first cricketer to score 100 centuries (100 runs in a single innings) in international play. He is the first sports figure to be awarded the Bharat Ratna. |
| Atal Bihari Vajpayee | 2015 | Atal Bihari Vajpayee (born December 25, 1924, Gwalior, India—died August 16, 2018, New Delhi) was leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party and prime minister of India twice (1996 and 1998–2004). |
| Madan Mohan Malaviya* | 2015 | Madan Mohan Malaviya (born December 25, 1861, Allahabad, India—died November 12, 1946, Allahabad?) was an Indian scholar, an educational reformer, and a leader of the Indian nationalist movement. |
| Nanaji Deshmukh* | 2019 | Nanaji Deshmukh (born on October 11, 1916, Kadoli, India—died February 27, 2010, Chitrakoot) was an educator, politician, and social reformer who played an important part in social restructuring programs and rural development in hundreds of villages in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. He established Chitrakoot Gramodya Vishwavidyalaya, India’s first rural university. |
| Bhupen Hazarika* | 2019 | Bhupen Hazarika (born September 8, 1926, Sadiya, British India [now India]—died November 5, 2011, Mumbai, India) was a person of many talents. Poet, lyricist, vocalist, actor, filmmaker, and politician, Hazarika was known as “the bard of Brahmaputra” and “Sudha Kontho” (meaning “nectar throat”). His songs touched on themes of humanity, brotherhood, and social action. Winner of the National Award for the best filmmaker for three movies (Shakuntala, 1960; Pratidhwani, 1964; and Loti Ghoti, 1967), Hazarika also won the National Award for best music composition for Chameli Memsaab (1977), the Sangeet Natak Academy award (1987), and the Dada Saheb Phalke award (1993). |
| Pranab Mukherjee | 2019 | Pranab Mukherjee (born December 11, 1935, Mirati, India—died August 31, 2020, Delhi) was an Indian politician and government official who served as president of India from 2012 to 2017. He succeeded Pratibha Patil, India’s first woman president. |
| *Awarded posthumously. |
Award recipients: 2024
On January 23, 2024, the president’s office announced that Karpoori Thakur, socialist leader and chief minister of the state of Bihar twice in the 1970s, will posthumously receive the country’s highest civilian honor. During his term as chief minister, Thakur worked for marginalized groups and brought in “reservations,” or affirmative action programs, for “other backward classes” (OBCs), a term used by the Indian government for groups that are educationally or socially marginalized. The president’s announcement came a day before Thakur’s birth centenary. On February 3 the president’s office and Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that Lal Krishna Advani, former deputy prime minister of India, a founding member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), will be conferred the Bharat Ratna. Then, on February 9, the president’s office and the prime minister announced three more Bharat Ratna awards (posthumous) for the year—geneticist and administrator Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan as well as Congress leader Pamulaparti Venkata Narasimha Rao and independence activist and political leader Chaudhuri Charan Singh, both of whom were former prime ministers of India—making this a year when the highest number of Bharat Ratna awards have been declared. Swaminathan is recognized for his role in India’s green revolution, increasing the yield of wheat and rice in the country and moving India toward self-sufficiency in food production; Rao made efforts to liberalize India’s economy in the early 1990s; and Charan Singh was an independence activist who served briefly as prime minister from 1979 to 1980.