Bharat Ratna is India's highest civilian award.
The Bharat Ratna is India's supreme decoration and honor, awarded for the highest degrees of national services. This service includes artistic, literary, and scientific achievements, as well as "recognition of public service of the highest order." Unlike knights, holders of the Bharat Ratna carry no special title, but they do have a place in the order of precedence.
The original specifications for the award called for a circular gold medal, 35 mm mm in diameter, with the sun and the Hindi legend "Bharat Ratna" above and a floral wreath below. The reverse was to carry the state emblem and motto. It was to be worn around the neck from a white ribbon. There is no indication that any specimens of this design were ever produced and one year later the design was altered.
The original statutes of January 1954 did not make allowance for posthumous awards (and this perhaps explains why the decoration was never awarded to Mahatma Gandhi), though this provision was added in the January 1955 statute. Subsequently, there have been nine posthumous awards. While there was no formal provision that recipients of the Bharat Ratna should be Indian citizens, this seems to have been the general assumption. There has been one award to a naturalized Indian citizen — Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, better known as Mother Teresa (1980) and two to non-Indians — Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1987) and Nelson Mandela (1990). There has been one instance of the award being withdrawn when in 1992, the award was posthumously given to Subash Chandra Bose but withdrawn later.
Bharat Ratna medallion: An image of the Sun along with the words "Bharat Ratna", inscribed in Devanagari script, on a peepul leaf
Complete list of the Awardees
Name Awarded
Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) 1954
Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (1878-1972) 1954
Dr C.V. Raman (1888-1970) 1954
Dr Bhagwan Das (1869-1958) 1955
Dr Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya (1861-1962) 1955
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 -1964) 1955
Govind Ballabh Pant (1887-1961) 1957
Dr Dhondo Keshave Karve (1858-1962) 1958
Dr B. C. Roy (1882-1962) 1961
Purushottam Das Tandon (1882-1962) 1961
Dr Rajendra Prasad (1884-1963) 1962
Dr Zakir Hussain(1897-1969) 1963
Dr Pandurang Vaman Kane (1880-1972) 1963
Lal Bahadur Shastri (Posthumous) (1904-1966) 1966
Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) 1971
V.V. Giri (1894-1980) 1975
K. Kamraj (Posthumous) (1903-1975) 1976
Mary Taresa Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa) (1910-1997) 1980
Acharya Vinoba Bhave (Posthumous) (1895-1982) 1983
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988) 1987
M.G. Ramachandran (Posthumous) (1917-1987) 1988
Dr Bhim Rao Ramji Ambedkar (Posthumous) (1891-1956) 1990
Dr Nelson Mandela (b 1918) 1990
Rajiv Gandhi (Posthumous) (1944-1991) 1991
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (Posthumous) (1875-1950) 1991
Morarji Desai (1896-1995) 1991
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (Posthumous) (1888-1958) 1992
J.R.D. Tata (1904-1993) 1992
Satyajit Ray (1922-1992) 1992
Subhash Chandra Bose (1897-1945) (later withdrawn) 1992
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (b 1931) 1997
Gulzarilal Nanda (1898-1998) 1997
Aruna Asaf Ali (Posthumous) (1906-1995) 1997
M.S. Subbulakshmi (1916-2004) 1998
C Subramaniam (1910-2000) 1998
Jayaprakash Narayan (1902-1979) 1998
Ravi Shankar (b 1920) 1999
Amartya Sen (b 1933) 1999
Gopinath Bordoloi (b 1927) 1999
Lata Mangeshkar (b 1929) 2001
Ustad Bismillah Khan (b 1916) 2001
41. Pandit Bhimsen Joshi 2008
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