Bharat Ratna Award Winners

Bharat Ratna Award Winners – Complete List

What is Bharata Ratna?

The Bharat Ratna is the highest civilian award of the Republic of India. Instituted in 1954, the award is conferred “in recognition of exceptional service/performance of the highest order”, without distinction of race, occupation position, or sex. The award was originally limited to achievements in the arts, literature, science, and public services, but the government expanded the criteria to include “any field of human endeavor” in December 2011.

The first recipients of the Bharat Ratna were politician C. Rajagopalachari, philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and scientist C. V. Raman, who was honored in 1954. Since then, the award has been bestowed on 45 individuals, including 12 who were awarded posthumously.

Bharat Ratna Award Winners

Name of the Awardees	Year
1. Shri C. Rajagopalachari	1954
2. Dr.Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan	1954
3. Dr.C. V. Raman	1954
4. Dr.Bhagwan Das	1955
5. Dr.M Visvesvaraya	1955
6. Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru	1955
7. Pt. Govind Ballabh Pant	1957
8. Dr.Dhondo Keshav Karve	1958
9. Dr.Bidhan Chandra Roy	1961
10. Shri.Purushottam Das Tandon	1961
11. Dr.Rajendra Prasad	1962
12. Dr.Zakir Husain	1962
13. Dr.Pandurang Vaman Kane	1963
14. Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri (posthumous)	1966
15. Smt.Indira Gandhi	1971
16. Shri V. V. Giri	1975
17. Shri K. Kamaraj(posthumous)	1976
18. Mother Teresa	1980
19. Shri Acharya Vinoba Bhave	1983
20. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan	1987
21. Shri M. G. Ramachandran	1988
22. Dr.B. R. Ambedkar	1990
23. Nelson Mandela	1990
24. Shri.Rajiv Gandhi (posthumous)	1991
25. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (posthumous)	1991
26. Shri Morarji Desai	1991
27. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (posthumous)	1992
28. Shri J. R. D. Tata	1992
29. Shri Satyajit Ray	1992
30. Shri Gulzarilal Nanda	1997
31. Smt.Aruna Asaf Ali(posthumous)	1997
32. Dr.A. P. J. Abdul Kalam	1997
33. Smt.M. S. Subbulakshmi	1998
34. Shri Chidambaram Subramaniam	1998
35. Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan (posthumous)	1999
36. Professer Amartya Sen	1999
37. Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi (posthumous)	1999
38. Pandit Ravi Shankar	1999
39. ShushriLata Mangeshkar	2001
40. Ustad Bismillah Khan	2001
41. Pandit Bhimsen Joshi	2009
42. Professor C. N. R. Rao	2014
43. Shri Sachin Tendulkar	2014
44. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya (posthumous)	2015
45. Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee	2015

Did You Know?

• The original 1954 specifications of the award was a circle made of gold 1 3⁄8 inches (35 mm) in diameter with a centered sunburst design on the obverse side.
• The text “Bharat Ratna”, in Devanagari Script, is inscribed on the upper edge in silver gilt with a wreath set along on the lower edge.