Bharat Ratna Awardees: Complete List and Exam Facts

The correct answer is C, 1954. The Bharat Ratna was instituted on 2 January 1954 by President Dr Rajendra Prasad, on the same day as the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri, and the first awards were conferred later the same year on C. Rajagopalachari, C. V. Raman and S. Radhakrishnan. Option A is wrong because 1950 is the year the Constitution came into force, which is often used as a distractor in award questions. Option B is wrong because 1952 marks the first general election and has no connection with the civilian awards. Option D is wrong because 1955 is the year in which the rules were amended to allow posthumous conferment; candidates who remember that amendment often give 1955 as the year of institution, which is the trap this question is built on.

The correct answer is D, Jawaharlal Nehru. The first three recipients of the Bharat Ratna, all in 1954, were C. Rajagopalachari, the last Governor-General of India, the physicist C. V. Raman and the philosopher S. Radhakrishnan, who later became President. Jawaharlal Nehru received the award in 1955, along with Bhagwan Das and the engineer M. Visvesvaraya, so he belongs to the second set and not the first. Options A, B and C are therefore all part of the 1954 group and cannot be the answer. The question is set in the negative form, which is common in this chapter, so read the stem carefully: it asks who was left out of 1954, not who received the award. Remember the three 1954 names together, since a matching question often uses them.

The correct answer is A, Lal Bahadur Shastri. The original rules of 1954 did not allow a posthumous award; the provision was added in 1955, and the first person honoured after his death was Lal Bahadur Shastri, the second Prime Minister of India, in 1966, the year he died at Tashkent. Option B is wrong because Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel received the award posthumously much later, in 1991. Option C is wrong because Dr B. R. Ambedkar, the chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution, was honoured posthumously in 1990. Option D is wrong because K. Kamaraj, the Tamil Nadu leader, was honoured posthumously in 1976, a decade after Shastri. All four are genuine posthumous recipients, so only the order of years separates them. Note also that the posthumous provision was introduced within a year of the award being instituted, which is why 1954 and 1955 are so often interchanged in this chapter, and that Shastri's award came in the same year as the Tashkent Declaration.

The correct answer is B, Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi received the Bharat Ratna in 1971, while she was Prime Minister, and she is the first woman in the list. Option A is wrong because Mother Teresa was honoured in 1980; she is remembered as the first naturalised Indian citizen to receive the award, not the first woman. Option C is wrong because Aruna Asaf Ali, known for her role in the Quit India movement of 1942, was honoured posthumously in 1997. Option D is wrong because M. S. Subbulakshmi received the award in 1998 and is remembered as the first musician to be honoured, a separate first that this question deliberately places among the options. Keep the three firsts apart: first woman in 1971, first naturalised citizen in 1980 and first musician in 1998.

The correct answer is C, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. The Pashtun leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, called the Frontier Gandhi and the founder of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, received the Bharat Ratna in 1987 and was the first recipient who was not an Indian citizen. Option A is wrong because Nelson Mandela, honoured in 1990, is the second non-Indian recipient, not the first. Option B is wrong because Mother Teresa, born in Skopje, had become an Indian citizen by naturalisation before she was honoured in 1980, so she is counted as an Indian citizen. Option D is wrong because the Dalai Lama has not received the Bharat Ratna, although he is often placed in the options because of his long residence in India. Only two non-Indian citizens appear in the list, and the order of 1987 and 1990 is what the question tests.

The correct answer is A, Sachin Tendulkar. Until December 2011 the Bharat Ratna could be given only for art, literature, science and public service. The rules were then widened to cover any field of human endeavour, and in 2014 Sachin Tendulkar became the first sportsperson to receive the award, along with the scientist C. N. R. Rao. At forty he is also the youngest recipient. Option B is wrong because Major Dhyan Chand, the hockey player, has not received the Bharat Ratna, although his name is frequently proposed and he gives the national sports award its name. Option C is wrong because Milkha Singh received the Padma Shri, not the Bharat Ratna. Option D is wrong because Vishwanathan Anand, the chess grandmaster, received the Padma Vibhushan, a lower civilian honour.

The correct answer is B, Article 18. Article 18 abolishes titles and forbids the State from conferring any title except a military or academic distinction. The civilian awards survive because they are treated as decorations and not as titles, and for the same reason a recipient may not write Bharat Ratna before or after a name. The Supreme Court upheld the awards on this reasoning in the Balaji Raghavan case decided in 1995, after they had been suspended from 1992. Option A is wrong because Article 14 guarantees equality before the law. Option C is wrong because Article 21 protects life and personal liberty. Option D is wrong because Article 51A lists the Fundamental Duties, which were inserted by the Forty-second Amendment in 1976 and have nothing to do with titles.

The correct answer is C, M. S. Subbulakshmi. The Carnatic vocalist M. S. Subbulakshmi received the Bharat Ratna in 1998 and was the first musician in the list. Option A is wrong because Lata Mangeshkar, the playback singer, was honoured in 2001, three years later. Option B is wrong because Bismillah Khan, the shehnai player from Varanasi, was honoured in the same year as Lata Mangeshkar, 2001. Option D is wrong because the Hindustani classical vocalist Bhimsen Joshi received the award in 2008. The sitar player Ravi Shankar, honoured in 1999, also comes after Subbulakshmi, so the order to remember is Subbulakshmi in 1998, Ravi Shankar in 1999, Lata Mangeshkar and Bismillah Khan in 2001 and Bhimsen Joshi in 2008. The wider point to hold is that six musicians appear in the list in all, drawn from Carnatic and Hindustani classical music, film playback singing and the shehnai, and a question may ask for any one of them by instrument or by gharana rather than by name.

The correct answer is B, peepal leaf. The Bharat Ratna is a medallion shaped like a peepal leaf, about an inch and three-eighths wide, bearing a sun on the front with the words Bharat Ratna below it in Devanagari, and the State Emblem with the motto Satyameva Jayate on the reverse. The recipient also gets a Sanad, a certificate signed by the President, and there is no cash grant with the award. Option A is wrong because the lotus is the design used on the Padma series of awards, where a lotus flower appears on the medal. Option C is wrong because no civilian award of India uses the banyan leaf, though the banyan is the national tree. Option D is wrong because the mango, though the national fruit, has no place in the design of these awards.

The correct answer is B, 1990. Nelson Mandela, the leader of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and later its President, received the Bharat Ratna in 1990, the same year in which Dr B. R. Ambedkar was honoured posthumously. Option A is wrong because 1987 is the year of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan's award, and he, not Mandela, was the first recipient who was not an Indian citizen. Option C is wrong because the awards conferred in 1992 went to Abul Kalam Azad posthumously, J. R. D. Tata and Satyajit Ray, and the civilian awards were then suspended until 1995 because of litigation. Option D is wrong because 1997, the fiftieth year of independence, saw the award go to Gulzarilal Nanda, Aruna Asaf Ali posthumously and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam.