पुरस्कार और सम्मान

हिंदी में पढ़ें

Awards & Honours — Who Gets What, and Why

◆ On 4 February 2014, a 40-year-old cricketer walked into the Durbar Hall of Rashtrapati Bhavan. Sachin Tendulkar became the first sportsperson, and the youngest person, ever to receive the Bharat Ratna. Sixty years earlier, in 1954, the same honour had gone to a statesman, a philosopher and a physicist. A cricketer and a physicist on the same list — that is the beauty of awards. They tell the story of a nation: whom it admires, and for what. In this chapter you will learn that story, and the dates and names that exams love to ask.

What you will master today (Learning Objectives)

India's civilian honours — Bharat Ratna and the three Padma awards — and their rules

Gallantry awards for war and for peace, and their order

Sports, cinema, literature, science and peace awards of India

International awards — Nobel, Ramon Magsaysay, Booker, Oscar and others — with famous Indian winners

How to handle "first recipient", "instituted in" and "given by" questions without confusion

PART A — CIVILIAN HONOURS OF INDIA

1. Bharat Ratna — the Jewel of India

The Bharat Ratna is India's highest civilian award. It was instituted on 2 January 1954.

First recipients (1954): C. Rajagopalachari, Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Dr. C. V. Raman.

Who decides? The Prime Minister recommends names directly to the President. No formal nomination is needed.

How many? The rule says a maximum of three in a year. Exceptions exist: four were given in 1999 and five in 2024.

What is given? A Sanad (certificate signed by the President) and a medallion. No money is given.

The medallion: shaped like a peepal leaf, with a figure of the sun and the words "Bharat Ratna" in Devanagari on the front; the State Emblem and "Satyameva Jayate" on the back.

Mnemonic for the first trio: "RRR" — Rajagopalachari, Radhakrishnan, Raman.

🧠 Active Recall: Who were the three first recipients of the Bharat Ratna, and in which year? (Rajagopalachari, Radhakrishnan, Raman — 1954.)

2. Bharat Ratna "Firsts" that exams love

First posthumous award: Lal Bahadur Shastri (1966). Posthumous awards were allowed only from 1966.

First woman: Indira Gandhi (1971).

Mother Teresa (1980) — born abroad, she was an Indian citizen.

First non-Indian citizen: Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the "Frontier Gandhi" (1987). Nelson Mandela of South Africa followed in 1990.

First sportsperson and youngest recipient: Sachin Tendulkar (2014). Scientist C. N. R. Rao received it in the same year.

Other well-known names: Jawaharlal Nehru (1955), Dr. Rajendra Prasad (1962), Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (1990), Satyajit Ray (1992), Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (1997), Lata Mangeshkar and Ustad Bismillah Khan (2001).

2015: Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Madan Mohan Malaviya (founder of Banaras Hindu University).
2019: Pranab Mukherjee, Nanaji Deshmukh and Bhupen Hazarika.
2024: five recipients — Karpoori Thakur, Lal Krishna Advani, Chaudhary Charan Singh, P. V. Narasimha Rao and Dr. M. S. Swaminathan (all except Advani posthumously).

Suspended twice: from 1977 to 1980, and from 1992 to 1995 (court cases). In 1995 (Balaji Raghavan case) the Supreme Court held that the Bharat Ratna and Padma awards are not "titles" banned by Article 18 of the Constitution — but they must not be used as a prefix or suffix to a name.

🧠 Active Recall: Who was the first woman to get the Bharat Ratna, and who was the first person to get it after death? (Indira Gandhi, 1971; Lal Bahadur Shastri, 1966.)

3. The Padma Awards

Instituted in 1954 along with the Bharat Ratna. At first there was only the "Padma Vibhushan" in three classes (Pahela Varg, Dusra Varg, Tisra Varg). On 8 January 1955 they were renamed:

Padma Vibhushan — exceptional and distinguished service
Padma Bhushan — distinguished service of a high order
Padma Shri — distinguished service

Order (highest first): Bharat Ratna → Padma Vibhushan → Padma Bhushan → Padma Shri.

Announced every year on the eve of Republic Day (25 January); presented by the President at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The total in a year should not be more than 120 — not counting posthumous awards and awards to foreigners, NRIs and OCIs.

Government servants (including PSU employees) are not eligible — except doctors and scientists.

Mnemonic: "V-B-S — Very Big Star": Vibhushan > Bhushan > Shri.

🧠 Active Recall: Arrange the four civilian awards from highest to lowest. (Bharat Ratna, Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri.)

PART B — GALLANTRY AWARDS

4. War-time and Peace-time Bravery

War-time gallantry (bravery in the face of the enemy) — instituted on 26 January 1950, with effect from 15 August 1947:
Param Vir Chakra (highest) → Maha Vir Chakra → Vir Chakra

Peace-time gallantry (bravery away from the battlefield) — instituted on 4 January 1952 as Ashoka Chakra Class I, II and III; renamed on 27 January 1967:
Ashoka Chakra (highest) → Kirti Chakra → Shaurya Chakra

Mnemonic: "War = P-M-V, Peace = A-K-S" (Param, Maha, Vir; Ashoka, Kirti, Shaurya).

5. Param Vir Chakra — facts to remember

Designed by Savitri Khanolkar. The medal shows four replicas of Indra's Vajra (the weapon made from the bones of sage Dadhichi) around the State Emblem; it hangs from a purple ribbon.

First recipient: Major Somnath Sharma (Kumaon Regiment), posthumously, for the battle at Badgam, Kashmir, on 3 November 1947.

Only Air Force recipient: Flying Officer Nirmal Jit Singh Sekhon (1971 war).

Kargil War 1999: Captain Vikram Batra and Lt. Manoj Kumar Pandey (both posthumous), Grenadier Yogendra Singh Yadav and Rifleman Sanjay Kumar.

So far 21 Param Vir Chakras have been awarded, 14 of them posthumously; none has been given after 1999.

🧠 Active Recall: Which is higher — Kirti Chakra or Shaurya Chakra? Which series is for war? (Kirti Chakra; Param–Maha–Vir is for war.)

PART C — FIELD-WISE NATIONAL AWARDS

6. Sports Awards (Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports)

Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna — India's highest sports honour. Started in 1991–92 as the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna; renamed after hockey wizard Major Dhyan Chand on 6 August 2021. First recipient: Viswanathan Anand (chess).
Khel Ratna 2024 (presented on 17 January 2025): Manu Bhaker (shooting), D. Gukesh (chess), Harmanpreet Singh (hockey) and Praveen Kumar (para high jump).

Arjuna Award (1961) — for players, for consistent outstanding performance.
Dronacharya Award (1985) — for coaches who produce medal winners.
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (MAKA) Trophy (1956–57) — for the best university in inter-university sport.

Mnemonic: In the Mahabharata, Arjuna was the student and Dronacharya the teacher. So Arjuna Award → player; Dronacharya Award → coach.

7. Cinema — Dadasaheb Phalke Award

India's highest award in cinema, given by the Government of India (Ministry of Information & Broadcasting) at the National Film Awards. Instituted in 1969, the birth centenary year of Dhundiraj Govind (Dadasaheb) Phalke, the "Father of Indian Cinema", who made "Raja Harishchandra" (1913).
First recipient: Devika Rani (1969), the "First Lady of Indian Cinema".
It carries a Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus), a shawl and ₹10 lakh.

Recent recipients (award year): 2018 Amitabh Bachchan, 2019 Rajinikanth, 2020 Asha Parekh, 2021 Waheeda Rehman, 2022 Mithun Chakraborty, 2023 Mohanlal (presented on 23 September 2025).

8. Literature Awards

Jnanpith Award — India's highest literary award, given by the Bharatiya Jnanpith (a private trust), not by the government. Established in 1961; first given in 1965 to G. Sankara Kurup (Malayalam) for "Odakkuzhal" (The Bamboo Flute).
First Hindi writer: Sumitranandan Pant (1968, "Chidambara").
First woman: Ashapoorna Devi (1976, Bengali).
The award carries a bronze statue of Vagdevi (Saraswati), a citation and cash.
58th Jnanpith (for 2023): Gulzar (Urdu) and Jagadguru Rambhadracharya (Sanskrit).
59th Jnanpith (for 2024): Vinod Kumar Shukla (Hindi) — the first writer from Chhattisgarh to receive it.

Sahitya Akademi Award — given by the Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Letters, set up on 12 March 1954); first given in 1955; for books in 24 languages (the 22 languages of the Eighth Schedule plus English and Rajasthani).

Saraswati Samman — by the K. K. Birla Foundation, started in 1991; first recipient Harivansh Rai Bachchan for his four-part autobiography. The same foundation gives the Vyas Samman for Hindi literature.

Mnemonic: "Jnan-pith = Jnan (knowledge) = Saraswati" — the Jnanpith trophy is a statue of Vagdevi (Saraswati). And the Saraswati Samman is a different award from a different body (K. K. Birla Foundation)!

🧠 Active Recall: Who gives the Jnanpith Award, and who was its first winner? (Bharatiya Jnanpith; G. Sankara Kurup, 1965.)

9. Peace and Science

Gandhi Peace Prize — instituted by the Government of India in 1995, the 125th birth anniversary year of Mahatma Gandhi. First recipient: Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. The prize carries ₹1 crore. The prize for 2021 went to Gita Press, Gorakhpur (announced in June 2023).

Science: The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (by CSIR, from 1958) was India's best-known science award for young scientists. From 2024 the government's science awards were merged into the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar, with four categories: Vigyan Ratna, Vigyan Shri, Vigyan Yuva–Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar and Vigyan Team. The first Vigyan Ratna (2024) went to biochemist Prof. G. Padmanabhan.

PART D — INTERNATIONAL AWARDS

10. The Nobel Prize

Started by the will (1895) of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist who invented dynamite. First given in 1901.
Original five fields: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace.
Economics (the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel) was set up in 1968 and first given in 1969.
Prizes are presented on 10 December, the death anniversary of Alfred Nobel. The Peace Prize is given in Oslo (Norway); all the others in Stockholm (Sweden).

Indians and people of Indian origin who won it:
1913 — Rabindranath Tagore, Literature ("Gitanjali") — first Indian and first Asian Nobel laureate
1930 — C. V. Raman, Physics (Raman Effect)
1968 — Har Gobind Khorana, Physiology or Medicine
1979 — Mother Teresa, Peace
1983 — S. Chandrasekhar, Physics
1998 — Amartya Sen, Economics
2009 — Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Chemistry
2014 — Kailash Satyarthi, Peace (shared with Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan)
2019 — Abhijit Banerjee, Economics (shared with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer)

Born in India: Ronald Ross (Medicine 1902, for work on malaria) and Rudyard Kipling (Literature 1907).

Nobel Prizes 2025 (announced October 2025): Peace — María Corina Machado (Venezuela); Literature — László Krasznahorkai (Hungary); Physics — John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis; Chemistry — Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi (metal–organic frameworks); Physiology or Medicine — Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi (peripheral immune tolerance); Economics — Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt.

Hook: "Peace in Oslo, the rest in Stockholm." And "13 for Tagore, 30 for Raman".

🧠 Active Recall: Who was the first Indian to win a Nobel Prize, in which field and year? (Rabindranath Tagore, Literature, 1913.)

11. Other International Awards

Ramon Magsaysay Award — the Philippines; established in 1957; often called "Asia's Nobel Prize". First Indian recipient: Vinoba Bhave (1958, for the Bhoodan movement). Others: Mother Teresa (1962), Kiran Bedi (1994), Arvind Kejriwal (2006), Sonam Wangchuk (2018), Ravish Kumar (2019).

Booker Prize — United Kingdom, since 1969, for the best novel written in English. Indian-born winners: Salman Rushdie (1981, "Midnight's Children"), Arundhati Roy (1997, "The God of Small Things"), Kiran Desai (2006, "The Inheritance of Loss"), Aravind Adiga (2008, "The White Tiger").

International Booker Prize — for fiction translated into English. 2022: Geetanjali Shree's "Tomb of Sand" (Hindi "Ret Samadhi", translated by Daisy Rockwell) — the first Hindi book to win. 2025: Banu Mushtaq's "Heart Lamp" (Kannada, translated by Deepa Bhasthi) — the first short-story collection to win.

Oscar (Academy Awards) — Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, USA. First Indian winner: Bhanu Athaiya (1983, costume design, film "Gandhi"). Satyajit Ray got an Honorary Oscar in 1992. In 2009 A. R. Rahman won two Oscars, and Resul Pookutty and Gulzar also won, for "Slumdog Millionaire". In 2023: "Naatu Naatu" from RRR (music M. M. Keeravani, lyrics Chandrabose) won Best Original Song, and "The Elephant Whisperers" (director Kartiki Gonsalves, producer Guneet Monga) won Best Documentary Short.

World Food Prize — founded by Norman Borlaug (father of the Green Revolution) in 1986; the first winner (1987) was India's M. S. Swaminathan.

Kalinga Prize — given by UNESCO for popularising science; set up with a grant from Biju Patnaik of Odisha; first given in 1952.

Pulitzer Prize — USA (Columbia University), for journalism, literature and music. Jhumpa Lahiri won it for fiction in 2000 ("Interpreter of Maladies").

Grammy — music (Recording Academy, USA). Fields Medal — mathematics, given every four years to mathematicians under 40 (Manjul Bhargava, of Indian origin, won it in 2014). Abel Prize — mathematics, Norway.

🧠 Active Recall: Which award is called "Asia's Nobel", and who was its first Indian winner? (Ramon Magsaysay Award; Vinoba Bhave, 1958.)

Summary Table

⏰ Review this chapter after 2 days.

⚠️ Caution: Examiner's Trap

Trap 1 — "Similar Name": "Jnanpith Award is given by the Ministry of Culture" or "Saraswati Samman is given by the Bharatiya Jnanpith". Jnanpith → Bharatiya Jnanpith trust; Saraswati Samman → K. K. Birla Foundation. The Saraswati-statue link makes students mix them.

Trap 2 — "Chronological Confusion": "Khel Ratna was started in 2021." 2021 is only the year of renaming; the award started in 1991–92. Likewise, the Padma awards began in 1954 — 1955 is only the year of their present names; and the Jnanpith was established in 1961 but first given in 1965.

Trap 3 — "Almost True Statement": "Kirti Chakra is a war-time gallantry award." Kirti and Shaurya are peace-time; Maha Vir and Vir are war-time. One wrong word in an otherwise correct line.

Trap 4 — "Negative Phrasing": "Which of the following did NOT receive the Bharat Ratna in 2024?" Read NOT twice and recall the five: Karpoori Thakur, Advani, Charan Singh, Narasimha Rao, M. S. Swaminathan.

🔁 Linguistic Bridge: In Hindi we say this, in English we say that

भारत रत्न — Bharat Ratna (Jewel of India)
मरणोपरांत — Posthumously
वीरता पुरस्कार — Gallantry award
प्रशस्ति-पत्र / सनद — Citation / Sanad (certificate)
पदक — Medal
स्वर्ण कमल — Golden Lotus (Swarna Kamal)
प्रशिक्षक — Coach
जीवनपर्यंत उपलब्धि — Lifetime achievement
संस्थापित / प्रारंभ — Instituted
प्राप्तकर्ता — Recipient / Awardee
वाग्देवी — Vagdevi (Goddess of speech, Saraswati)

🔗 Static-Dynamic Link

The static rules never change, but every year adds new names. In 2024 the Bharat Ratna was given to five people — more than the usual maximum of three. The Khel Ratna, renamed in 2021, was presented for 2024 in January 2025. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award for 2023 went to Mohanlal in September 2025. The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize went to María Corina Machado. When you read news of a new award, first place it in its static box: what the award is, who gives it, and in which field.

📅 Revision Planner: Three-Level Blurting

🔢 High-Yield Facts & Figures (Quick Glance)

Awards are not just names on a list — they are a map of what India values: courage, knowledge, art, service and sport. Learn each award as a small box — what, who gives it, since when, first winner — and you will answer these questions in 15 seconds.