Bharat Ratnas

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

From The Jacket Every country has its great men and women who serve the country and who are responsible to some extent of taking their country to greater heights.

Indian honours such people with the Bharat Ratnas, the highest civilian awards bestowed by the country for exceptional service towards advancement of art, literature and science, and in recognition of public service of the highest order.

The boo covers forty-one luminaries from various walks of life who are considered Bharat Ratnas or Gems of India and highlights the their illustrious deeds. What made them special and worthy of the country's highest honour and why are they considered Gems of the Nation? One will find the answers to these questions in the book.

Wg Cdr D P Sabharwal is a postgraduate in Aeronautical Engineering. He had a distinguished career spanning twenty-five years in the Indian Air Force. He took premature retirement to pursue a career of teaching and writing. He has published twelve books on aviation related subjects. This is his fourth book with Rupa & Co.

Preface India's highest awards, the Bharat Ratna, which roughly translates as the 'Gem of India' is conferred for the highest degrees of national service that 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 nor any other honorifics, but they do have a place in the order of precedence.

The order was established by Dr Rajendra Prasad, President of India, on 2 January 1954. The original statutes of January 1954 did not make allowance for posthumous awards, which perhaps explains why the decoration was never awarded to Mahatma Gandhi. This provision was added in the January 1955 statute. Subsequently, there have been eleven posthumous awards, including the award to Subhash Chandra Bose in 1992, which was later withdrawn due to a legal technicality following the controversy about whether he is dead or still alive, and is the only case of an award being withdrawn.

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 naturalised Indian citizen: Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, better known as Mother Teresa and two non-Indians, namely Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Nelson Mandela.

Beginning with 1954 when the awards given to three personalities, so far forty-one Bharat Ratnas have been awarded, the last ones being in 2001. The subsequent pages briefly highlight the achievements of these great personalities.

Contents

1.	S. Radhakrishnan	1
2.	C. Rajagopalchari	4
3.	Dr C.V. Raman	7
4.	Dr Bhagwan Das	10
5.	Sir M. Visvesvaraya	13
6.	Jawaharlal Nehru	17
7.	Govind Ballabh Pant	19
8.	Dr. Dhondo Keshav Karve	23
9.	Dr B.C. Roy	25
10.	Purushottam Das Tandon	29
11.	Dr Rajendra Prasad	31
12.	Dr. Zakir Hussain	34
13.	Dr Pandurang Vaman Kane	37
14.	Lal Bahadur Shastri	41
15.	Indira Gandhi	43
16.	V.V. Giri	46
17.	K. Kamaraj	49
18.	Mother Teresa	52
19.	Acharya Vinod Bhave	55
20.	Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan	58
21.	M.G. Ramachandran	61
22.	Dr B.R. Ambedkar	65
23.	Nelson Mandela	67
24.	Rajiv Gandhi	70
25.	Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel	73
26.	Morarji Desai	76
27.	Maulana Abul Kalam Azad	79
28.	JRD Tata	82
29.	Satyajit Ray	85
30.	Subhash Chandra Bose	89
31.	APJ Abdul Kalam	91
32.	Gulzarilal Nanda	95
33.	Aruna Asaf Ali	97
34.	M.S. Subbulakshmi	100
35.	C. Subramaniam	103
36.	Jayaprakash Narayan	106
37.	Pandit Ravi Shankar	109
38.	Dr Amartya Kumar Sen	112
39.	Gopinath Bordoloi	115
40.	Lata Mangeshkar	118
41.	Ustad Bismillah Khan	121

Sample Pages