Bharat Ratna Awardess

The legendary shehanai maestro, a man of tenderness, a man who believes in remaining private and who believes that musicians are supposed to be heard and not seen.The legend was born on 21 March 1916. His ancestors were court musicians in the princely state of Dumraon in Bihar and he was trained under his uncle, […]

Any account of Indian playback music must start and end with Lata Mangeshkar.Born September 28, 1929 in Indore, Lata Mangeshkar has been active in all walks of Indian popular and light classical music having sung film songs, ghazals, bhajans andpop. She is the supreme voice of popular Indian music, an Indian Institution. The Guinness Book

Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi was the first man from the entire north-eastern region of the country to be awarded the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award. The recognition, however, came half a century after his demise in August 1950.Bordoloi was born on June 6,1890. His father was a medical practitioner. He took advantage of his father’s

Amartya Kumar Sen (born November 3, 1933) is an Indian economist best known for his work on famine, human develop-ment theory, welfare economics, and the underlying mechanisms of poverty. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in welfare economics in 1998 and the Bharat Ratna in 1999.Sen first studied in India at

Ravi Shankar (born April 7, 1920) is best known for being a virtuoso at the sitar. A disciple of Ustad Allauddin Khan (founder of the Maihar Gharana of Hindustani classical music), Pandit Ravi Shankar is one of the best-known Indian musician.He was generally unknown outside of India until the musician George Harrison, a member of

Jaiprakash Narayan (October 11, 1902-October 8, 1979), widely known as JP, was an freedom fighter and political leader.He was born in village Diara in Bihar, and completed his higher studies in the UnitedStates. After returning to India, he joined the Indian National Congress in 1929 with blessings from Gandhiji. During the Indian independence movement, he

Chidambaram Subramaniam (commonly known as CS) known as the Father of the Green Revolution in India, held ministerial positions at the State and the Centre. He was born on January 30, 1910 in village Pollachi in Coimbatore district. He finished hishigher studies from Madras University. In 1932 he qualified for Bar at law.He was the

The one-line commu-nique of the then President K.R. Narayanan that the President is pleased to award the ‘Bharat Ratna’ to M.S. Subbulakshmi, was greeted by doyens of Indian music.She was in fact the first musician to be awarded this distinction. When the President spoke to her over the phone before making the announcement, eye-witnesses said

Born on 15th October, 1931 at Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu, Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, specialized in Aeronautical Engineering from Madras Institute of Technology.Dr. Kalam made significant contribution as Project Director to develop India’s first indigenous Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III) which successfully injected the Rohini satellite in the near earth orbit in July 1980

Subhash Chandra Bose was the most visionary and fierce activist in the pre-independence era. Known as Netaji, he followed the path which no one even could have thought of.Subhash was born on January 23rd 1897 in Cuttack (in present day Orissa) as the ninth child among fourteen, of Janakinath Bose, an advocate, and Prabhavati Devi,

Aruna Asaf Ali was born into an orthodox Hindu Bengali family and was educated at the Sacred Heart Convent in Lahore and then sent to a Protestant school in Nainital. After graduating she got a job in the Gokhale Memorial School in Calcutta.In Allahabad she met her husband, M. Asaf Ali, a prominent Congressman, and

Gulzarilal Nanda was born on July 4, 1898, in Sialkot now in Pakistan. He was educated at Lahore, Agra and Allahabad. He worked as a research scholar on labour problems at Allahabad University and became Professor of Economics at the National College Bombay.He joined the Non-Cooperation Movement and in 1922, he became Secretary of the

Satyajit Ray (May 2 1921-April 23 1992) was a Bengali film director whose films are perhaps the greatest testament to Bengali and Indian cinema. He has a large collection of works that are accliaimed among the world film industry. He has been called one of the four greatest director-producers of cinema in the world.Satyajit Ray

Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata (July 29, 1904-November 29, 1993) was a pioneer aviator and leading businessman.J.R.D. Tata was born to an Indian father and a French mother in Paris.He was educated in France, Japan and England before being drafted into the French army for a mandatory one-year period.JRD then set his mind on securing an

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (11 Novermber 1888 – August 1958) was a freedom fighter in India’s struggle for Indepen-dence from Britain. He had an illustrious career being a journalist, a cabinet minister in Free India’s government.He was born in Mecca. Azad was a descendent of a lineage of learned Muslim scholars. His father was Maulana