Bharat Ratna is India's highest civilian award.

The Bharat Ratna is India's supreme decoration and honor, awarded for the highest degrees of national service. This service 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, but they do have a place in the order of precedence. The original specifications for the award called for a circular gold medal, 35 mm in diameter, with the sun and the Hindi legend "Bharat Ratna" above and a floral wreath below. The reverse was to carry the state emblem and motto. It was to be worn around the neck from a white ribbon. There is no indication that any specimens of this design were ever produced and one year later the design was altered. The original statutes of January 1954 did not make allowance for posthumous awards (and this perhaps explains why the decoration was never awarded to Mahatma Gandhi), though this provision was added in the January 1955 statute. Subsequently, there have been nine posthumous awards. 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 naturalized Indian citizen Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, better known as Mother Teresa (1980); and two to non-Indians Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1987) and Nelson Mandela (1990). There has been one instance of the award being withdrawn when in 1992, the award was posthumously given to Subhash Chandra Bose but withdrawn later.

Bharat Ratna medallion: An image of the Sun along with the words "Bharat Ratna", inscribed in Devanagari script, on a peepul leaf
Complete list of the Awardees Name Awarded Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) 1954 Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (1878-1972) 1954 Dr C.V. Raman (1888-1970) 1954 Dr Bhagwan Das (1869-1958) 1955 Dr Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya (1861-1962) 1955 Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 -1964) 1955 Govind Ballabh Pant (1887-1961) 1957

Dr Dhondo Keshave Karve (1858-1962) 1958 Dr B. C. Roy (1882-1962) 1961 Purushottam Das Tandon (1882-1962) 1961 Dr Rajendra Prasad (1884-1963) 1962 Dr Zakir Hussain(1897-1969) 1963 Dr Pandurang Vaman Kane (1880-1972) 1963 Lal Bahadur Shastri (Posthumous) (1904-1966) 1966 Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) 1971 V.V. Giri (1894-1980) 1975 K. Kamraj (Posthumous) (1903-1975) 1976 Mary Taresa Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa) (1910-1997) 1980 Acharya Vinoba Bhave (Posthumous) (1895-1982) 1983 Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988) 1987 M.G. Ramachandran (Posthumous) (1917-1987) 1988 Dr Bhim Rao Ramji Ambedkar (Posthumous) (1891-1956) 1990 Dr Nelson Mandela (b 1918) 1990 Rajiv Gandhi (Posthumous) (1944-1991) 1991 Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (Posthumous) (1875-1950) 1991 Morarji Desai (1896-1995) 1991 Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (Posthumous) (1888-1958) 1992 J.R.D. Tata (1904-1993) 1992 Satyajit Ray (1922-1992) 1992 Subhash Chandra Bose (1897-1945) (later withdrawn) 1992 A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (b 1931) 1997 Gulzarilal Nanda (1898-1998) 1997 Aruna Asaf Ali (Posthumous) (1906-1995) 1997 M.S. Subbulakshmi (1916-2004) 1998 C Subramaniam (1910-2000) 1998 Jayaprakash Narayan (1902-1979) 1998 Ravi Shankar (b 1920) 1999 Amartya Sen (b 1933) 1999 Gopinath Bordoloi (b 1927) 1999 Lata Mangeshkar (b 1929) 2001 Bismillah Khan (b 1916) 2001