Cultural Awards and Honours

Awards and honours are given to individuals and groups as a token of appreciation for extraordinary work. In the cultural sphere, any artist, writer or creative person of real excellence deserves recognition. The Government of India confers several honours every year on those who achieve outstanding merit in their chosen field.

India's cultural honours fall into two broad streams:

• Awards given by the Government of India: the civilian awards (Bharat Ratna and the Padma awards), the National Film Awards and the Dada Saheb Phalke Award.
• Awards given by other major institutions: the national Akademis, and trusts and foundations such as the Bharatiya Jnanpith and the K. K. Birla Foundation.

The sections below cover the most exam-relevant of these honours. For each, note the year instituted, the conferring body, and what the recipient receives, as these are the details examiners like to test.

The Bharat Ratna literally means the "Jewel of India" and is the highest civilian award of the Republic of India. It is awarded to exceptional individuals who have performed in the highest order.

• First given: 1954.
• Original scope: art, science, literature and public service. In December 2011, the criteria were widened to include "any field of human endeavour."
• Recommendation: the Prime Minister recommends names to the President. The President chooses not more than three persons in a particular year.
• What the awardee gets: no cash, a peepal-leaf-shaped medal and a certificate (sanad).
• Precedence: ranked seventh in the Indian Order of Precedence.
• Restriction: under Article 18(1) of the Constitution it cannot be used as a prefix or suffix to the recipient's name. The civilian awards are honours, not titles, which is why they survive the constitutional bar on titles.
• Suspension: the civilian awards (the Bharat Ratna and the Padma awards) have been suspended twice in their history, first from 1977 to 1980 and again from 1992 to 1995. Examiners often pair this fact with the three-per-year cap.

Some prominent awardees:

• 1954 (first awardees): C. Rajagopalachari (freedom fighter and last Governor-General), Dr. C. V. Raman (physicist) and Dr. S. Radhakrishnan (philosopher, first Vice-President and second President).
• 1955: Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister.
• 1966: Lal Bahadur Shastri, the first posthumous awardee.
• 1990: B. R. Ambedkar, chief architect of the Constitution.
• 1997: Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, scientist and eleventh President.
• 2014: Sachin Tendulkar (cricketer) and C. N. R. Rao (chemist).
• 2015: Madan Mohan Malaviya and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The Padma awards were introduced in 1954. They are given for exceptional service in fields such as sports, art, social work, civil service, literature and education, public affairs, science and technology, and trade and industry. The names are announced every year on Republic Day.

Key rules that examiners test:

• A recipient of a lower grade can be raised to a higher grade only after five or more years since the last conferment.
• The award is rarely given posthumously, though exceptions can be made.
• There must be an element of public service: "excellence plus", not mere excellence in a field.
• Government servants (including those in PSUs), except doctors and scientists, are not eligible.

The award has three grades, in descending order of rank:

• Padma Vibhushan: for exceptional and distinguished service, the second-highest civilian award. The medal bears a lotus and the words "Desh Seva" on the obverse.
• Padma Bhushan: for distinguished service of a high order, the third-highest civilian award, conferred at the Rashtrapati Bhavan around March or April.
• Padma Shri: for distinguished service, the fourth-highest civilian award. The recipient receives no cash, a certificate and a medallion bearing a lotus with "Padma" and "Shri" in Devanagari.

(The Bharat Ratna ranks above all three Padma grades.)

India runs three national Akademis (academies). They were set up to nurture letters, the performing arts and the visual arts. Each confers its own awards and fellowships.

Sahitya Akademi is the National Academy of Letters, instituted in 1954:

• Its Sahitya Akademi Award goes annually to writers of literary merit in any of the 24 major languages it recognises: the 22 in the Constitution plus English and Rajasthani.
• The award is a cash prize of ₹1 lakh and a plaque inscribed "Sahitya" in Devanagari. The plaque was designed by the filmmaker Satyajit Ray.
• Recipients include Ramdhari Singh Dinkar (Hindi, 1959), R. K. Narayan (English, 1960) and Amrita Pritam (Punjabi, 1956).
• Its Fellowship is the Akademi's highest honour, a greater honour than the award itself.
• It also gives the Bhasha Samman (for languages outside the 24, and for classical and medieval literature, ₹1.2 lakh) and Translation Awards (₹50,000).

Sangeet Natak Akademi is the academy for music, dance and drama:

• It was the first national academy set up for the arts, in 1952. It was inaugurated by the first President, Dr. Rajendra Prasad.
• It is the apex body for the performing arts and the intangible heritage of music, dance and drama.
• It administers the National School of Drama (set up 1959) and works with UNESCO on safeguarding cultural heritage.
• It is the body that recognises India's eight classical dance forms. (The Ministry of Culture recognises nine, additionally including Chhau.)
• Its highest honour is the Sangeet Natak Akademi Ratna, also called the Akademi Fellowship. It is given for lifetime achievement in the performing arts and ranks above the annual Akademi Award. The celebrated Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi dancer Yamini Krishnamurthy received the Ratna in 2005 for lifetime achievement in dance.

Lalit Kala Akademi is the National Academy of Art, set up in 1954:

• An autonomous body funded by the Ministry of Culture, dedicated to promoting fine arts.
• Headquartered in Delhi, with regional centres at Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Shimla, Shillong and Bhubaneswar.
• It runs major shows such as the National Exhibition of Art and the International Triennale India. It also gives scholarships, grants and fellowships to artists.

Alongside the Sahitya Akademi, several trusts and foundations confer India's most coveted literary prizes.

• Jnanpith Award: also called the Gyanpeeth Award ("Seat of Knowledge"). It was instituted in 1961 by the Bharatiya Jnanpith, a trust run by the family that founded The Times of India. It goes to Indian citizens writing in one of the 22 Schedule VIII languages or English (23 languages in all). The winner receives a plaque, ₹11 lakh and a bronze statue of Goddess Saraswati. It is not given posthumously.
• Saraswati Samman: instituted in 1991 by the K. K. Birla Foundation for outstanding prose or poetry in any of the 22 Schedule VIII languages. It carries ₹15 lakh, a citation and a plaque. It is among India's highest literary awards. Works from the previous ten years are considered.
• Vyas Samman: also given by the K. K. Birla Foundation, first awarded in 1991, for a literary work in Hindi published in the past ten years. It carries ₹2.5 lakh.

National Film Awards are the most prominent awards for cinematic excellence:

• Annual awards, started in 1954. Since 1973 they have been organised by the Directorate of Film Festivals. Winners are chosen by a national selection panel and the awards are presented by the President.
• They honour the best of both mainstream and regional cinema. Two of the headline categories are:
  • Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus): including Best Feature Film, Best Direction, Best Children's Film, and the Indira Gandhi Award for Best Debutant Director.
  • Rajat Kamal (Silver Lotus): the many best-feature-film categories across Schedule VIII and other languages.

Dada Saheb Phalke Award is India's highest award in cinema:

• Introduced in 1969 to commemorate Dada Saheb Phalke (1870–1944). He made India's first full-length feature film, Raja Harishchandra (1913).
• Given by the Directorate of Film Festivals (under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting) for lifetime contribution to Indian cinema.
• The recipient gets a Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus) medallion and a cash prize of ₹10 lakh.

The Gandhi Peace Prize honours work outside the arts: social, economic and political transformation through non-violence and other Gandhian methods.

• Instituted in 1995 by the Government of India to mark the 125th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
• Open to individuals and institutions of any nationality.
• Winners are chosen by a jury chaired by the Prime Minister. The other members are the Chief Justice of India, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and two eminent persons nominated to the panel. The President of India is not a member of the jury, a detail examiners use as a trap.

The Fukuoka Prize is an international honour:

• Established by the city of Fukuoka (Japan) to recognise outstanding work in preserving or creating Asian culture.
• It has three categories: Grand Prize, Academic Prize, and Arts & Culture Prize.
• Indian recipients include A. R. Rahman (2016), Ramachandra Guha (2015), Romila Thapar (1997) and Amjad Ali Khan (2004).