Bharat Ratna is the highest civilian award of the Republic of India. Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is conferred "in recognition of exceptional service/performance of the highest order", without distinction of race, occupation, position, or sex
The Bharat Ratna ceremony is usually held at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi but a special ceremony was held on 18 April 1958 at Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai to honour Karve on his 100th birthday.
1954 - C. Rajagopalachari
1954 - C. V. Raman
1954 - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
1955 - Bhagwan Das
1955 – Visvesvaraya
1955 - Jawaharlal Nehru
1957 - Govind Ballabh Pant
1958 - Dhondo Keshav Karve
1961 - Bidhan Chandra Roy
1961 - Purushottam Das Tandon
1962 - Rajendra Prasad
1963 - Zakir Hussain
1963 - Pandurang Vaman Kane
1966 - Lal Bahadur Shastri
1971 - Indira Gandhi
1975 - V. V. Giri
1976 - K. Kamaraj
1980 - Mother Teresa
1983 - Vinoba Bhave
1987 - Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
1988 - M. G. Ramachandran
1990 - B. R. Ambedkar
1990 - Nelson Mandela
1990 - Rajiv Gandhi
1991 - Vallabhbhai Patel
1991 - Morarji Desai
1992 - Abul Kalam Azad
1992 - J. R. D. Tata
1992 - Satyajit Ray
1997 - Gulzarilal Nanda
1997 - Aruna Asaf Ali
1997 - A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
1998 - M. S. Subbulakshmi
1998 - Chidambaram Subramaniam
1999 - Jayaprakash Narayan
1999 - Ravi Shankar
1999 - Amartya Sen
1999 - Gopinath Bordoloi
2001 - Lata Mangeshkar
2001 - Bismillah Khan
2009 - Bhimsen Joshi
2014 - C. N. R. Rao
2014 - Sachin Tendulkar
2015 - Madan Mohan Malaviya
2015 - Atal Bihari Vajpayee