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Lata Mangeshkar (born as Hema Mangeshkar on 28 September 1929)) is an Indian playback singer and music director. She is one of the best-known and most respected playback singers in India. She has recorded songs in over a thousand Hindi films and has sung songs in over thirty-six regional Indian languages and foreign languages, though primarily in Marathi, Hindi, Bengali and Assamese.

The Dadasaheb Phalke Award was bestowed on her in 1989 by the Government of India. In 2001, in recognition of her contributions to the nation, she was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour and is only the second vocalist, after M. S. Subbulakshmi, to receive this honour. France conferred on her its highest civilian award, the Officer of the Legion of Honour, in 2007.

Lata is the eldest child of the family. Meena, Asha, Usha, and Hridaynath, in birth order, are her siblings; all are accomplished singers and musicians.

Lata received her first music lesson from her father. At the age of five, she started to work as an actress in her father's musical plays (Sangeet Natak in Marathi). On her first day of school, she left school because they would not allow her to bring her sister Asha with her, as she would often bring her younger sister with her.

 

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Madurai Shanmukhavadivu Subbulakshmi is a name that is synonymous with the world of Carnatic music. This flawless singer, whose voice almost had a divine power, is the first singer to be presented with India’s highest civil honour, the Bharat Ratna. When she was honoured with the Ramon Magsaysay award, which is considered as Asia's Nobel Prize, she became the first Indian musician to do so. Subbulakshmi, fondly addressed as M.S by her fans, was a true pioneer of anything that has to do with women empowerment. She led by example and showed the way to contemporary women of her era. 

Subbulakshmi began her training under her mother Shanmu kavadiver Ammal. She then went on to learn the nuances of Carnatic music under Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer. While learning Carnatic music, she also learnt and mastered Hindustani music under the famous vocalist Pandit Narayanrao Vyas. M.S was a quick learner and thus finished her education at a young age.

The great talent that M.S possessed brought a galaxy of fans. Her fan list included the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, Lata Mangeshkar, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Kishori Amonkar. Mahatma Gandhi once commented that he would rather hear Subbulakshmi utter the lyrics of the songs rather than hear someone else sing it. While Jawaharlal Nehru called her the ‘Queen of Music’, Bade Ghulam Ali defined her as the ‘Goddess of perfect note’. In the year 1998, M. S. Subbulakshmi became the first musician to be honored with India's highest civilian award.

 

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Bhupen Hazarika, who was posthumously awarded Bharat Ratna in 2019, was a singer, balladeer, poet, lyricist and film maker who was widely admired not only in native Assam but across the country.

He started out as a child actor and wrote and sang his first song at the age of 10. His famous song, `O Ganga, tum bhati ho kyun' is sung across homes in India. Hazarika created his own ode to the Brahmaputra. His song on Bangladesh's liberation was very popular and he was well-known in Nepal.

Hazarika was popularly known as Bhupenda in Assam and awaded with titles like Sudhakantha.

He had joined the BJP ahead of 2004 Lok Sabha elections impressed by the performance of Atal Bihari Vajpayee government though he desisted bondage of a political party. He had also been an independent member of the Assam Assembly.

 

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Amartya Sen is an Indian economist and philosopher. He has worked in India, the United Kingdom and the United States.

He was born on November 3rd, 1933, to a Bengali family of Santiniketan in West Bengal. He is the second Indian after Rabindranath Tagore to receive a Nobel Prize.

Sen's first book 'Collective Choice and Social Welfare' was launched around 1970. This book was considered to be one of the most influential monographs that speak about the issue of primary welfare, justice, equality and individual rights.

His publication 'Development as freedom' got the recognition of the Nobel Prize committee. In 1992 he came up with his book 'Inequality Re-examined' which covered all the important themes of his work. In 1998 he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contribution to 'Welfare Economics'. He also won the Bharat Ratna award IN 1999, the highest civilian award in India and the National Humanities Medal ward in 2011.

 

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Kamaraj was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, posthumously in 1976. The domestic terminal of the Chennai airport is named "Kamaraj Terminal". Marina beach road in Chennai was named as "Kamarajar Salai". North Parade Road in Bengaluru and Parliament road in New Delhi were also renamed after Kamaraj. Madurai Kamaraj University is named in his honour. In 2003, the Government of India released a commemorative coin on his birthday.

After Nehru's death in 1964, Kamaraj successfully navigated the party through turbulent times. As the president of INC, he refused to become the next Prime Minister himself and was instrumental in bringing to power two Prime Ministers, Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1964 and Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi in 1966. For this role, he was widely acclaimed as the "kingmaker" during the 1960s.

When the Congress split in 1969, Kamaraj became the leader of the Indian National Congress (Organisation) (INC(O)) in Tamil Nadu. The party fared poorly in the 1971 elections amid allegations of fraud by the opposition parties. He remained the leader of INC(O) until his death in 1975.

 

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Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was an Indian physicist who made groundbreaking works in the field of light scattering. With his student K. S. Krishnan, he discovered that when light traverses a transparent material, some of the deflected light change wavelength and amplitude. This phenomenon was a new type of scattering of light and was subsequently known as the Raman effect (Raman scattering). His works earned him the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics and was the first non-white, Indian or Asian person to receive a Nobel Prize in any branch of science.

He founded the Indian Journal of Physics in 1926. He and Krishnan discovered on 28 February 1928 a novel phenomenon of light scattering, which they called "modified scattering," but more famously known as the Raman effect. The day is celebrated by the Government of India as the National Science Day every year in commemoration of the discovery. Raman moved to the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 1933 to become its first Indian Director. There he founded the Indian Academy of Sciences the same year. He established the Raman Research Institute in 1948 where he worked to his last days.

In 1954, the Government of India honoured him with the first Bharat Ratna (along with politician C. Rajagopalachari and philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan), its highest civilian award. He later smashed the medallion in protest against Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's policies on scientific research.

 

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MS Subbulakshmi, a carnatic singer, was the first musician ever to receive this honour. She won the award in 1998. Her voice and singing skills were admired by many great people such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Sarojini Naidu.

Subbulakshmi gave her first performance at the prestigious Madras Music Academy in 1929, when she was 13 years old. The performance consisted of singing bhajans (Hindu hymns). The academy was known for its discriminating selection process, and they broke tradition by inviting a young girl as a key performer. Her performance was described as spellbinding and earned her many admirers and the moniker of musical genius from critics. Soon after her debut performances, Subbulakshmi became one of the leading Carnatic vocalists.

By the age of seventeen, Subbulakshmi was giving concerts on her own, including major performances at the Madras Music Academy.

She travelled to London, New York, Canada, the Far East, and other places as India's cultural ambassador. 

 

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Aruna Asaf Ali was an Indian educator, political activist, and publisher. An active participant in the Indian independence movement, she is widely remembered for hoisting the Indian National flag at the Gowalia Tank maidan, Bombay during a Quit India Movement in 1942. Post-independence, she remained active in politics, becoming Delhi's first Mayor.

Aruna Asaf Ali became a member of Indian National Congress after marrying Asaf Ali and participated in public processions during the Salt Satyagraha. She was arrested on the charge that she was a vagrant and hence not released in 1931 under the Gandhi-Irwin Pact which stipulated release of all political prisoners. Other women co-prisoners refused to leave the premises unless she was also released and gave in only after Mohandas K. Gandhi intervened. A public agitation secured her release.

In 1932, she was held prisoner at the Tihar Jail where she protested the indifferent treatment of political prisoners by launching a hunger strike. Her efforts resulted in an improvement of conditions in the Tihar Jail but she was moved to Ambala and was subjected to solitary confinement. She was politically not very active after her release, but at the ending of 1942, she took part in the underground movement. She was active in it.

On 8 August 1942, the All India Congress Committee passed the Quit India resolution at the Bombay session. The government responded by arresting the major leaders and all members of the Congress Working Committee and thus tried to pre-empt the movement from success. Young Aruna Asaf Ali presided over the remainder of the session on 9 August and hoisted the Congress flag at the Gowalia Tank Maidan. This marked the commencement of the movement. The police fired upon the assembly at the session. Aruna was dubbed the Heroine of the 1942 movement for her bravery in the face of danger and was called Grand Old Lady of the Independence movement in her later years. Despite the absence of direct leadership, spontaneous protests and demonstrations were held all over the country, as an expression of the desire of India’s youth to achieve independence.

 

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Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is a former international cricketer from India and a former captain of the Indian national team. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He is the highest run scorer of all time in International cricket. Considered as the world's most prolific batsman of all time, he is the only player to have scored one hundred international centuries, the first batsman to score a double century in a One Day International (ODI), the holder of the record for the most runs in both Test and ODI cricket, and the only player to complete more than 30,000 runs in international cricket.

In 2013, he was the only Indian cricketer included in an all-time Test World XI named to mark the 150th anniversary of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. He is affectionately known as Little Master or Master Blaster.

He retired from Twenty20 cricket in October 2013 and subsequently retired from all forms of cricket on 16 November 2013 after playing his 200th Test match, against the West Indies in Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium. Tendulkar played 664 international cricket matches in total, scoring 34,357 runs.

 

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Satyajit Ray was an Indian film director, writer, and illustrator. He was one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century. Ray was born in Calcutta into a Bengali family which was prominent in the field of arts and literature. Starting his career as a commercial artist, he was drawn into independent filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing Vittorio De Sica's Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves (1948) during a visit to London.

Ray's first film, Pather Panchali (1955), won eleven international prizes, including the inaugural Best Human Document award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. This film, along with Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (1959), form The Apu Trilogy. Ray did the scripting, casting, scoring, and editing, and designed his own credit titles and publicity material. Ray received many major awards in his career, including 32 Indian National Film Awards, a Golden Lion, a Golden Bear, 2 Silver Bears, a number of additional awards at international film festivals and award ceremonies, and an Academy Honorary Award in 1992. The Government of India honored him with the Bharat Ratna, its highest civilian award, in 1992. Ray had received many noticeable awards and gained a prestigious position over his life time.

 

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Mother Mary Teresa honoured in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary. She was born in Skopje (now the capital of North Macedonia), then part of the Kosovo Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. After living in Skopje for eighteen years, she moved to Ireland and then to India, where she lived for most of her life.

Teresa received a number of honors, including the 1962 Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize and 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. She was canonised on 4 September 2016, and the anniversary of her death (5 September) is her feast day. A controversial figure during her life and after her death, Teresa was admired by many for her charitable work. She was praised and criticized on various counts, such as for her views on abortion and contraception, and was criticized for poor conditions in her houses for the dying. Her authorized biography was written by Navin Chawla and published in 1992, and she has been the subject of films and other books. On 6 September 2017, Teresa and St. Francis Xavier were named co-patrons of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Calcutta.

 

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Assamese singer Bhupen Hazarika was most popular in Bengal and Bangladesh and was responsible for introducing the culture and folk music of Assam and northeast India to Hindi cinema. Popularly known as Sudhakantha, meaning the nightingale, he had received the National Film Award, Padmashri, Dada Saheb Phalke Award, Padma Vibhushan, and many other prestigious honours. He was known for his baritone voice and for making music on themes ranging from romance to social and political commentary. Some of his renowned works in Assamese music which audiences still enjoy includes "Bistirno Parore", "Moi Eti Jajabo", "Ganga Mor Maa", and "Bimurto Mur Nixati Jen".

 He was posthumously awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian award, in 2012. Hazarika also held the position of the Chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi from December 1998 to December 2003. He was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in 2019.

 

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Ustad Bismillah Khan almost single-handedly popularised the shahnai as a classical instrument. He had won a number of awards including Bharat Ratna (2001), Padma Vibhushan (1980), Padma Bhushan (1968), Padma Shri (1961), Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1956) among several others.

Ustad Bismillah Khan was popular not only in India but across the globe. It can almost be said safely that he and his shehnai were almost synonyms to each other. He had also performed on the eve of India’s first Republic day on January 26 1950. The great maestro passed away on August 21, 2006, in Varanasi following cardiac arrest.

His Independence Day recitals became a part of the cultural celebrations; and were telecast live by Doordarshan, the official national TV network; after the speech of the Prime Minister at Red Fort.

 

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Lal Bahadur Shastri was an Indian politician who served as the second Prime Minister of India. He promoted the White Revolution – a national campaign to increase the production and supply of milk – by supporting the Amul milk co-operative of Anand, Gujarat and creating the National Dairy Development Board. Underlining the need to boost India's food production, Shastri also promoted the Green Revolution in India in 1965. This led to an increase in food grain production, especially in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

He led the country during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965. His slogan "Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan" ("Hail to the soldier; Hail to the farmer") became very popular during the war. The war formally ended with the Tashkent Agreement on 10 January 1966; he died the following day, still in Tashkent, with the cause of his death in dispute; it was reported to be a cardiac arrest but his family was not satisfied with the proffered reason. He was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna.

 

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Dr. Ambedkar is known as the chief architect of the Indian Constitution and has been bestowed with the country’s highest civilian honor, Bharat Ratna in 1990 posthumously.

 

Babasaheb Bhim Rao Ambedkar was born on 14th April, 1891 at Mhow, now known as Dr. Ambedkar Nagar in Madhya Pradesh. Dr. Ambedkar was a known jurist, economist, politician and social reformer who worked hard throughout his life to end social discrimination against weaker sections of the society.

 Dr. Ambedkar’s legacy as a socio-political reformer is respected across the world. His thoughts has played important role in transforming the views towards India’s socio-economic problems.

 

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