list of first recipients of Important Awards in India

 

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.

• 1st Indian to be awarded the Bharat Ratna: C Rajagopalachari who was the last Governor-General of India.

• 1st person to be awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously: Lal Bahadur Shastri who was the Second Prime Minister of the Republic of India.

• 1st woman to be awarded the Bharat Ratna: Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi who was  the fourth Prime Minister of India.

•  1st Bharat Ratna Awardee to become the President of India: Dr. S. Radhakrishnan who was the first Vice President of India and the second President of India from 1962 to 1967.

• 1st Scientist to be awarded the Bharat Ratna: CV Raman who won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

GALLANTRY AWARDS

 

• 1st winner of Param Vir Chakra- Major Somnath Sharma: Major Som Nath Sharma, (1923–1947) was the first recipient of the Param Vir Chakra. the highest Indian gallantry award. He was awarded the medal posthumously for his bravery in the Kashmir operations in November 1947.

• 1st and only Air Force person to receive the Param Vir Chakra- Flying Officer Nirmaljit Shekhon was posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra in recognition of his lone defence of Srinagar Air Base against a PAF air raid during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.

• 1st and only woman to receive theAshoka Chakra- Neerja Bhanot (1987) who was murdered while saving passengers from terrorists on board the hijacked Pan Am, Flight 73 on 5 September 1986. Posthumously, she became the youngest recipient of India's highest peacetime military award for bravery, the Ashok Chakra.

IN THE FIELD OF SCIENCE

• 1st person to receive Nobel prize for Physics: William K Roentgen who, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range known as X-rays or Röentgen rays in 1895.

• 1st woman to receive the Nobel prize: Madame Curie (1903) was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, the only person to win twice in multiple sciences, and was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.

LITERARY AWARDS

 

• 1st Indian woman (and also first Indian citizen) to receive the Booker prize: Arundhati Roy who is best known for her novel The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997.

• 1st Indian to receive the Pulitzer prize (Reporting category): Gobind Behari Lal became the first Indian to win the Pulitzer Prize ( 1937)  and he got Padma Bhushan in 1969.

SPORTS AWARDS

 

•  1st recipient of Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award : Viswanathan Anand became India's first grand master in 1988.He was also the first recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 1991–92, India's highest sporting honour. In 2007, he was awarded India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan.

• 1st woman recipient of Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award: Karnam Malleshwari is the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal. She is a recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award, India's highest sporting honour for the year 1995-1996. She is also a recipient of the civilian honour Padma Shri in 1999.

• 1st cricket player to be awarded theArjuna Award: Salim Durrani who was the first cricketer to win an Arjuna Award.