The highest Indian civilian award, Bharat Ratna, was instituted in 1954 . Since then , the award has been bestowed upon 53 individuals , including 18 who were awarded posthumously
| 1954 | Chakravarti Rajagopalachari | Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan | Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman |
| 1955 | Bhagwan Das | MokshagundamV isvesvaraya | Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru |
| 1957 | Govind Ballabh Pant |
| 1958 | Dhondo Keshav Karve |
| 1961 | Purushottam Das Tandon | Bidhan Chandra Roy |
| 1962 | Rajendra Prasad |
| 1963 | Dr. Zakir Husain | Pandurang Vaman Kane |
| 1966 | Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri [ Posthumousam ] |
| 1971 | Indira Gandhi |
| 1975 | Varahagiri Venkata Giri |
| 1976 | K Kamraj [ Posthumousam ] |
| 1980 | Mother Teresa |
| 1983 | Acharya Vinoba Bhave [ Posthumousam ] |
| 1987 | Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan |
| 1988 | M G Ramachandran [ Posthumousam ] |
| 1990 | Dr. Bhim Rao Ramji Ambedkar [ Posthumousam ] | Nelson Mandela |
| 1991 | Rajiv Gandhi [ Posthumousam ] | Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel [ Posthumousam ] | Morarji Desai |
| 1992 | Maulana Abul Kalam Azad [ Posthumousam ] | Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhai Tata | Satyajit Ray |
| 1997 | Gulzarilal Nanda | Aruna Asaf Ali [ Posthumousam ] | Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam |
| 1998 | MS Subbulakshmi | Chidambaram Subramaniam |
| 1999 | Jayaprakash Narayan [ Posthumousam ] | Amartya Sen | Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi [ Posthumousam ] | Pandit Ravi Shankar |
| 2001 | Lata Mangeshkar | Ustad Bismillah Khan |
| 2009 | Pandit Bhimsen Joshi |
| 2014 | CNR Rao | Sachin Tendulkar |
| 2015 | Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee | Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya [ Posthumousam ] |
| 2019 | Bhupendra Kumar Hazarika [ Posthumousam ] || Pranab Mukherjee || Nanaji Deshmukh |
| 2024 | Karpoori Thakur [ Posthumousam ] | Lal Krishna Advani | Chaudhary Charan Singh [ Posthumousam ] | P V Narasimha Rao [ Posthumousam ] | MS Swaminathan [ Posthumousam ] |