Awards Named After People — A Cross-Reference
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A huge share of "match the award to what it's named after" questions cut clean across every category covered in this book — civilian, gallantry, sports, arts — because Indian award-naming conventions consistently honour a real historical or mythological figure. Rather than learning each award's namesake in isolation inside its own section, this table gathers every named-after-a-person award in one place, precisely because an exam is just as likely to test the namesake as the award itself.
| Award | Named after | One-line identity of the namesake |
|---|---|---|
| Bharat Ratna | — (not named after a person; "Ratna" = jewel of India) | N/A |
| Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna | Major Dhyan Chand | Hockey wizard, three Olympic golds (1928, 1932, 1936) |
| Dronacharya Award | Dronacharya | Guru to the Pandavas and Kauravas, Mahabharata |
| Arjuna Award | Arjuna | Dronacharya's finest archer-student, Mahabharata |
| Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Award | Tenzing Norgay | Sherpa mountaineer, first confirmed Everest summiteer (with Hillary), 1953 |
| Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (MAKA) Trophy | Maulana Abul Kalam Azad | India's first Education Minister |
| Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar | Bismillah Khan | Shehnai maestro, Bharat Ratna (2001) |
| Dadasaheb Phalke Award | Dadasaheb Phalke | Made Raja Harishchandra (1913), India's first feature film |
| Nargis Dutt Award (National Film Awards category) | Nargis Dutt | Actress and social worker, later Rajya Sabha MP |
| Indira Gandhi Award for Best Debut Film | Indira Gandhi | Former Prime Minister |
| Ashoka Chakra | Emperor Ashoka | Mauryan emperor; the Ashoka Chakra also appears on the national flag |
| Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize | Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar | Founder-director of CSIR |
| G.D. Birla Award for Scientific Research | Ghanshyam Das Birla | Industrialist, philanthropist |
| Homi Bhabha Fellowship | Homi J. Bhabha | "Father of the Indian nuclear programme," founded TIFR |
| Ramon Magsaysay Award | Ramon Magsaysay | Former President of the Philippines |
| Gandhi Peace Prize | Mahatma Gandhi | Instituted on his 125th birth anniversary (1995) |
| Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development | Indira Gandhi | Former Prime Minister |
| Subhas Chandra Bose Aapda Prabandhan Puraskar | Subhas Chandra Bose | Freedom fighter, Indian National Army leader |
| Sardar Patel National Unity Award | Vallabhbhai Patel | "Iron Man of India," architect of princely-state integration |
| Rajiv Gandhi Sadbhavana Award | Rajiv Gandhi | Former Prime Minister (party award, not government-conferred) |
| Nobel Prize | Alfred Nobel | Swedish inventor of dynamite, whose will funded the prize |
How this cross-reference table earns its place in this book: notice how many namesakes appear twice across this book — Bismillah Khan is both a Bharat Ratna recipient (2001) and the namesake of a Sangeet Natak Akademi youth award; Indira Gandhi is both a Bharat Ratna recipient (1971, first woman) and the namesake of two entirely separate honours in two entirely separate fields (cinema and peace/development); Dhyan Chand is remembered purely through his own sporting legacy but lends his name to sport's highest civilian-adjacent honour. Treat every name in this table as a two-way lookup — award-to-namesake and namesake-to-award-list — since exams test the connection in both directions.
Memory hook — "One person, many plaques": whenever you learn a new award's namesake, check whether that same person already has their own entry somewhere else in this book (as a Bharat Ratna recipient, a Nobel laureate, or a Param Vir Chakra soldier) — Bismillah Khan and Indira Gandhi both illustrate that a single historical figure can anchor multiple, otherwise-unconnected awards.