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Who was the first Indian musician to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award for public service?
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Answer: Option C — M.S. Subbulakshmi
Detailed Solution
Explanation
Subbulakshmi. In 1974, the legendary Carnatic singer M.S. Subbulakshmi (1916-2004) received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service. She was the first Indian musician to receive this award.
The Ramon Magsaysay Award is an annual award established in 1957 in honour of Ramon Magsaysay, the President of the Philippines, who died in a plane crash in 1957. It is given to individuals and organisations in Asia for outstanding service to their communities and is often called "Asia's Nobel Prize". M.S. Subbulakshmi was honoured not only for her musical genius but also for her generosity. Over her career, she gave hundreds of concerts to raise money for charities, hospitals, schools, temples and other public causes, and she donated large sums of her earnings to good causes.
M.S. Subbulakshmi was born in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, in 1916. She was known for her pure, divine voice and her devotional singing, and her recordings, such as the "Venkatesa Suprabhatam", the "Vishnu Sahasranamam", "Kurai Ondrum Illai" and the bhajan "Hari Tum Haro", are still played every day in homes and temples. She acted in the Hindi film "Meera" (1947). In 1966, she became the first Indian musician to perform at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. She received the Padma Bhushan (1954), the Padma Vibhushan (1975) and the Bharat Ratna (1998), which made her the first musician to receive India's highest civilian honour.
Other Indians from the world of arts and culture who have received the Ramon Magsaysay Award include Satyajit Ray (1967), Pandit Ravi Shankar (1992) and Rasipuram Krishnaswami Laxman, the cartoonist R.K. Laxman (1984).
Why not the other options?
Pandit Ravi Shankar received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1992, after M.S. Subbulakshmi.
Lata Mangeshkar and Ustad Bismillah Khan did not receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award.
💡 Exam tip
M.S. Subbulakshmi's "firsts": first Indian musician to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award (1974), first Indian musician to perform at the UN General Assembly (1966) and first musician to receive the Bharat Ratna (1998).💬 Discussions on this question
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Awards & Honours — Preparation
This question tests your understanding of Awards & Honours, a key topic in the General Knowledge section. The detailed solution above uses a step-by-step approach to show the reasoning, and where available, a shortcut that helps you solve similar questions in under 90 seconds during the actual exam.
This topic covers national and international awards: Bharat Ratna and the Padma awards, gallantry awards, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, Jnanpith and Sahitya Akademi awards, sports awards, Nobel Prizes, the Ramon Magsaysay Award and other global honours, along with the fields they recognise and notable winners. Static questions ask about the field each award is given for, the year it started, and the first winners. For example, the Jnanpith Award is for literature and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award is for cinema. Questions on recent winners change every year, so revise those from the latest announcements and treat older winner lists as background only. Practise the awards and honours questions below, written in the style of the general awareness sections of exams such as SSC, banking, railways, CUET GAT, MAH CET and CLAT. Each question comes with a detailed explanation that adds related facts, so every question helps you revise more than one point.