Artist News · English
Usha Mangeshkar named first recipient of the new Bharat Ratna Dr Bhupen Hazarika Award
Assam has created a national music honour in Bhupen Hazarika's name, worth Rs 10 lakh and given once every three years. Veteran playback singer Usha Mangeshkar will be its first recipient on 29 November in New Delhi.
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Assam has created a new national honour in memory of Bhupen Hazarika, and its very first winner is one of the most familiar voices in Indian film music. Veteran singer Usha Mangeshkar will receive the Bharat Ratna Dr Bhupen Hazarika Award, after the Assam Cabinet approved the honour at its meeting in Dispur on Friday, 23 October 2026.
About the new award
- It will be given once every three years to a nationally or internationally recognised figure in music, the arts or cinema.
- Each award carries a citation and a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh.
- The first award will be presented at the closing ceremony of Hazarika's birth centenary celebrations at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on 29 November, with reports saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hand it over.
Why Usha Mangeshkar
The state government picked her for her long contribution to Indian music and for her personal connection to Hazarika's work. The Mangeshkar sisters recorded several Assamese songs composed by the Bard of the Brahmaputra, and that bond between Assam and Maharashtra has been a theme of this year's centenary programme.
Born in December 1935, Usha is the youngest of the four Mangeshkar sisters. She became a household name with the devotional songs of Jai Santoshi Maa (1975), and her career spans Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Assamese, Odia, Nepali, Kannada and Gujarati songs. Marathi audiences know her for the classic Pinjara soundtrack, while Hindi film fans remember the playful Mungda from Inkaar.
This is not her first honour linked to Hazarika. In 2022, the Asam Sahitya Sabha gave her its Biswaratna Dr Bhupen Hazarika International Solidarity Award, a separate prize from the new national award.
The bigger picture
Assam ran a year-long celebration from 8 September 2025 to mark 100 years since Hazarika's birth. The new award gives that legacy a permanent place on India's cultural calendar, and putting a Mangeshkar first sends a clear message that Hazarika's music always belonged to the whole country, not just the Northeast.
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