What is the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur that Shashi Tharoor will receive? Which other Indians have been honoured?

Senior Congress leader and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor will soon be conferred with France’s highest civilian award Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur.

According to news agency PTI, the French government is honouring him for his writings and speeches and French Ambassador Emmanuel Lenain has written to Tharoor informing him about the award.

“As one who cherishes our relations with France, loves the language and admires the culture, I am honoured to be recognized in this way. My gratitude & appreciation to those who have seen fit to award me this distinction,” Tharoor said in response to a tweet congratulating him on the award.

Thanks. As one who cherishes our relations with France, loves the language and admires the culture, I am honoured to be recognized in this way. My gratitude & appreciation to those who have seen fit to award me this distinction. @FranceinIndia https://t.co/dyy6L1sQEO

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) August 11, 2022

In 2010, Tharoor received a similar honour, from the Spanish government. The King of Spain had bestowed upon him the Encomienda de la Real Order Espanola de Carlos III.

The award will be conferred on him during the next visit of any minister of the French government to India.

What is Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur?

The Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur (Knight of the National Order of the French Legion of Honour), instituted in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte, is the highest civilian award given by the French Republic for outstanding contribution to the recipient’s field of expertise, regardless of their nationality. The Legion has five classes, listed in descending rank: grand cross (limited to 80 members), grand officer (200), commander (1,000), officer (4,000), and knight, or chevalier (unlimited).

According to Britannica, the membership of the Legion is remarkably egalitarian; both men and women, French citizens and foreigners, civilians and military personnel, irrespective of rank, birth, or religion, can be admitted to any of the classes of the Legion.

Admission into this order, which can be conferred posthumously, requires 20 years of civil achievement in peacetime or extraordinary military bravery and service in times of war.

Which other Indians have received it?

There has been a long list of Indians before Tharoor who have received the award.

The first Indian to be awarded with the Legion of Honour was Maharaja Pratap Singh of Idar in 1918.

Since then, more than 40 Indians have been honoured with the award.

The list of the recipients includes JRD Tata (1983), Satyajit Ray (1987), Pandit Ravi Shankar (2000), Zubin Mehta (2001), E Sreedharan (2005), Amitabh Bachchan (2007), Lata Mangeshkar (2007), Shah Rukh Khan (2014), Manish Arora (2016) Kamal Haasan (2016), Ratan Tata (2016), Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (2016), and Azim Premji (2018), among others. With inputs from agencies