The Greatest Indian
A poll to name independent India's greatest figure.
The Greatest Indian was a public poll sponsored by Reliance Mobile and conducted by Outlook magazine in partnership with CNN-IBN and The History Channel. It aimed to identify the most influential Indian from the post-independence era, deliberately excluding figures from earlier periods to avoid overshadowing by Mahatma Gandhi. The winner, B. R. Ambedkar, was announced on 11 August 2012, and an associated television program aired from 4 June until 15 August.
Quick Facts
- Sponsor
- Reliance Mobile
- Conducting partners
- Outlook magazine
- CNN-IBN
- The History Channel
- Poll period
- June to August 2012
- Winner
- B. R. Ambedkar
- Winner announcement date
- 11 August 2012
- Number of original nominees
- 50
Facts from the source article.
Nominations and voting process
A twenty-eight-member jury, including N. Ram, Vinod Mehta, Soli Sorabjee, Sharmila Tagore, Harsha Bhogle, Chetan Bhagat, Ramachandra Guha, Shashi Tharoor, Nandan Nilekani, Rajkumar Hirani, Shabana Azmi, and Arun Jaitley, compiled an initial list of one hundred names. They finalized a top 50, released on 4 June 2012 by CNN-IBN Editor-in-Chief Rajdeep Sardesai. A three-way process then determined a top ten, giving equal weight to jury votes, an online poll, and a market survey by the Nielsen Company. 7,129,050 people participated in the online phase of this round. Public voting ran from 4 to 25 June, and the top ten were announced on 3 July. A second voting round, using the same method, lasted from 1 July to 1 August. Individuals could vote via the website www.thegreatestindian.in or by calling a unique number for each nominee. Nearly 20,000,000 people voted in this round. The winner was announced on 11 August, and a special finale hosted by Amitabh Bachchan aired on 14 and 15 August.
List of original fifty nominees
Of the 50 nominees, 15 had received the Bharat Ratna and 6 were women. The oldest living nominees at the time included B. K. S. Iyengar (93), Ravi Shankar (92), Verghese Kurien (90), R. K. Laxman (90), Dilip Kumar (89), Atal Bihari Vajpayee (87), and M. S. Swaminathan (87); Sachin Tendulkar (39) was the youngest. The list featured B. R. Ambedkar, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Vallabhbhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mother Teresa, J. R. D. Tata, Indira Gandhi, Sachin Tendulkar, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lata Mangeshkar, Jayaprakash Narayan, Kanshi Ram, Ram Manohar Lohia, C. Rajagopalachari, Sam Manekshaw, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Baba Amte, Ela Bhatt, Vinoba Bhave, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Ravi Shankar, M. S. Subbulakshmi, M. F. Husain, Bismillah Khan, R. K. Narayan, R. K. Laxman, B. K. S. Iyengar, Amitabh Bachchan, Raj Kapoor, Kamal Haasan, Satyajit Ray, A. R. Rahman, Kishore Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Mohammad Rafi, Homi Bhabha, Dhirubhai Ambani, Verghese Kurien, Ghanshyam Das Birla, N. R. Narayana Murthy, Vikram Sarabhai, M. S. Swaminathan, Ramnath Goenka, Amartya Sen, E. Sreedharan, Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar, Dhyan Chand, and Viswanathan Anand.
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