Padma Bhushan Award 1962

1962 saw a notably large Padma Bhushan cohort, with 27 recipients spanning medicine, literature, civil service and public affairs. Highlights include Hindustani classical vocalist Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Sanskrit scholar V. Raghavan, physicist-educationist Daulat Singh Kothari, and social worker Tarabai Modak, a pioneer of Indian preschool education. Medicine dominated, with over a third of honorees from that field. Unlike 1961, no foreign nationals appeared; the sheer size of the 1962 list made it an outlier compared to the more modest annual counts typical of the award's first decade.

The Padma Bhushan is the third-highest civilian award in the Republic of India, preceded by the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Vibhushan and followed by the Padma Shri. Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is given for "distinguished service of a high order, without distinction of race, occupation, position or sex".