Assess the role of state honours and cultural awards in recognising and preserving India's intangible cultural heritage.

Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is living heritage: the music, practices and skills that people carry and pass on, not monuments [1]. India's honours, from the Bharat Ratna to the Sangeet Natak Akademi awards, recognise these carriers well. They preserve the heritage only partly.

Role in recognition

• Highest national recognition: Lata Mangeshkar received the Bharat Ratna (2001), the Dadasaheb Phalke Award and three National Film Awards [2]. These awards treat popular music as part of national heritage.
• Dignity of the artist: Her cremation with full state honours [3] gave an artist the standing usually reserved for statesmen.
• Constitutional fit: In Balaji Raghavan (1995), the Supreme Court held that national awards are not "titles" under Article 18, but barred using them as a prefix or suffix to a name [4]. This keeps recognition based on merit and consistent with equality.
• Soft power: France made her an Officer of the Legion of Honour [2], which shows how honoured artists carry Indian culture abroad.

Role in preservation

• Folk and tribal forms: Sangeet Natak Akademi awards cover traditional, folk and tribal music, dance, theatre and puppetry, and include a cash purse [5]. This supports traditions that earn little in the market.
• Reaching the overlooked: The one-time Amrit Awards honoured 84 artists above 75 who had never received a national honour [6].
• Keeping memory alive: The Lata Deenanath Mangeshkar Award [7] and IFFI 53's homage [8] carry her legacy to new generations.

Limitations

• Symbolic, not sustaining: Awards honour the finished master, not the guru-shishya chain that passes a form on.
• Narrow legal cover: The Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012 created performer's rights and requires principal performers to be named on broadcast [9]. But PRS noted that its special royalty protection covered only authors of works in films and sound recordings, so other creators were treated unequally [10].
• Late recognition: The need for the Amrit Awards shows that many elderly masters went unhonoured for decades [6].

Honours therefore give artists legitimacy, visibility and soft power, but preservation also needs livelihoods and a way to pass skills on. Awards could be paired with apprenticeship grants and with credit for every performer, as the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty envisages; India's Cabinet approved joining it in 2018 [11]. Following UNESCO's 2003 Convention [1] would turn recognition into safeguarding and honour the Article 51A(f) duty to value and preserve our composite culture.