Narayan, who had launched a 'Sampoorna Kranti' (total revolution) in 1974 against corruption in public life, is the third person to get the prestigious award this year.
Noted Carnatic vocalist M S Subbalakshmi and veteran Gandhian C Subramaniam were the other two.
Following are the 35 previous recipients of the Bharat Ratna:
Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (1954)
Dr Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan (1954)
Sir Chandrashekhar Venkat Raman (1954)
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (1955)
Bhagwan Das (1955)
Dr M Visweswaraiyya (1955)
Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant (1957)
Maharishi Dhondu Keshav Karve (1958)
Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy (1961)
Purushottam Das Tandon (1961)
Babu Rajendra Prasad (1962)
Dr Zakir Hussain (1963)
P V Kane (1963)
Pandit Lal Bahadur Shastri (posthumously, 1966)
Indira Gandhi (1971)
Varahagiri Venkata Giri (1975)
K Kamaraj (posthumously, 1976)
Mother Teresa (1980)
Acharya Vinoba Bhave (1983)
'Frontier Gandhi' Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1987)
M G Ramachandran (posthumously, 1988)
Dr Bhimrao R Ambedkar (1990)
Nelson Mandela (1990)
Rajiv Gandhi (posthumously, 1991)
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (posthumously, 1991)
Morarjee Desai (1991)
Jehangir R D Tata (1992)
Satyajit Ray (posthumously, 1992)
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (posthumously, 1992)
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose (posthumously, 1992)
Aruna Asaf Ali (posthumously, 1997)
Gulzari Lal Nanda (1997)
Dr Avul Pakir Jainulabedin Abdul Kalam (1997)
M S Subbalaxmi (1998)
C Subramaniam (1998)The award to Netaji was withdrawn later, thanks to a controversy over whether he is still alive.