List of Indians who won Oscars

Indian cinema had a great day at Oscar on Sunday with the magnum opus ‘RRR’ winning the Best Original Song and ‘The Elephant Whisperer’ walking away with the Best Documentary Short film. Before this, there were a couple of Indian filmmakers and technicians who won Oscars and here is the list.

Costume designer Bhanu Athaiya became the first Indian to win an Oscar. She won the Academy award for Best Costume Design for the film ‘Gandhi’ (1982). Exactly ten years later i.e, in 1992, legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray received an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement award. He is the first and only Indian filmmaker to receive such an honour.

In between in Bollywood’s Mr. Perfectionist Aamir Khan’s ‘Lagaan’ received an Oscar nomination but could not win. Then after a long gap in 2009, music maestro AR Rahman won two Oscar awards in Best Original Score and Best Original Song categories for the 2009 film Slumdog Millionaire and the song ‘Jai Ho’ from the same film.

But Keeravani’s ‘Naatu Naatu’ is a straight Oscar award for an Indian production and it’s a moment of pride for Telugu cinema.