Savitri Bai Khanolkar was a designer, best known for designing the Param Vir Chakra, India’s highest military decoration, awarded for displaying distinguished acts of valour during wartime.
Savitri Bai Khanolkar was a designer, best known for designing the Param Vir Chakra, India’s highest military decoration, awarded for displaying distinguished acts of valour during wartime. Khanolkar also designed several other major gallantry medals including the Ashok Chakra (AC), Maha Vir Chakra (MVC), Kirti Chakra (KC), Vir Chakra (VrC) and Shaurya Chakra (SC). She had also designed the General Service Medal 1947, which was used until 1965. Khanolkar was also a painter and an artist.

Born Eve Yvonne Maday de Maros in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, she married Indian Army Captain Vikram Ramji Khanolkar in 1932, and subsequently changed her name to Savitri Bai Khanolkar, became a Hindu and acquired Indian citizenship.

Soon after Indian independence, she was asked by the Adjutant General Major General Hira Lal Atal to design India’s highest award for bravery in combat, the Param Vir Chakra. Major General Atal had been given the responsibility of creating and naming independent India’s new military decorations. His reasons for choosing Khanolkar were her deep and intimate knowledge of Indian culture, Sanskrit and Vedas, which he hoped would give the design a truly Indian ethos.

Savitri Bai had always done a lot a social work which she continued in her later years, working with soldiers and their families and refugees who had been displaced during the Partition. After her husband’s death in 1952, she found refuge in spirituality, and retired to the Ramakrishna Math. She wrote a book on the Saints of Maharashtra that is still popular today.