Kumudlal Ganguly (13 October 1911 – 10 December 2001), better known by his stage name Ashok Kumar and also by Dadamoni, was an Indian actor who attained iconic status in Indian cinema. He was a member of the cinematic Ganguly family. He was honoured in 1988 with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the highest national award for cinema artists, by the Government of India. He also received the Padma Bhushan in 1999 for his contributions to Indian cinema. Background and personal life Ashok Kumar was born Kumudlal Ganguly to a Bengali Hindu Brahmin family in Bhagalpur, Bengal Presidency, British India (present-day Bihar, India). His father, Kunjlal Ganguly, was a lawyer while his mother, Gouri Devi, was a house wife. Kumudlal was the eldest of four children. His only sister, Sati Devi, a few years younger to him, was married at a very young age to Sashadhar Mukherjee and became the matriarch of a large "film family". Next was his brother, Kalyan, 16 years younger (b.1927), who later took the screen name Anoop Kumar. Youngest of all was Abhas (b.1929), whose screen name was Kishore Kumar, who became a phenomenally successful playback singer of Hindi films. Although the eldest by several years, Kumudlal outlived all his siblings. In fact, he stopped celebrating his birthday after his youngest brother, Kishore, died on that day in 1987. While still a teenager and well before he had even given thought to a career in films, the young Kumudlal was married to Shobha, a girl of his own Bengali Brahmin community and similar family background, in a match arranged by their parents in the usual Indian way. Their lifelong marriage was a harmonious and conventional one, and despite his film career, the couple retained a very middle-class outlook and value system, bringing up their children with traditional values in a remarkably simple home. They were the parents of one son, Aroop Ganguly, and three daughters named Bharati Patel, Rupa Verma and Preeti Ganguly. Aroop Kumar Ganguly worked in only one film, appearing as hero in Bezubaan (1962), which flopped at the box office. He then made a career in the corporate world. The eldest daughter, Bharati Patel, is the mother of the actress Anuradha Patel. His second daughter, Rupa Verma, is the widow of the actor and comedian Deven Verma. The youngest daughter, Preeti Ganguly, was the only one among his daughters to enter the film