Literary Awards

Jnanpith Award

 Jnanpith Award is recognized as the highest literary award in India. This

award is conferred to the Indian literary geniuses of various languages who
have contributed the finest works and creations to Indian literature. The
Jnanpith Award is given by one of the premier literary organizations in the
country, the Bharatiya Jnanpith.

 Instituted in 1961, the award is bestowed only on Indian writers writing in

Indian languages included in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of
India (22 languages) and English, with no posthumous conferral.

 The first recipient of the award was the Malayalam writer G. Sankara
Kurup who received the award in 1965 for his collection of
poems, Odakkuzhal (The Bamboo Flute), published in 1950.

 Out of twenty-three eligible languages the award has been presented for
works in sixteen languages: Hindi (eleven), Kannada (eight), Bengali and
Malayalam (six each), Urdu (five) Gujarati, Marathi, Odia (four each),
Assamese and Telugu (three each), Punjabi, Tamil, Konkani and Sanskrit
(two each), English, Kashmiri and (one each).
 The award has been conferred upon fifty-eight writers including eight
women authors.

 In 1976, Bengali novelist Ashapoorna Devi became the first woman to

win the award and was honoured for the 1965 novel Prothom Protishruti
(The First Promise), the first in a trilogy.

 The most recent recipients of the award are Sanskrit scholar

Rambhadracharya and Urdu writer, Bollywood lyricist Gulzar jointly
awarded for the year of 2023.

 This award is felicitated only to the Indian authors (Indian nationals).

 In 2019, Amitav Ghosh became the first English writer to receive this
award.

 Once a language gets the award, it is not eligible for the award for the next
two years.

 The award recipient has a citation, a bronze replica of Vagdevi (Goddess

Saraswathi), and 11 lakh rupees.
 The Jnanpith Award was instituted by Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain. He is the
founder of Bharatiya Jnanpith, a research and cultural institute founded in
1944. He wanted to establish an award that would recognize and celebrate
the outstanding contributions of Indian writers.

 Important Reciepants:

1) Sumitranandan Pant- In 1968, Pant became the first Hindi poet to receive
the Jnanpith Award. This was awarded to him for a collection of his most
famous poems titled Chidambara. In 1960, Pant received the Sahitya
Academy award, given by India's Academy of Letters, for Kala Aur
Budhdha Chand.

2) Ramdhari Singh Dinkar- in 1972 for Urvashi.

3) Girish Karnad- (Kannada language 34th award) 1998

4) Amitav Ghosh- (54th award)- English, 2018.

5) Damodar Mauzo- (Konkani) 2022 {Karmelin}

Sahitya Akademi Award

 The Sahitya Akademi Award, established in 1954( first awarded in 1955),

is a literary honour in India, which the Sahitya Akademi, India's National
 Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of the most outstanding
books of literary merit published in any of the 22 languages of the 8th
Schedule to the Indian constitution as well as in English and Rajasthani
language. (including translations)

 The plaque awarded by the Sahitya Akademi was designed by the Indian
film-maker Satyajit Ray.

 The head office of the Sahitya Akademi is located in New Delhi.

 Amrita Pritam was the first woman to receive the Sahitya Akademi
Award in 1956, for her magnum opus in Punjabi literature, “Sunehade”.

 Shiv Kumar Batalvi was a Punjabi language poet, who was known for his
romantic poetry. He was the youngest recipient of the Sahitya Akademi
Award in 1967 at the age of 31 for his magnum opus verse play, “Loona”.

 The first recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award was R.K. Narayan for his
novel "The Guide" in 1960.

 Important Recipients-

1) R.K.Narayan – 1960 (Novel, The Guide)

2) Verrier Elwin- 1965 (Autobiography, The Tribal life of Verrier Elwin)
3) Niharranjan Ray- 1969 (Biography, An Arist in Life)
4) Jayanta Mahapatra- 1981 (Poetry, Relationship)
 5) G.N.Devy- 1993 (Essays, After Amnesia)
6) Mahesh Dattani- 1998 (Drama, Final Solutions and Other plays)
7) Chaturvedi Badrinath- 2009 (Criticism, Mahabharata: An Inquiry into
the Human Condition)
8) Ramachandra Guha- 2011 (Historical Narrative, After Gandhi)
9) Temsula Ao- 2013 (Short Stories, Laburnum For My Head)

 The Serpant and the Rope(1964)- Raja Rao

 Morning Face(1971)- Mulk Raj Anand
 Scholar Extraordinary (1975)- Nirad C. Chaudhuri
 Azadi- Chaman Nahal
 Latter Day Psalms (1983)- Nissim Ezekiel
 Collected Poems (1985)- Kamala Das
 The Shadow Lines (1989)- Amitav Ghosh
 That Long Silence(1990)- Shashi Deshpande
 The Collected poems (1999)- A.K.Ramanujan
 The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2001)- Arundhati Roy
 An Era of Darkness (2019)- Shashi Tharoor
 All the lives we never Lived (2022)- Anuradha Roy
 Requim in Raga Janaki (2023)- Neelam Gour