Jnanpith Award & its Awardees

Jnanpith Award

 

The Jnanpith Award is a literary award in India. Along with the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, it is one of the two most prestigious literary honours in the country. The award was instituted in 1961. Any Indian citizen who writes in any of the official languages of India is eligible for the honour. It is presented by the Bharatiya Jnanpith, a trust founded by the Sahu Jain family, the publishers of the The Times of India newspaper. 

 

The word “Jnanpith” has its origin in Sanskrit language where two words jnāna and pīṭha means knowledge-seat. 

 

It carries a cheque for 7 lakh, a citation plaque and a bronze replica of Saraswati, the Indian goddess of knowledge, music, and the arts.

Till 1982, this award was  given for a single work by a writer.   However,  since then,  the award has been given for a lifetime contribution to Indian literature.

 

Women Award Winning Writers :  Starting with the Bengali writer (1) Ashapoorna Devi in 1976, seven women writers have won the award so far.   The other recipients include  (2) Amrita Pritam (1981, Punjabi), (3)  Mahadevi Varma (1982, Hindi),  (4) Qurratulain Hyder (1989, Urdu),  (5) Mahasweta Devi (1996, Bengali),  (6) Indira Goswami (2000, Assamese) and (7)  Pratibha ray (2011, Odia).

Satya Vrat Shastri is the first Sanskrit poet to be conferred the award since its inception.

The award announcements have lately been lagging behind the award-years. 

 

(a)    The awards for the years 2005 and 2006 were announced on 22 November 2008.  

 

(b)   The awards for the 45th and 46th Jnanpith for the years 2009 and 2010 respectively, were announced on 20 September 2011.   

 

(c)    The 48th Jnanpith award for the year 2012 was announced on 17th April, 2013 and was conferred to Telugu novelist, short-story writer and poet Ravuri Bharadhwaja for his work Paakudu Raallu.

List of Jnanpith Awardees

 

 

 

S. No.	Name of the Author	Year of award	Language
1	G. Sankara Kurup	1965	Malayalam
2	T.S. Bandyopadhyaya	1966	Bangla
3	Uma Shankar Joshi	1967	Gujarati
4	K.V. Puttappa	1967	Kannada
5	Sumitranandan Pant	1968	Hindi
6	Firaq Gorakhpuri	1969	Urdu
7	V. Satyanarayana	1970	Telugu
8	Bishnu Dey	1971	Bangla
9	Ramdhari Singh `Dinkar'	1972	Hindi
10	D.R. Bendre	1973	Kannada,
11	Gopinath Mohanty	1973	Oriya
12	V.S. Khandekar	1974	Marathi
13	P.V. Akilandam	1975	Tamil
14	Ashapurna Devi	1976	Bangla
15	K.S. Karanth	1977	Kannada
16	S.H.V. Ajneya	1978	Hindi
17	B.K. Bhattacharya	1979	Assamese
18	S.K. Pottekkatt	1980	Malayalam,
19	Amrita Pritam	1981	Punjabi
20	Mahadevi Varma	1982	Hindi
21	Masti V. Iyengar	1983	Kannada
22	Thakazhi S. Pillai	1984	Malayalam
23	Pannalal Patel	1985	Gujarati
24	Satchidanand Rautroy	1986	Oriya
25	V.V.S. 'Kusumagraj'	1987	Marathi
26	C. Narayana Reddy	1988	Telugu
27	Qurratulain Hyder	1989	Urdu
28	V.K. Gokak	1990	Kannada
29	Subhash Mukhopadhyaya	1991	Bangla
30	Naresh Mehta	1992	Hindi
31	Sitakant Mahapatra	1993	Oriya
32	U.R. Anantha Murthy	1994	Kannada
33	M.T. Vasudevan Nair	1995	Malayalam
34	Mahasveta Devi	1996	Bangla
35	Ali Sardar Jafri	1997	Urdu
36	Girish Karnad	1998	Kannada
37	Nirmal Verma	1999	Hindi
38	Gurdial Singh	1999	Punjabi
39	Indira Goswami	2000	Assamese
40	Rajendra Shah	2001	Gujarati
41	D. Jayakanthan	2002	Tamil
42	Vinda Karandikar	2003	Marathi
43	Rahman Rahi	2004	Kashmiri
44	Kunwar Narain	2005	Hindi
45	Satyavrat Shastri	2006	Sanskrit
46	Ravindra Kelekar	2006	Konkani
47	O. N. V. Kurup	2007	Malayalam
48	Akhlaq Khan Shahryar	2008	Urdu
49	Shrilal Shukla	2009	Hindi
50	Amarkant	2009	Hindi
51	Chandrasekhar Kambar	2010	Kannada
52	Pratibha Ray	2011	Oriya
53	Ravuri Bharadwaja	2012	Telegu