The Jnanpith Award

The Jnanpith Award is an Indian literary award. Along with the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, it is one of the two most prestigious literary honours in the country. It is presented by the Jnanpith Trust, founded by the Sahu Jain family, the publishers of The Times of India. The award carries a cash prize of Rs. 500,000, a citation plaque and a bronze replica of Vagdevi, the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, and arts. Instituted in 1961, the Malayalam writer G. Sankara Kurup was the first recipient of the award in 1965. Any Indian citizen who writes in any of the official languages of India is eligible for the honor.

 Prior to 1982, the awards were given for a single work by a writer; since then, the award has been given for a lifetime contribution to Indian literature. The literature of the state of Uttar Pradesh is most represented among the awardees, six for Hindi and three for Urdu. Kannada writers have won seven awards, the highest for any language. The award announcements have lately been lagging behind the award-years; the last award, made in 2006, was for the year 2004.

 Previous Winners

               2000 - Indira Goswami - Assamese

        2001 - Rajendra Keshavlal Shah - Gujarati

        2002 - D. Jayakanthan - Tamil

        2003 - Vinda Karandikar - Marathi

        2004 - Rahman Rahi - Kashmiri