The Bharatiya Jnanpith annually presents an author with the Jnanpith Prize, the highest and oldest literary honour in India, in recognition of their "great contribution to literature." The award, which was established in 1961, is exclusively given to Indian authors who write in English and one of the Indian languages listed in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India. Posthumous recipients are not eligible.
The idea to launch a programme "commanding national prestige and of international standard" to "select the best book out of the publications in Indian languages" originated in May 1961 at the Bharatiya Jnanpith, a research and cultural institution founded in 1944 by industrialist Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain of the Sahu Jain family. A few literary specialists were invited by Rama Jain, the founder of the Bharatiya Dnyanpith, later in November to discuss various components of the plan.
List of Jnanpith Award Winners
Below is the complete list of Jnanpith Award winners from 1965 to 2022.
| Year | Jnanpith Award winners | Language |
|---|---|---|
| 1965 | G. Sankara Kurup | Malayalam |
| 1966 | Tarashankar Bandopadhyaya | Bengali |
| 1967 | Kuppali Venkatappagowda Puttappa | Kannada |
| 1967 | Umashankar Joshi | Gujarati |
| 1968 | Sumitranandan Pant | Hindi |
| 1969 | Firaq Gorakhpuri | Urdu |
| 1970 | Viswanatha Satyanarayana | Telugu |
| 1971 | Bishnu Dey | Bengali |
| 1972 | Ramdhari Singh Dinkar | Hindi |
| 1973 | Dattatreya Ramachandra Bendre | Kannada |
| 1973 | Gopinath Mohanty | Oriya |
| 1974 | Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar | Marathi |
| 1975 | P. V. Akilan | Tamil |
| 1976 | Ashapurna Devi | Bengali |
| 1977 | K. Shivaram Karanth K. Shivaram Karanth | Kannada |
| 1978 | Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan ‘Ajneya’ | Hindi |
| 1979 | Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya | Assamese |
| 1980 | S. K. Pottekkatt | Malayalam |
| 1981 | Amrita Pritam | Punjabi |
| 1982 | Mahadevi Varma | Hindi |
| 1983 | Masti Venkatesh Iyengar | Kannada |
| 1984 | Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai | Malayalam |
| 1985 | Pannalal Patel | Gujarati |
| 1986 | Sachidananda Routray | Oriya |
| 1987 | Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkaray | Marathi |
| 1988 | Dr.C. Narayana Reddy | Telugu |
| 1989 | Qurratulain Hyder | Urdu |
| 1990 | Vinayaka Krishna Gokak | Kannada |
| 1991 | Subhas Mukhopadhyay | Bengali |
| 1992 | Naresh Mehta | Hindi |
| 1993 | Sitakant Mahapatra | Oriya |
| 1994 | U. R. Ananthamurthy | Kannada |
| 1995 | M.T. Vasudevan Nair | Malayalam |
| 1996 | Mahasweta Devi | Bengali |
| 1997 | Ali Sardar Jafri | Urdu |
| 1998 | Girish Karnad | Kannada |
| 1999 | Gurdial Singh | Punjabi |
| 1999 | Nirmal Verma | Hindi |
| 2000 | Indira Goswami | Assamese |
| 2001 | D. Jayakanthan | Tamil |
| 2003 | Vinda Karandikar | Marathi |
| 2004 | Rehman Rahi | Kashmiri |
| 2005 | Kunwar Narayan | Hindi |
| 2006 | Ravindra Kelekar | Konkani |
| 2006 | Satya Vrat Shastri | Sanskrit |
| 2007 | ONV.Kurup | Malayalam |
| 2008 | Akhlaq Mohammed Khan | Urdu |
| 2009 | Amar Kant | Hindi |
| 2009 | Shrilal Shukla | Hindi |
| 2010 | Chandrashekhara Kambara | Kannada |
| 2011 | Pratibha Ray | Oriya |
| 2012 | Ravauri Bharadwaja | Telegu |
| 2013 | Kedarnath Singh | Hindi |
| 2014 | Bhalchandra Nemade | Marathi |
| 2015 | Dr. Raghuvir Chaudhari | Gujarati |
| 2016 | Shanka Ghosh | Bengali |
| 2017 | Krishna Sobti | Hindi |
| 2018 | Amitav Ghosh | English |
| 2019 | Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri | Malayalam |
| 2021 | Nilamani Phookan | Assamese |
| 2022 | Damodar Mauzo | Konkani |
Points to Remember about Jnanpith Award
| Jnanpith Award Award for individual contributions to Literature Instituted in 1961 | |
|---|---|
| Awarded for | Literary award in India |
| Sponsored by | Bharatiya Jnanpith |
| Reward(s) | ₹11 lakh (equivalent to ₹14 lakh or US$18,000 in 2020) |
| First awarded | 1965 |
| Last awarded | 2022 |
| Total awarded | 62 |
| First winner | G. Sankara Kurup |
| Last winner | Damodar Mauzo |
Jnanpith Award Question Answers
Who is the first Jnanpith Award winner?
G.Sankara Kurup
Who was the first woman writer to win the Jnanpith award?
Ashapoorna Devi
In which year did Ashapoorna Devi receive the Jnanpith award?
1976 ( Bengali writer)
How many times have Malayalam writers received the Jnanpith award?
6
How many times have works in the Hindi language won the Jnanpith Award?
11
The year in which M.T. Vasudevan Nair received the Jnanpith Award?
1995
Who won the Jnanpith award in 2007?
ONV.Kurup
Name of the Jnanpith Award-winning work by G. Sankara Kurup?
Odakkuzhal (Collection Of Poems)
Who is the winner of Jnanpith Award 2019?
Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri
What is the prize money of Jnanpith Award?
11 lakh
What is the prize money of Jnanpith award in 1965?
1 lakh
The year Mahasweta Devi received the Jnanpith award?
1996
In which year did O.N.V. Kurup receive the Jnanpith Award?
2007
Who is the winner of Jnanpith Award 2010?
Chandrashekhara Kambara
How many people have received the Jnanpith award so far?
57(Until 2022)
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