The Jnanpith Award is the oldest and the highest Indian literary award presented annually by the Bharatiya Jnanpith to an author for their "outstanding contribution towards literature". 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 and English, with no posthumous conferral.
Amrita Pritam was an Indian novelist, essayist and poet, who wrote in Punjabi and Hindi. A prominent figure in Punjabi literature, she is the recipient of the 1956 Sahitya Akademi Award. Her body of work comprised over 100 books of poetry, fiction, biographies, essays, a collection of Punjabi folk songs and an autobiography that were all translated into several Indian and foreign languages.
Sankarankutty Kunjiraman Pottekkatt was an Indian writer of Malayalam literature, traveller, and politician from Kerala. Best known for his travelogues, he has authored nearly 60 books, which include 10 novels, 24 collections of short stories, three anthologies of poems, 18 travelogues, four plays, a collection of essays and a couple of books based on personal reminiscences.
Kamleshwar Prasad Saxena, known mononymously as Kamleshwar, was a 20th-century Indian writer who wrote in Hindi. He also worked as a screenwriter for Indian films and television industry. Among his most well-known works are the films Aandhi, Mausam, Chhoti Si Baat and Rang Birangi. He was awarded the 2003 Sahitya Akademi Award for his Hindi novel Kitne Pakistan, and the Padma Bhushan in 2005.
The Partition of India and the associated bloody riots inspired many creative minds in the republics of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh to create literary/cinematic depictions of this event. While some creations depicted the massacres during the refugee migration, others concentrated on the aftermath of the partition in terms of difficulties faced by the refugees in both side of the border. Even now, more than 60 years after the partition, works of fiction and films are made that relate to the events of partition. W.H. Auden in his poem "Partition" showed the dilemmas of Cyril John Radcliffe, 1st Viscount Radcliffe, responsible for deciding which parts of India went where.
Bhisham Sahni was an Indian writer, playwright in Hindi and an actor, most famous for his novel and television screenplay Tamas ("Darkness"/'Ignorance"), a powerful and passionate account of the partition of India. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan for literature in 1998, and Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 2002. He was the younger brother of the noted Hindi film actor, Balraj Sahni.
Rajinder Singh Bedi was an Indian Urdu writer of the progressive writers' movement and a playwright, who later worked in Hindi cinema as a film director, screenwriter and dialogue writer and he is grandfather to Rajat Bedi and Manek Bedi.
Krishna Sobti was an Indian Hindi-language fiction writer and essayist. She won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1980 for her novel Zindaginama and in 1996, was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, the highest award of the Akademi. In 2017, she received the Jnanpith Award for her contribution to Indian literature.
Gulzar is an Indian Urdu poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, and film director known for his works in Hindi cinema. He is regarded as one of greatest Urdu poets of this era. He started his career with music director S.D. Burman as a lyricist in the 1963 film Bandini and worked with many music directors including R. D. Burman, Salil Chowdhury, Vishal Bhardwaj and A. R. Rahman. Gulzar also writes poetry, dialogues and scripts. He directed films such as Aandhi and Mausam during the 1970s and the TV series Mirza Ghalib in the 1980s. He also directed Kirdaar in 1993.
Gracy is a Malayalam author. Her first collection of short stories, Padiyirangippoya Parvati, was published in 1991. Her awards include the Lalithambika Antharjanam Award (1995), the Thoppil Ravi Award (1997), the Katha Prize for the Best Malayalam Short Story (1998) and the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award (2000). Her major works are Narakavaathil, Randu Swapna Darsikal, Kaveriyude Neru, Eezbu Penkathakal, Panikkannu and a collection, Gracyude Kathakal. Her stories have been translated into English, Hindi, Tamil and Oriya. She was the head of the Malayalam department, Al-Ameen college, Edathala, Aluva.
Uday Prakash is a Hindi poet, scholar, journalist, translator and short story writer from India. He has worked as administrator, editor, researcher, and TV director. He writes for major dailies and periodicals as a freelancer. He has also received several awards for his collection of short stories and poems. With Mohan Das he received Sahitya Academi Awards in 2011. He is the first author to return his Sahitya Akademi award on September 3, 2015 against the killing of M. M. Kalburgi that initiated a storm of national protests by writers, artists, scholars and intellectuals.
Nathuram Sharma, better known by his pen-name Mahakavi Shankar, was a Hindi and Urdu poet from Harduaganj, Aligarh, North-Western Provinces, British India. He worked with the Irrigation Department at Kanpur and subsequently as an Ayurvedic physician. His poetic works are primarily in the dialects of Braj Bhasha and Khariboli. He was a writer of Modern Period.
Santanu Kumar Acharya is a National Sahitya Academy Award-winning Indian writer.
Neelakshi Singh is an Indian Novelist and short-story writer in Hindi language. She won Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Young Writers Award, Kalinga Book of the year award 2021 & Valley of Words Award 2022.
Sukrita Paul Kumar is an Indian poet, critic, and academic. She has been the chief editor of Cultural Diversity, Linguistic Plurality and Literary Traditions of India – a textbook prescribed by the University of Delhi for course use in its Honours B.A. programme.
Dr. Yashodhara Mishra is a Odia writer and poet. She is a professor of English who has published poems, several collections of short stories and novels. She was a fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
Binapani Mohanty was an Indian Odia language writer and academician. She was well known for her works such as Patadei and Kasturi Mriga. She was a professor in economics before retiring. She had been awarded Padmashree by the Government of India and Atibadi Jagannatha Das Sammana by Odisha Sahitya Akademi. She had earlier won the Sahitya Akademi Award and Sarala Award. She had served as chairperson of Odisha Lekhika Sansad.
Sharifa Vijaliwala is an Indian Gujarati language writer, critic, translator and editor from Surat, Gujarat, India. She is a recipient of a 2018 Sahitya Akademi Award for Vibhajanni Vyatha, a collection of critical essays in Gujarati, and has won several Gujarat Sahitya Akademi awards for her literary work.
Asad Zaidi is an Indian poet, editor, translator, publisher, and literary critic. He has been a noted Hindi poet since the early 1980s.
