Jnanpith Award JNANPITH AWARD The Jnanpith Award is an 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. The Bharatiya Jnanpith, a research and cultural institute founded in 1944 by industrialist Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain, conceived an idea in May 1961 to start a scheme "commanding national prestige and of international standard" to "select the best book out of the publications in Indian languages". 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. In 1976, Bengali novelist Ashapoorna Devi became the first woman to win the award and was honoured for the 1965 novel Pratham Pratisruti (The First Promise), the first in a trilogy. Year Recipient(s) Language(s) 1965 G. Sankara Kurup Malayalam (1st) 1966 Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay Bengali (2nd) 1967 Umashankar Joshi Gujarati (3rd) 1967 Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa 'Kuvempu' Kannada (3rd) 1 Download Study Materials on www.examsdaily.in Follow us on FB for exam Updates: ExamsDaily Jnanpith Award 1968 Sumitranandan Pant Hindi (4th) 1969 Firaq Gorakhpuri Urdu (5th) 1970 Viswanatha Satyanarayana Telugu (6th) 1971 Bishnu Dey Bengali (7th) 1972 Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar' Hindi (8th) 1973 D. R. Bendre Kannada (9th) 1973 Gopinath Mohanty Odia (9th) 1974 Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar Marathi (10th) 1975 Akilan Tamil (11th) 1976 Ashapoorna Devi Bengali (12th) 1977 K. Shivaram Karanth Kannada (13th) 1978 Sachchidananda Vatsyayan Hindi (14th) 1979 Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya Assamese 2 Download Study Materials on www.examsdaily.in Follow us on FB for exam Updates: ExamsDaily Jnanpith Award (15th) 1980 S. K. Pottekkatt Malayalam (16th) 1981 Amrita Pritam Punjabi (17th) 1982 Mahadevi Varma Hindi (18th) 1983 Masti Venkatesha Iyengar Kannada (19th) 1984 Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai Malayalam (20th) 1985 Pannalal Patel Gujarati (21st) 1986 Sachidananda Routray Odia (22nd) 1987 Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar 'Kusumagraj' Marathi (23rd) 1988 C. Narayana Reddy Telugu (24th) 1989 Qurratulain Hyder Urdu (25th) 1990 Vinayaka Krishna Gokak Kannada (26th) 1991 Subhash Mukhopadhyay Bengali (27th) 3 Download Study Materials on www.examsdaily.in Follow us on FB for exam Updates: ExamsDaily Jnanpith Award 1992 Naresh Mehta Hindi (28th) 1993 Sitakant Mahapatra Odia (29th) 1994 U. R. Ananthamurthy Kannada (30th) 1995 M. T. Vasudevan Nair Malayalam (31st) 1996 Mahasweta Devi Bengali (32nd) 1997 Ali Sardar Jafri Urdu (33rd) 1998 Girish Karnad Kannada (34th) 1999 Nirmal Verma Hindi (35th) 1999 Gurdial Singh Punjabi (35th) 2000 Mamoni Raisom Goswami Assamese (36th) 2001 Rajendra Shah Gujarati (37th) 2002 Jayakanthan Tamil (38th) 2003 Vinda Karandikar Marathi 4 Download Study Materials on www.examsdaily.in Follow us on FB for exam Updates: ExamsDaily Jnanpith Award (39th) 2004 Rehman Rahi Kashmiri (40th) 2005 Kunwar Narayan Hindi (41st) 2006 Ravindra Kelekar Konkani (42nd) 2006 Satya Vrat Shastri Sanskrit (42nd) 2007 O. N. V. Kurup Malayalam (43rd) 2008 Akhlaq Mohammed Khan 'Shahryar' Urdu (44th) 2009 Amarkant Hindi (45th) 2009 Sri Lal Sukla Hindi (45th) 2010 Chandrashekhara Kambara Kannada (46th) 2011 Pratibha Ray Odia (47th) 2012 Ravuri Bharadhwaja Telugu (48th) 2013 Kedarnath Singh Hindi (49th) 5 Download Study Materials on www.examsdaily.in Follow us on FB for exam Updates: ExamsDaily Jnanpith Award 2014 Bhalchandra Nemade Marathi (50th) 2015 Raghuveer Chaudhari Gujarati (51st) 2016 Shankha Ghosh Bengali (52nd) 2017 Krishna Sobti Hindi (53rd) 2018 Amitav Ghosh English (54th) Join Us on FB : For English – Examsdaily For Tamil – Examsdaily Tamil For WhatsAPP Group - Click Here For Telegram Channel Click Here 6 Download Study Materials on www.examsdaily.in Follow us on FB for exam Updates: ExamsDaily .