List Of Jnanpith Award Winners (2023 Updated)

Last Updated: 1 August 2023

Before we get into the list of the Jnanpith Award, let’s have a quick intro about this award!

The Jnanpith Award (Gyanpith Puraskar in Hindi) is the oldest and the highest Indian literary award presented annually by the Bharatiya Jnanpith to an author for their “outstanding contribution towards literature”.

The Bharatiya Jnanpith was founded in 1944 as a research and cultural institute by industrialist Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain of the Sahu Jain family, who 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 the Indian Languages”.

The award was instituted in 1961 and is bestowed only on Indian writers writing in Indian languages included in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India (22 Languages) and English with no Posthumous Conferral.

As per Articles 344(1) and 351 of the Indian Constitution, the eighth schedule includes the recognition of the following 22 languages:

1) Assamese	9) Konkani	17) Sanskrit
2) Bengali	10) Maithili	18) Santhali
3) Bodo	11) Malayalam	19) Sindhi
4) Dogri	12) Meitei	20) Tamil
5) Gujarati	13) Marathi	21) Telugu
6) Hindi	14) Nepali	22) Urdu
7) Kannada	15) Odia
8) Kashmiri	16) Punjabi

Page Contents

Facts About Jnanpith Award

From 1965 till 1981, the award was given to the authors for their “most outstanding work” and consisted of a citation plaque, a cash prize, and a bronze replica of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge and wisdom.

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.

The rules were revised in subsequent years to consider only works published during the preceding twenty years, excluding the year for which the award was to be given, and the cash prize was increased to ₹1.5 lakhs (equivalent to ₹26 lakh or US$33,000 in 2020) from 1981.

As of 2015, the cash prize has been revised to ₹11 lakhs (equivalent to ₹14 lakh or US$18,000 in 2020) and out of twenty-three eligible languages the award has been presented for works in sixteen languages: Hindi (eleven), Kannada (eight), Bengali and Malayalam (six each), Gujarati, Marathi, Odia, and Urdu (four each), Assamese and Telugu (three each), Punjabi, Tamil and Konkani (two each), English, Kashmiri and Sanskrit (one each).

The award has been conferred upon fifty-eight writers including seven women authors.

In 1976, Bengali novelist Ashapoorna Devi became the first woman to win the award and was honored for the 1965 novel Prothom Protishruti (The First Promise), the first in a trilogy.

Rules & Selection Process

The nominations for the award are received from various literary experts, teachers, critics, universities, and numerous literary and language associations.

Every three years, an advisory committee is constituted for each of the languages.

The language of the most recent recipient’s work is not eligible for consideration for the next two years.

Each committee consists of three literary critics and scholars of their respective languages.

All the nominations are scrutinized by the committee and their recommendations are submitted to the Jnanpith Award Selection Board (Pravara Parishad).

The Selection Board consists of between seven and eleven members of “high repute and integrity”.

Each member is part of the committee for a term of three years which can also be extended further for two more terms.

The recommendations of all language advisory committees are evaluated by the board based on complete or partial translations of the selected writings of the proposed writers into Hindi or English.

The recipient for a particular year is announced by the Selection Board, which has final authority in selection.

Jnanpith Award Winners

Serial	Year	Recipients	Language
57^th	2022	Damodar Mauzo	Konkani
56^th	2021	Nilamani Phookan	Assamese
55^th	2019	Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri	Malayalam
54^th	2018	Amitav Ghosh	English
53^rd	2017	Krishna Sobti	Hindi
52^nd	2016	Shankha Ghosh	Bengali
51^st	2015	Raghuveer Chaudhari	Gujarati
50^th	2014	Bhalchandra Nemade	Marathi
49^th	2013	Kedarnath Singh	Hindi
48^th	2012	Ravuri Bharadhwaja	Telugu
47^th	2011	Pratibha Ray	Odia
46^th	2010	Chandrashekhara Kambara	Kannada
45^th	2009^†	Amarkant	Hindi
45^th	2009^†	Srilal Sukla	Hindi
44^th	2008	Akhlaq Mohammed Khan ‘Shahryar’	Urdu
43^rd	2007	O. N. V. Kurup	Malayalam
42^nd	2006^†	Ravindra Kelekar	Konkani
42^nd	2006^†	Satya Vrat Shastri	Sanskrit
41^st	2005	Kunwar Narayan	Hindi
40^th	2004	Rehman Rahi	Kashmiri
39^th	2003	Vinda Karandikar	Marathi
38^th	2002	Jayakanthan	Tamil
37^th	2001	Rajendra Shah	Gujarati
36^th	2000	Mamoni Raisom Goswami	Assamese
35^th	1999^†	Nirmal Verma	Hindi
35^th	1999^†	Gurdial Singh	Punjabi
34^th	1998	Girish Karnad	Kannada
33^rd	1997	Ali Sardar Jafri	Urdu
32^nd	1996	Mahasweta Devi	Bengali
31^st	1995	M. T. Vasudevan Nair	Malayalam
30^th	1994	U. R. Ananthamurthy	Kannada
29^th	1993	Sitakant Mahapatra	Odia
28^th	1992	Naresh Mehta	Hindi
27^th	1991	Subhash Mukhopadhyay	Bengali
26^th	1990	Vinayaka Krishna Gokak	Kannada
25^th	1989	Qurratulain Hyder	Urdu
24^th	1988	C. Narayana Reddy	Telugu
23^rd	1987	Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar ‘Kusumagraj’	Marathi
22^nd	1986	Sachidananda Routray	Odia
21^st	1985	Pannalal Patel	Gujarati
20^th	1984	Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai	Malayalam
19^th	1983	Masti Venkatesha Iyengar	Kannada
18^th	1982	Mahadevi Varma	Hindi
17^th	1981	Amrita Pritam	Punjabi
16^th	1980	S. K. Pottekkatt	Malayalam
15^th	1979	Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya	Assamese
14^th	1978	Sachchidananda Vatsyayan	Hindi
13^th	1977	K. Shivaram Karanth	Kannada
12^th	1976	Ashapoorna Devi	Bengali
11^th	1975	Akilan	Tamil
10^th	1974	Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar	Marathi
9^th	1973^†	D. R. Bendre	Kannada
9^th	1973^†	Gopinath Mohanty	Odia
8^th	1972	Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’	Hindi
7^th	1971	Bishnu Dey	Bengali
6^th	1970	Viswanatha Satyanarayana	Telugu
5^th	1969	Firaq Gorakhpuri	Urdu
4^th	1968	Sumitranandan Pant	Hindi
3^rd	1967^†	Umashankar Joshi	Gujarati
3^rd	1967^†	Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa ‘Kuvempu’	Kannada
2^nd	1966	Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay	Bengali
1^st	1965	G. Sankara Kurup	Malayalam