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Indian Awards

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National Awards

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Jnanpith Award

The Jnanpith award is given every year for the best creative writing by an Indian citizen in any of the languages included in Schedule VIII of the Indian Constitution. It is the most prestigious literary award of the country. The Award is sponsored by Bharatiya Jnanpith, a literary and cultural organisation set up in 1944, by the late Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain and his wife Rama Jain; its present president is Ashok Kumar Jain. The Jnanpith Award was instituted on May 22, 1961. The first award was given in 1965. The award carries a cash price of Rs 2.5 lakh, a citation and a bronze replica of Vagdevi.

So far, 38 eminent writers have received the award in 34 years. The award was given to six times each to Kannada and Hindi writers, five times to Bengali writers, four times to Malayalam, thrice to Oriya, twice each to Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Urdu and Punjabi, and one each to Assamese and Tamil writers. The Award was shared by two persons on three occasions. The 34th Award for 1998 was given to the renowned Kannada playwright, actor and director, Girish Karnad. This is the second occasion when an award was given to a playwright. The 35th Jnanpith Award for 1999 was given jointly to the Hindi writer Nirmal Verma and Punjabi novelist Gurdial Singh.