Sahitya Akademi Fellowship

Sahitya Akademi Fellowship
Sahitya Akademi Fellowship
Awarded for	Literary award in India
Sponsored by	Sahitya Akademi
First awarded	1968
Last awarded	2021
Highlights
Total awarded	105
First winner	Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Recent winner(s)	• Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay; • Ruskin Bond; • Vinod Kumar Shukla; • M. Leelavathy; • Bhalchandra Nemade; • Tejwant Singh Gill; • Rambhadracharya; • Indira Parthasarathy
Website	sahitya-akademi.gov.in/fellowship
	Sahitya Akademi Award →

The Sahitya Akademi Fellowship is a literary honour in India bestowed by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters.^[1]^[2] It is the highest honour conferred by the Akademi on a living writer,^[1] the number of fellows at no time exceeding 21.^[3] Elected from among writers thought by the Akademi to be of acknowledged merit, the fellows are sometimes described as the "immortals of Indian literature."^[3]^[4]

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was the first writer elected to the Fellowship; Mulk Raj Anand was the first Indian English writer to be inducted in 1989 and R. K. Narayan in 1994, the second.^[5]

^ ^a ^b Kachru, Braj B. (2005), Asian Englishes: Beyond the Canon, Hong Kong University Press, pp. 145–, ISBN 978-962-209-665-3Quote: "In his acceptance speech when India's National Academy of Letters (Sahitya Akademi) in 1997 conferred its highest honour, the Fellowship, to Raja Rao, he said, "My dream would have been to write in that luminous and precise language Sanskrit ..."
^ Rao, D.S. (2004). Five Decades of The National Academy of Letters, India: A Short History of Sahitya Akademi. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. p. 7.
^ ^a ^b George, Rosemary Marangoly (2013), Indian English and the Fiction of National Literature, Cambridge University Press, p. 144, ISBN 978-1-107-04000-7 Quote: Poet, President of Senegal, and theorist of "Négritude" Leopold Sangor was elected the first Honorary Fellow of the Sahitya Akademi in 1974. This group was to complement the category of "Fellows of the Akademi" whose number was at no time to exceed twenty-one in total and who were to be living Indian writers of undisputed excellence — "the immortals of literature."
^ "Sahitya Akademi: Fellows and Honorary Fellows". sahitya-akademi.gov.in. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
^ George, Rosemary Marangoly (2013), Indian English and the Fiction of National Literature, Cambridge University Press, p. 144, ISBN 978-1-107-04000-7 Quote: "S. Radhakrishnan was the first "Fellow of the Akademi" to be given this title in 1968 after he left the service of both the government and the Akademi. ... Mulk Raj Anand was the first Indian English writer to be inducted in 1989 and R. K. Narayan the second Indian writer working in English to be inducted in 1994."

[Kachru2005-1] Kachru, Braj B. (2005), Asian Englishes: Beyond the Canon, Hong Kong University Press, pp. 145–, ISBN 978-962-209-665-3Quote: "In his acceptance speech when India's National Academy of Letters (Sahitya Akademi) in 1997 conferred its highest honour, the Fellowship, to Raja Rao, he said, "My dream would have been to write in that luminous and precise language Sanskrit ..."

[2] Rao, D.S. (2004). Five Decades of The National Academy of Letters, India: A Short History of Sahitya Akademi. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. p. 7.

[George2013-p144-a-3] George, Rosemary Marangoly (2013), Indian English and the Fiction of National Literature, Cambridge University Press, p. 144, ISBN 978-1-107-04000-7 Quote: Poet, President of Senegal, and theorist of "Négritude" Leopold Sangor was elected the first Honorary Fellow of the Sahitya Akademi in 1974. This group was to complement the category of "Fellows of the Akademi" whose number was at no time to exceed twenty-one in total and who were to be living Indian writers of undisputed excellence — "the immortals of literature."

[4] "Sahitya Akademi: Fellows and Honorary Fellows". sahitya-akademi.gov.in. Retrieved 22 March 2017.

[George2013-p144-b-5] George, Rosemary Marangoly (2013), Indian English and the Fiction of National Literature, Cambridge University Press, p. 144, ISBN 978-1-107-04000-7 Quote: "S. Radhakrishnan was the first "Fellow of the Akademi" to be given this title in 1968 after he left the service of both the government and the Akademi. ... Mulk Raj Anand was the first Indian English writer to be inducted in 1989 and R. K. Narayan the second Indian writer working in English to be inducted in 1994."

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