Moortidevi Award

Moortidevi Award
Award for contributions to literature
Awarded forLiterary award in India
Sponsored byBharatiya Jnanpith
Reward(s)₹4 lakh (US$4,800)
First awarded1983 (Instituted in 1961)
Last awarded2019
Most recent winnerVishwanath Prasad Tiwari
Highlights
Total awarded30
First winnerC. K. Nagaraja Rao

The Moortidevi Award is an Indian literary award annually presented by the Bharatiya Jnanpith, a literary and research organisation.[1] The award is given only to Indian writers writing in Indian languages included in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India, and in English,[a] with no posthumous conferral or self nomination.[3]

From 2003, the award was given to the authors for their "contemplative and perceptive work" and consisted of a cash prize of ₹1 lakh (US$1,600), a citation plaque, a shawl, and a statue of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge and wisdom.[4][5][6] The cash prize was raised to ₹2 lakh (US$2,400) in 2011 and to ₹4 lakh (US$4,800) in 2013.[7][8] The first recipient of the award was the Kannada writer C. K. Nagaraja Rao who was honoured in 1983 for his novel, Pattamahadevi Shantala Devi, which was published in four volumes.[4][9]

Works have been presented the award in ten of the twenty-three eligible languages: Urdu, Telugu, Rajasthani, Marathi and Bengali (one each), Gujarati, Odia and Kannada (two), Malayalam (three) and Hindi (sixteen). No awards were given in 1985 and between 1996 and 1999. The award has been conferred upon twenty-nine writers including one female author: In 1991, Odia academic and writer Pratibha Ray became the first woman to win the award and was honoured for the 1985 novel Yajnasani.[10] Ray and Nirmal Verma have won both the Moortidevi as well as the Jnanpith Award.[11][12] As of 2019, Hindi writer and professor, Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari is the most recent recipient of the award.[13]

  1. ^ "Moortidevi Award". Bharatiya Jnanpith. Archived from the original on 30 May 2017. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
  2. ^ "The Constitution of India: Eighth Schedule" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs (India). p. 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 28 May 2016.
  3. ^ "Proposal for the 29th Moortidevi Award" (PDF). Bharatiya Jnanpith. 10 August 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
  4. ^ a b "Moortidevi Awards for two writers". The Times of India. 24 February 2003. Archived from the original on 30 December 2016. Retrieved 17 December 2015.
  5. ^ "Moortidevi Award for Haraprasad Das". The Times of India. 3 September 2013. Archived from the original on 24 September 2016. Retrieved 17 December 2015.
  6. ^ "Happy Basant Panchami 2017: Why We Celebrate This Festival". NDTV. 31 January 2017. Archived from the original on 2 December 2017. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
  7. ^ "Hamid Ansari presents 'Moortidevi Award' to Dr. Raghuvansh". Sify. 16 May 2011. Archived from the original on 26 February 2014. Retrieved 29 March 2012.
  8. ^ "Moortidevi Award for C. Radhakrishnan". The Hindu. 14 June 2014. Archived from the original on 3 February 2018. Retrieved 18 December 2015.
  9. ^ "List of Hindi Books" (PDF). Vikram Sarabhai Library-IIM. Archived (PDF) from the original on 12 July 2017. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
  10. ^ Tiwari 2005, p. 108.
  11. ^ "Speech by the President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee at the presentation of 47th Jnanpith Award to Dr. Pratibha Ray" (Press release). Press Information Bureau, India. 22 May 2013. Archived from the original on 10 June 2016. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
  12. ^ "Nirmal Verma, Gurdial Singh jointly get Jnanpith Award". The Hindu. 11 March 2000. Archived from the original on 3 February 2018. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
  13. ^ "'अस्ति और भवति को सम्मान मिलने से आह्लादित हैं साहित्य अकादमी के पूर्व अध्यक्ष प्रो. विश्‍वनाथ तिवारी". Dainik Jagran (in Hindi). 7 December 2019. Retrieved 30 December 2019.


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