Ramon Magsaysay, Pulitzer and Booker: Indian Winners
Notes on three international awards for exams: the founding, seat, field and categories of the Magsaysay, Pulitzer and Booker prizes, with their Indian winners.
By GK24 Editorial Team· Published · 4 min read
Three awards given outside India appear in Indian question papers as often as the national honours do: the Ramon Magsaysay Award for public service in Asia, the Pulitzer Prize for journalism and writing in the United States, and the Booker Prize for fiction in Britain. Each has a founder, a founding year, a seat and a field, and each has a line of Indian winners. Learn those four facts for each award and the Indian names attached to it, and a whole set of questions is settled.
The Ramon Magsaysay Award
The award was established in 1957 by the trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund of New York, in memory of Ramon Magsaysay, the third President of the Philippines in the post-war era, who had died in an aircraft crash in March that year. It is administered by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation at Manila and is presented on 31 August, Magsaysay's birth anniversary. Because it honours greatness of spirit in service to the people of Asia, it is widely described as Asia's Nobel Prize.
For its first fifty years the award had fixed categories: Government Service; Public Service; Community Leadership; Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts; Peace and International Understanding; and Emergent Leadership, which was added in 2000. From 2009 the Foundation set the fixed categories aside and now honours work of any kind that meets its purpose.
| Year | Indian recipient | Field of work |
|---|---|---|
| 1958 | Vinoba Bhave | Community leadership; the first Indian to receive the award |
| 1959 | C. D. Deshmukh | Government service |
| 1962 | Mother Teresa | Peace and international understanding |
| 1963 | Verghese Kurien | Community leadership, for the dairy movement |
| 1965 | Jayaprakash Narayan | Public service |
| 1967 | Satyajit Ray | Journalism, literature and creative communication arts |
| 1974 | M. S. Subbulakshmi | Public service, for music |
| 1985 | Baba Amte | Public service, for work among people with leprosy |
| 1994 | Kiran Bedi | Government service |
| 2001 | Rajendra Singh | Community leadership, for water conservation |
| 2016 | Bezwada Wilson and T. M. Krishna | Work against manual scavenging, and music |
| 2018 | Sonam Wangchuk | Education and innovation in Ladakh |
The Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize was created by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian-born American newspaper publisher who owned the New York World, and it was awarded for the first time in 1917. It is administered by Columbia University in New York on the advice of the Pulitzer Prize Board, and it covers journalism in American newspapers and news organisations along with books, drama and music. The prizes carry a cash award, and the one for Public Service in journalism is given as a gold medal rather than money.
- Gobind Behari Lal shared the prize for reporting on science in 1937 and was the first person of Indian origin to win a Pulitzer.
- Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 for her story collection Interpreter of Maladies.
- Siddhartha Mukherjee won the prize for General Non-fiction in 2011 for The Emperor of All Maladies, a history of cancer.
- Vijay Seshadri won the prize for Poetry in 2014 for his collection 3 Sections.
- Danish Siddiqui shared the prize for Feature Photography in 2018 as part of a news agency team.
The Booker Prize
The Booker Prize was begun in 1969 and is given each year for a work of fiction written in English. Its early sponsor was the firm Booker McConnell, from which the name comes. The Man Group sponsored it from 2002 to 2019, when it was called the Man Booker Prize, and since 2019 it has been supported by Crankstart and is simply the Booker Prize. The winner receives fifty thousand pounds. Until 2014 only writers from the Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe could be considered; since then any novel originally written in English and published in the United Kingdom is eligible.
| Year | Writer of Indian origin | Novel |
|---|---|---|
| 1971 | V. S. Naipaul | In a Free State |
| 1981 | Salman Rushdie | Midnight's Children |
| 1997 | Arundhati Roy | The God of Small Things |
| 2006 | Kiran Desai | The Inheritance of Loss |
| 2008 | Aravind Adiga | The White Tiger |
Arundhati Roy was the first Indian woman to win the prize, and Midnight's Children was later voted the finest of all the winners, as the Booker of Bookers in 1993 and the Best of the Booker in 2008. A separate award, the International Booker Prize, is given for a book translated into English, and its money is divided equally between the author and the translator. In 2022 it went to Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, the first book in any Indian language to win it.
Keeping the three apart
| Award | Begun | Seat | Given for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ramon Magsaysay Award | 1957 | Manila, Philippines | Service to the people of Asia |
| Pulitzer Prize | 1917 | Columbia University, New York | Journalism, books, drama and music |
| Booker Prize | 1969 | United Kingdom | A work of fiction written in English |
Exam Point of View
Three kinds of question come from this topic. The first asks for a founding fact: the year, the country, the founder or the administering body, so 1957 and Manila for the Magsaysay, 1917 and Columbia University for the Pulitzer, and 1969 and Britain for the Booker must be held apart. The second asks for an Indian winner, usually a first: the first Indian to receive the Magsaysay, the first Indian woman to win the Booker, the winner of the International Booker for a Hindi novel. The third asks which award goes with which field, and here the trap is to place journalism with the Booker or fiction with the Pulitzer. A further habit worth building is separating the Nobel of 1901, the Pulitzer of 1917 and the Booker of 1969, because these three years are shuffled between the options in almost every version of the question.
Important Facts
| Magsaysay Award established | 1957, by the trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund |
|---|---|
| Named after | Ramon Magsaysay, a President of the Philippines, who died in an air crash in 1957 |
| Magsaysay Award presented at | Manila, on 31 August each year |
| Popular description | Asia's Nobel Prize |
| First Indian recipient | Vinoba Bhave, 1958, for community leadership |
| Magsaysay for cinema | Satyajit Ray, 1967 |
| Pulitzer Prize founder | Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World |
| Pulitzer first awarded | 1917, administered by Columbia University, New York |
| Pulitzer for Public Service | Given as a gold medal |
| First person of Indian origin to win a Pulitzer | Gobind Behari Lal, 1937, for reporting on science |
| Booker Prize began | 1969, sponsored then by Booker McConnell |
| Booker prize money | Fifty thousand pounds |
| Booker of Bookers | Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, in 1993 and again in 2008 |
| International Booker Prize 2022 | Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell |
Practice MCQs on this topic
The Ramon Magsaysay Award is named after a former President of which country?
- A.Indonesia
- B.Malaysia
- C.Philippines
- D.Thailand
Show answer
Ramon Magsaysay was President of the Philippines and died in an aircraft crash in March 1957. The award was created in his memory later that year, and it is given at Manila, the Philippine capital, on 31 August, his birth anniversary.
Read the full explanation →In which year was the Ramon Magsaysay Award established?
- A.1947
- B.1952
- C.1957
- D.1962
Show answer
The trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund of New York set up the award in 1957, the year in which President Ramon Magsaysay died, and the first awards were given in 1958.
Read the full explanation →Who was the first Indian to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award?
- A.Mother Teresa
- B.Vinoba Bhave
- C.Jayaprakash Narayan
- D.C. D. Deshmukh
Show answer
He received the award in 1958, in the very first year it was given, for community leadership, in recognition of the Bhoodan movement in which he walked from village to village asking landowners to give land to the landless.
Read the full explanation →The Ramon Magsaysay Award is popularly described as
- A.Asia's Nobel Prize
- B.Asia's Booker Prize
- C.the Nobel Prize of the Pacific
- D.Asia's Pulitzer Prize
Show answer
The description is used because the award honours a lifetime of selfless service in Asia, in fields such as government service, public service and community leadership, in the manner in which the Nobel Prizes honour service to humanity.
Read the full explanation →The Pulitzer Prize is administered by which institution?
- A.Harvard University
- B.Columbia University
- C.Yale University
- D.the Library of Congress
Show answer
Joseph Pulitzer, the newspaper publisher who owned the New York World, left money in his will both for a school of journalism and for the prizes, and Columbia University in New York administers the awards on the advice of the Pulitzer Prize Board.
Read the full explanation →The Pulitzer Prize was awarded for the first time in which year?
- A.1901
- B.1917
- C.1929
- D.1945
Show answer
Joseph Pulitzer died in 1911 and provided for the prizes in his will; the first awards were made in 1917 by Columbia University.
Read the full explanation →'The Emperor of All Maladies', which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2011, was written by
- A.Amartya Sen
- B.Siddhartha Mukherjee
- C.Abhijit Banerjee
- D.Atul Gawande
Show answer
He is a physician and researcher of Indian origin, and his book The Emperor of All Maladies is a history of cancer written for general readers.
Read the full explanation →The Booker Prize was instituted in which year?
- A.1917
- B.1957
- C.1969
- D.1981
Show answer
The prize was begun in 1969 with the firm Booker McConnell as its sponsor, which is where the name comes from, and it is given each year for a work of fiction written in English.
Read the full explanation →The Booker Prize is awarded for excellence in which field?
- A.Journalism
- B.A work of fiction written in English
- C.Scientific research
- D.Public service in Asia
Show answer
The Booker Prize is a British literary award given each year to one novel. Until 2014 only writers from the Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe were eligible; since then any novel originally written in English and published in the United Kingdom may be considered, and the winner receives fifty thousand pounds.
Read the full explanation →Who was the first Indian woman to win the Booker Prize?
- A.Anita Desai
- B.Kiran Desai
- C.Arundhati Roy
- D.Jhumpa Lahiri
Show answer
She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her first novel, The God of Small Things, set in Kerala, and no Indian woman had won it before her.
Read the full explanation →The International Booker Prize of 2022 was won by 'Tomb of Sand', the English translation of a Hindi novel written by
- A.Mridula Garg
- B.Geetanjali Shree
- C.Krishna Sobti
- D.Mannu Bhandari
Show answer
Her Hindi novel Ret Samadhi was translated into English by Daisy Rockwell as Tomb of Sand, and it won the International Booker Prize in 2022.
Read the full explanation →Which Indian filmmaker was honoured with the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1967?
- A.Bimal Roy
- B.Satyajit Ray
- C.Mrinal Sen
- D.Ritwik Ghatak
Show answer
He received the award in 1967 in the category of journalism, literature and creative communication arts, for his films. His first film, Pather Panchali, had appeared in 1955, and he was later given the Bharat Ratna and an honorary Academy Award.
Read the full explanation →Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the Ramon Magsaysay Award called Asia's Nobel Prize?
Because it honours a lifetime of selfless service to the people of Asia, in fields such as government service, public service, community leadership and peace, in the way the Nobel Prizes honour service to humanity. It is given at Manila by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation.
Who was the first Indian to win the Ramon Magsaysay Award?
Vinoba Bhave, in 1958, the first year the awards were given. He was honoured for community leadership, for the Bhoodan movement in which he asked landowners to give land to the landless.
Which Indians have won the Pulitzer Prize?
Gobind Behari Lal shared the prize for science reporting in 1937, Jhumpa Lahiri won for Fiction in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee for General Non-fiction in 2011 for The Emperor of All Maladies, Vijay Seshadri for Poetry in 2014, and Danish Siddiqui shared the Feature Photography prize in 2018.
What is the difference between the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize?
The Booker Prize is for a novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom, and the whole amount goes to the author. The International Booker Prize is for a book translated into English, and the money is divided equally between the author and the translator.
Why is the Booker Prize sometimes called the Man Booker Prize?
The prize took the name of its sponsor. It began in 1969 with Booker McConnell, was sponsored by the Man Group from 2002 to 2019 and was called the Man Booker Prize in those years, and since 2019 it has been supported by Crankstart and is called simply the Booker Prize.
Which was the first book in an Indian language to win the International Booker Prize?
Ret Samadhi by Geetanjali Shree, written in Hindi and translated into English by Daisy Rockwell as Tomb of Sand. It won the International Booker Prize in 2022, the first book in any Indian language to do so.
Sources
- About the Award and the Awardees — Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation
- History of the Prizes and Prize Winners — The Pulitzer Prizes, Columbia University
- The Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize — The Booker Prize Foundation
