The Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, was established in which year?
- A.1947
- B.1954
- C.1961
- D.1972
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, 1954. The Government of India set up the Sahitya Akademi on 12 March 1954 as the national academy for literature, and it works today as an autonomous body under the Ministry of Culture with its headquarters at Rabindra Bhavan in New Delhi. Its first President was Jawaharlal Nehru.
Option A, 1947, is the year of Independence and not of the Akademi, though the three national academies for letters, for the performing arts and for the fine arts were all creations of the first decade after it. Option C, 1961, is the year the Jnanpith Award was instituted by a private trust and has nothing to do with the Akademi. Option D, 1972, is too late by nearly two decades. A useful memory hook is that the Sahitya Akademi and the Lalit Kala Akademi both belong to 1954, while the Sangeet Natak Akademi came a year earlier, in 1953.
Read the full article: Jnanpith and Sahitya Akademi: Awards and Winners
Practice Questions
View allWho among the following was awarded the 55th Jnanpith Award?
- A.Amitav Ghosh
- B.Raghuveer Chaudhari
- C.Chandrashekhara Kambara
- D.Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri
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The Malayalam poet, known simply as Akkitham, received the 55th Jnanpith Award, given for the year 2019. He was the sixth Malayalam writer to be honoured, the language whose G. Sankara Kurup had won the very first Jnanpith for 1965.
Read the full explanation →In which year was the Jnanpith Award instituted?
- A.1944
- B.1954
- C.1961
- D.1965
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The Jnanpith Award was instituted in 1961 by Bharatiya Jnanpith, and it is regarded as the highest literary honour given in India.
Read the full explanation →Who was the first recipient of the Jnanpith Award?
- A.G. Sankara Kurup
- B.Sumitranandan Pant
- C.Tarashankar Bandopadhyay
- D.Kuvempu
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The Malayalam poet received the first Jnanpith Award, for the year 1965, for his collection of poems Odakkuzhal, meaning the reed flute.
Read the full explanation →Who was the first woman writer to receive the Jnanpith Award?
- A.Mahadevi Verma
- B.Ashapurna Devi
- C.Amrita Pritam
- D.Mahashweta Devi
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The Bengali novelist received the Jnanpith for the year 1976 for Pratham Pratishruti, the first book of a trilogy about three generations of women in a Bengali household, and she was the first woman to be honoured with the award.
Read the full explanation →A recipient of the Jnanpith Award is presented with a bronze statue of which figure?
- A.Vagdevi, the goddess Saraswati
- B.Nataraja
- C.Goddess Lakshmi
- D.Gautama Buddha
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Along with a citation and a cash prize, every Jnanpith laureate receives a bronze replica of Vagdevi, Saraswati as the goddess of speech and learning, which is a fitting emblem for a literary honour and a detail asked directly in objective papers.
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