Jnanpith Awards
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Critiques and commentaries
2024: the Downfall of the Jnanpith Award
[Gulzar, Jagadguru Swami Rambhadracharya, and the Downfall of the Jnanpith Award (thewire.in) Om Thanvi/ Gulzar, Jagadguru Swami Rambhadracharya, and the Downfall of the Jnanpith Award/ TheWire.in/ Edited]
Questions are being raised about the integrity of Jnanpith after the announcement of this year's recipients, with many wondering if it has chosen to compromise.
By Om Thanvi
The award, usually awarded to only one litterateur per year, has sparked controversy whenever it has been awarded jointly. Shrilal Shukla and Amarkant were honoured together 15 years ago in 2009 while Gurdial Singh shared the award with Nirmal Verma in 1999.
The Jnanpith Award was instituted in 1965 and is operated by the Jain family that runs the Times of India. The task of publication and awards is handled by a trust.
The latest announcement made for the Jnanpith Award for 2023 echoes the much-hyped ‘Amrit Kaal’. The work of academies is often shadowed by governments. However, government interference is generally a hushed affair. However, this year’s announcement has sent ripples down the literary community. Questions are being raised about the integrity of Jnanpith with many wondering if it has chosen to compromise.
Describing Swami Rambhadracharya as a ‘renowned scholar, educationist, philosopher, preacher and religious leader’, the award committee has given details of his association with the Ramanand sect and his religious positions.
It is further stated that he knows 22 languages, is a ‘poet and writer’ of many languages including Sanskrit, Hindi, Awadhi, and Maithili, and has authored more than 240 books. He is said to have composed four epics, two of which are in Hindi, and has written commentaries on religious texts and is a well-known expert on Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas. Modi government honoured him with Padma Vibhushan in 2015.
…There is also no mention that he is close to the prime minister who flew to Chitrakoot to inaugurate his 10,000-page Ashtadhyay commentary.
Swamiji had testified in favour of Ramlala Virajman in the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute. He was among the initial ‘warriors’ of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, was at the forefront of the campaign to demolish the ‘tainted structure’, and went to jail too. He denigrates the leaders of Shiv Sena, Samajwadi Party and Congress by name and calls them ‘fools’.
He is also known to make controversial statements regarding Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). Recently, he was appointed the guardian of Ramjanmabhoomi Pranpratistha. He retaliated against Jyotirmoy Shankaracharya for calling the pratishtha not scriptural. The temple trust also kept reiterating that the consecration is taking place under the guidance of Ramanandi sect.
Therefore, it does not seem logical to pit a saint, who was at the forefront of the temple movement, against literary figures on the basis of sermons or commentary. This is disrespectful even of a saint.
Ironically, Swamiji’s nomination for the Jnanpith award was welcomed not by the literary community but by controversial figures like Baba Bageshwar Dham and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Shivraj Singh Chauhan.
Meanwhile Gulzar, the second nominee for the Jnanpith, is a prominent personality of Hindi cinema. He is a successful filmmaker who has made many interesting films and has expertise in scriptwriting and songs.
He has received the Filmfare Award 22 times, National Film Award six times, Dadasaheb Phalke Award, Padma Bhushan and even a Grammy and Oscar (with AR Rahman) for song-writing. He is a popular cine-lyricist and his poetry gained great fame after receiving the Sahitya Akademi Award for an Urdu short story collection in 2002.
In the last few years, he has emerged as a popular face of literature festivals in Jaipur and other cities. The series of so-called literary festivals has set up a market with mainly English publishers, writers’ agents and renowned writers, politicians, actors, singers, and anchors. The market itself bears their expenses.
I have been reading Gulzar sahab ever since his poetry collection was published in Hindi by his best friend Bhushan Banmali in the 1970s. At that time, romantic literature of Urdu and Punjabi had its own charm. But later, after the emotional phase of songs like ‘Jab bhi ye dil udaas hota, Jaane kaun aas paas hota hai’ or ‘Shaam ki aankh mein nami si hai, aaj phir aap ki kami si hai’, the lack of some deep poetry was felt.
Gulzar sahab… In the introduction, his identity as an Urdu poet has been downplayed and mentioned only after Hindi. …
Trivenis were regularly published in Sarika in the 1970s, when Kamleshwar was the editor. Gulzar used to give the third verse a shocking twist which became like a game at times….
Hindi poet and editor Vishnu Nagar posted on Facebook that the neglect of Vinod Kumar Shukla, and other writers who have done great work and carved a niche in Hindi fiction, poetry and children’s literature, is disappointing. However, apart from Hindi, many prominent writers in other Indian languages are still beyond the realm of Jnanpith.
Critic Shambhunath has called it the ‘downfall of the Jnanpith Award’. Virendra Yadav believes that the devaluation of Jnanpith began when Shahryar was handed the award by Amitabh Bachchan. ‘In status, it has now become like a dustbin’s beauty.’
Perhaps it is the era of ‘New India’, in which lyricists, stage poets, storytellers (one can even find all these qualities in one person) are awarded.
Awards are not offered but procured nowadays.
Om Thanvi is a senior journalist who retired as editor of Jansatta, a Hindi daily of the Indian Express group, in 2015. He was the founding Vice Chancellor of HJ University of Journalism and Mass Communication, Jaipur.
Translated from the Hindi orginal by Naushin Rehman
YEAR-WISE
2021
Nilmani Phookan, Damodar Mauzo win
Benita Fernando, Dec 9, 2021: The Indian Express
Assamese poet Nilmani Phookan Jr won the 56th Jnanpith Award and Konkani novelist Damodar Mauzo won the 57th Jnanpith Award.
The country’s highest literary award, the Jnanpith is bestowed on writers for “their outstanding contribution to literature”.
Mauzo, 77, is based out of Majorda, Goa, and has previously won the Sahitya Akademi Award. He is known for his novels, such as Karmelin, and Tsunami Simon, and short stories Teresa’s Man and Other Stories from Goa.
His books have been translated into several Indian languages. The author said he was elated to be awarded the Jnanpith, but also realised that there were many writers of the same calibre or better than him who deserve the award.
“Perhaps the problem of the jury is to consider one name, so I am lucky. I accept this award with humility on behalf of my fellow writers, who also deserve this,” he said.
Mauzo’s achievement comes in Goa’s 60th year of liberation from the Portuguese Estado da India in 1961. “I am happy for my language, which suffered at the hands of the colonisers,” he said, adding that it was a dark period for Konkani as the Portuguese barely tolerated Indian languages.
It was only after 1961 that Konkani literature was able to find a place in the country. This is the second Jnanpith Award for a Konkani writer— the first being Ravindra Kelekar in 2006.
Phookan, 90, is a Sahitya Akademi and Padma Shri awardee. Based out of Guwahati, he is a poet of renown and has written Surya Henu Nami Ahe Ei Nodiyedi, Gulapi Jamur Lagna, and Kobita.
The poet was unavailable for comment due to age-related reasons. His son Jyotirmoy said, “My father is primarily a poet but used to write prose as well. He was one of the pioneering art critics from Assam, and worked on folklore and folk art.”
Phookan is the third Assamese writer to have received the Jnanpith. The previous awardees were Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya in 1979 and Mamoni Raisom Goswami in 2000.
2023
The selection committee, chaired by Jnanpith awardee Pratibha Rai, decided to confer the award on Rambhadracharya for Sanskrit, and Gulzar for Urdu.
