Jnanpith Award is an Indian literary award presented annually by the Bharatiya Jnanpith to an author for their “outstanding contribution towards literature“.
Instituted in 1961, the award is bestowed only on Indian writers writing in Indian languages included in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India and English, with no posthumous conferral.
From 1965 till 1981, the award was given to the authors for their “most outstanding work” and consisted of a citation plaque, a cash prize of ₹11 lakh (equivalent to ₹54 lakh or US$75,000 in 2019), and a bronze replica of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge and wisdom.
The first recipient of the award was the Malayalam writer G. Sankara Kurup who received the award in 1965 for his collection of poems, Odakkuzhal (The Bamboo Flute), published in 1950.
| Year | Recipient(s) | Language(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 1965 (1st) | G. Sankara Kurup | Malayalam |
| 1966 (2nd) | Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay | Bengali |
| 1967 (3rd) † | Umashankar Joshi | Gujarati |
| 1967 (3rd) † | Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa ‘Kuvempu’ | Kannada |
| 1968 (4th) | Sumitranandan Pant | Hindi |
| 1969 (5th) | Firaq Gorakhpuri | Urdu |
| 1970 (6th) | Viswanatha Satyanarayana | Telugu |
| 1971 (7th) | Bishnu Dey | Bengali |
| 1972 (8th) | Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’ | Hindi |
| 1973 (9th) † | D. R. Bendre | Kannada |
| 1973 (9th) † | Gopinath Mohanty | Odia |
| 1974 (10th) | Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar | Marathi |
| 1975 (11th) | Akilan | Tamil |
| 1976 (12th) | Ashapoorna Devi | Bengali |
| 1977 (13th) | K. Shivaram Karanth | Kannada |
| 1978 (14th) | Sachchidananda Vatsyayan | Hindi |
| 1979 (15th) | Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya | Assamese |
| 1980 (16th) | S. K. Pottekkatt | Malayalam |
| 1981 (17th) | Amrita Pritam | Punjabi |
| 1982 (18th) | Mahadevi Varma | Hindi |
| 1983 (19th) | Masti Venkatesha Iyengar | Kannada |
| 1984 (20th) | Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai | Malayalam |
| 1985 (21st) | Pannalal Patel | Gujarati |
| 1986 (22nd) | Sachidananda Routray | Odia |
| 1987 (23rd) | Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar ‘Kusumagraj’ | Marathi |
| 1988 (24th) | C. Narayana Reddy | Telugu |
| 1989 (25th) | Qurratulain Hyder | Urdu |
| 1990 (26th) | Vinayaka Krishna Gokak | Kannada |
| 1991 (27th) | Subhash Mukhopadhyay | Bengali |
| 1992 (28th) | Naresh Mehta | Hindi |
| 1993 (29th) | Sitakant Mahapatra | Odia |
| 1994 (30th) | U. R. Ananthamurthy | Kannada |
| 1995 (31st) | M. T. Vasudevan Nair | Malayalam |
| 1996 (32nd) | Mahasweta Devi | Bengali |
| 1997 (33rd) | Ali Sardar Jafri | Urdu |
| 1998 (34th) | Girish Karnad | Kannada |
| 1999 (35th) † | Nirmal Verma | Hindi |
| 1999 (35th) † | Gurdial Singh | Punjabi |
| 2000 (36th) | Mamoni Raisom Goswami | Assamese |
| 2001 (37th) | Rajendra Shah | Gujarati |
| 2002 (38th) | Jayakanthan | Tamil |
| 2003 (39th) | Vinda Karandikar | Marathi |
| 2004 (40th) | Rehman Rahi | Kashmiri |
| 2005 (41st) | Kunwar Narayan | Hindi |
| 2006 (42nd) † | Ravindra Kelekar | Konkani |
| 2006 (42nd) † | Satya Vrat Shastri | Sanskrit |
| 2007 (43rd) | O. N. V. Kurup | Malayalam |
| 2008 (44th) | Akhlaq Mohammed Khan ‘Shahryar’ | Urdu |
| 2009 (45th) † | Amarkant | Hindi |
| 2009 (45th) † | Sri Lal Sukla | Hindi |
| 2010 (46th) | Chandrashekhara Kambara | Kannada |
| 2011 (47th) | Pratibha Ray | Odia |
| 2012 (48th) | Ravuri Bharadhwaja | Telugu |
| 2013 (49th) | Kedarnath Singh | Hindi |
| 2014 (50th) | Bhalchandra Nemade | Marathi |
| 2015 (51st) | Raghuveer Chaudhari | Gujarati |
| 2016 (52nd) | Shankha Ghosh | Bengali |
| 2017 (53rd) | Krishna Sobti | Hindi |
| 2018 (54th) | Amitav Ghosh | English |
| 2019 (55th) | Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri | Malayalam |