List of Jananpith award recipients, showing the year, and language(s)
Facts
- Jnanpith Award has achieved the recognition of the highest literary award of the country.
- The Award is open for only Indian citizens and is given annually.
- English along with other Indian languages is considered for the Award.
- The winner is given a cash prize of Rs. 11 lakh and a bronze replica of Goddess Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning.
- The first recipient of the award was Malayalam writer G Sankara Kurup in 1965 for his novel ‘Odakkuzhal’ (The Bamboo Flute).
- The first woman writer to be awarded this award was Ashapoorna Devi, a Bengali writer, in 1976.
- The organization which presents this award was founded in 1944 by industrialist and philanthropist Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain.
- Jnanpith Award is sponsored by the cultural organization Bharatiya Jnanpith.
- The organization which presents this award was founded in 1944 by industrialist and philanthropist Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain.
| Year | Recipient(s) | Language(s) |
| 1965 | G. Sankara Kurup | Malayalam |
| 1966 | Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay | Bengali |
| 1967 | Umashankar Joshi | Gujarati |
| 1967 | Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa ‘Kuvempu’ | Kannada |
| 1968 | Sumitranandan Pant | Hindi |
| 1969 | Firaq Gorakhpuri | Urdu |
| 1970 | Viswanatha Satyanarayana | Telugu |
| 1971 | Bishnu Dey | Bengali |
| 1972 | Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’ | Hindi |
| 1973 | D. R. Bendre | Kannada |
| 1973 | Gopinath Mohanty | Odia |
| 1974 | Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar | Marathi |
| 1975 | Akilan | Tamil |
| 1976 | Ashapoorna Devi | Bengali |
| 1977 | K. Shivaram Karanth | Kannada |
| 1978 | Sachchidananda Vatsyayan | Hindi |
| 1979 | Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya | Assamese |
| 1980 | S. K. Pottekkatt | Malayalam |
| 1981 | Amrita Pritam | Punjabi |
| 1982 | Mahadevi Varma | Hindi |
| 1983 | Masti Venkatesha Iyengar | Kannada |
| 1984 | Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai | Malayalam |
| 1985 | Pannalal Patel | Gujarati |
| 1986 | Sachidananda Routray | Odia |
| 1987 | Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar ‘Kusumagraj’ | Marathi |
| 1988 | C. Narayana Reddy | Telugu |
| 1989 | Qurratulain Hyder | Urdu |
| 1990 | Vinayaka Krishna Gokak | Kannada |
| 1991 | Subhash Mukhopadhyay | Bengali |
| 1992 | Naresh Mehta | Hindi |
| 1993 | Sitakant Mahapatra | Odia |
| 1994 | U. R. Ananthamurthy | Kannada |
| 1995 | M. T. Vasudevan Nair | Malayalam |
| 1996 | Mahasweta Devi | Bengali |
| 1997 | Ali Sardar Jafri | Urdu |
| 1998 | Girish Karnad | Kannada |
| 1999 | Nirmal Verma | Hindi |
| 1999 | Gurdial Singh | Punjabi |
| 2000 | Mamoni Raisom Goswami | Assamese |
| 2001 | Rajendra Shah | Gujarati |
| 2002 | Jayakanthan | Tamil |
| 2003 | Vinda Karandikar | Marathi |
| 2004 | Rehman Rahi | Kashmiri |
| 2005 | Kunwar Narayan | Hindi |
| 2006 | Ravindra Kelekar | Konkani |
| 2006 | Satya Vrat Shastri | Sanskrit |
| 2007 | O. N. V. Kurup | Malayalam |
| 2008 | Akhlaq Mohammed Khan ‘Shahryar’ | Urdu |
| 2009 | Amarkant | Hindi |
| 2009 | Sri Lal Sukla | Hindi |
| 2010 | Chandrashekhara Kambara | Kannada |
| 2011 | Pratibha Ray | Odia |
| 2012 | Ravuri Bharadhwaja | Telugu |
| 2013 | Kedarnath Singh | Hindi |
| 2014 | Bhalchandra Nemade | Marathi |
| 2015 | Raghuveer Chaudhari | Gujarati |
| 2016 | Shankha Ghosh | Bengali |
| 2017 | Krishna Sobti | Hindi |
| 2018 | Amitav Ghosh | English |
| 2019 | Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri | Malayalam |
