Tamil littérateurs and why they miss out on the prestigious Jnanpith Award Premium

The lack of Jnanpith Awards for Tamil writers sparks debate among intellectuals, highlighting the need for recognition and representation.

At a memorial event in Chennai for Ashokamitran in April 2017, speaker after speaker regretted that the veteran Tamil writer-critic had not been given the Jnanpith Award, the most prestigious of literary awards in the country. Sections of the intelligentsia have been nursing a grievance that many other Tamil stalwarts — Gnanakoothan and Ki. Rajanarayanan, both of whom died in the last 10 years — did not get the award despite being in the field for years. Ka. Naa. Subramanyam (Ka.Naa.Su) and T. Janakiraman, who belonged to the Manikodi generation of writers and died in the 1980s, were also among the notable writers who could not get the award. Commonly known as Ee. Paa, the 94-year-old Indira Parthasarathy is a prospective candidate. When Professor Parthasarathy, “an eminent Tamil writer, scholar, and cultural historian”, received the Sahitya Akademi’s highest honour — Fellowship for 2021 — it was after a gap of 25 years that a Tamil littérateur was chosen.

The grievance of the intelligentsia is caused, to a large extent, by the fact that there have been only two Tamil Jnanpith awardees, ever since the award was first given to eminent Malayalam poet G. Sankara Kurup 60 years ago. The last Tamil recipient of the award was D. Jayakanthan, who got it for 2002. His predecessor for Tamil was P.V. Akilandam, or Akilan, for 1975. All this was despite Tamil being widely acknowledged as the oldest living language. Professor Parthasarathy, who taught Tamil at Delhi University for 25 years and was a Visiting Professor of Indology at Warsaw University during 1981-86, says, “I don’t believe awards are the only yardstick to decide the quality of writing.” Even the selection of the first recipient of the Jnanpith Award [Sankara Kurup] raised eyebrows among certain sections of literary figures. One of the reasons was that in a country of many languages such as India, it was a difficult decision to make as “poetry has the closest relationship to the distinctive culture of the region”, he points out.

All private awards are arbitrary, according to K. Satchidanandan, former Secretary of the Akademi and a poet-critic in Malayalam and English. Citing the case of his mother tongue, he says, “If you look at those who got the award and those who did not [Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, O.V. Vijayan, Vyloppilli Sreedhara Menon, and Edasseri], you will easily know [that] its value is relative. This is true even of the Nobel Prize,” he says, emphasising that “writers live on because of their works and people’s admiration for them, not the award they won”. S. Vaideeswaran, a veteran Tamil poet, feels the awards “depend more upon the author’s projection of his or her social and economic background apart from literature...the hardship he or she faced!!!! This has nothing to do with literature”.

Professor Parthasarathy, who received the Sahitya Akademi Award for 1977 and Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 2004, contends, “The Tamils have splendidly isolated themselves from the national landscape by boycotting the study of Hindi, whereas other south Indian languages concentrate on getting their best works translated into Hindi and English! The most important aspect in regard to Tamil is that there was a long tradition of those who were supposed to be well-educated in English and Sanskrit, but never bothered to study old or modern Tamil literature.”

Thiruppur Krishnan, writer and Editor of the Tamil journal Amudhasurabhi, citing the example of Jayakanthan, points out, “It is not just enough if you have the qualifications. You also require people who can articulate your case in a credible manner. In respect of the last Tamil recipient of the Jnanpith Award, this was what was done by literary personalities such as K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, who received the Akademi’s Fellowship in 1975 for his contribution to Indian writing in English; ‘Chitti’ P.G. Sundararajan, veteran writer-journalist; and K.S. Subramanian, who translated Jayakanthan’s works.” Of late, there has been a fall in the strength of literary critics who highlight Tamil works to non-Tamil audiences, particularly to those knowing only English, he says.

Referring to the time gap since the selection of the last Tamil awardee, A.J. Thomas, a poet in English, translator of several Malayalam works into English, and the Editor of The Greatest Malayalam Stories Ever Told, says, “I don’t know what the Jnanpith Award Committee does to counter this natural handicap, but whatever it is, that is not obviously working efficiently in the case of Tamil.” He cites the “naturally inadequate representation” of Tamil Jnanpith awardees on the award committee as one of the reasons for Tamil not getting its due, because previous awardees, he points out, automatically constitute a decisive section of the panel. The second significant reason could be the “comparative absence of good translations” of Tamil literary works till about a decade ago. “Now, there are many good translations from Tamil to English, and I think it is only a matter of time before the next award goes to a Tamil writer.”

To reinforce Mr. Thomas’ optimism, the Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation, a body under the School Education Department, is doing its bit to overcome the “lack of Tamil presence in the non-Tamil world”. In recent years, thanks to the initiative of enterprising civil servants, it has been functioning with the stated aim of “promoting the literature and culture of Tamil Nadu”. It has been bringing out, with the collaboration of 20 private publishers, a series of award-winning Tamil works in English, apart from other Indian languages. Mr. Thomas’ forecast of Tamil having its third Jnanpith Award winner in the near future is likely to come true sooner or later.