Outstanding literary works awarded

Every year since its inception in 1954, the Sahitya Akademi Award prizes to the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the major Indian languages recognised by the Akademi. The 2016 awards were presented to 24 writers at a glittering ceremony on February 22 at Kamani Auditorium in the national Capital.

The ceremony began with invocation. Dr K. Sreenivasarao, Secretary, Sahitya Akademi, welcomed the President and Vice President of Sahitya Akademi, the Chief Guest, other dignitaries, Award winners and the audience.

Dr K. Sreenivasarao read out the citations and Dr Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari, President, Sahitya Akademi, conferred the Awards on the awardees. Sri Jerry Pinto (English), Dr Sitanath Acharya (Sanskrit), Sri Chhatrapal (Dogri) and Sri NandlalJaveri (Sindhi) could not attend the Awards presentation ceremony due to some personal reasons. In his Presidential address, he observed that Sahitya Akademi Award is not a prize but an honor given to the writers and stated that the writer or poet does not belong to any one region or any other human stratification, rather it is the humanness of a writer and human values of his / her writings that earmark one. In our country there are millions of talented litterateurs in the countryside but talent alone cannot make one a good writer or poet but it is practice that makes a man perfect. Dr Tiwari appealed to all the writers of India to possess the quality of fearlessness and equanimity in outlook – to face any problem in life and to portray the evils and injustice in society.

Dr Jayant Vishnu Narlikar, distinguished physicist and eminent Marathi writer was the Chief Guest. In his speech, Dr Narlikar said that though he does not have depth of literary knowledge, he is well acquainted with science and technology and added that literature can be expressed through technology in a better way and coupled with the concepts of science. He observed that the present-day technology-filled societies should think of the future generations and try to preserve literature of the time as it is literature that reflects values and culture of the society and not technology. Dr Narlikar stated that the effects of science can be best described only through literature and only by litterateurs. This is the biggest relevance of literature, even the classical one, in the digital era and appealed to the

writers to pen more science-based stories and poems.