The Sahitya Akademi , India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

's National Academy of Letters, is an organisation dedicated to the promotion of literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

 in the languages of India

Languages of India

The languages of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-European languages—Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian languages...

. Founded on 12 March 1954, it is supported by, though independent of, the Indian government.

The Sahitya Akademi organises national and regional workshops and seminars; provides research and travel grants to authors; publishes books and journals, including the Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature; and presents the annual Sahitya Akademi Award

Sahitya Akademi Award

Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honor in India which Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of outstanding works in one of the following twenty-four major Indian languagesAssamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri,...

 of Rs. 100,000 (approx. USD 2,200) in each of the 24 languages it supports, as well as the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship

Sahitya Akademi Fellowship

The Sahitya Akademi Fellowship is a literary honour in India. Awarded by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, to the "immortals of literature," and limited to twenty one individuals at any given time, it is the highest literary honour conferred by the Government of India...

 for lifetime achievement. The Sahitya Akademi Library is one of the largest multi-lingual libraries in India, with a rich collection of books on literature and allied subjects. It also publishes two bimonthly literary journals -- Indian Literature

Indian Literature (journal)

Indian Literature is an English-language literary journal published bi-monthly by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters. the editor was A. J. Thomas, and Gopi Chand Narang, Sunil Gangopadhyaya and Agrahara Krishna Murthy, inspired by K...

 in English and Samkaleen Bharatiya Sahitya in Hindi.

Supported languages

• Assamese
  Assamese language
  Assamese is the easternmost Indo-Aryan language. It is used mainly in the state of Assam in North-East India. It is also the official language of Assam. It is also spoken in parts of Arunachal Pradesh and other northeast Indian states. Nagamese, an Assamese-based Creole language is widely used in...
  
  
• Bengali
  Bengali language
  Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
  
  
• Dogri
  Dogri language
  Dogri is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about five million people in Pakistan and India, chiefly in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, but also in northern Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, other parts of Jammu and Kashmir, and elsewhere. Dogri speakers are called Dogras, and the Dogri-speaking...
  
  
• English
  English language
  English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
  
  
• Gujarati
  Gujarati language
  Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...
  
  
• Hindi
• Kannada
  Kannada language
  Kannada or , is a language spoken in India predominantly in the state of Karnataka. Kannada, whose native speakers are called Kannadigas and number roughly 50 million, is one of the 30 most spoken languages in the world...
  
  
• Kashmiri
  Kashmiri language
  Kashmiri is a language from the Dardic sub-group and it is spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley, in Jammu and Kashmir. There are approximately 5,554,496 speakers in Jammu and Kashmir, according to the Census of 2001. Most of the 105,000 speakers or so in Pakistan are émigrés from the Kashmir...
  
  
• Konkani
  Konkani language
  KonkaniKonkani is a name given to a group of several cognate dialects spoken along the narrow strip of land called Konkan, on the west coast of India. This is, however, somewhat an over-generalisation. Geographically, Konkan is defined roughly as the area between the river Damanganga to the north...
  
  
• Maithili
  Maithili language
  Maithili language is spoken in the eastern region of India and South-eastern region of Nepal. The native speakers of Maithili reside in Bihar, Jharkhand,parts of West Bengal and South-east Nepal...
  
  
• Malayalam
  Malayalam language
  Malayalam , is one of the four major Dravidian languages of southern India. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India with official language status in the state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry. It is spoken by 35.9 million people...
  
  
• Meitei
• Marathi
  Marathi language
  Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
  
  
• Nepali
  Nepali language
  Nepali or Nepalese is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.It is the official language and de facto lingua franca of Nepal and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar...
  
  
• Oriya
  Oriya language
  Oriya , officially Odia from November, 2011, is an Indian language, belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. It is mainly spoken in the Indian states of Orissa and West Bengal...
  
  
• Punjabi
  Punjabi language
  Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language...
  
  
• Rajasthani
  Rajasthani language
  Rajasthani Rajasthani Rajasthani (Devanagari: , Perso-Arabic: is a language of the Indo-Aryan languages family. It is spoken by 50 million people in Rajasthan and other states of India and in some areas of Pakistan. The number of speakers may be up to 80 million worldwide...
  
  
• Sanskrit
• Sindhi
  Sindhi language
  Sindhi is the language of the Sindh region of Pakistan that is spoken by the Sindhi people. In India, it is among 22 constitutionally recognized languages, where Sindhis are a sizeable minority. It is spoken by 53,410,910 people in Pakistan, according to the national government's Statistics Division...
  
  
• Tamil
  Tamil language
  Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
  
  
• Telugu
  Telugu language
  Telugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...
  
  
• Urdu http://www.sahitya-akademi.gov.in/old_version/awa10322.htm#urdu

See also

• Jnanpith Award
  Jnanpith Award
  The Jnanpith Award is a literary award in India. Along with the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, it is one of the two most prestigious literary honours in the country...
  
  
• Sahitya Kala Parishad
  Sahitya Kala Parishad
  Sahitya Kala Parishad is the Cultural wing of the Govt. of National Capital Territory of Delhi of Delhi for music, dance, drama & fine arts, established in 1968, under the 'Department Of Art, Culture And Language'. It was registered under the Society's Registration Act, 1860 on July 31, 1975...
  
  
• List of Sahitya Akademi Award winners for Bengali
• List of Sahitya Akademi Award winners for Oriya

External links

• Sahitya Akademi , official website