Gulzar, Jagadguru Rambhadracharya to get 58th Jnanpith Award

New Delhi: The country's highest literary honour, the Jnanpith Award for 2023, is being conferred upon famous Urdu lyricist Gulzar and eminent Sanskrit writer Jagadguru Rambhadracharya.

The Jnanpith Award Selection Committee on Saturday announced that the 58th Jnanpith Award for 2023 was being given to two eminent writers, Jagadguru Rambhadracharya for Sanskrit and Gulzar for Urdu respectively.

The award will carry prize money of Rs 11 lakh, a citation and a statue of Vagdevi the goddess of speech.

The committee said that Jagadguru Rambhadracharya who was born in 1950 in Khandi Khurd Village of Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, is an eminent scholar, educationist, polyglot, writer, preacher, philosopher and a religious leader living in Chitrakoot, UP. He is one of the present four Jagadguru Ramanandacharyas of the Ramananda sect and has been holding this position since 1988. 

He is the founder president of Tulsi Peeth, a religious and social service institution named after Saint Tulsidas that is based in Chitrakoot. He is a polyglot who speaks 22 languages. He is a poet and writer in many languages including Sanskrit, Hindi, Awadhi, and Maithili.

He has authored more than 240 books and texts, including four epics (two in Sanskrit and two in Hindi), a Hindi commentary on the Ramcharitmanas, a poetic Sanskrit commentary on Ashtadhyayi and Sanskrit commentaries on Prasthanatrayi (Brahmasutra, Bhagavad Gita and Pradhan Upanishads). He is considered among India’s best known experts on Tulsidas and is the editor of an authentic copy of Ramcharitmanas, published by Tulsi Peeth.

In 2015, the Government of India honoured him with a Padma Vibhushan. The other recipient of the award is Sampooran Singh Kalra. Born in 1934, he is popularly known as Gulzar and is a famous lyricist of Hindi cinema.

The committee said that apart from this, he is a screenwriter, film director, playwright and famous poet. His works are mainly in Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi.

Gulzar was also bestowed the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2002 and the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award given by the Government of India, in 2004. In 2009, he received the Oscar Award for Best Song for ‘Jai Ho’ written by him for the film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ that was directed by Danny Boyle. He was also honoured with a Grammy Award for the same song.

Along with his long film journey, Gulzar has been setting new milestones in the field of literature. In poetry, he invented a new genre ‘Triveni,’ which is a non-mukaffa poem of three lines. Gulzar has always

created something new through his poetry. For some time now, he has also been paying serious attention to children’s poetry.