Delhi’s Hindi Academy renames top literary honours after nationalists and BJP-linked figures, dropping AAP-era award name and inviting entries for 16 categories.
New Delhi: Delhi government’s Hindi Academy has revamped its annual literary awards programme by renaming several existing ones after figures associated with Hindutva ideology and freedom fighters, reported PTI.
The ‘Veer Savarkar Samman,’ named after ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, recognises contributions to national consciousness and carries a cash prize of Rs 2 lakh, while the ‘Atal Bihari Vajpayee Sanskriti tatha Gyan Parampara Samman’ honours efforts to promote Indian culture and knowledge traditions, with a prize of Rs 5 lakh.
Meanwhile, the academy’s top honour, the ‘Hindi Academy Shalaka Samman,’ has been rechristened the ‘Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Shalaka Samman,’ with its cash prize bumped from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 7 lakh. The academy has also renamed its ‘Hindi Sevi Samman’ after veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra, who passed away last September, awarding individuals for their promotion of and service to the Hindi language.
The women litterateurs’ award, which earlier memorialised Santosh Koli, an anti-corruption activist, has been renamed after Rani Ahilyabai Holkar, a Marathi Hindu ruler. The award had been instituted by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government after her death in a 2013 road accident and gifts Rs 2 lakh to honourees for national consciousness.
Awards carrying a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh each are the ‘Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya Hindi Sahityakar Samman,’ ‘Baba Jorawar Singh Samman’ for children’s literature and the ‘Swami Vivekanand Yuva Pratibha Samman.’ Awardees for contributions to Hindi journalism will also receive Rs 1 lakh under the ‘Vidya Niwas Mishra Samman.’
Other honours include the ‘Nirmal Verma Samman’ for translation, ‘Ramchandra Shulka Hindi Utkarsh Samman,’ ‘Vasudev Sharan Agrawal Samman’ for folk writing, ‘Devendra Swaroop Samman’ for works in social sciences, ‘Mridula Sinha Samman’ for female writers and ‘Narendra Kohli Samman’ for contributions across literary forms.
The Hindi Academy is an autonomous body established in 1981 to promote and preserve Hindi language, literature and culture and runs the Sahityakar Samman Yojana, a programme honouring writers, poets and journalists from Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR).
Overall, 16 award categories have been instituted, carrying prizes ranging from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 7 lakh. The academy is accepting nominations for the academic years 2022-23, 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26 from eligible litterateurs till June 23, 2026. Details for all awards have been uploaded on the academy’s website.
This article went live on June twelfth, two thousand twenty six, at forty-eight minutes past eleven in the morning.
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