R. Vairamuthu Conferred 60th Jnanpith Award

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Prominent Tamil poet and lyricist R. Vairamuthu has been selected for the 60th Jnanpith Award for the year 2025.
He is only the third Tamil writer to receive this honor after Akilan and Jayakanthan, ending a 24-year wait for Tamil literature.
He previously received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2003 for his novel Kallikattu Ithikasam.

Instituted in 1961 by Bharatiya Jnanpith, this award is India's highest literary honor for extraordinary lifetime contributions by writers.
Widely considered as the "Nobel Prize of Indian literature," it celebrates the country's rich linguistic diversity and literary traditions.
Industrialist Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain and his wife Rama Jain established the award through Bharatiya Jnanpith, a cultural body created in 1944, with G. Sankara Kurup receiving the first award in 1965 for Malayalam literature.
Writer Ashapurna Devi became the first female winner in 1976 for Bengali literature, while Amitav Ghosh became the first English author to win it in 2018.
The award is given annually to an Indian citizen, moving from rewarding a single book between 1965 and 1981 to honoring an author's complete lifetime work from 1982 onwards.
Writers in all 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule along with English are eligible, but the award is never given posthumously.
Winners receive Rs 11 lakh in cash, a citation, and a bronze idol of Vagdevi (Saraswati), usually presented by the President of India.
A selection committee named Pravara Parishad, consisting of top scholars and experts, evaluates candidates based on literary creativity and cultural impact.