Sunil Gangopadhyay elected as new president of Sahitya Akademi

Sunil Gangopadhyay got the rare privilege by becoming the new President of Sahitya Akademi, India’s most valued literary body after defeating two of his rivals on Wednesday.

The 73 year new president had 45 votes in his share while the other two Malayalam writer M T Vasudevan and Satyavrat Shastri, a Professor in Sanskrit got 40 and 7 votes respectively.

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Later after winning the post Sunil said, “It was a close thing between MT Vasudevan Nair and me. I could have lost. In fact, I was quite prepared for defeat.”

He later said that his priorities will be to focus oral and tribal languages through publications, seminars and other organisational efforts in his five year tenure.

He was born on 7th September 1934 in Faridpur in Bangladesh; Sunil acquired Master's degree in Bengali from the University of Calcutta in 1954. He has been associated with the Ananda Bazar group, a major publishing house in Kolkata, for many years, was serving the post of Vice President of the Sahitya Akademi before becoming the president.

This Bengali poet and novelist of over 200 books take pleasure to declare that his first love is poetry; he has founded Krittibas, a poetry magazine which become dais for a number of budding poets. Some of his translated poems under the title For You, Neera and Murmur in the Woods have been extremely popular in the world of literature.

His prose including Arjun, Pratidwandi, Aranyer Din-Raatri, have been filmed by Satyajit Ray. Abar Aranya was too made into film by Gautam Ghosh. His book Sei Somay a fiction based on history won the Sahitya Akademi Award for the year 1985. Pratham Alo and Purbo-Paschim too got rave reviews in literary society.

He is also the winner of the Bankim Puraskar and the Ananda Puraskar twice.

Other than novel and poetry he has written travelogues, children's fiction, short stories, features, and essays.

With his experience and foresighted the Akademi seems to have got the right person. His drive to promote tribal languages shows his respect towards this unexplored region in literature.

2007 Sahitya Akademi Award announced

On Wednesday Twenty four eminent writers are conferred with the Sahitya Akademi Award 2007 for their priceless contribution in promoting literary activities in India.

A presentation ceremony organised by the Akademi at the Sahitya Akademi Auditorium bestowed the writers with the second highest literary honour established by government of India.

Veteran Bangla literate Sunil Gangopadhyay as the newly elected president of the Akademi offered citation and awards to the winners for the year 2007.

Poetry, novel, short story and drama collections as popular genre regarded as driving tool for literary publication and promotion in India. Novel brought reorganisation for eight writers along with six collections of poems, two books, three plays and biographies were honoured.

Eminent writer Amarkant was conferred in Hindi language category while for English, it was Maltirao for her book -- Disorderly women.