Sahitya Akademi Award

The Sahitya Akademi Award is the second-highest literary honor in India. 

The Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, aims at "promoting Indian literature throughout the world". 

Although the Akademi is under the control of the  Ministry of Culture, Government of India, it functions as an autonomous body

The Akademi annually confers on writers of "the most outstanding books of literary merit". 

The awards are given for works published in any of the 24 languages recognised by the akademi

 Instituted in 1954, the award recognizes and promotes excellence in writing and acknowledge new trends.

 The annual process of selecting awardees runs for the preceding twelve months. 

As of 2015, the award comprises a plaque and a cash prize of ₹1 lakh (US$1,500).

 As of 2015, the award has been presented to 56 writers.

The inaugural edition of the award recognised works in twelve languages – Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

In Tamil, the first recipient of the award was R. P. Sethu Pillai, who was honoured for his collection of essays entitled Tamil Inbam in 1955. 

Posthumous recipients of the award include - 

 Kalki Krishnamurthy (1956), Bharathidasan (1969), Ku. Alagirisami (1970), Aadhavan Sundaram (1987) and C. S. Chellappa (2001)