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17-788: The award was instituted by the Samvad India Foundation, a nonprofit charitable trust named for the Sanskrit word for dialogue, which was co-founded by Makarand Paranjape , a professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and Vijay Mishra , a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Murdoch University in Perth . Its purpose was to honour writers of Indian origin settled abroad, mainly those in South-East Asia, and to promote education and cultural contributions to India and

34-401: A difficult relationship." In 2013, Makarand R. Paranjape published a novel called Body Offering . The novel is a tale of a middle-aged man's extra-marital affair with a woman 25 years younger than him. The Sunday Guardian dubbed the book as one "that walked in the long shadow cast" by Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabakov's 1955 novel Lolita . In 1987, Paranjape married Sarina,

51-781: A graduate student at UIUC. In 2006, he married Devaki Singh, daughter of Arun Singh . They divorced in 2014. He is now married to Gayatri Iyer. Ritu Menon Ritu Menon is an Indian feminist , writer and publisher. In 1984, Menon co-founded Kali for Women , India's first exclusively feminist publishing house, along with Urvashi Butalia , her longtime collaborator. In 2003, Kali for Women shut shop due to lack of commercial viability compounded by irreconcilable personal differences between Menon and Butalia. Thereafter, Menon independently founded Women Unlimited, another feminist publishing house. She has also written numerous newspaper articles and op-eds . Her writing focuses on violence against women , religion's take on women and

68-550: A member of the board of advisors for the award. The seven recipients were: The award was bestowed by a three-member jury of "scholars of international standing". Those who served as jurors for selection of the recipient included: In addition, an International Advisory Board was assembled, generally including some members of the jury as well as other scholars, with the initial board also including Ritu Menon , Malashri Lal, Alastair Niven , and Vijay Mishra. Makarand Paranjape Makarand R. Paranjape (born 31 August 1960)

85-758: Is an Indian novelist, poet, author of Body Offering , a former director at Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla , and former professor of English at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi . Makarand R. Paranjape was born in 1960 in Ahmedabad , Gujarat . He was educated at the Bishop Cotton Boys' School in Bangalore followed by a B.A. (Hons.) in English at St. Stephen's College , University of Delhi , in 1980. Thereafter, he joined

102-624: The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from where he received his M.A. in English Literature and, subsequently, a PhD, in 1985, on the topic Mysticism in Indian English Poetry . Makarand Paranjape had started his career in 1980 as a teaching assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and returned to India in 1986 to join the University of Hyderabad , first as lecturer and then reader. In 1994, he joined

119-604: The Commonwealth Literature Prize committee (1999-2001) and the Raja Rao Award for Literature of the South Asian Diaspora jury (2004)”. Meenakshi Mukherjee , chair of the last awarding jury, died in 2009, and the award was discontinued that same year. As of 2021, it has not since been bestowed, and has been described as "discontinued". The last recipient of the award, Vijay Mishra, had also previously been

136-509: The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Delhi as an associate professor, and between 1999 and 2018, he served as professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University , New Delhi. Paranjape was appointed as Director of IIAS in August 2018. In August 2020, charges of irregularities filed against him by another office-bearer, leading to a spat with the chairman and the vice-chairman at

153-636: The Indian writing establishment would regard me in that light,” she says. Of the third recipient, Edwin Thumboo , who had previously been a juror for the award, the Pune Mirror wrote: Among the awards he’s received are the National Book Development Council of Singapore’s Book Awards for Poetry (three times); the inaugural S.E.A. Write Award; Singapore’s first Cultural Medallion for Literature, and

170-480: The Meritorious Services Medal. The Raja Rao Award he received in 2002 is very special to him, says Thumboo, who launched his country’s first National Poetry Festival in 2015. Of the fifth winner, David Dabydeen , The Encyclopedia of Twentieth‐Century Fiction noted that he was the “winner of many awards including the 2004 Raja Rao Award for Literature and the 2008 Anthony N. Sabga Award for Literature --

187-716: The South Asian diaspora. It was named for Raja Rao, with his permission; Rao having been born in Mysore , Karnataka , India , and eventually moved first to France, and then to live for many decades in the United States. There is no cash prize attached to the award. The inaugural recipient of the Award was K. S. Maniam , who was bestowed the award in 2000. One literary journal reported that "the 2000 Raja Rao Award that Maniam received in New Delhi

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204-457: The form of the goddess Tara . When The Samvad India Foundation singled out Yasmine for the Raja Rao award in 2002, they made her a gift of the beautiful little figurine. This international prize celebrates writers and scholars who have made an outstanding contribution to the literature of the South Asian diaspora, and the honour delighted Yasmine even as it took her by surprise. “I never expected that

221-436: The gender divide across the society from a strongly feminist and left-wing perspective. Over a Zoom call, she talked about Address Book: A Publishing Memoir in the time of COVID , which she wrote during the pandemic without an explicit plan to publish a book. “It became a form of putting down what I was going through, remembering, thinking, reading, and worrying about,” she says (13 July 2021). In 2000-2001 she served on

238-598: The institution. Paranjape offered a rebuttal to his critics through an interview with The Wire in April 2021. However, it was later reported that he had violated the MoA (memorandum of association) of the institute as its Director and that it was not any clash with other specific individual heads at the institution. In his coffee-table book of poems published in January 2022 as Identity's Last Secret , Paranjape discussed how he "came out of

255-578: The largest literary prize in the Caribbean.” Likewise, another source wrote: Dabydeen is extremely highly decorated as a writer. The Anthony N Sabga Award was actually his second for 2008, having, a little more than two months ago, gone to India to receive the Hind Rattan (Jewel of India) Award presented by the Government of India. What is more, that was also his second recent Indian recognition, having been

272-566: The winner of the 2004 Raja Rao Award, given in India for outstanding contribution to literature in the Indian diaspora. The Memoriam of Victor Ramraj, who served as a juror for the awarding of the honor, lauded his participation in committees “too numerous to mention individually”, but noted that “some of the most prestigious were his presidency of the Canadian Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies (1992-95), his membership on

289-576: Was a definite boost to his international acclaim as a writer." The second winner was Yasmine Gooneratne , whose international scholarship was described as being recognized with " Macquarie University 's first higher doctoral degree (D.Litt.), the Order of Australia , and the Samvad India Foundation's Raja Rao Award which acknowledges authors who deal with the South Asian Diaspora in their literary work." The Sunday Times of Sri Lanka wrote of Gooneratne: When Saraswati did come into Yasmine’s life... she took

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