• Eminent English author Ruskin Bond was awarded the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Fellowship at his Mussoorie home.

• Bond was named a recipient of Akademi’s highest honour in September 2021. However, due to his ill health, he could not be given the honour in person. 

• Sahitya Akademi president Madhav Kaushik and secretary K. Sreenivasarao handed the plaque to Bond at his home on May 11.

Who is Ruskin Bond?

• Ruskin Bond has written over 300 short stories, essays and novels and more than 30 books for children besides several other works.

• He is the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1992, Sahitya Akademi’s Bal Sahitya Puraskar in 2012, Padma Shri in 1999 and Padma Bhushan in 2019 among other prestigious awards.

• Born on May 19, 1934 in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, Bond has been actively writing for more than 50 years and has written in various genres of literature.  

• His notable works include ‘Vagrants in the Valley’, ‘Once Upon a Monsoon Time’, ‘Angry River’, ‘Strangers in the Night’, ‘All Roads Lead to Ganga’, ‘Tales of Fosterganj’, ‘Leopard on the Mountain’ and ‘Too Much Trouble’.  

• The 1978 Hindi film ‘Junoon’ is based on Bond’s historical novel ‘A Flight of Pigeons’ (Indian Rebellion of 1857). 

• Adaptations of his stories were aired on Doordarshan as the TV serial ‘Ek Tha Rusty’ and several of his stories like ‘The Night Train at Deoli’, ‘Time Stops at Shamli’ and ‘Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra’ were included in the school curriculum in India. 

Sahitya Akademi

• Sahitya Akademi, India’s National Academy of Letters, was established in March 1954 by the government of India. 

• It is an autonomous body under the ministry of culture with the objectives to work for the development of Indian letters and to set high literary standards, foster and co-ordinate literary activities in all the Indian languages and promote through them the cultural unity of the country.

It aims to:

i) Promote good taste and healthy reading habits.

ii) Keep alive the intimate dialogue among the various linguistic and literary zones and groups through seminars, symposia, lectures, discussions and readings.

iii) Increase the pace of mutual translations through workshops and individual assignments.

iv) Develop a serious literary culture through publication of translations, journals, monographs, individual creative works of every genre, anthologies, encyclopedia, bibliographies, histories of literatures, dictionaries, etc. 

• The Akademi has a special programme called Gramalok for the writers from remote village areas.

• The Akademi has recently introduced a new programme titled Dalit Chetna to give exposure especially to Dalit writers. 

• Akademi gives 24 awards annually to literary works in the languages it has recognised and an equal number of awards to literary translations from and into the languages of India, both after a year-long process of scrutiny, discussion and selection.

• Sahitya Akademi bestows Bal Sahitya Puraskar on the best literary works in the field of children’s literature and Yuva Puraskar for young writers who have achieved excellence in creative writing and Bhasha Samman for significant contribution to classical and medieval literature and unrecognised languages. 

• It also awards fellowships and honorary fellowships to eminent writers, Indian and non-Indian, and Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy Fellowship and Premchand Fellowship to a person of eminence in the field of art, culture, literature and language studies, and to scholars doing research on Indian literature or to creative writers from the SAARC countries other than India.

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