Indian literature refers to the literature produced on the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and in the Republic of India thereafter. The Republic of India has 22 officially recognized languages.
The earliest works of Indian literature were oraly transmitted. Sanskrit literature begins with the Rig Veda a collection of sacred hymns dating to the period 1500–1200 BCE. The Sanskrit epics Ramayana and Mahabharata appeared towards the end of the first millennium BCE. Classical Sanskrit literature flourished in the first few centuries of the first millennium CE[citation needed], as did the Tamil[citation needed]Sangam literature[citation needed], and the Pāli Canon[citation needed].
In the medieval period, literature in Kannada and Telugu appeared in the 5th and 11th centuries respectively. Later, literature in Marathi, Bengali, various dialects of Hindi, Persian and Urdu began to appear as well. Early in the 20th century, Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore became India's first Nobel laureate. In contemporary Indian literature, there are two major literary awards; these are the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship and the Jnanpith Award. Eight Jnanpith awards each have been awarded in Hindi and Kannada, followed by five in Bengali, four in Malayalam, and three in Gujarati, Marathi and Urdu and 2 each in Assamese, Tamil and Telegu
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (Hindi: अहमद सलमान रुशदी (Devanagari), احمد سلمان رشدی (Nastaʿlīq); /sælˈmɑːn ˈrʊʃdi/; born 19 June 1947) is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He is said to combine magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions and migrations between East and West.
His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the centre of a major controversy, provoking protests from Muslims in several countries, some violent. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwā issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989.
Rushdie was appointed Commandeur dans Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in January 1999. In June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II dubbed him Knight Bachelor for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945.
Khushwant Singh (Punjabi: ਖ਼ੁਸ਼ਵੰਤ ਸਿੰਘ [xʊʃʋən̪t̪ sɪ́ŋɡ]; born 2 February 1915) is a prominent Indian novelist and journalist. Singh's weekly column, "With Malice towards One and All", carried by several Indian newspapers, is among the most widely-read columns in the country.
An important Indo-Anglian novelist, Singh is best known for his trenchant secularism, his humor, and an abiding love of poetry. His comparisons of social and behavioral characteristics of Westerners and Indians are laced with acid wit. He served as editor of several well-known literary and news magazines, as well as two major broadsheet newspapers, through the 1970s and 1980s.He is a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan the second highest civilian award in India.
He was born in Hadali District Khushab, Punjab (which now lies in Pakistan), in a Sikh family. His father, Sir Sobha Singh, was a prominent builder in Lutyens' Delhi.
He was educated at Modern School, New Delhi, Government College, Lahore, St. Stephen's College in Delhi and King's College, London, before reading for the Bar at the Inner Temple.
Govind Vināyak Karandikar (Marathi: गोविंद विनायक करंदीकर) (August 23, 1918 – March 14, 2010), better known as Vindā Karandikar (Marathi: विंदा करंदीकर), was a well-known Marathi poet and writer. He was also an essayist, literary critic, and a translator.
He was conferred with 39th Jnanpith Award in 2003, which is the highest literary award in India. He also received some other awards for his literary work including Keshavasut Prize, Soviet Land Nehru Literary Award, Kabir Samman, and the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 1996
Karandikar was born on August 23, 1918, at Dhalval village in the present-day Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra.
Karandikar's poetic works include Svedgangā (River of Sweat) (1949), Mrudgandha (1954), Dhrupad (1959), Jātak (1968), and Virupika (1980). Two anthologies of his selected poems, Sanhita (1975) and Adimaya (1990) were also published. His poetic works for children include Rānichā Bāg (1961), Sashyāche Kān (1963), and Pari Ga Pari (1965).
Experimentation has been a feature of Karandikar's Marathi poems. He also translated his own poems in English, which were published as "Vinda Poems" (1975). He also modernized old Marathi literature like Dnyaneshwari and Amrutānubhawa.
Abdur Rehman Rahi (born March 6, 1925, Srinagar) is a Kashmiri poet, translator and critic. He was awarded the Indian Sahitya Akademi Award in 1961 for his poetry collection Nawroz-i-Saba, the Padma Shri in 2000, and India's highest literary award, the Gyanpith Award (for the year 2004) in 2007. He is the first Kashmiri writer to be awarded the Gyanpith, India's highest literary award for his poetic collection Siyah Rud jearen Man( In heavy downpour of Black rain ).
Rehman Rahi began his career as a clerk in the Public Works Department of the Government for a brief period in 1948 and was associated with the Progressive Writers' Association, of which he became the General Secretary. He also edited a few issues of Kwang Posh, the literary journal of the Progressive Writer's Association. He was later a sub-editor in the Urdu daily Khidmat. He did an M.A. in Persian (1952) and in English (1962) from Jammu and Kashmir University where he taught Persian. He was on the editorial board of the Urdu daily Aajkal in Delhi from 1953 to 1955.He was also associated with the Cultural wing of communist Party of Kashmir during his student days.As translator he did excellent translation of Baba Farid's sufi poetry to Kashmiri from Original Punjabi.Camus and Sartre are some visible effects on his poems while Dina nath Naadim's influence on his poetry is also visible especially in earlier works.