President of India, Pranab Mukherjee presented the 24th Saraswati Sammaan for the year 2014 to Dr. M Veerappa Moily, Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha) in New Delhi.
He received the award for his epic Sri Ramayana Mahanveshanam written in Kannada.
Divided into five volumes, Ramayana Mahanveshanam was first published in 2007 in Kannada. Later the poem was translated into English, Hindi, Telugu and Tamil.
Moily’s work was selected for the award in March 2015 by a 13-member panel of scholars and writers headed by former Chief Justice of India RC Lahoti.
Ramayana Mahaveshanam
In the poem Ramayana Mahaveshanam, Moily tried to explore the Ramarajya or the true principle of the ideal State from a secular and modern point of view in his collection of poems.
About Moily and his work as an author
- 75-year-old Moily a senior Congress leader from Karnataka is an established writer in Kannada.
- He has authored four novels, three collections of poetry, a number of plays and numerous essays.
- His novels includes:
- Kotta (made into telefilms in both Kannada and Hindi)
- Tembare (translated into English under the title, The Edge of Time)
- Suligali: Typhoon
- Sagaradeepa: Ocean lamp
- His poems includes:
- Halu-Jenu Maththe
- Nadeyali Samara
- Yakshaprashne
- He has authored four volumes of an English book named Unleashing India
Saraswati Samman
- Saraswati Samman is an annual award that is given in recognition of outstanding prose or poetry literary works in Indian languages that are listed in Schedule VIII of the constitution of India.
- This Samman is given for the literary works of last 10 years. The award was established in 1991 by KK Birla Foundation and carries a prize amount of 10 lakh rupees along with citation and a plaque.
- The KK Birla Foundation has instituted three awards in the field of literature. These are Saraswati Samman, Vyas Samman (for Hindi) and Bihari Puraskar (for Hindi and Rajasthani writers of Rajasthan).
- On 23 September 2014, the Saraswati Samman 2013 was given to Govind Mishra, the renowned Hindi author for his novel Dhool Paudhon Par that was published in 2008.
