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Ashapoorna Devi, the first woman to receive the Jnanpith Award, received it in which year?
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Answer: Option D — 1976
Detailed Solution
Explanation
The Bengali writer Ashapoorna Devi received the Jnanpith Award in 1976, becoming the first woman to receive India's highest literary honour. She was honoured for her novel "Pratham Pratishruti" (The First Promise).
Ashapoorna Devi (1909-1995) was born in Kolkata. She grew up in a conservative family and was not sent to school, but she educated herself by reading the books at home. She began writing at the age of 13, and her first poem was published in a children's magazine. Over a long career, she wrote more than 150 novels and hundreds of short stories, as well as many books for children.
She is best known for her trilogy of novels "Pratham Pratishruti" (1964), "Subarnalata" (1967) and "Bakul Katha" (1974). The trilogy tells the story of three generations of women in Bengal, Satyabati, her daughter Subarnalata and her granddaughter Bakul, and shows their struggle for education, freedom and dignity in a society dominated by men. Through her simple and realistic stories of family life, she showed the inner world of women and the injustices they faced. Her works have been translated into many languages, and several have been made into films and television serials. She received the Padma Shri (1976), the Rabindra Puraskar and many other honours.
The Jnanpith Award was first given in 1965, to the Malayalam poet G. Sankara Kurup. Other women who have received it include Amrita Pritam (Punjabi), Mahasweta Devi (Bengali), Indira Goswami (Assamese), Qurratulain Hyder (Urdu), Krishna Sobti (Hindi) and Pratibha Ray (Odia).
Why not the other options?
1965 is the year the first Jnanpith Award was given, to G. Sankara Kurup.
1984 is not linked with Ashapoorna Devi's award.
1992 is not linked with Ashapoorna Devi's award.
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Link Ashapoorna Devi with the first Jnanpith Award won by a woman (1976) and her novel "Pratham Pratishruti".💬 Discussions on this question
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Awards & Honours — Preparation
This question tests your understanding of Awards & Honours, a key topic in the General Knowledge section. The detailed solution above uses a step-by-step approach to show the reasoning, and where available, a shortcut that helps you solve similar questions in under 90 seconds during the actual exam.
This topic covers national and international awards: Bharat Ratna and the Padma awards, gallantry awards, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, Jnanpith and Sahitya Akademi awards, sports awards, Nobel Prizes, the Ramon Magsaysay Award and other global honours, along with the fields they recognise and notable winners. Static questions ask about the field each award is given for, the year it started, and the first winners. For example, the Jnanpith Award is for literature and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award is for cinema. Questions on recent winners change every year, so revise those from the latest announcements and treat older winner lists as background only. Practise the awards and honours questions below, written in the style of the general awareness sections of exams such as SSC, banking, railways, CUET GAT, MAH CET and CLAT. Each question comes with a detailed explanation that adds related facts, so every question helps you revise more than one point.