Poet Vairamuthu Receives Jnanpith Award
Call for a University Dedicated to Literature in Acceptance Speech
Poet Vairamuthu has been awarded the Jnanpith Award—India’s highest literary honor—this year. This marks the third time the Tamil language has received this award in 25 years.
Former Union Minister Dr. Karan Singh presented the award at a ceremony held in Delhi on July 13. Representatives from the Jnanpith organization—Sahu Akhilesh Jain, Smt. Mudath Jain, Pratibha Ray, and R.N. Tiwari—were present on the dais. Upon receiving the award, poet Vairamuthu delivered his acceptance speech:
“I was born into a farming family in Mettur, a tiny hamlet of just sixty households located in the southwestern corner of Tamil Nadu—a remote outpost that barely registered on the map of India. In the 1950s, the Vaigai Dam was constructed across the Vaigai River; fourteen villages were evacuated to create the reservoir’s catchment area. My birthplace was one of them.
As the village—already submerged up to the waist—began to sink up to the neck, a mother from that village climbed ashore, wailing, her eyes dry of tears but her saree soaked through. She carried a baby girl on her hip and held a young boy by the hand. At that moment, she did not know that the baby girl on her hip would pass away within six months, or that the boy she led by the hand would, over the next seventy years, go on to receive the Jnanpith Award. The boy who reached the shore that day with his shorts soaked through is the very man standing before you now on this Jnanpith stage; his name is Vairamuthu.
In Vadugapatti, where we had moved to make a living, the classroom taught him the alphabet; poverty taught him about life. Together, they took him by the hand and led him to the world of poetry.
Literature is that which perceives the good; literature is that which instills hope. The Upanishads say, ‘If you do not get what you desire, learn to desire what you have.’ Literature, however, says, ‘If you do not desire what you have, then create what you desire.’
This is the 60th Jnanpith Award.
In recognition of my half-century of writing, the Jnanpith has bestowed upon me a sixty-gram vessel of Amrit (nectar). I cannot claim sole ownership of this. A gram belongs to Thiruvalluvar, a gram to Ilango Adigal, a gram to Kambar; a drop each to Bharathi, Bharathidasan, Anna, Kalaignar, and Kannadasan. To them…” Is that all? A drop for Kalidasa, a drop for Veda Vyasa; a drop for Valmiki, for Tagore, Shakespeare, Ferdowsi, and Milton; for Shelley, Byron, Keats, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound; and finally, a drop for Kahlil Gibran—after sharing it all out like that, perhaps only the moisture clinging to the ladle becomes my share.
This award will not make me lean back in a reclining chair. It is not a bundle of grass offered to a horse that has been running; it is yet another lash of the whip upon that horse. The horse will pick up even more speed; I will run with a frenzied passion. My Tamil will continue to do justice to this award.
I have a few questions.
It has been 113 years since India received its only Nobel Prize for Literature. Has India failed to produce a creator worthy of the Nobel Prize since then? Or has the Nobel Committee failed to discover one? Did India, which has produced so many ‘Miss Worlds,’ forget to produce world-class poets?
We establish a university for every specific technology; shouldn’t we establish a university dedicated solely to literature? When will that happen?
I conclude my acceptance speech with these questions. I express my gratitude to every member of society who deemed me worthy of this award.”
—he said.
Footnote:
The 60th Jnanpith Award was presented to poet Vairamuthu at a ceremony held in Delhi. Former Union Minister Dr. Karan Singh presented the award. Akhilesh Jain, Managing Trustee of the Jnanpith; Dr. Pratibha Ray, Chairperson of the Selection Committee; and other officials were present.