The selection committee of the most prestigious literary award in the country – Saraswati Samman – has finalised Malayalam poetry ‘Roudra Sathwikam’ by Prabha Varma for the award for the year 2023.
Prabha Varma is a poet, litterateur, lyricist and a media person. The bilingual writer, who writes in Malayalam and English with equal elan, completes 50 years of creative writing this year, and is presently working as the Media Secretary to the Chief Minister of Kerala.
According to an official statement, the selection for the Saraswati Samman is made by a high level ‘Chayan Parishad’ presided over by Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri, former Judge of Supreme Court, New Delhi.
The Saraswati Samman, which was instituted by the KK Birla Foundation in 1991, is recognized as the most prestigious and the highest literary award in the country and is conferred every year to acknowledge the outstanding literary work written in any Indian language mentioned in Schedule VIII to the Constitution of India, by an Indian citizen and published during the last 10 years.
The Samman carries a prize money of Rs 15 lakhs, a Citation and a Plaque.
For the award for the year 2023, books published between 2013- 2022 were intensively discussed by 22 language committees, following which they recommended one book each from across 22 languages to five regional committees for further selection.
This year, five books were shortlisted and sent to the main selection committee for finalising the recipient of Saraswati Samman, 2023.
The five books that were shortlisted included Aakhri Sawariyaan(Urdu Novel) by Syed Mohd. Ashraf, Mita-Bhas Samagra (Assamese Poetry) by Nagen Saikia, Posra (Santhali Novel) by Gangadhar Hansda, Roudra Sathwikam (Malayalam Poems) by Prabha Varma and Banaras Diary (Gujarati Poetry) by Harish Meenashru.
In the meeting of the ‘Chayan Parishad,’ Roudra Sathwikam by Prabha Varma was selected and declared for the award.
The KK Birla Foundation, which is a literary and cultural organization, has instituted three awards in the field of literature, that include Saraswati Samman, Vyas Samman (for Hindi), and Bihari Puraskar (for Hindi and Rajasthani writers of Rajasthan).
Saraswati Samman is the most prestigious out of the three, and no other award has such an elaborate process involving a deep comparative study.
The selection in this award is entirely done by the committee which includes outstanding scholars and writers of the country under the Chairmanship of Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri.
The process is in fact a fully integrated three-tier arrangement.