CDS (II) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 101 of 120

Correct — A, Dr. Rajendra Kishore Panda. The Kuvempu Rashtriya Puraskar for 2020 went to the Odia poet and novelist Rajendra Kishore Panda, who was born in 1944 in Sambalpur district and took his master's degree at the University of Allahabad. He was already among the most decorated writers in Odia — the Sahitya Akademi Award came to him in 1985 for the poetry collection Shailakalpa, Sambalpur University conferred a D.Litt on him in 2004, and the Gangadhar National Award followed in 2010. He published some sixteen collections of verse along with fiction, including the novel Chidabhas, and he died in 2025. The award itself is a national literary honour named after Kuvempu, the pen name of Kuppalli Venkatappa Puttappa, and it is given to a writer in any Indian language, which is how a Kannada memorial prize comes to be won by an Odia poet.

• (b)Amitav Ghosh — Ghosh is a novelist in English and the most decorated of the three wrong names, but his big Indian honour of this period is a different one — he received the 54th Jnanpith Award in December 2018, the first writer in English to be chosen for it.
• (c)Vikram Seth — Also an English-language writer, best known for A Suitable Boy. He is not the Kuvempu Puraskar recipient for 2020.
• (d)Chetan Bhagat — A writer of popular English fiction with no major literary award of this kind. He is in the list to give a familiar name to candidates who do not recognise the other three.

Kuvempu, the pen name of Kuppalli Venkatappa Puttappa, is one of the towering figures of twentieth-century Kannada literature. His epic Sri Ramayana Darshanam, published in two volumes in 1949 and 1957, brought him the Jnanpith Award in 1967, making him the first Kannada writer to receive it, and he wrote the Karnataka state anthem, Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate. He held the Padma Bhushan from 1958 and the Padma Vibhushan from 1988. A national literary prize carries his name.

Awards questions are won by having a filing system, not by luck. The useful cut here is by language: the correct answer is the only writer among the four who works in an Indian language other than English, and a prize instituted in memory of a Kannada poet to honour Indian-language writing lands naturally on such a writer. If a name is completely unfamiliar in an awards question, that unfamiliarity is often a clue rather than a problem — regional-language laureates are exactly the names general-knowledge papers reach for. Note also the date convention: the Kuvempu award for 2020 was announced and given later, so the year in the question is the year of the award and not necessarily the year of the ceremony.

• Rajendra Kishore Panda (1944-2025) was an Indian poet and novelist writing in Odia; he received the Kuvempu Rashtriya Puraskar for 2020.
• He won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1985 for his poetry collection Shailakalpa and the Gangadhar National Award in 2010.
• Kuvempu, whose real name was Kuppalli Venkatappa Puttappa, wrote in Kannada and was the first Kannada writer to receive the Jnanpith Award, in 1967.
• Kuvempu wrote the Karnataka state anthem, Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate, and held the Padma Bhushan (1958) and Padma Vibhushan (1988).
• Amitav Ghosh received the 54th Jnanpith Award in December 2018, the first Indian writer in English to be chosen for it.

• Assuming a prize named after a Kannada writer must go to a Kannada writer; the Kuvempu Puraskar is open to Indian-language writing generally.
• Confusing the Jnanpith Award with the Sahitya Akademi Award — the first is a single national honour for a body of work, the second is given every year in each recognised language.
• Matching the award year to the ceremony year; announcements often come a year or more later.

As a one-line who-won item on a named literary prize for a stated year, or as a match between writers and the languages they write in.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Rajendra Kishore Panda, who received the Kuvempu Rashtriya Puraskar for 2020, wrote in which language?

  • (a)Kannada
  • (b)Odia
  • (c)Marathi
  • (d)Assamese

  Answer(b) Odia — he was among the most decorated Odia poets of his generation and had won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Shailakalpa in 1985.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Kuvempu, after whom the award is named, was the first writer in which language to receive the Jnanpith Award?

  • (a)Malayalam
  • (b)Telugu
  • (c)Kannada
  • (d)Tamil

  Answer(c) Kannada — he received it in 1967 for the epic Sri Ramayana Darshanam.