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The JCB Literature Foundation is a not-for-profit organization and is a result of JCB’s desire to create an enduring cultural legacy in India that is based on their substantial and long-standing involvement in the country’s social and economic life. The Foundation’s mission is to promote the art of literature in India via working towards enhancing the prestige and the success of contemporary Indian literature, increasing literary awareness, creating greater prominence for literary writers in Indian cultural and intellectual life, foster translation of and between Indian languages, and to communicate to readers everywhere the full diversity of Indian Literature by making a long term and sustained contribution in promoting literature in India.
B-1 / I-1, 2nd Floor, Mohan Co-operative Industrial Estate, Mathura Road, New Delhi - 110044 India
The JCB Literature Foundation initiated the Qissa Pitara Project in 2022, with an aim to inculcate the habit of reading for joy, promote free thinking, creativity, and imagination in children, and provide access to knowledge to those who are marginalized.
The Foundation partners with organisations working in the areas of education to set up child-friendly libraries in schools and community centres to provide access to books and create a culture of reading among children from rural and marginalized communities. It also works towards promoting community ownership by building the capacity of teachers and librarians to manage the library and conduct reading activities for children. All of this helps increase reading levels, promoting joy of reading through a number of activities such as read-alouds, storytelling and art and crafts.
The seeds for The Community Library Project (TCLP) were sown in the early 2010’s with a read-aloud program conducted by volunteers, for children attending the Ramditti J R Narang Deepalaya Learning Centre in New Delhi.
At the center of the program was the idea that "Reading Is Thinking" - that everyone, regardless of their social or economic background, had the right to books and other tools of learning. In order to actualize this, one had to acknowledge the serious lack of free, community libraries in India that welcomed all, especially in those communities that had historically been left out (or actively kept out) of any discourse around books & reading.
In 2014-15, the first library was set up, in partnership with the NGO Deepalaya and Narang Trust. Today, TCLP has set up 3 libraries in Delhi & Gurugram, catering to a membership of over 6000 children & adults, 7 days a week. The JCB Literature Foundation supports the running of the Kotla Library and the accessibility programme across all TCLP branches.
The Post Graduate Diploma in Literary Translation is aimed to train translators to bring new works from Indian languages to English readers worldwide. This two-semester programme is delivered online with two additional offline sessions. The programme involves hands-on training in literary translation and courses on the production, circulation and reception of translation in India, as well as digital tools and design, production and marketing avenues for literary translations. Students produce a publishable translation of a literary work as part of the Translation Studio.
The programme is designed under the leadership of Professor Tejaswini Niranjana, an eminent translator, winner of multiple translation awards like the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award, State Sahitya Akademi Award, the DSC Prize for South Asian fiction, and the National Translation Award for Prose 2020 given by the American Literary Translators’ Association.
The JCB Prize for Literature is a Rs 25-lakh award presented each year to a distinguished work of fiction by an Indian author.
The Prize aims to celebrate Indian writing, and to help readers across the world discover the very best of contemporary Indian literature. It makes significant awards also to translators, without whose work no reader can appreciate the scale and diversity of a literature written in over twenty languages.
Each year, the Literary Director appoints a jury of prominent individuals from various areas of Indian social and intellectual life. Every member of the jury reads every novel entered for the Prize. The jury is alone responsible for selecting the longlist (of ten), the shortlist (of five), and the winner.
Authors shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature receive Rs 1 lakh, their translators (if any) Rs 50,000. The winning author receives Rs 25 lakh; if the winning work is a translation, an additional Rs 10 lakh is awarded to the translator.
The Prize is funded by JCB, the global construction equipment manufacturer, and administered to the highest standards of integrity by the JCB Literature Foundation. Each year, the deliberations of the jury are audited from beginning to end by third party process auditors.
By Perumal Murugan
Fire Bird is a masterfully crafted tale of one man’s search for the elusive concept of permanence. Muthu has his world turned upside down when his father divides the family land, leaving him with practically nothing and causing irreparable damage to his family’s bonds.
By Tejaswini Apte-Rahm
By Manoranjan Byapari
Translated by V. Ramaswamy
By Perumal Murugan
Translated by Janani Kannan
By Vikramajit Ram
By Manoj Rupda
Translated by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
By Brinda Charry
By Geet Chaturvedi
Translated by Anita Gopalan
By Janice Pariat
By Bikram Sharma
By Tanuj Solanki
By Tejaswini Apte-Rahm
By Manoranjan Byapari
Translated by V. Ramaswamy
By Perumal Murugan
Translated by Janani Kannan
By Vikramajit Ram
By Manoj Rupda
Translated by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
One of the missions of the JCB Literature Foundation, is to take the joy of reading to vulnerable communities across India. In a bid to realise this mission, in 2019, the Foundation partnered with SAKSHAM and Access For All, to translate the JCB Prize for Literature's shortlisted titles into visual impairment friendly formats (digital and braille). The digital versions over the years have been made available to those on the visual impairment spectrum through the Daisy Library (Sugamya Pustakalaya), worldwide.
To take this further, and to impact this at the very foundation, JCBLF has now partnered with Access for All, to create accessible DIY libraries for schools and institutes for those with special needs, starting with those on the visual impairment spectrum, on the hearing impairment spectrum, and those across the learning disability spectrum, to start with. These library setups will not only include books in formats that are special needs friendly, but also tactile objects and audio formats to ensure that storytelling is not compromised in the process. The project also envisions the creation of a space in these schools and institutes that is accessible and inclusive.
A large part of what the Foundation does is to take Indian literature to Indian audiences across mediums, and in doing so platform the length and breadth of our cultural tapestry. Aimed at creating prestige for both legacy literature and the contemporary, by promoting literature in different mediums like theatre, dance, visual arts and others, it makes literature accessible to new audiences.
The Foundation is working with Bookaroo Children's Literature Festival and the Ninasam Theatre Festival under the current project.
We are always on the lookout to add more projects to Beyond Text, incase you think you have a project that aligns with us, reach out to collaborate through the below form.
(Please note, all projects entered for this will need to have a CSR Registration number)