| Year |
Writer |
Book |
| 1960 |
R. K. Narayan |
The Guide (Novel) |
| 1963 |
Raja Rao |
The Serpent and the Rope (Novel) |
| 1965 |
Verrier Elwin |
The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin (Autobiography) |
| 1967 |
Bhabani Bhattacharya |
Shadow from Ladakh (Novel) |
| 1969 |
Niharranjan Ray |
An Artist in Life (Study of Tagore) |
| 1971 |
Mulk Raj Anand |
Morning Face (Novel) |
| 1975 |
Nirad C. Chaudhuri |
Scholar Extraordinary (Biography) |
| 1976 |
S. Gopal |
Jawaharlal Nehru (Biography) |
| 1977 |
Chaman Nahal |
Azadi (Novel) |
| 1978 |
Anita Desai |
Fire On the Mountain (Novel) |
| 1979 |
Rama Mehta |
Inside the Haveli (Novel) |
| 1980 |
K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar |
On the Mother (Biography) |
| 1981 |
Jayanta Mahapatra |
Relationship (Poetry) |
| 1982 |
Arun Joshi |
The Last Labyrinth (Novel) |
| 1983 |
Nissim Ezekiel |
Later-Day Psalms (Poetry) |
| 1984 |
Keki N. Daruwalla |
The Keeper of the Dead (Poetry) |
| 1985 |
Kamala Das |
Collected Poems (Poetry) |
| 1986 |
Nayantara Sahgal |
Rich Like Us (Novel) |
| 1987 |
Shiv K. Kumar |
Trapfalls in the Sky (Poetry) |
| 1988 |
Vikram Seth |
The Golden Gate (Novel in verse) |
| 1989 |
Amitav Ghosh |
The Shadow Lines (Novel) |
| 1990 |
Sashi Deshpande |
That Long Silence (Novel) |
| 1991 |
I. Allan Sealy |
The Trotter-Nama (Novel) |
| 1992 |
Ruskin Bond |
Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra (Short stories) |
| 1993 |
G.N Devy |
After Amnesia: Tradition and Change in Indian Literary Criticism |
| 1994 |
Dom Moraes |
Serendip (Poetry) |
| 1996 |
Sunetra Gupta |
Memories of Rain (Novel) |
| 1998 |
Mahesh Dattani |
Final Solutions and Other Plays (Plays) |
| 1999 |
A. K. Ramanujan |
The collected poems of A. K. Ramanujan (Poetry) |
| 2000 |
Kiran Nagarkar |
Cuckold (Novel) |
| 2001 |
Rajmohan Gandhi |
Rajaji : A Life (Biography) |
| 2002 |
Amit Chaudhuri |
A New World (Novel) |
| 2003 |
Meenakshi Mukherjee |
The Perishable Empire: Essays On Indian Writing In English (Essays) |
