Harshadev Madhav

Who is Harshadev Madhav?

Harshadev Madhav is a Sanskrit poet and writer who won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Sanskrit in 2006 for his work of poetry, Tava Sparshe Sparshe. He had composed over 2200 poems in Sanskrit as of 1992.

While working in a telegraph office in Palitana, he completed his M.A. in Sanskrit from Saurashtra University with first rank, and subsequently became a lecturer at H. K. Arts College, Ahmedabad. He did his B.Ed and Ph.D from Gujarat University.

He lives in Gandhinagar. He won a Gujarat Sanskrit Academy Award in 1994, and Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad Award in 1997–98. His book "Nishkyantaha Sarve" won the All-India Kalidas Award for 1997–98, awarded by the Madhya Pradesh Kalidas Akademi. In 2010 he was awarded a Sahitya Gaurav Puraskar in Gujarat. He participated in the Kavisammelana at the 13th World Sanskrit Conference, Edinburgh and the 14th World Sanskrit Conference, Kyoto.

He is credited with introducing Japanese Haiku and Tanka, and Korean Sijo, into Sanskrit poetry. Samir Kumar Datta puts in him the category of modernist or revolutionary Sanskrit poets, and says:

Harshadev Madhav is a modern poet in true sense of the term.