Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship and Awards 2024–2025: President to Honour 115 Performing Artists

Why in News?

The President of India will confer the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowships (Akademi Ratna) and Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards (Akademi Puraskar) for the years 2024 and 2025 on 13 August 2026 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi.

Important Point

• A total of 115 artists have been selected for the honours, representing different States and Union Territories and a wide spectrum of India’s performing arts traditions.
• The ceremony will be attended by Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Union Minister for Culture and Tourism, Rao Inderjit Singh, Minister of State for Culture, senior officials of the Ministry of Culture and the Chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi.

What is the Sangeet Natak Akademi?

• The Sangeet Natak Akademi is India’s national academy for music, dance and drama.
• It plays an important role in promoting, preserving and documenting the country’s rich performing arts traditions.
• The Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards have been conferred since 1952. They recognise sustained and outstanding contributions to India’s performing arts.

The honours cover diverse traditions, including:

• Indian classical music
• Classical dance
• Theatre
• Folk and tribal arts
• Puppetry and mask-making
• Traditional musical instrument making
• Allied theatre arts
• Art criticism and scholarship
• Contributions to performing arts overseas

Akademi Fellowship – Akademi Ratna

The Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship, popularly known as Akademi Ratna, is the highest honour of the Akademi. For the 2024–2025 honours, 7 eminent personalities have been selected as Follows:

1. Ramlal Bareth
2. A. V. Anand
3. Rita Ganguly
4. Puru Dadheech
5. Chittaranjan Jyotishi
6. Pasumarthi Rattaiah Sarma
7. Sudharani Raghupathy

The Fellowship carries a purse of ₹3 lakh, along with a Tamrapatra and Angavastram.

Sangeet Natak Akademi Award – Akademi Puraskar

The Akademi Puraskar recognises outstanding contribution to specific fields of performing arts.

The award carries:

• ₹1 lakh purse
• Tamrapatra
• Angavastram

The 2024 and 2025 awardees represent a broad range of artistic traditions from across India.

Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards 2024

1. Music

The 2024 Music category includes artists from Hindustani, Carnatic and other major musical traditions.

2. Dance

The awardees represent almost the entire spectrum of India’s major classical dance traditions.

3. Theatre

Theatre awardees include practitioners of direction, acting, lighting and traditional theatre.

4. Folk, Tribal, Puppetry, Mask & Instrument Making

This category highlights India’s diverse community-based cultural traditions.

Important awardees include:

• Dursheti Ramaiah – Folk Music, Telangana
• K. Murugan – Folk Dance, Puducherry
• S. C. Sharma – Folk & Tribal Music, Karnataka
• Atamjeet Singh – Nautanki, Uttar Pradesh
• Mahendra Ram – Folk Music, Bihar
• Butan Devi and Somari Devi – Folk Dance, Jharkhand
• Ranajit Kumar Nag – Sambalpuri Folk Dance, Odisha
• Hawa Singh – Folk Music, Haryana
• Veswuzo Phesao – Folk Music & Dance, Nagaland
• Gulabi Sapera – Kalbeliya Folk Dance, Rajasthan
• Lourembam Bedabati – Folk Music, Manipur
• Subhash Narayan Nakashe – Folk Dance, Maharashtra
• Kishorbhai Somabhai Mistry – Rudra Veena Instrument Making

5. Overall Contribution and Other Areas

The 2024 honours also recognise broader contributions to performing arts:

• T. S. Sathyavathi – Overall Contribution in Music
• Voleti Rangamani – Overall Contribution in Dance
• Shubhada Manohar Varadkar – Scholarship in Performing Arts – Dance
• Tapati Chowdhurie – Art Critique – Performing Arts
• Sunanda Nair – Overseas – Dance (Mohiniattam)

Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards 2025

1. Music

The 2025 Music awardees include prominent practitioners of Dhrupad, Hindustani and Carnatic music.

2. Dance

The 2025 Dance category covers Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kathakali, Manipuri, Sattriya, Mohiniattam, Chhau and other traditions.

Major awardees include:

• Roja Kannan – Bharatanatyam
• Krishna Mohan Mishra Maharaj, Vaswati Misra and Ram Mohan Maharaj – Kathak
• Kalamandalam Krishnakumar – Kathakali
• Irengbam Nalini Devi – Manipuri
• Seetha Nagajothy and P. Nagajothy – Manipuri
• Mallika Kandali – Sattriya
• Girija Chandran – Mohiniattam
• Pagulu Jena – Chhau, Mayurbhanj
• Kaniyal Hariprasad – Music for Dance, Bharatanatyam
• Bhaskar Jyoti Ojah – Music for Dance, Sattriya
• S. Kumar – Bhagavatamela

3. Theatre

The 2025 Theatre category recognises direction, acting, music for theatre and traditional theatre forms.

4. Folk, Tribal, Puppet, Mask & Instrument Making

The 2025 awardees reflect the geographical and cultural diversity of India.

Notable awardees include:

• Anup Ranjan Pandey – Folk Music, Chhattisgarh
• Bheru Singh Chouhan – Nirguni Folk Music, Madhya Pradesh
• Surjya Kumar Debbarma – Folk Dance, Tripura
• Joginder Singh Habbi – Folk Dance, Himachal Pradesh
• Romalo Ram – Folk Music & Dance, Jammu & Kashmir
• Harmanpreet Singh – Folk Dance, Punjab
• Ali Mohammad – Folk Music, Ladakh
• Domin Karbak – Folk Dance, Arunachal Pradesh
• K. Rosiama – Folk Dance, Mizoram
• Rani Maring – Instrument Making
• Sushanta Kumar – Chhau Mask Making
• Mangla Prasad Sharma – Instrument Making

5. Overall Contribution and Other Areas

The 2025 awards also recognise wider contributions to performing arts:

• Kunal – Overall Contribution in Theatre
• Maneesha Sathe – Overall Contribution in Dance – Kathak
• Rakesh Sinha – Overall Contribution – Art Photography
• Manjari Sinha – Art Critique – Performing Arts
• T. S. Nandakumar – Overseas – Music (Mridangam)

Why is this Award Important?

The Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards are significant because they recognise not only mainstream classical traditions but also India’s folk, tribal, traditional and community-based performing arts.

The awards help:

1. Preserve intangible cultural heritage by recognising traditional practitioners.
2. Promote Indian classical arts such as Hindustani and Carnatic music and classical dance.
3. Support folk and tribal traditions that are often transmitted through generations.
4. Encourage younger generations to engage with traditional performing arts.
5. Recognise lifelong artistic contribution, rather than merely a single performance or achievement.
6. Strengthen cultural diversity and national integration by bringing artists from different regions and traditions into a common national framework.

Prelims Facts to Remember

• Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards: Conferred since 1952
• Akademi Ratna: Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship
• Fellowship purse: ₹3 lakh
• Akademi Award purse: ₹1 lakh
• Award components: Tamrapatra and Angavastram
• Major areas: Music, Dance, Theatre, Folk & Tribal Arts and allied performing arts
• 2024–25 honours: 115 artists
• Venue: Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi
• Award ceremony: 13 August 2026

Challenge

India possesses an enormous diversity of performing arts, but many traditional forms face challenges such as:

• Declining transmission of traditional knowledge
• Limited financial opportunities for artists
• Commercialisation and homogenisation of cultural forms
• Declining participation of younger generations
• Lack of systematic documentation of oral traditions
• Regional and community-specific art forms receiving limited visibility

Therefore, awards such as the Sangeet Natak Akademi honours are important, but they need to be complemented by institutional support, documentation, digital preservation, cultural education and sustainable livelihoods for artists.

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