Cultural Institutions: The three national akademis

The Sangeet Natak Akademi was inaugurated on 28 January 1953 and Dr P. V. Rajamannar, a jurist and later Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, was its first Chairman. Jawaharlal Nehru was the first President of the Sahitya Akademi, a different body, and Maulana Azad was the Education Minister under whom the academies were planned.

The Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Academy began in April 1954 as the Government of India's Manipur Dance College and became a constituent unit of the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1957. It trains students in Manipuri dance, music and the allied martial and ritual arts of Manipur.

The Sahitya Akademi, the Lalit Kala Akademi and the National School of Drama are autonomous bodies funded by and functioning under the Ministry of Culture. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations, though a cultural body, functions under the Ministry of External Affairs, because its work is cultural diplomacy abroad. So three of the four are under the Ministry of Culture.

The Sahitya Akademi gives the Premchand Fellowship to writers and scholars from SAARC countries working on Indian literature, and the Ananda Coomaraswamy Fellowship to scholars from Asian countries for literary projects in India. The Lalit Kala Akademi's highest honour is its Fellowship, also called the Lalit Kala Ratna. So pair 3 is wrong.

The Lalit Kala Akademi, India's national academy of the visual arts, was inaugurated on 5 August 1954. Its headquarters is Rabindra Bhavan, Ferozeshah Road, New Delhi, with regional centres such as Chennai, Lucknow, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and Garhi (Delhi). Jaipur House houses the NGMA, a separate subordinate office of the Ministry of Culture. The Akademi hosted India's first Triennale in 1968.

The Sangeet Natak Akademi, inaugurated in 1953, was registered as a society on 11 September 1961. In 2006 it instituted the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar for outstanding young artists up to forty years of age. Its Kathak Kendra is in New Delhi, not Lucknow; its other well-known constituent unit is the Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Academy at Imphal.

The Sangeet Natak Akademi came first, inaugurated on 28 January 1953. The Sahitya Akademi followed on 12 March 1954, and the NGMA was opened at Jaipur House on 29 March 1954, only seventeen days later. The Lalit Kala Akademi was inaugurated last, on 5 August 1954. So the order is 2-4-3-1.

All three are correct. The Sahitya Akademi was inaugurated on 12 March 1954 and registered as a society on 7 January 1956 under the Societies Registration Act, 1860; like the other national academies it is not a statutory body. It publishes Indian Literature, a bimonthly English journal begun in 1957, and Samkaleen Bharatiya Sahitya, a bimonthly Hindi journal begun in 1980.