Sunita Jain is an Indian scholar, novelist, short-story writer and poet of English and Hindi literature. She is a former professor and the Head of the department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. She has published over 60 books, in English and Hindi, besides translating many Jain writings into English. She is featured in the Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English and is a recipient of The Vreeland Award and the Marie Sandoz Prairie Schooner Fiction Award. The Government of India awarded her the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri in 2004. In 2015 she was awarded the Vyas Samman by the K.K. Birla foundation for outstanding literary work in Hindi.
Returning to India in 1972, after a short teaching stints at Indraprastha College and Aurobindo College, she joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and became the Head of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, from where she superannuated in 2002 as the Professor of English. While at IIT, Delhi, she encouraged the expansion of the Humanities department and was instrumental in broadening the degree programs to include a Masters and Ph.D program.
Writing
She started writing at the age of 22 and has published short-stories, novels and poems in Hindi and English. Her works in English include A Girl of Her Age, a novel published in 2000 and two short-story anthologies, A Woman is Dead and Eunuch of Time and Other Stories, published in 1980 and 1982 respectively. She published seven poetry anthologies and some of those poems have been reprinted under the titles, Sensum: Collected Poems 1965-2000 and American Desi and Other Poems. Besides, she has also written a book for children under the name, The Mango Tree and literary criticism, John Steinbeck's Concept of Man : a Critical Study of his Novels. Her short-stories have been included in two multi-writer short-story collections, Short Short Stories Universal and Concert of Voices: An Anthology of World Voices in English. Jain's autobiography has been written in Hindi as also five novels, five short-story poem anthologies and several volumes of poetry collections. Her book, Inner Light , is a five-volume book on religious thoughts and she has published a translated work, Premchand: A Life and Letters. Her other translated works include Confluence of Seasons, poems of Kalidasa and Mukti, poems of Kshamasagar, a Jain holy person.
Awards
She received The Vreeland Award of the University of Nebraska in 1969 and Marie Sandoz Prairie Schooner Fiction Award twice, in 1970 and 1971. She was awarded Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sansthan Award in 1979 and 1980, followed by Delhi Hindi Academy Award in 1996. The Government of India awarded her the civilian honour of the Padma Shri in 2004. She is a recipient of other honours such as Nirala Namit Award, Sahityakar Samman, Mahadevi Varma Samman, Prabha Khetan Award, Brahmi Sundari Award, Sulochini Writer Award and UP Sahitya Bhushan Award. In 2015 she was awarded the Vyas Samman by the K.K. Birla foundation for outstanding literary work in Hindi.
Death
Jain died in New Delhi on 11 December 2017 after a short battle with a rare blood disorder.
Archives
Sunita Jain's collection of writings, awards, private papers etc. are part of the permanent collection in the archives of Jamia Millia Islamia University at the Premchand Archives & Literary Centre http://jmi.ac.in/jpalc/collections
