The Gujarat Sahitya Akademi or Gujarat Sahitya Academy, established in 1981, is a government institution dedicated to the development of the languages spoken in Gujarat, India and their literature. Gujarati, an official language of Gujarat, is one of them; the others are Hindi, Sanskrit, Kutchi, Sindhi and Urdu. As of 2022, Bhagyesh Jha is the chairman of the Akademi.
logo of Akademi
Akademi headquarters in Gandhinagar
Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Indian state of Gujarat and spoken predominantly by the Gujarati people. Gujarati is descended from Old Gujarati. In India, it is one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Union. It is also the official language in the state of Gujarat, as well as an official language in the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. As of 2011, Gujarati is the 6th most widely spoken language in India by number of native speakers, spoken by 55.5 million speakers which amounts to about 4.5% of the total Indian population. It is the 26th most widely spoken language in the world by number of native speakers as of 2007.
1666 manuscript of a 6th-century Jain Prakrit text with a 1487 commentary in Old Gujarati
A page from the Gujarati translation of Dabestan-e Mazaheb prepared and printed by Fardunjee Marzban (25 December 1815)
Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi were both native Gujarati speakers but the former one advocated for the use of Urdu.
Gujarati sample (Sign about Gandhi's hut)