THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Awarded a doctorate in literature (DLitt) degree from the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) for his thesis on ‘The Influence of Sree Narayana Guru on Malayalam Poetry’, writer Vellayani Arjunan has achieved the distinction of becoming the first Indian to be awarded three DLitt degrees for his theses.
A Padmashree winner and writer of more than 40 books, Arjunan is also an alumni and former faculty of the AMU having served as the first Malayalam lecturer there from 1961 to 70 and also acquiring a PhD from the institute in 1965.
Arjunan, 82, was earlier awarded a DLitt for a thesis on ‘The Influence of Hindi Vocabularies on the South Indian Languages: A Linguistic Study’ by Jabalpur University in 1969 and also received a DLitt from the Agra University for his thesis on ‘A Comparative Study of the Mutual Relations and Uniformity of Hindi and Malayalam Languages’ in 1998.“The idea behind the thesis is to spread the vision of Sree Narayana Guru across the world,” said Arjunan.
The 1,500-page thesis is written in two volumes and covers the topic extensively and is also the first thesis in India to cover Sree Narayana Guru.