Surendra Jha ‘Suman’ (1910–2002), born at Ballipur in Samastipur, was a rare all-rounder of the Maithili renaissance — poet, editor, publisher and elected politician. Head of the Maithili department at Lalit Narayan Mithila University, Darbhanga, and author of some forty books, he won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1971 for Payasvini, a collection of lyric poems on the beauty of nature and the simplicity of rural Mithila; he won the Akademi’s translation prize again in 1995 for rendering Tagore’s plays into Maithili.
In 1948 he founded the Mithila Press, dedicating it to spreading awareness of Maithili language, culture and literature — an institution still run by his family. He also served in public life as a member of the Bihar Legislative Assembly and as Member of the Lok Sabha from Darbhanga (1977–1979).
His career bridges literature and public service: he helped win Maithili its place in the Sahitya Akademi and built the printing and editorial infrastructure that allowed a vernacular literature to circulate widely in twentieth-century Mithila.
