Bangalore: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Professor of humanities at Columbia University has been honoured with the annual Kyoto Prize, an international award honouring those who have contributed significantly to humankind's scientific, cultural, and spiritual development.

Gayatri, who works for people who are discriminated by Western culture, including immigrants, the working class and women, will receive a diploma, a gold Kyoto Prize medal and a cash prize of 50 million yen ($6, 30,000) at a function which will be held in Kyoto in the month of November, reports Firstpost.

“It will go to my rural education foundation. I will probably keep $50,000 bucks for myself and let the rest enrich the foundation. My teachers need higher salaries,” Spivak told Firstpost regarding her plans to use the amount.

Spivak established a literacy project named Pares Chandra Chakravorty Memorial Literacy Project in the year 1997, intending to support children of rural India by providing primary education.

“I don’t really feel that I should be receiving this huge prize, but I am very happy I got it,” said Spivak, who is quite renowned in New York for her literary works which carries powerful intellectual script.

 “I have been thinking of my parents because they laid a great deal of emphasis on not only the life of the mind but also on the ethical. Right from childhood I had a very intellectual and ethical upbringing.”

Gayatri, who was born in Calcutta, completed her education from India and the U.S. She holds a B.A in English from Presidency College, Calcutta and MA and PhD in English from Cornell University.