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Honours Although Benodebehari had shunned fame and preferred to work in self-imposed isolation the larger art world began to take notice of his work and acknowledge his contribution in the 70s. In 1970, he was appointed Professor Emeritus at Visva Bharati; in the same year he was also elected Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi; in 1973 Satyajit Ray made a celebrated documentary on his work entitled The Inner Eye; in 1974 he was honoured by the Government of India with Padma Vibhushana; in 1977 he was conferred with the honorary doctoral degree of Desikottama by Visva Bharati and in 1980 "Chitrakar", a collection of his writings won the Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad award and the Rabindra Puraskar.
On his death at the age of 76 on the19th of November, 1980 he was survived by his wife and daughter, also artists, Leela and Mrinalini Mukherjee, and several grateful students. By then his influence on the Indian art scene at large was at its height and by then an informed public from both inside and outside this country had started taking greater notice of his works and contribution to the making of modern Asian art.
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