New India Foundation announced the recipients of the tenth NIF Fellowships on April 15. Eleven scholars and writers received the fellowship for their non-fiction book proposals on different aspects of post-Independence India. This is the highest number of fellowships ever awarded by the NIF.
The Bengaluru-based NIF’s core activity is the New India Fellowships, meant to facilitate original research on a wide range of topics centred on post-Independence India. So far it has resulted in the publication of 22 books by top-notch publishers, and many of these have become seminal and award-winning works on contemporary Indian history.
Despite the pandemic, the NIF received over 900 applications this time. The list was finalised through a rigorous process of screening and interview carried out by the jury comprising political scientist Niraja Gopal Jayal; historian Ramachandra Guha; Rukmini Banerji, CEO, Pratham Education Foundation; entrepreneur Nandan Nilekani; historian Srinath Raghavan; and Manish Sabharwal, Chairman, Teamlease Services.
The 11 awardees are novelist and critic Anjum Hasan; journalist and researcher Chitrangada Choudhury; freelance journalist, researcher and writer Jaideep Hardikar; social anthropologist and academic Jayaseelan Raj; academic and researcher Maya Ratnam; lawyer and academic M. Mohsin Alam Bhat; conservationist, wildlife historian, researcher and writer Raza Kazmi; scholar and Founder Director, Bombaywalla Historical Works, Simin Patel; independent journalist and writer Sohini C; independent researcher and writer Srikar Raghavan; public sociologist, academic and writer Suryakant Waghmore.
The NIF fellowships are awarded for a period of one year with an annual stipend of ₹18 lakh for each recipient, in addition to editorial and publishing support for individual projects.
Speaking on behalf of the jury, the NIF’s trustee, Srinath Raghavan, said: “This has been an exceptional year for the NIF fellowships. Not only did we receive an extraordinary number of applications, but were delighted to award more fellowships than ever before. The 11 NIF fellows will write books on a remarkable set of topics encompassing cities and forests, law and politics, sports and literature, business and culture — books that promise to transform our understanding of contemporary India.”
