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The New India Foundation announced its ten-book longlist for the 2025 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize on August 15, 2025. The books range from intellectual history and community-based essays to biographies, election research and cross-border politics. The list later narrowed to five, and Aparajith Ramnath’s Engineering a Nation won.
The 10 books on the 2025 longlist
The entries below are listed with the publishers identified in contemporary coverage. The descriptions reflect the New India Foundation’s summaries.
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Janaki Bakhle, Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva (Princeton University Press). An intellectual history of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, drawing on his Marathi and English writing and examining his roles as ideologue, poet, historian and social reformer.
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Bela Bhatia, India’s Forgotten Country: A View from the Margins (Penguin Random House India). Essays rooted in more than three decades of fieldwork among marginalized communities, including Dalits, Adivasis, women, bonded laborers and communities affected by conflict.
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Urmilla Deshpande and Thiago Pinto Barbosa, Iru: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve (Speaking Tiger Books). A biography of anthropologist, philosopher and institution-builder Irawati Karve, combining personal memory with scholarly analysis through what the foundation describes as “critical fabulation.”
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Avinash Paliwal, India’s Near East: A New History (Penguin Random House India). A study that considers India’s relations with Myanmar and Bangladesh alongside state-building in Northeast India.
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Manu S. Pillai, Gods, Guns, and Missionaries: The Making Of The Modern Hindu Identity (Penguin Random House India). An account of how colonialism, Christian missionary activity and indigenous reform movements shaped modern Hindu identity.
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Aparajith Ramnath, Engineering a Nation: The Life and Career of M Visvesvaraya (Penguin Random House India). A biography of engineer-statesman M. Visvesvaraya, examining his place in the technological imagination of the state and industrial development in independent India. The book later won the prize.
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Amogh Dhar Sharma, The Backstage of Democracy: India’s Election Campaigns and the People Who Manage Them (Cambridge University Press). Research into the consultants, data engineers, pollsters and digital war-room operators who shape Indian election campaigns.
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Nico Slate, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: The Art of Freedom (HarperCollins India). A biography focused on Chattopadhyay’s work in the freedom struggle, craft and cultural revival, feminist movements and internationalism.
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Anand Teltumbde, Iconoclast: A Reflective Biography of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar (Penguin Random House India). A critical account of Ambedkar’s intellectual and political journey that argues for a more complex understanding than iconization.
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Salil Tripathi, The Gujaratis: A Portrait of a Community (Aleph Book Company). An account of Gujarati community identity across time and geography, challenging stereotypes and considering Gujaratis in India and abroad.
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What the prize recognizes
The Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize is an annual award for nonfiction on modern or contemporary India published in the preceding calendar year. According to the New India Foundation’s prize page, writers of any nationality may be considered, and books originally written in English or translated into English are eligible. Eligible forms include history, biography, political commentary, travelogue and memoir, alongside other nonfiction that illuminates modern India.
The prize amount is INR 15 lakhs. Nominations typically come from publishers, literary agents and independent nominators, though the foundation may also consider books independently. A jury of scholars, writers and public intellectuals selects the winner after considering a longlist and shortlist.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How the longlist became the winner
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Date |
Milestone |
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August 15, 2025 |
The New India Foundation announced the ten-book longlist. |
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October 15, 2025 |
The foundation named a five-book shortlist: Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva; India’s Forgotten Country: A View from the Margins; India’s Near East: A New History; Gods, Guns, and Missionaries; and Engineering a Nation. Crashes, No Sound, or Screen Glitches?Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minutePC Slower Than It Used to Be?A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11Special offer. See more information about Outbyte and uninstall instructions. Please review EULA and Privacy policy.
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December 2025 |
The foundation’s longlist page forecast a December winner announcement. Scroll reported that the result would be announced on December 6 at the Bangalore Literature Festival. |
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Confirmed result |
The foundation’s current prize page names Aparajith Ramnath’s Engineering a Nation: The Life and Career of M. Visvesvaraya as the 2025 winner. |
What the range of subjects reveals
The list is not confined to one discipline or scale. Some books focus on a single figure or political idea; others examine marginalized communities, Gujarati identity, election professionals or India’s relations with neighboring countries. Taken together, their subjects connect individual lives and local experience with institutions, public politics and broader histories.
“Together, these books remind us that understanding India is an ongoing, layered journey, one enriched by the rigour, empathy, and imagination of our finest nonfiction writers.”
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For the official descriptions and announcement, see the New India Foundation’s 2025 longlist page. The foundation’s prize page records the award’s remit and winner.
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