Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2021 longlist announced
Bangalore: The longlist for some of the prestigious literary awards within the nation, the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF E book Prize, was introduced on Thursday.
The Prize, awarded by the New India Basis (NIF), acknowledges and celebrates excellence in non-fiction writings on fashionable and modern India.
From a big pool of books encompassing a spread of matters, the Jury has longlisted 12 books for the Prize this yr.
The books replicate a compelling image of the varied narratives which embody unbiased India’s cultural, political, and social milieu in showcasing the best non-fiction writing from and in regards to the Indian subcontinent.
They cowl a long time of recent Indian historical past, nourish inventive and aware conversations across the Indian polity, and show a variety of approaches and themes.
Many of those works mirror India’s heterogeneity and intricately mix the nation’s advanced previous with aspirations for its future.
This yr’s longlist was chosen by an eminent Jury together with political scientist Niraja Gopal Jayal, entrepreneur Nandan Nilekani, historian Nayanjot Lahiri, entrepreneur Manish Sabharwal, and historian Srinath Raghavan.
“We’re delighted with our longlist which isn’t merely a set of excellent books however can be extremely various, because it covers greater than a century of recent Indian historical past, and encompasses a number of genres: biography and autobiography, politics and historical past, artwork and music, gender and society,” a press release from the Jury learn.
The 2021 Longlist (in alphabetical order):
Muscular India: Masculinity, Mobility & the New Center Class by Michiel Baas (Context, Westland)
Jury’s notes: A captivating account of how the Bollywood superb of a lean and muscular physique has impressed lower-middle-class males to hunt social mobility, by working as health trainers in gyms, or as rivals on this planet of bodybuilding and modelling. Baas follows the trajectories of a number of health trainers, exploring their aspirations, their anxieties, and the resilience of sophistication boundaries.
The Loss of life Script: Goals and Delusions in Naxal Nation by Ashutosh Bhardwaj (Fourth Property, HarperCollins Publishers)
Jury’s notes: A searing and stunningly crafted narrative based mostly on the writer’s reportage from India’s so-called ‘pink hall’. All sides within the battle discover a voice in Bharadwaj’s delicate therapy, providing poignant reflections on the human predicament in a hazard zone: concern and love, betrayal and violence, and above all of the craving for justice.
India’s First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-77 by Christophe Jaffrelot & Pratinav Anil (HarperCollins Publishers)
Jury’s notes: A masterful research of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, and her son Sanjay’s function in it. This can be a complete and deeply researched ebook on a darkish interval of our historical past, during which democracy was suspended and a constitutional dictatorship was instituted, with little well-liked resistance.
Model New Nation: Capitalist Goals and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First-Century India by Ravinder Kaur (Stanford College Press)
Jury’s notes: A compelling and provocative ebook about how the shiny new Model India of the twenty first century was created and marketed abroad to draw funding by international capital; and the way it was deployed to gas nationalism inside the nation, because the very concept of the nation was formed anew.
India’s Founding Second: The Structure of a Most Shocking Democracy by Madhav Khosla (Harvard College Press)
Jury’s notes: An elegantly written ebook in regards to the political considered India’s constitutional founding and the way the founders of the republic crafted a structure designed to supply democratic residents.
Sebastian & Sons: A Temporary Historical past of Mrdangam Makers by T.M. Krishna (Context, Westland)
Jury’s notes: A celebrated musician explores how the principle percussion instrument in Carnatic music, the Mridangam, is definitely made. The ebook gives a multi-layered account of the method, and of the lived experiences of the individuals, particularly Dalits, concerned in it.
The Larger India Experiment: Hindutva and the Northeast by Arkotong Longkumer (Stanford College Press)
Jury’s notes: A path-breaking research of the rise of Hindu nationalist politics in northeast India, this ebook explores the tensions between the imaginative and prescient of Akhand Bharat and the native political arithmetic and indigenous nationalisms.
I Might Not Be Hindu: The Story of a Dalit within the RSS by Bhanwar Meghwanshi; Trans. Nivedita Menon (Navayana)
Jury’s notes: A robust memoir of a Dalit activist and journalist, as soon as a deeply dedicated RSS employee in Rajasthan, whose painful expertise with untouchability results in disillusionment and disavowal.
Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism by Dinyar Patel (Harvard College Press)
Jury’s notes: An excellent biography of Dadabhai Naoroji that illuminates his life and work – from his pioneering critique of imperialism to his engagement in British parliamentary politics, from his constructing of political alliances in Europe and America to his eventual declaration of self-rule as the one method ahead for India.
Gandhi within the Gallery: The Artwork of Disobedience by Sumathi Ramaswamy (Roli Books)
Jury’s notes: A good-looking, superbly illustrated quantity that explores how and why Mahatma Gandhi got here to be the muse of a number of fashionable Indian artists who, by making him visually acquainted by way of their artwork, have change into Gandhi’s conscience-keepers within the current.
The Coolie’s Nice Battle: Indian Labour in a World Battle 1914-1921 by Radhika Singha (HarperCollins Publishers)
Jury’s notes: A pioneering historical past of the 550,000 non-combatants within the Indian Military who participated within the First World Battle as menial labour – porters, building employees, cooks and water carriers – and on whose largely invisible labour the struggle effort of the British Empire depended so tremendously.
Jugalbandi: The BJP Earlier than Modi by Vinay Sitapati (Penguin Random Home)
Jury’s notes: An interesting account of the six decades-long friendship between Atal Behari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani, and the way their partnership and ideological unity cast the unique success of the Bharatiya Janata Get together.
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Final yr, the prize was collectively awarded to Amit Ahuja for his debut Mobilizing the Marginalized: Ethnic Events with out Ethnic Actions (Oxford College Press) and Jairam Ramesh for his biography A Chequered Brilliance: The Many Lives of V.Ok. Krishna Menon (Penguin Random Home).
In 2019 it was awarded to Ornit Shani for her scholarly work How India Turned Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Common Franchise (Penguin Random Home) and in 2018 to Milan Vaishnav for his outstanding debut When Crime Pays: Cash and Muscle in Indian Politics (HarperCollins Publishers).
Instituted in 2018, the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF E book Prize, which carries a money award of Rs 15 lakhs and a quotation, builds on the Basis’s mission of sponsoring high-quality analysis and writing on all elements of the world’s largest democracy.
It’s named in honour of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: the good patriot and institution-builder who contributed considerably to the liberty wrestle, to the ladies’s motion, to refugee rehabilitation and to the renewal of Indian theatre and handicrafts.
The Shortlist of 6 titles of the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF E book Prize 2021 might be introduced within the final week of October.
