Janaki Bakhle: Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva 

An outstanding intellectual history of one of the most contentious figures of modern India, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Drawing on the entire range of his writings in Marathi and English, the book offers an incisive analysis of the complexity of Savarkar’s thought, viewing him not just as the pre-eminent ideologue of Hindutva but also as a poet, historian, and social reformer.

Bela Bhatia: India’s Forgotten Country: A View from the Margins 

A searingly powerful collection of essays emerging from over three decades of fieldwork amongst India’s most marginalised and vulnerable people —Dalits, Adivasis, women, bonded labourers, and communities impacted by conflict. Bhatia turns an unflinching eye on exploitation and structural violence, as well as on resistance and resilience, in forgotten corners of the nation.

Avinash Paliwal: India’s Near East: A New History

This rigorously researched book brings India’s bilateral relations with Myanmar and Bangladesh into conversation with the struggles of state-building in Northeast India. Interweaving the challenges of diplomacy and statecraft, the book reveals the limitations of independent India’s influence in its Near East, and in doing so presents a compelling challenge to conventional geopolitical narratives.

Manu S. Pillai: Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity

This ambitious work charts the interplay of colonialism, Christian missionary activity, and indigenous reform movements in the shaping of modern Hindu identity. Pillai offers a rich account of the cultural transformations and social forces that prepared the ground for Hindu nationalism. 

Aparajith Ramnath: Engineering a Nation: The Life and Career of M. Visvesvaraya

A meticulously researched biography of M. Visvesvaraya that explores the life and work of this visionary engineer-statesman, and his influential role in shaping the technological imagination of the state and industrial development in independent India. 

The winner of the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2025 will be declared in December.