Ratheesh Radhakrishnan

Ratheesh is working on a biography of the Malayalam star Sathyan

Rahul Pandita

In this testimonial, Rahul Pandita, an acclaimed journalist and author, reflects on how the New India Foundation Fellowship empowered him to undertake an in-depth exploration of the Kashmir conflict and the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. His work, supported by the NIF Fellowship, offers a deeply personal and powerful narrative that illuminates the complexities of identity, displacement, and communal trauma. Through the Fellowship, Rahul Pandita was able to conduct extensive research and gather firsthand accounts that bring to light the lived experiences of a community that has often been marginalized in mainstream discourse. His writing not only preserves a crucial chapter of India’s history but also fosters understanding and dialogue on issues of conflict and coexistence.

SV Srinivas

In this engaging testimonial, a film scholar and cultural historian, S.V. Srinivas, shares how the New India Foundation Fellowship supported his research into the social history of Telugu cinema.

His NIF book Politics as Performance explores how cinema, stardom, and regional identity intersect in post-independence India. Through the NIF Fellowship, Dr. Srinivas was able to study the unique phenomenon of Telugu film star N.T. Rama Rao’s immense cultural influence—not just as an actor, but also as a symbol of Telugu pride and linguistic nationalism. His research offers a compelling lens on the politics of popular culture, memory, and identity in South India.

Dr. Manjima Bhattacharjya

In this testimonial, Dr. Manjima Bhattacharjya, a feminist researcher, writer, and activist, reflects on how the New India Foundation Fellowship enabled her to write her book on the intersections of gender, labor, and the body in India's urban landscapes. Her book, supported by the NIF Fellowship, offers a nuanced exploration of how globalization, digitization, and gentrification have transformed occupations that straddle precarity and stigma. Through the Fellowship, Dr. Bhattacharjya was able to bring to light narratives and voices that are often overlooked in mainstream discourse.

Lawrence Liang

In this testimonial, Lawrence Liang, a legal researcher and academic, reflects on how the New India Foundation Fellowship enabled him to delve deeply into the intersections of law, cinema, and society in India. His work, supported by the NIF Fellowship, offers a nuanced exploration of how legal frameworks and cinematic narratives influence and reflect societal norms and values. Through the Fellowship, Liang was able to conduct extensive research, bringing to light narratives that are often overlooked in mainstream discourse.

G. Kanato Chophy

Christianity and Politics in Tribal India: Baptist Missionaries and Naga Nationalism

“The NIF Fellowship gave me the freedom to pursue my research independently.”

In this testimonial, G. Kanato Chophy, an independent researcher and writer from Nagaland, reflects on how the New India Foundation Fellowship enabled him to delve deeply into the intersections of religion, politics, and identity in Northeast India. His work, 'Christianity and Politics in Tribal India: Baptist Missionaries and Naga Nationalism', offers a nuanced exploration of how Protestant missions influenced the ethnic and cultural identity of the Naga people. Through the Fellowship, Kanato was able to conduct extensive fieldwork and archival research, bringing to light narratives that are often overlooked in mainstream discourse.

Neha Dixit

The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian

Who is Syeda X? That question lies behind The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian, (Juggernaut, 2024), Neha Dixit’s remarkable, quiet, and yet devastating account of one woman’s – or perhaps I should say an ordinary woman’s – life. One woman, who is actually every woman – she is the domestic worker you see walking down the road in front of your home every day, she is the young woman stitching clothes to earn an income in her home, she is the toilet attendant in the mall you visit, she is the vegetable vendor who stands by the side of the road, the construction workers who lugs kilos of cement in the house that’s being built next door, the rag picker who gets chased out of the gated colony where you live.

Arupjyoti Saikia

'The Quest for Modern Assam: A History (1942-2000)'

The crucial battles of World War II fought in India’s north-east-followed soon after by Independence and Partition-had a critical impact on the making of modern Assam. In the three decades following 1947, the state of Assam underwent massive political turmoil, geographical instability, and social and demographic upheaval, among others. Later, the truncated state suffered widespread unrest as various groups believed their cultural identity and political leverage were under threat. New social energies and political forces were unleashed and came to the fore. Definitive, comprehensive and unputdownable,

The Quest for Modern Assam explores the interconnected layers of political, environmental, economic and cultural processes that shaped the development of Assam since the 1940s. It offers an authoritative account that sets new standards in the writing of regional political history. Not to be missed by any one keen on Assam, India, Asia or world history in the twentieth century.

Nazia Akhtar

Bibi’s Room: Hyderabadi Women and Twentieth-Century Urdu Prose

In addition to the general neglect of women writers, Urdu literary historiography in both English and Urdu has historically privileged north Indian and Pakistani writers while overlooking the many Urdus south of Bombay and Bhopal. Next to no work exists in English on the Urdu writers of Hyderabad, and only a handful of texts have been translated into English—an astonishing neglect, considering their contribution to the study of gender, political cultures, and regional histories.

Bibi’s Room studies the lives and work of three women writers from Hyderabad who wrote in Urdu: Zeenath Sajida, Najma Nikhat, and Jeelani Bano. It addresses the absence of scholarship on Hyderabadi women writers in three ways: representative translations; short, nuanced biographies; and critical analyses of their oeuvres—all framed against twentieth-century Hyderabadi history, politics, culture, and society.

The three writers showcased here offer rich portrayals of Hyderabadi urban culture as well as critiques of gender and patriarchy. Zeenath Sajida’s insights into Islam dramatically alter what we know of Muslim women’s engagements with fundamental theological questions. Sajida is also a skilled proponent of Urdu humour and satire, a genre notorious for its exclusion of women writers. Jeelani Bano’s oeuvre, spanning three schools of Urdu literature, makes vital contributions to our understanding of gender, class, communalism, and national identity. Najma Nikhat’s deodi stories powerfully narrate women’s lives across class in feudal aristocratic homes, and their participation in revolutionary struggles like the Telangana movement.

The picture of Hyderabadi women’s lives that emerges generates new knowledge about the conditions in which women live, write, and resist, and expands our understanding of their public participation in South Asia. Bibi’s Room is also a welcome and valuable addition to studies of Urdu literature, South Asian feminism, translation, and the history and culture of Hyderabad.

Swati Ganguly

Tagore’s University: A History of Visva-Bharati 1921-1961

Tagore’s University is a history of Visva-Bharati, the world centre of learning and culture founded by Rabindranath Tagore a hundred years ago. The poet’s conception entailed several autonomous centres – for Asian studies, the visual arts, music, and rural reconstruction – in defiance of the standard notions of a university. Visva-Bharati was set up to break barriers between nations and races by rebuilding in miniature the visva – the world torn apart by World War I.

The book traces the first four decades of this large experiment in building a cultural community of learning, teaching, and scholarship. It tells the story of exceptional individuals from across Europe, Asia, America, and India who became Tagore’s collaborators in a mini-universe of creativity and humane intellection. It reveals why in its heyday Visva-Bharati was so internationally renowned as an extraordinarily attractive institution.

Pradeep Magazine

Not Just Cricket: A Reporter's Journey through Modern India

Eminent journalist Pradeep Magazine's memoir is a story of lived, real experiences, of joy, sorrow, fear, loss and hope, and about how an uprooted identity shapes one's attitude towards society and the nation. From the Kashmir of the 1950s to terror-stricken Punjab, from the Mandir-Masjid divide and the impact of Mandal politics to the tragic consequences of the Kashmir situation-Magazine paints a fascinating portrait of modern India.

At the core of the book are accounts of some of the most epochal events in India's cricketing history, woven around personal encounters with several well-known cricketers. The author lays bare the vicious machinations that are a staple diet of sports governance and reveals hitherto unknown facts about the frictions and ego clashes that are inevitable in a game that dominates India's sporting discourse.