Thursday, 1st August 2024: The New India Foundation is pleased to invite applications for the 12th edition of its prestigious New India Foundation Book Fellowships for research and scholarship about Indian history after Independence. 

With an award of INR 18 lakhs to each recipient, the New India Foundation Book Fellowships provide editorial, legal, and administrative support, along with the opportunity to join the diverse NIF Community. Open to Indian nationals, including those residing abroad, these Fellowships are granted for a period of one year. 

Since its inception two decades ago, the New India Foundation has sponsored the publication of 34 critically-acclaimed, award-winning books across a wide range of topics detailing the trajectory of India after 1947. 

According to Srinath Raghavan, Trustee, New India Foundation, “One of our objectives with the New India Foundation was to broaden the circle of people who write about India from a non-fiction perspective. We hope that the Fellowship will give an opportunity for people from a diverse range of careers and professions to write their book about India, because so many of us have different entry points into understanding this country.”

Fellowship-holders are expected to write original books. Proposals should be oriented towards publication, and outline a roadmap towards that destination. The Foundation is agnostic as regards genre, theme, and ideology: the only requirement is that the proposed works contribute to a fuller understanding of independent India. Thus, Fellowship-holders may choose to write a memoir, or a work of reportage, or a thickly footnoted academic study. Book proposals can focus on economics, politics, or culture, and can be either specific—like a single decade or region—or broad, covering a nationwide perspective. 

Applications open: 1st August 2024 

Applications close: 31st December 2024 

Applications can be accessed through the website www.newindiafoundation.org, and all queries may please be directed to info@newindiafoundation.org or yauvanika@newindiafoundation.org. Applicants are expected to submit a Book Proposal (up to 5000 words), a Writing Sample (up to 5000 words), and a CV. 

Recent publications under the New India Foundation Book Fellowship include:

• Neha Dixit’s The Many Lives of Syeda X (Juggernaut 2024)

• Sohini Chattopadhyay’s The Day I Became a Runner (HarperCollins 2023)

• Arupjyoti Saikia’s The Quest for a Modern Assam (Penguin 2023)

• Abhishek Choudhary’s Vajpayee (PanMacmillan 2023)

• Manoj Mitta’s Caste Pride (Westland 2023)

•  Savithri Preetha Nair’s Chromosome Woman, Nomad Scientist (Routledge 2023). 

A full list of published books and Fellowship proposals can be found on the New India Foundation website. 

About the New India Foundation

Based in Bengaluru, the core activity of the New India Foundation is the New India Foundation Fellowships which have been awarded to scholars and writers for over two decades now. Alternating each year between the NIF Book Fellowships and the NIF Translation Fellowships (for bringing non-fiction from Indian languages to English), the New India Foundation Fellowships have resulted in the publication of 34 books in collaboration with several leading publishers across India. 

Instituted in 2018, the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize, awarded to the best non-fiction book on modern/contemporary India, has further built on this mission of sponsoring high-quality research and writings on the world’s largest democracy. The 2023 KCBP was awarded to Akshaya Mukul for his biography Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya (Penguin 2022). 

The Annual NIF Lecture was started in 2004 and renamed in 2019 as the Girish Karnad Memorial NIF Lecture in honour of the late multi-lingual scholar. Delivered annually by a distinguished scholar or writer, the NIF Lecture is held in Bengaluru in association with a reputed public institution. The 2023 Lecture, delivered by Amory Lovins at the Bangalore International Centre, was titled: ‘Can We Innovate Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis?’

Ramachandra Guha, Nandan Nilekani, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Manish Sabharwal and Srinath Raghavan are the Trustees of the New India Foundation.

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For more details, please log on to www.newindiafoundation.org