The New India Foundation revealed the five shortlisted non-fiction works competing for the ₹15 lakh award.
The selections cover post-Independence biographies, democratic history, economic analysis, and musicology.
The winning author will be announced and awarded on December 12 at the Bangalore Literature Festival.
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2026 Shortlist Announced
The New India Foundation unveils five shortlisted non-fiction works competing for the annual ₹15 lakh award set for December 12
Summary
Five books on the Constitution, India's development journey, partitions in South Asia, and lives of statesman-diplomat K M Panikkar and classical vocalist Arun Kashalkar have made it to the shortlist of the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize announced on Wednesday.
The New India Foundation (NIF) said the shortlist comprises outstanding works of non-fiction, all published in 2025, on modern and contemporary India.
The five books are Narayani Basu's "A Man for All Seasons: The Life of K.M. Panikkar", "Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia" by Sam Dalrymple, "Assembling India's Constitution: A New Democratic History" by Rohit De and Ornit Shani, "A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India's Development Odyssey" by Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian, and Sumana Ramanan's "The Secret Master: Arun Kashalkar and a Journey to the Edge of Music".
The shortlist was selected by a jury comprising Chairman of Tata Sons and Tata Group N Chandrasekaran, political scientist Niraja Gopal Jayal, partner at Trilegal Rahul Matthan, historians Jahnavi Phalkey and Srinath Raghavan, former diplomat Nirupama Rao, and entrepreneur Manish Sabharwal.
The winner will be announced in December, and the prize will be presented on December 12 at the Bangalore Literature Festival. The winning author will receive a cash prize of Rs 15 lakh.
Jury chair Jayal said the five books "demonstrate the value of rigorous, imaginative non-fiction in deepening our understanding of India and are exceptional in their ability to bring important aspects of the country's experience into focus".
Instituted by NIF in 2018, the prize aims at fostering high-quality research and writing on all aspects of India.
The work can be originally written in English or translated into English, and welcomes a wide range of non-fiction genres.
The past three winners are Aparajith Ramnath (2025), Ashok Gopal (2024), and Akshaya Mukul (2023).
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