New India Foundation announces shortlist for 2026 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize

The New India Foundation (NIF) on Wednesday announced the shortlist of five books for the 2026 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize (KCBP), the foundation said in a statement on Wednesday.

The winner, who will receive a cash prize of ₹15 lakh, will be announced in December, with the award presentation scheduled for December 12 at the Bangalore Literature Festival 2026.

“We are delighted with this year’s shortlist. 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,” chair of the jury and political scientist Niraja Gopal Jayal said, according to the statement.

“The NIF Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Book Prize embodies the New India Foundation’s mission to foster high-quality research and writing on all aspects of the world’s largest democracy,” the statement said.

The five shortlisted books for the award this year are “A Man for All Seasons: The Life of K.M. Panikkar” by Narayani Basu; “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 “The Secret Master: Arun Kashalkar and a Journey to the Edge of Music” by Sumana Ramanan.

The books examine different aspects of India’s political, constitutional and cultural history including the making of the Constitution, the country’s development since Independence and the partitions that shaped modern Asia.

An eminent seven-member jury, including Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran, former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao and entrepreneur Manish Sabharwal, selected the shortlist.

The statement said the KCBP, instituted in 2018, celebrates original non-fiction works written in or translated into English. Based in Bengaluru, NIF supports original research and scholarship on post-Independence India through fellowships and literary awards, the statement said.