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

The New India Foundation (NIF) announced the shortlist for the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2026. The prize will be presented on December 12 at the Bangalore Literature Festival and the winner will be awarded a cash prize of ₹15 lakh.The shortlist comprises five outstanding works of non-fiction on modern and contemporary India, all published in 2025. It 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, historian of science Jahnavi Phalkey, historian Srinath Raghavan, former Foreign Secretary of India Nirupama Rao, and entrepreneur Manish Sabharwal. The shortlisted books and authors: A Man for All Seasons: The Life of K.M. Panikkar by Narayani Basu (Westland - Context)Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia by Sam Dalrymple (HarperCollins - Fourth Estate)Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History by Rohit De and Ornit Shani (Penguin Random House - Allen Lane)A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India’s Development Odyssey by Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian (HarperCollins)The Secret Master: Arun Kashalkar and a Journey to the Edge of Music by Sumana Ramanan (Westland - Context)Instituted in 2018, the prize is India’s largest and most prestigious book prize for non-fiction books on modern and contemporary India. The work can be originally written in English or translated into English, and welcomes a wide range of non-fiction genres. Published - October 28, 2026 06:00 pm IST