The New India Foundation (NIF) on Wednesday announced the 10-book longlist for the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2026, which recognises non-fiction writing on modern and contemporary India.

The books, all published in 2025, span genres including memoir-history, ethnography, biography and data-driven assessments, and examine a range of subjects related to India and its contemporary history.

The longlist was selected by a seven-member jury comprising Tata Sons and Tata Group chairman N Chandrasekaran, political scientist Niraja Gopal Jayal, Trilegal partner Rahul Matthan, historian of science Jahnavi Phalkey, historian Srinath Raghavan, former Foreign Secretary of India Nirupama Rao and entrepreneur Manish Sabharwal.

The winner will receive a cash prize of ₹15 lakh. The shortlist is scheduled to be announced at the end of October, while the winner will be announced in early December and presented the award on December 12 at the Bangalore Literature Festival 2026.

Announcing the longlist, jury chair Niraja Gopal Jayal said the selected books reflected the diversity and depth of non-fiction writing on modern and contemporary India.

“This year’s longlist reflects the diversity and depth of non-fiction writing on modern and contemporary India. The ten selected works offer distinctive and compelling perspectives on the people, ideas, and movements that have shaped the country. We look forward to celebrating these works and the conversations they will inspire,” she said.

KCBP 2026 longlist

1. A Man for All Seasons: The Life of K.M. Panikkar — Narayani Basu (Context)

2. For a Just Republic: The People of India and the State — Partha Chatterjee (Permanent Black)

3. Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia — Sam Dalrymple (HarperCollins - Fourth Estate)

4. Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History — Rohit De and Ornit Shani (Penguin Random House - Allen Lane)

5. The Undying Light: A Personal History of Independent India — Gopalkrishna Gandhi (Aleph)

6. A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India’s Development Odyssey — Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian (HarperCollins)

7. Scamlands: Inside the Asian Empire of Fraud That Preys on the World — Snigdha Poonam (Penguin Random House - Viking)

8. The Secret Master: Arun Kashalkar and a Journey to the Edge of Music — Sumana Ramanan (Context)

9. Souls in the Kalyug: The Politics and Cosmologies of Migrant Workers in Contemporary India — Shankar Ramaswami (Permanent Black)

10. The Conscience Network: A Chronicle of Resistance to a Dictatorship — Sugata Srinivasaraju (Penguin Random House - Vintage Books)

Instituted in 2018, the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize is awarded for non-fiction books on modern and contemporary India. The prize accepts works originally written in English as well as works translated into English, across a range of non-fiction genres.

Previous winners include Aparajith Ramnath, who won in 2025 for Engineering a Nation: The Life and Career of M. Visvesvaraya; Ashok Gopal, who won in 2024 for A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B.R. Ambedkar; and Akshaya Mukul, who won in 2023 for Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya.

The prize is part of the New India Foundation’s efforts to promote research and writing on modern and contemporary India.

Tags: