The jury for the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2026 has announced its longlist. These 10 books were selected from more than 150 entries submitted by publishers and authors.
The books on the longlist, published in the 2025 calendar year, explore a wide range of themes and genres from memoir-histories and data-rich reassessments to ethnographies and biographies. These ten books, in many ways, make a reader look at India afresh.
The 2026 KCBP Longlist was selected by an eminent 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.
Announcing the Longlist, the chair of the Jury, Prof. Niraja Gopal Jayal said, “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.”
The winner will be announced in December 2026 and awarded on 12 December at the Bangalore Literature Festival 2026. The winning author receives a cash prize of ₹15 lakh.
Longlist for the 2026 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize:
1. A Man for All Seasons: The Life of K.M. Panikkar (Context) by Narayani Basu
2. For a Just Republic: The People of India and the State (Permanent Black) by Partha Chatterjee
3. Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (HarperCollins – Fourth Estate) by Sam Dalrymple
4. Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History (Penguin – Allen Lane) by Rohit De and Ornit Shani
5. The Undying Light: A Personal History of Independent India (Aleph) by Gopalkrishna Gandhi
6. A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India’s Development Odyssey (HarperCollins) by Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian
7. Scamlands: Inside the Asian Empire of Fraud That Preys on the World (Penguin – Viking) by Snigdha Poonam
8. The Secret Master: Arun Kashalkar and a Journey to the Edge of Music (Context) by Sumana Ramanan
9. Souls in the Kalyug: The Politics and Cosmologies of Migrant Workers in Contemporary India (Permanent Black) by Shankar Ramaswami
10. The Conscience Network: A Chronicle of Resistance to a Dictatorship (Penguin – Vintage) by Sugata Srinivasaraju
Instituted in 2018, the NIF Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Book Prize is India’s largest and most prestigious book prize for non-fiction on modern and contemporary India. Books can be written in English or translated into English, and all non-fiction genres are welcome.
Past winners include Aparajith Ramnath (2025) for Engineering a Nation: The Life and Career of M. Visvesvaraya, Ashok Gopal (2024) for A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B.R. Ambedkar, and Akshaya Mukul (2023) for Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya.
