NB: Shashank is a former student of history at Ramjas College, the University of Delhi. He can be assured that his erstwhile teachers are very proud of him. DS
The 2025 Karwaan Book Award has been awarded to Shashank Shekhar Sinha for Casting the Buddha: A Monumental History of Buddhism in India.
The Jury also awarded a Special Mention to Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav for Being Hindu, Being Indian: Lala Lajpat Rai’s Ideas of Nationhood
This year’s jury comprised Dilip Menon (historian and the Mellon Chair in Indian Studies at the University of Witwatersrand), Sucheta Mahajan (historian and teacher), Rakhshanda Jalil (academic and translator), Sangeeta Dasgupta (researcher of Adivasi communities, colonial ethnographies, and environment), Kanad Singa (historian), and Shraddha Kumbhojkar (academic).
The jury said: “…[Moving] away from the traditional approach of writing the history of religion largely based on texts, Shashank Sinha’s history is rooted in monuments, art, and heritage sites. Some of these spaces of devotion, scholarship, art, and politics include the Mahabodhi Temple, the stupa at Sanchi, the cave paintings at Ajanta, and the ruins of Nalanda University. Sinha weaves a web of connected histories across time and space, from the birth of the Buddha to the present day, encompassing sites associated with the rites of passage in his life in India, as well as culturally diverse spaces in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Southeast Asia.
“The canvas is large, as is the timeline. It is a measure of the historian’s craft that the work has such broad appeal to a general audience at a time when local and specialised histories are the order of the day.
“Extremely readable and lucid, Sinha’s work displays academic rigour in ample measure. Most important of all, in an age of fundamentalist religion distorting society and underwriting politics, Buddhism in Casting the Buddha offers a different kind of faith for ‘our times’.”
The jury added that Bhargav’s book “[…] deeply researched and compelling biography of Lala Lajpat Rai sets a standard for popular history. Dispelling well-worn clichés and misunderstandings, she rescues Rai from both Hindutva misappropriation and the bland nationalist portrayal of a heroic martyr.
“What emerges is a complex thinker committed to imagining an India beyond religious binaries, even as he remained unreflective of certain entrenched hierarchies. By engaging with the fluidity and contradictions of Rai’s thought with clarity, Vanya presents a figure rooted in his time yet offering signposts for the future. This is a vital book for an age of entrenched religious majoritarianism, reminding us that politics must remain a space of struggle for a just society. Through this biography, Bhargav enables a new generation to engage with the unfinished and fraught project of building a secular Indian nation.”
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‘Baba’ – A Personal Tribute to Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi, by A. L. Basham
‘India’s First Radicals’ argues for a generous assessment of 19th-century Indian intellectual life
Kautilya’s observations on the causes of discontent in a polity
Ramachandra Guha’s ‘India After Gandhi’ – Gujarati translation launched in Ahmedabad
Toys from Trash: Teaching kids science using everyday objects / Visit Arvind Gupta’s Archive
After the truth-shower 