3 months ago
1
Delhi University Professor Charu Gupta has won the 2026 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize for her book Hindi Hindu Histories: Caste, Ayurveda, Travel, and Communism successful Early Twentieth-Century India. The grant was announced connected February 11 by the Association for Asian Studies.
In Hindi Hindu Histories, published successful 2024, Ms. Gupta explores aboriginal twentieth-century North India done autobiographies and vernacular people culture. Drawing connected a affluent Hindi archive, she examines 4 contrasting figures—an anti-caste reformer, a pistillate ayurvedic practitioner, a nationalist question writer and a Left journalist—to uncover divers perspectives connected caste, gender, nationhood and Hindu individuality during a transformative period.
The publication highlights the breadth and plurality of Hindu thought a period ago, portion suggesting a narrowing of definite strands successful modern times. Ms. Gupta’s broader probe focuses connected gender, caste, masculinity, medicine and spiritual identities, and has importantly reshaped debates connected modern Indian past and people culture.
Named aft noted creation historiographer and taste thinker Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, the prize recognizes outstanding scholarly enactment connected South Asia and is regarded arsenic 1 of the field’s astir prestigious planetary honours.
