Our first cohort is now approaching its conclusion. We have supported projects spanning intellectual history, cinema, political thought, sport, social theory, state politics, environmental change, and civilizational futures. Here is what they produced:

1. Whispers in the Storm: The Future of Indian Cinema

Akshay Singh and Kamal Swaroop

What happens to cinema when the reel, the theatre, and the collective ritual of viewing give way to the file, the algorithm, and the solitary scroll? Whispers in the Storm reads this change not simply as a shift in content but as a transformation in the material and imaginative conditions of the moving image. Singh and Swaroop argue that the dominant ‘Mumbai Gaze’ has become a closed loop, increasingly alienated from the common viewer. Against it, they map the emergence of new cine-ecologies: regions such as Uttar Pradesh that could become sovereign centres of storytelling, production, and even hardware. The book culminates in a proposal for Indo-futurism - not VFX spectacle with Indian motifs, but moving-image forms shaped by Indian philosophies of time, consciousness, and experience.

Akshay Singh is a BAFTA Breakthrough India honoree and the writer-producer of acclaimed independent films. Kamal Swaroop is the National Film Award-winning filmmaker behind the cult classic Om-Dar-B-Dar and a four-decade body of audacious cinema and documentary work.

2. Raising Olympians: Making India a Sports Superpower

Atreyee Sengupta

Raising Olympians is a call to envision India as a global sporting superpower, one that consistently excels on the world stage and earns its place among the elite sporting nations. The book examines why a country with India’s population, passion, and growing resources has struggled to convert isolated achievement into sustained global excellence. Its diagnosis moves beyond the usual demand for more funding or infrastructure to the institutional and cultural foundations of a sporting power. Drawing on history, international politics, governance, and comparative experience - including China’s rise - the book develops a roadmap for embedding athletic aspiration within national life. Its horizon is 2047: an India in which sport strengthens collective identity, state capacity, and the confidence to compete at the highest level.

Atreyee Sengupta is a UGC Senior Research Fellow and PhD candidate at JNU’s School of International Studies, where she studies sport, geopolitics, political economy, and the governance of world football.

3. Liberating Madurai: The Victory that Defined Vijayanagara

Jay Vardhan Singh

Madhuravijayam is an extraordinary fourteenth-century Sanskrit account of Kumara Kampana’s conquest of Madurai, composed by his wife, Queen Gangadevi. Jay Vardhan Singh approaches it not as a quarry of facts but as a cultural artefact through which a new empire explained itself. Written amid invasion, dynastic collapse, and social disruption, the text reveals Vijayanagara’s self-fashioning as a restorer of sacred order and an agent of political renewal. It also shows how the empire created a supra-regional identity by combining inherited forms with new political necessities. By placing Gangadevi’s authorship and perspective at the centre, the project opens a rare window onto power, legitimacy, memory, and civilisational restoration at a decisive moment in South Indian history.

Jay Vardhan Singh is a historian, public communicator, and creator of a popular history channel. His doctoral work at JNU examined the formation of religious identities, memory, and belonging in pre-medieval India.

4. Recontextualizing Savarkar

Apratim Tripathi

Savarkar is frequently divided into fragments: the revolutionary, the prisoner, the political thinker, the organiser, and the object of present-day controversy. Apratim Tripathi’s project reunites these fragments through four recurring ideas - freedom, revolution, nationhood, and war. Its central claim is that Savarkar never abandoned the revolutionary project; rather, his understanding of revolution changed form as circumstances changed. Petitions, philosophical writings, organisational work, militarisation, and later strategic choices are read as parts of a continuous civilisational quest rather than as disconnected or contradictory episodes. By replacing a merely chronological biography with a conceptual architecture, the book seeks to produce a more coherent account of both Savarkar’s inner development and his continuing political afterlife.

Apratim Tripathi is an independent researcher of modern Indian history and the revolutionary movement whose work draws on archival research and sustained engagement with the Savarkar scholarship.

5. The Third Pole

Suraj Dalal

The Third Pole follows Suraj’s odyssey across the Himalayan arc, documenting the catastrophic unraveling of Asia’s water towers. From Indus in the west to Brahmaputra in the east, through intimate encounters with sheep herders, soldiers, and displaced communities, Suraj reveals how glacial retreat, unpredictable monsoons, and geopolitical tensions are converging into an existential crisis affecting 2 billion people across seven nations. But this is not a book of despair. Weaving together stunning photography, climate data, and deeply human stories, the book refuses the false binary between technological progress and environmental preservation, instead exploring the synergies where ancient knowledge systems and cutting-edge climate tech create unexpected solutions. Part travelogue, part scientific investigation, part spiritual inquiry, The Third Pole asks: What might we learn if we truly listened to the land and those who know it most intimately?

Suraj Dalal is an explorer, photographer, and climate-technology researcher working at the intersection of machine learning, environmental data, art, and community knowledge.

6. State Leadership Under Modi

Soumyadeep Chowdhury

The BJP’s rise since 2014 is usually explained from New Delhi: through Narendra Modi’s leadership, national campaigning, or central party organisation. Soumyadeep Chowdhury reverses the direction of inquiry. His project examines the BJP through the distinctive political worlds of India’s states and the leaders who translate, adapt, and sometimes reinvent its national project. Through figures including Yogi Adityanath, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Himanta Biswa Sarma, Devendra Fadnavis, Suvendu Adhikari, and Rekha Gupta, the book studies how civilisational concerns - identity, cultural preservation, security - interact with governance priorities such as welfare, infrastructure, and law and order. It restores subnational politics to the centre of the story and asks which forms of state leadership may shape India’s political future.

Soumyadeep Chowdhury is an assistant professor of political science at Adamas University and an academic leader in the International Association for Political Science Students. His research specialises in Indian democracy and politics.

7. Icons of the Hindu Renaissance in the 19th Century

Akshay Jog

The familiar account of the nineteenth-century Hindu renaissance is usually organised around a small set of canonical figures. Akshay Jog expands that field of vision. His book recovers a wider constellation of thinkers, reformers, editors, and institution-builders - among them Rajnarayan Basu, Balshastri Jambhekar, Bhau Mahajan, Bhaskar Tarkhadkar, Gazulu Lakshminarasu Chetty, Swarnakumari Devi, Nabagopal Mitra, and Chandranath Basu. Through them, the book reconstructs a period in which social reform, intellectual awakening, linguistic pride, resistance to conversion, economic critique, and Hindu political self-consciousness developed together. It presents the Hindu renaissance not as a derivative response to the West, but as a many-centred effort to renew a civilisation under conditions of colonial modernity.

An engineer by training, Akshay Jog is a writer and public speaker on modern Indian history, and nationalist thought.

8. Dreams of a New Republic: An Ambedkar-Savarkar Reader

Vardhaman Jain

B.R. Ambedkar and V.D. Savarkar are usually placed in separate and antagonistic ideological canons. This resourcebook creates the conditions for a different kind of reading. Organised thematically from their writings and speeches, it brings the two thinkers into direct dialogue around common national problems. The purpose is to make comparison possible at the level of primary texts and to draw attention to neglected complementarities in their concerns, diagnoses, and visions of nation-building. At a moment when both figures are more frequently invoked than read, the project offers students, researchers, and general readers an accessible intellectual map grounded in their own words.

Vardhaman Jain is an independent researcher of Ambedkar, Savarkar, and modern Indian political thought, and an active public communicator.

Progress: Emphasis on producing optimistic, forward-looking works that inspire action and solutions.

Rootedness: Deeply rooted in India's civilizational identity, ensuring relevance to India's unique challenges and opportunities while contributing to global discourse.

The fellowship seeks to nurture the next generation of bold thinkers who can reimagine India’s trajectory through fresh, dynamic, and impactful ideas. We are actively seeking applications from young Indians who are eager to challenge conventional narratives and offer innovative solutions.

Objective

The fellowship is a one-year immersive program designed to support exceptional individuals in producing book-length works that explore critical issues across culture, society, technology, economy, and politics. The work must aim to contribute actionable ideas, historical insights, and visionary pathways to accelerate India's development and leadership in the 21st century.

The thematic focus areas for the fellowship are:

• Culture and Identity

• Society and Institutions

• Politics and Policy

• Technology and Innovation

• Economy and Industry

Program Details

A total of 15 Fellowship grants will be awarded. Fellows will receive a grant of ₹ 12,00,000, payable as a monthly stipend of ₹ 80,000 for a period of twelve months, and the balance of ₹ 2,40,000 payable on the submission of the final manuscript. Additional travel grants will also be considered for the Fellows on a discretionary basis.

The Fellowship will involve a mix of virtual engagement and up to two months of in-person involvement including orientation, workshops and mentorship sessions.

Selection Process

The selection process is designed to identify individuals with exceptional potential to produce impactful, book-length works aligned with the ethos of the fellowship.

Applicants must be 18 years or older and possess a Master’s degree or higher; however, individuals with an undergraduate degree may be considered in exceptional cases. The application process includes a comprehensive book proposal of 3,000–5,000 words. The proposal must outline the central idea of the book, a detailed structure with key chapters or sections, and a clear alignment with the fellowship’s vision of advancing India’s progress in culture, society, technology, economy, or politics. Additionally, applicants must include a roadmap detailing how they plan to complete the book within the fellowship year, along with a writing sample that complements the proposal and demonstrates their ability to articulate complex ideas effectively.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview and a selection panel will evaluate proposals based on the originality and relevance of ideas, the clarity and feasibility of the book roadmap, the quality of writing, and commitment to the project’s completion. Final decisions will be communicated within a week of the interview round, and selected fellows will be invited to join the upcoming cohort.

Application Deadline

Round 1: January 7, 2025

Round 2: February 7, 2025

Applications will be considered on a rolling basis, meaning applications are reviewed as they come in, and exceptional candidates may be selected early. With limited spots available, applicants are encouraged to apply as soon as possible.

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