A.K. Coomaraswamy Prize 2026 goes to Charu Gupta’s Hindi Hindu Histories

We are delighted to share the news that the annual A.K. Coomaraswamy Prize 2026 for the best scholarly work in South Asian Studies has gone to Charu Gupta’s Hindi Hindu Histories (Permanent Black Ranikhet, and SUNY Press New York). The award is given by the American Association for Asian Studies.

This award honours distinguished non-fiction scholarly works that define or redefine their fields across various disciplines. There is no bigger prize than this for a scholar in South Asian Studies.

Charu Gupta is Professor of History at Delhi University. Her prize-winning book looks at caste, ayurveda, travel, and communism in early-twentieth-century India to reveal the breadth and depth of Hindu ideas a hundred years back, and shows by implied contrast a narrowing of certain Hindu worldviews in contemporary India.

Her first monograph – a revised version of her PhD at SOAS, London – is the classic Sexuality, Obscenity, Community (still in print with Permanent Black), which also looks at the social and religious ethos of the Hindi belt a hundred years ago. This book investigates Hindu patriarchy and hostility to Muslims. It works beautifully as the precursor to Hindi Hindu Histories which has won the 2026 Coomaraswamy Prize.