Initiated in 2021, each year the NIF Translation Fellowship awards a Rs 6-lakh grant to translators for translating historically significant non-fiction texts published from 1850 onwards from Indian languages.

This year’s winners are:

  • Tamil: Vilasini Ramani, to translate Swaraj to Whom? by Malayapuram Singaravelar
    Singaravelar’s Swaraj to Whom? (Swarajyam Yaarukku?) is a compilation of writings by Malayapuram Singaravelar (1860-1946), an intellectual and political activist often hailed as the first communist of South India. Published between 1931-1934, these writings are a critical reflection on Swaraj, the idea of self-rule propagated by Indian nationalists; to Singaravelar, Swaraj would be incomplete without foregrounding questions of class and caste in arguing for an anti-colonial movement that ingrains a vision for creating an egalitarian society.

  • Gujarati: Hemang Ashwinkumar, to translate The Dawn of Life by Prabhudas Gandhi
    Prabhudas Gandhi’s The Dawn of Life (Jivan Nu Parodh) is an account of the Gandhi family’s life in South Africa seen from the eyes of young Prabhudas Gandhi (1901-95), Mahatma Gandhi’s grandnephew, who had migrated to South Africa in 1905. In elaborate and precise ways, this memoir curates a precious archive of all that went into the making of the man who went on to organise a diverse, and mutually averse, subcontinent for swaraj in the spirit of ahimsa.

  • Urdu: Matthew Reeck, to translate A Portrait of the West by Qazi Abdul Ghaffar
    Qazi Abdul Ghaffar’s A Portrait of the West (Naqsh e Farang) is a travelogue narrating the author's trip as Secretary of the Khilafat Movement’s 1922 delegation to Britain. It is a critical text of literary and historical importance which documents an oft-forgotten moment of the Indian. Independence movement, reversing the Western gaze onto Europe in surprisingly humorous ways while undercutting colonial-modern Western claims for humanist values and universal knowledge.

  • Hindi: Achyut Chetan, for translating Sanskriti Ke Chaar Adhyaya by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar
    Ramdhari Singh Dinkar’s Sanskriti Ke Chaar Adhyaya (Four Chapters of Culture) is a history of Indian culture written in post-Independence India. The book traces the roots of the syncretism and pluralism of Indian culture in four chapters, each conceptualised as the account of a revolution and a synthesis. It offers unique perspectives on the contribution of several traditions-religious, literary, philosophical, aesthetic, and linguistic-to the making of a pluralist, composite, and democratic Indian culture which is inevitably dynamic.

The fellowship also offers an opportunity for direct mentorship under the Language Expert Committee and the NIF Trustees, apart from providing financial, editorial, legal, and publishing support.