ICG Scholars-In-Residence Programme 2021
Abhishek Choudhary and Amrita Shah were selected for the 2021 Scholars-in-Residence award
Abhishek Choudhary has worked since 2010 variously as a reporter, researcher and editor. He has written for a dozen-odd popular forums, including the Caravan, the EPW, Himal Southasian and the Indian Express. He was awarded the New India Foundation fellowship in 2017 to research his biography of the former Prime Minister AB Vajpayee, Believer’s Dilemma. He lives in Delhi.
About the book Charming and sensitive, secretive and vacillating, detached yet quietly ambitious: Atal Behari Vajpayee was a man of unusual talents and some dangerously consequential flaws. Vajpayee made an unintended entry in politics in 1948 as the underground organizer of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which had been banned for its alleged involvement in Gandhi’s murder. As one of the popular right-wing parliamentarians in the early 1960s Vajpayee, known for his fiery speeches and poetry, bridged the contrasting world-views of Nehru and Savarkar. As Prime Minister towards the end of his six-decade-long career, he steered India to a multi-party democracy. But his years in office also helped the RSS become mainstream, respectable even. A man of varied interests and poor health, Vajpayee could finance his tumultuous career with a complicated private life. Juxtaposing a wide range of original archival sources with detailed interviews in India, the US and the UK, the 700-page book will be the first major study that will attempt to lay open the psychology of the most glamorized, enigmatic, and consequential Indian politician of the last three decades. In detailing Vajpayee’s intimate relationship with Sangh Parivaar, Believer’s Dilemma will also paint a revealing emotional and psychological portrait of Hindu nationalism.
Published as Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right, 1924–1977 (Picador India, 2023) and
Believer’s Dilemma: Vajpayee and the Hindu Right’s Path to Power, 1977–2018 (Picador India, 2025).
Amrita Shah is the author of three nonfiction books: the award-winning Ahmedabad: A City in the World (Bloomsbury, 2015), Vikram Sarabhai: A Life (Penguin, 2007) and Telly-Guillotined: How Television Changed India (Sage-Yoda, 2019). She has worked for the Time-Life News Service, been a Contributing Editor with the Indian Express newspaper, launch Editor for Elle (India) and Editor, Debonair magazine. She has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, a New India Foundation Fellowship and a Homi Bhabha Fellowship. She has been a Fellow at the Institutes for Advanced Study in Nantes and Johannesburg and The Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.
About the book Traders and professionals who followed indentured workers to Mauritius and South Africa were called ‘passenger’ Indians. A celebrated passenger Indian, Mohandas Gandhi went to Natal in 1893. A decade later, an undistinguished passenger Indian, the author’s great grandfather Mohanlal arrived in Natal. As a child growing up in India she was fascinated by the mystery surrounding her ancestor’s journey. Why had he gone there? What was the name of the woman he met along the way, who gave birth to her grandmother? And did he know Gandhi? Embarking on a search for her wandering forefather she found a paper trail strewn in archives across South Africa, Mauritius, the UK and India, providing answers but also revealing the immense value in researching a small man’s history.
Published as The Other Mohan in Britain’s Indian Ocean Empire : A Personal Journey into History (HarperCollins India, 2024).
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
The International Centre Goa (ICG) invites academics, journalists, writers and others to apply for the ICG Scholars-in-Residence Programme 2021. ICG will select one applicant to spend 30 days at ICG to work on her book project.
Eligibility
- Applicants must be residents of India
- Applicants must be currently writing/completing a book manuscript, a report (10,000 words or more) or any other scholarly/literary work; and
- Applicants must be able to convincingly show in their application their progress in the ongoing project (1-2 book chapters or some other documentation).
Note: The programme is not open to those who are yet to begin work on a project.
Terms and conditions
- The selected applicant will be required to make a public presentation (typically a lecture) during the period of her stay at ICG.
- The ICG Scholars-in-Residence programme will cover the following expenses:
- Return air travel (economy);
- Complimentary accommodation for self (and spouse/partner) at ICG for 30 days; and
- A Stipend of Rs. 4,000 per day for the 30-day period.
All applications – clearly marked as “ICG Scholars-in-Residence Programme 2021” – must be sent by email on or before 31st May 2021 to: director@incentgoa.com.
Note: ICG reserves the right to amend the rules and terms and conditions of the Scholars-in-Residence Programme.