Ashok Gopal has won the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2024 for his meticulously-researched biography, A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B.R. Ambedkar. A history student, he had been studying the life of Ambedkar since 2003, and the biography was published in 2023 by Navayana, which has just finished two decades as an independent publisher of books on caste injustice.   Gopal’s book was picked from a shortlist of five, including Neerja Choudhry’s How Prime Ministers Decide (Aleph), Radhika Iyengar’s Fire on the Ganges: Life Among the Dead in Banaras (HarperCollins), Kunal Purohit’s H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars (HarperCollins) and Chitralekha Zutshi’s Sheikh Abdullah: The Caged Lion of Kashmir (HarperCollins).   The New India Foundation prize is given to the best non-fiction book on modern India with high-quality research and writing. Gopal will will receive a prize of Rs 15 lakh (£15,000).   The jury led by political scientist Niraja Gopal called A Part Apart a “remarkable book” which delves into Ambedkar’s many lives — as a pioneering activist and leader of the Dalits, a tireless political organiser, a writer and publicist, constitutionalist and Cabinet Minister, as well as a peerless economic and political thinker.   More about the book, reviews, and to order it here.