John F. Richards Prize Recipients
The John F. Richards Prize in South Asian History recognizes the most distinguished work of scholarship on South Asian history published in English during the previous calendar year.
2022
Shahla Hussain, Kashmir in the Aftermath of Partition (Cambridge Univ. Press)
2021
Nira Wickramasinghe, Slave in a Palanquin: Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka (Columbia Univ. Press)
2020
Sheetal Chhabria, Making the Modern Slum: The Power of Capital in Colonial Bombay (Univ. of Washington Press)
2019
Sebastian R. Prange, Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast (Cambridge Univ. Press)
2018
Faiz Ahmed, Afghanistan Rising: Islamic Law and Statecraft between the Ottoman and British Empires (Harvard Univ. Press)
2017
Audrey Truschke, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (Columbia Univ. Press)
2016
Nayanjot Lahiri, Ashoka in Ancient India (Harvard Univ. Press)
2015
Richard Eaton and Phillip Wagoner, Power, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300-1600 (Oxford Univ. Press)
2014
Sunil S. Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants (Harvard Univ. Press)
2013
A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (Columbia Univ. Press)
2012
Douglas Haynes, Small Town Capitalism in Western India (Cambridge Univ. Press)
2011
Farina Mir, The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab (Univ. of California Press)
2022 Richards Prize
Shahla Hussain, Saint John's University
Kashmir in the Aftermath of Partition (Cambridge Univ. Press)
Shahla Hussain’s Kashmir in the Aftermath of Partition foregrounds key concepts of freedom, self-determination, and Kashmiriyat in presenting a nuanced and innovative history of the region of Jammu and Kashmir in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. Hussain’s work helps us see how important aazadi (freedom) and insaaf (justice) are as historically situated moral and political concepts in Kashmir, especially since 1947. Hussain centers Kashmiri voices and renders them as active historical and political subjects. This is a meticulously researched and expansive work that promises to open new vistas for research on questions of territory, belonging, faith, resistance, and self-determination.