Established in 1999, the Sardar Patel award is annually conferred by the Center for India and South Asia at UCLA. An endowment was created by funds donated by the Friends of the Sardar Patel Association provided to the UCLA

Foundation.

The award was created to honor the best doctoral dissertation on any aspect of modern India - social sciences, humanities, education and fine arts - in any U.S. University or academic institution awarding the Ph.D.

The award continues to this day, honoring the legacy of Sardar Patel.

Recipients

2022

Dr. Sarath Pillai, University of Chicago
Federal Futures: Imagining Federation, Constitution, and World in Late Colonial India

2021

Dr. Ketaki Jaywant, University of Minnesota
Secularizing Caste: Mapping Nineteenth-Century Anti-caste Politics in Western India

2020

Dr. Ahona Panda, University of Chicago
Philology and the Politics of Language: The Case of Bengali, 1893-1955

2019

Dr. Sahana Ghosh, Yale University
Borderland orders: Gendered economies of mobility and security across the India-Bangladesh border

2018

Dr. Rebecca Whittington, UC Berkeley
Tug-of-Ear: The Play of Dialect in Modern Bengali and Tamil Literature

2017

Dr. Alpen Sheth, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
Cultivating Risk: Weather Insurance, Technology and Financialization in India 

2016

Dr. Aniket Aga, Yale University
Genetically Modified Democracy: The Science and Politics of Transgenic
Agriculture in Contemporary India

2015

Dr. Isabel Huacuja Alonso, University of Texas at Austin
Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting at the Crossroads of Empire

2014 

Dr. Benjamin Siegel, Harvard University
Independent India of Plenty: Food, Hunger, and Nation-Building in Modern India

2013 

Dr. Uday Chandra, Yale University
Negotiating Leviathan: Statement and Resistance in the Margins of Modern India

2012

Dr. Tariq Ali, Harvard University
The Envelope of Global Trade: The Political Economy and Intellectual History of Jute in the Bengal Delta, 1850s to 1950s

2011

Dr. Nikhil Anand, Stanford University
Infrapolitics: The Social Life of Water in Mumbai

2010

Dr. Tariq Thachil, Cornell University
The Saffron Wave Meets the Silent Revolution: Why the Poor Vote for Hindu Nationalism in India

2009

Dr. Gayatri A. Menon, Cornell University
Living Conditions: Citizens, 'Squatters,' and the Politics of Accommodation in Mumbai

2008

Dr. Jahnavi Phalkey, Georgia Institute of Technology
Science, State-Formation and Development: The Organization of Nuclear Research In India.

2007

Dr. Bhavani Raman, University of Michigan
Document Raj: Scribes and Writing Under Early Colonial Rule in Madras, 1771-1860.

2006

Dr. Gillian Goslinga, University of California Santa Cruz
The Ethnography of a South Indian God: Virgin Birth, Spirit Possession and the Prose of the Modern World.

2005

Dr. Michael Youngblood, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Cultivating Identity: Agrarian Mobilization and the Construction of Collective Interest in Contemporary Western India.

2004

NOT ADMINISTERED

2003

Dr. Sarah Pinto, Princeton University
Casting Desire: Reproduction, Loss and Subjectivity in Rural North India.

Dr. Milind Wakankar, Columbia University
The Prehistory of the Popular: Caste and Canonicity in Indian Modernity.

2002

Dr. Farina Mir, Columbia University
The Social Space of Language: Punjabi Popular Narrative in Colonial India, c. 1850-1900.

Dr. Rachel Sturman, University of California Davis
Family Values: Refashioning Property and Family in Colonial Bombay Presidency, 1818-1937.

2001

Dr. David Stuligross, University of California Berkeley
A Piece of Land to Call One's Own: Federalism and Institutional Innovation in India.

2000

Dr. Srirupa Roy, University of Pennsylvania
Divided We Stand: Diversity and National Identity in India.

Published: Thursday, February 5, 2015