Political scientist Vidhu Verma picked for annual Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship

The Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund has awarded its 2025 fellowship to political scientist Vidhu Verma for her research project exploring how Gandhi, Ambedkar, and Tagore confronted colonial violence and epistemic injustice.

The fellowship recognizes her work on colonial modernity and epistemic injustice in India’s intellectual legacy.

Political scientist Vidhu Verma from JNU has been awarded the 2025 Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship for her research on Gandhi, Ambedkar, and Tagore.

Ahead of the 136th birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru on Friday, the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund has announced that political scientist Vidhu Verma has been awarded the annual fellowship and selected for a project that examines how India’s founding thinkers grappled with the violence and inequities of colonial rule.

In a statement released from Teen Murti House on November 10, the Fund said it was “pleased to announce the award of Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship for the year 2025 to Verma to work on the project ‘Colonial Modernity and Epistemic Injustice: Politics, Ethics and Action in Gandhi, Ambedkar and Tagore’.”

The statement described her as “a distinguished political scientist,” noting her tenure at JNU and earlier positions as Visiting Fellow at Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, and Senior Fellow at the Indian Council of Social Science Research.

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Her research, the statement said, spans “Comparative Political Theory, feminist political theory, State, religion and democracy, affirmative action policies, and social justice in India.” She recently edited Secularism, Religion and Democracy (OUP, New Delhi).

The Fellowship “is awarded for a period of two years. It carries a stipend of Rs 1,00,000 per month and a contingency amount of Rs. 75,000 per year.”

The Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund (JNMF) was established in 1964 in memory of the first Prime Minister of independent India. Since its inception, the Fund added, it has awarded 163 fellowships.

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