LONDON (TIP): India-born author Nandini Das has been named the winner of the 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, a leading international non-fiction prize worth GBP 25,000, for her book ‘Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire’.

The UK-based academic’s debut work, described as the “true origin story of Britain and India told through England’s first diplomatic mission to the Mughal courts”, was revealed as this year’s winner at a ceremony at the British Academy in London on Tuesday evening.

As a Professor in the English faculty at the University of Oxford, the 49-year-old author has sought to present a new perspective on the origins of empire through the story of the arrival of the first English ambassador in India, Sir Thomas Roe, in the early 17th century. “By using contemporary sources by Indian and British political figures, officials and merchants she has given the story an unparalleled immediacy that brings to life these early encounters and the misunderstandings that sometimes threatened to wreck the whole endeavor,” said Professor Charles Tripp, Chair of the prize jury. “At the same time, she grants us a privileged vantage point from which we can appreciate how a measure of mutual understanding did begin to emerge, even though it was vulnerable to the ups and downs of Mughal politics and to the restless ambitions of the British,” he said.

He described how through her beautiful writing and exceptional research, the jury was drawn to the contrast between an impoverished, insecure Britain and the flourishing, confident Mughal Empire and the often-amusing, sometimes querulous exchanges between their various representatives.

The British Academy Book Prize, formerly known as the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize, was established in 2013 to reward and celebrate the best works of non-fiction that demonstrate rigor and originality and have contributed to public understanding of other world cultures and their interaction. Das will receive GBP 25,000 for winning the prize.