Call for Papers

Kishwar Memorial All-India Essay Competition to ‘Deep Dive into your individual family or village/town/ city history’ welcomes

  • Students, research scholars, teachers of all disciplines—including literature, history, economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, engineering, law, medicine, architecture et al.
  • Gyanis  without any academic degrees who have knowledge of Bharatiya Parampara of maintaining family histories;
  • Those whose own families have maintained such records;
  • Persons from communities, such as the Nat sampradaya, that have maintained the age-old tradition of recording jati puranas.

The competition is open to persons old and young, no matter what their age.

Since such an exercise requires serious digging of facts through multiple sources, we will provide nine months of preparation time to those interested in submitting their essays for the competition.

To begin with, we will invite essays in Hindi and English. In the coming years, as translation within Indian languages becomes easy, we would consider opening the competition to all of India’s languages.

What We Expect from FINAL ESSAY in order for it to qualify for the contest:

  • The final submission must be at least 5000 words. However, there is no upper limit of words. We would welcome even book length manuscripts.
  • The sources of information must be verifiable;
  • If the contestant is referring to official or historical records, the contest must provide photographic evidence of their existence;
  • In case of oral histories, please make sure to video or audio record each interview along with photographs and provide details of the persons interviewed.

We will accept only online submissions in PDF format with a file name in the format as follows: Full-Name-Title-of-The-Essay.pdf.
(Ex: aditya-k-from-the-mountains-to-the-plains.pdf)