A.K. Ramanujan Book Prize for Translation

A.K. Ramanujan (1929–1993) was born and educated in Mysore, India. He taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades, where he served as the chairman of the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. He earned the Padma Shri in 1976 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 1983. In recognition of the excellence of his translations, the South Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies has established the A.K. Ramanujan Book Prize for Translation, awarded biennially.

2026 Prize

$1,000 award for the translator.

Guidelines for Submission

• Only books bearing a copyright date of 2023 or 2024 will be eligible for the 2026 awards.
• Publishers must complete the book nomination form.
• Each press may nominate a maximum of six books for the Ramanujan Prize.
• Only publishers may nominate books.
• Upon receipt of a completed nomination form, publishers will be provided with addresses for prize committee members. A copy of each entry, clearly labeled “A.K. Ramanujan Book Prize,” must be sent to each member of the appropriate committee.

Books published by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc. are ineligible for consideration for prizes administered by the Association for Asian Studies. Employees of the Association are excluded from consideration for AAS book prizes, subventions, and grants. Publishers should check with authors to certify that they are not employed by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 

Deadline

Nominations for the 2026 A.K. Ramanujan Prize will open in late spring 2025.

Ramanujan Prize Committee

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2024 Awards

Winner and Citation

Chinnaiah Jangam, Gabbilam: A Dalit Epic (Yoda Press)

The recipient of the A. K. Ramanujan Prize for Translation for 2024 is Chinnaiah Jangam for his work of translation titled Gabbilam: A Dalit Epic by Gurram Jashuva (1895-1971). Regarded as a pioneer of Dalit literature in Telugu and as an anti-caste visionary, Jashuva remains virtually unknown beyond regional boundaries, while his work continues to be a staple of Telugu textbooks. Gabbilam (Bat) is a Dalit epic in that it consciously models itself on one of the most beloved of Sanskrit messenger poems—the Meghadhūta of Kālidāsa—only to invert its romantic tropes and predominant mood of love in separation, centering the narrative around a bat—reviled as neither bird nor animal but treated as a symbol of Dalit identity itself—while boldly morphing it into the chief protagonist of an epic journey. And this journey—spanning from the south to the Himalayas—is entrusted by a celibate untouchable to seek Shiva’s wisdom: Why must a Dalit bear karma’s weight of suffering? In his translation, Jangam does not seek to reproduce Jashuva’s classical meter as such but mobilizes a lucid and powerful free verse that preserves the aesthetic dimensions, rhetorical force, and radical essence of the original work. Accompanied by an excellent introduction that contextualizes Jashuva’s genius within the broader historical landscape of neglected Dalit literature in Telugu, Jangam’s translation exemplifies nothing short of a deep commitment to capturing the revolutionary spirit of Gabbilam, attesting to his own contention that translation is by no means an apolitical practice. And it seems fitting that the A. K. Ramanujan Prize goes this year to the translation of a poetical work, a Dalit epic, which both questions and subverts religious norms much in the same way the radical Kannada poetry did—poetry that Ramanujan himself made available powerfully for the first time to the Western world.

Honorable Mention

Past Awards