Professor Surajkumar Thube awarded 2025 Bayly Prize
The Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science received the honour for his PhD thesis work from the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

Surajkumar Thube is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Ashoka University. Out of many possible entries, Suraj’s PhD thesis titled “Towards a Non-Brahmin Hinduism: Caste, Dharma, and the Marathi Public Sphere in Western India, circa 1890 – 1930”, which he completed at the University of Oxford in 2024, has been announced as the third-place winner of the prestigious Professor Sir Christopher Bayly Prize by the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Named after the great historian, the late CA Bayly, this prize awards the best thesis written in the UK on any topic in Asian Studies that falls within the ambit of two prestigious journals, The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and Modern Asian Studies.