We are delighted to announce that the winner of the BASAS Book Prize 2025 is Michael O’Sullivan, No Birds of Passage: A History of Gujarati Muslim Business Communities, 1800-1975 (Harvard University Press, 2023). Congratulations, Michael!
The judging panel made the following comments:
No Birds of Passage is a truly innovative study of the complex interlinkages between religion, community, caste and capitalism that firmly puts alternative ways of functioning of mercantile ‘corporations’ in South Asia on the map of global capitalism. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, the committee was impressed by the sweep of the study, which covers more than two centuries, and by the way the author pieced together diverse sources in multiple languages to challenge existing views on Islam and capitalism.
The judging panel would also like to give an honourable mention to Moyukh Chatterjee’s Composing Violence: The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities (Duke University Press, 2023). This book engaged with theory and empirical data in truly an impressive manner, and spoke to the wider global moment.
The BASAS Council would also like to thank this year’s Book Prize judging panel for all their hard work in bringing the process to this conclusion. Many many thanks to
Professor Taylor Sherman (Chair)
Professor Anindita Ghosh
Professor Yunas Samad
Professor Dina Siddiqi