Delhi-based Journalist is working on memoir of growing up Muslim in Bihar and Delhi.
By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
New Delhi: 27-year-old Delhi-based journalist Neyaz Farooquee has got the prestigious New India Foundation fellowship to write a memoir of growing up Muslim in Bihar and Delhi.
Farooquee left his job last year from Hindustan Times after working for over two years to devote more time on the book. He is also on the list of regular contributor for the ‘India Ink’ page of New York Times.
Originally from Gopalganj district in Bihar, Farooquee came to Delhi when he was still very young to study in a school of Jamia Millia Islamia. As he “failed to secure a seat for medical,” he completed graduation in Bioscience from Jamia Millia Islamia.
The 2008 Batla House shootout influenced most people living in the Muslim “ghetto” near the University. That made Farooquee change course too as he decided to become a Journalist and did his masters in Convergent Journalism from Jamia’s prestigious AJK Mass Communication Research Center.
Farooquee earlier got a non-fiction fellowship from Sarai-CSDS to work on a project on same issue. The book tentatively titled as “Unmaking of a Radical,” will be a culmination of the same project.
The Trustees of the New India Foundation are Historian Ramachandra Guha and UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani; while the Board of Advisers include academicians André Béteille, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Srinath Raghavan and Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, N. Ravi.
The New India Fellowships are awarded to scholars and writers working on different aspects of the history of independent India on eighteen-month cycle.
Several reputed journalists and academicians have been given this award in past. Six persons in all got this prestigious fellowship this year.
1. Nishita Jha (journalist, Bombay), to write a book on the changing narratives of violence against women.
2. Dr Jason Fernandes (sociologist, Dona Paula), to write a book on the political history of postcolonial Goa.
3. Amitava Sanyal (journalist New Delhi), to write a book on the social history of football in Kolkata.
4. Dr Sohini Guha (political scientist, New Delhi) to write a book on low caste politics in North India.
5. Neyaz Farooquee (journalist, New Delhi) to write a memoir of growing up Muslim in Bihar and Delhi.
6. Dr S. Sajikumar (economist, Thiruvananthapuram) to write a book on the sociology and economics of labour migration into Kerala.