The Fall of the JCB Literature Prize: Good Riddance to Literary Gatekeeping

It’s official: the JCB Prize for Literature is shutting down. And while a few quarters of the Indian literary scene may be busy mourning its exit, I, for one, won’t be sending flowers. In fact, I believe this is long overdue,not because literature doesn’t need recognition, but because prizes like the JCB had quietly become tools of cultural and intellectual gatekeeping, celebrating a very narrow, carefully curated slice of what they believed Indian literature ought to be.

Let’s unpack this.

Since its inception in 2018, the JCB Prize was presented as India’s answer to the Booker ; an award meant to champion “the finest fiction by an Indian writer each year.” But year after year, one couldn’t help but notice an eerie predictability to the shortlist. A quick glance at the nominated titles, and you’d already know the kind of stories you’d find inside: angsty, urban, identity-driven narratives swimming in postcolonial guilt, peppered with the requisite criticism of Indian traditions, nationalism, or the complexities of Indic civilisation.

To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with these themes. Literature should confront, question, and reflect. But when an award repeatedly seems to favour one kind of ideological lens while ignoring the vast, untapped, and diverse literary traditions of India, it ceases to be a fair literary prize. It becomes an echo chamber.

What about India’s vast corpus of storytelling rooted in Indic philosophy, Sanatan Dharma, and Dharmic worldviews? What about novels that grapple with history from an indigenous perspective, or celebrate the civilisational continuity of this land without reducing it to colonial tropes? What about bold political fiction that doesn't toe the fashionable global liberal line?

Those voices, it seems, were never going to find favour with the gatekeepers of the JCB Prize.

And this is a problem that extends beyond JCB. Too often, literary prizes in India ; especially those backed by corporate or Western interests ; reward writing that conforms to a specific, globally palatable narrative about India: a land of caste oppression, religious fanaticism, and cultural superstition, desperately in need of saving by progressive enlightenment.

It’s a tired template. And yet, it has continued to dominate literary spaces, stifling the plurality of voices that truly reflect the India of today complex, contradictory, rooted, and evolving on its own terms.

The shuttering of the JCB Prize presents an opportunity. An opportunity to rethink how we celebrate literature in India. Because if there’s one thing this country has never lacked, it’s stories. From ancient Sanskrit epics to Bhakti poetry, from regional folk tales to modern novels that capture the pulse of rural, urban, and digital India ; our literary traditions are pluralistic, diverse, and profoundly rich.

It’s high time we had literary awards and platforms that reflect this reality. Prizes that don’t feel compelled to satisfy international literary tropes to remain ‘relevant.’ Platforms that can appreciate a well-crafted historical novel about the Maratha Empire as much as a contemporary urban drama. Spaces where writers unafraid to celebrate Indic thought, Sanatan values, or nationalist histories aren’t sidelined for being ‘problematic’ or ‘politically inconvenient.’

The death of the JCB Prize isn’t a loss for Indian literature. If anything, it’s an opportunity for course correction. A chance to move away from patronising, elitist, and ideologically homogenous literary spaces toward a genuinely inclusive, culturally rooted, and intellectually diverse literary landscape.

The stories of this land are too vast, too ancient, and too alive to be confined to the narrow definitions of a now-defunct prize committee.

So good riddance, JCB Prize. May what rises in your place better reflect the India you consistently chose to ignore.