Nehru Trust Awards

Nehru Trust Awards

The Trust aims to achieve its mission by making it possible for scholars and professionals from India and the UK to develop and share skills relevant to these subjects and to gain access to Indian cultural resources both in India and in the UK.

The Trust’s primary activity is an annual awards programme for individual scholars and museum professionals from both countries in order to enable them to study, carry out research or undertake training in both India and the UK. The awards programme is announced each autumn; awards are made in late March and must be taken up within the subsequent year (1 April to 31 March).

The Trust also administers grants on behalf of the V&A Jain Art Fund, and works in collaboration with the Charles Wallace India Trust with whom it offers an annual joint UK Visiting Fellowship.

 

P Perumal

Palmleaf Manuscripts: Care and Conservation

To study and train in the conservation of paper and palmleaf manuscripts at the V&A & other UK museums

Dr Kavita Singh

A complex history: collections of Indian art at the V&A

Of the grants awarded to me, the one that most deeply affected me , was the NTICVA Visiting Fellowship which I was awarded soon after completing my PhD when I was looking for a new area of study and had become interested in the field of new new museology. This deconstructive approach applies insights of the new anthropology to the field of museology, examining the ways in which museums have become influential institutions in the modern world, as custodians and interpreters of the artefacts of the past.

Rosemary Crill

Rajasthani paintings

A study of Rajput culture and society and their representation in Rajasthani paintings

Dr Sudeshna Guha

Ethno-archaeological survey of pastoral groups in Gujarat

Atul Tripathi

A comprehensive and comparative study of Solar Temples

N Athiyaman

Documentation of traditional diving for pearl and chunk in Mannar Gulf, from the Sangam period onwards;

These funds were very useful as seed money for ethnographic study in the Tamil region. As a result, Tamil University has extended its helping hand to widen the survey for the Palk Bay region also. INSA, New Delhi, also provided some contingency grants to improve the study of traditional pearl and chank fishing. Since the Trust has encouraged such a small study, I feel more confident in pursuing further ethnographic study uncovered by the scholars.

P Venkatesan

Relief sculptures as revealed from Hero-stones in Thiruvannamalai, Samburayar and North Arcot Districts of Tamilnadu

The grant was very helpful to me in allowing me to discover a number of hero-stones and inscriptions during the Pallava and Chola periods in Vellore and Thiruvannamalai districts and to prepare research articles in vernacular research magazines like Hindu, Avanam, Pulamai, Dinamani etc. I am currently (2001) doing PhD research in the field of Hero-stones .

Smitha Cariappa

Artistic expression of the Kodavas through artifacts, ritual and performance

The grant helped me to understand the ethnic culture of the Kodavas (Kodagu, Karnataka)  and largely exposed me to the rural environment, paving the way to the use of natural materials, pigments, cloth for my growing practive of installation and site-specific work. I was awarded the Commonwealth Arts and Crafts Award and was artist-in residence at the University of Newcastle in 1997-8.

Vibha Singh Chauhan

The construction of indigenous gods and linkages with the communities of eastern Uttar Pradesh

The award of a Small Study and Research grant proved invaluable for me for reasons probably different from many others. I was not a young scholar but a university teacher in mid-career, and had developed a serious academic interest in an area that was not directly related to my formal discipline of English literature. My independent readings in sociology, anthropology and history, along with my travels in the Indian countryside had opened the fresh arena of the creation and continuation of village gods as an intergral part of cultural existence in India.

Anish Vohra

To document and research modern Indian art criticism at Santiniketan, Bengal

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