Brahma Chellaney

Brahma Chellaney is a leading strategic thinker and analyst. He is the winner of the 2012 Bernard Schwartz Book Award by the New York-based Asia Society for his pioneering work, Water: Asia's New Battleground, published by Georgetown University Press. He will receive the $20,000 prize at a special event in New York on January 23, 2013.

Professor Chellaney, the first Bernard Schwartz awardee living outside the Anglosphere, is a Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, an independent think-tank; a member of the Board of Governors of the National Book Trust of India; and a nonresident affiliate with the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London. He has been a Fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, which through the Nobel Committee awards the Nobel Peace Prize annually. He was formerly a member of the Policy Advisory Group headed by the External Affairs Minister of India.

Professor Chellaney is widely regarded as one of India's leading strategic thinkers and analysts, and is also a well-known newspaper and television commentator on international affairs. Stanley Weiss in the International Herald Tribune, for example, called him "one of India's top strategic thinkers," while The Guardian has described him as “a respected international affairs analyst and author.” He is very well known as a commentator on regional and international issues in the field of strategic affairs, including larger Asian strategic issues and non-traditional subjects like water security, energy security and climate security.

He is one of the authors of India's nuclear doctrine and its first strategic defense review. Those contributions came when Professor Chellaney was an adviser to India's National Security Council until January 2000, serving as convenor of the External Security Group of the National Security Advisory Board, as well as member of the Board's Nuclear Doctrine Group.