Souhardya De

Souhardya De (born 9 January 2004) is an Indian writer, columnist, and commentator from Midnapore, West Bengal. He is a recipient of the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar, a civilian award for Indian citizens under the age of 18, in 2021. He is a Think Big scholar at the University of Bristol and a Don Lavoie Fellow in political economy at the Mercatus Center. De was one of the young authors commissioned by the Government of India to commemorate Lal Pratap Singh on the occasion of India’s 75th anniversary of Independence. He did an undergraduate certificate in History from the University of Cambridge Professional and Continuing Education with a bursary. Later, he was awarded a Think Big scholarship for his undergraduate education in History at the University of Bristol, where he also worked as a student fundraiser.

His father, Shakti Prasad De, is a professor in the faculty of history at Midnapore College and his mother, Jayati De, is a teacher at a government school in West Bengal. De is a member of the erstwhile aristocratic Mallick Bari family.

Career He was a columnist for the Sunday Guardian and a podcaster, hosting a show called Cosmographia: The Graeco Romans, the Egyptians and Us. His book Pratap Jung: The Ultimate Sacrifice was published by the National Book Trust as part of the PM-YUVA series in 2023.

In foreign policy, De has worked with the Hudson Institute, where he was associated with the South Asia centre. As a policy commentator, he has also written in The SAIS Review of International Affairs, the Critical Asian Studies, and the Global Taiwan Institute, among other places. In 2024, De also briefly worked on a research stint at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh.