Divya Cherian's book, Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (Oakland: University of California Press, 2023), received an Honorable Mention for the 2024 Presidents Book Prize for the best first book by an early career scholar awarded by the Social Science History Association.

The Presidents Award is for a meritorious first work by an early-career scholar. Entrants were judged on scholarly significance, interdisciplinary reach, and methodological innovativeness within monographs analyzing past structures and events and change over time. In their citation, the jury committee noted that Cherian makes "an extraordinary archival dive into fine-grained conflicts among merchant elites and rulers in early-modern Marwar … show[ing] the construction of ‘untouchability’ in real time, on the ground, and with all its multitudinous and tragic consequences on full display."

Merchants of Virtue also received an Honorable Mention for a first book in any field of history that does not focus on the history of women, gender, and/or sexuality (2023) from the Berkshire Conference for Women Historians. The award committee called Cherian's book “a monumental contribution to historical knowledge of Hindu-ness and Hindu consciousness.”

Divya Cherian is Associate Professor of History.