Rahul Pandita is a journalist known for his dispatches from war-torn areas. He has reported extensively from various theatres of conflict and political upheaval, including Iraq. In India, he is particularly known for his reporting from the Maoist-affected areas of central-eastern India.
He published his debut novel, Our Friends in Good Houses, in October 2025. He is the author of Hello, Bastar: The untold story of India’s Maoist Movement; Our Moon has Blood Clots: A memoir of a lost home in Kashmir; The Lover Boy of Bahawalpur; and the coauthor of The Absent State: Insurgency as an excuse for Misgovernance. He was awarded the International Red Cross Award for conflict reporting in 2010.
He is a Yale World Fellow (2015) and also the recipient of the New India Foundation Fellowship (2011). He was also a visiting fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of INDIA at the University of Pennsylvania (2014).
Currently, he is the Carnegie Distinguished Fellow at Columbia University’s Institute of Global Politics.