NLSIU student bags coveted Rhodes scholarship for 2026

Bengaluru: Manhar Bansal, final-year LLB student at National Law School India University's (NLSIU), has bagged the coveted Rhodes Scholarship for 2026. Manhar is among the six students in the country to win the scholarship fully funded to pursue a postgraduate programme at the University of Oxford. 

A native of Muktsar in Punjab, Manhar will be heading to the University of Oxford in October 2026 to join the cohort of more than 100 scholars from around the world for fully funded postgraduate studies.

A final year BA LLB (Hons) student with an interdisciplinary focus in philosophy and literature, Manhar has published his academic writings and received recognition by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology and the South Asian Studies Association of Australia.

He intends to pursue Masters in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation. "I want to study literature and philosophy at Oxford. My degree at NLS is not just Law, but also the social sciences and the humanities," he told DH.