Raj Mankad, Houston Chronicle Editorial Team Win Pulitzer

India-West News Desk

HOUSTON, TX – Raj Mankad, deputy opinion editor at the Houston Chronicle, is part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize on May 5 for Distinguished Editorial Writing—an honor that places them at the forefront of American journalism. The award recognizes a body of work that doesn’t just inform but demands change, using moral force and clear-eyed reasoning to confront one of Houston’s most dangerous, ignored crises – railroad crossings.

Mankad, a writer and thinker with deep roots in both journalism and academia, brings a rare combination of intellectual rigor and civic urgency to the page. He earned his Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston after earlier degrees in philosophy and creative writing from Northwestern. His career has spanned topics from architecture to health care, but always with one goal: make the city—and the conversation—better.

His latest piece on May 5,  “Display the Hindu Ten Commandments in Texas classrooms too,” is a sharp, personal challenge to the Texas Legislature’s push to require the Christian Ten Commandments in every public school classroom. “As someone raised as a Hindu,” Mankad writes, “I’ve watched with interest as a bill requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom is making its way through the Texas Legislature.” The piece cuts to the core of what’s at stake: the erasure of pluralism, and the creeping normalization of one religious worldview in public life.

That same clarity and conviction pulses through the Pulitzer-winning editorials, which take aim at a threat hiding in plain sight: freight trains that stop for hours at a time in Houston’s working-class neighborhoods, often blocking ambulances, schoolchildren, and even grieving families from reaching their destinations. The series gained national attention after the death of Sergio Rodriguez, a high school sophomore who was killed trying to cross the tracks near his school. In the aftermath, the Chronicle’s editorial board, led in part by Mankad’s voice, demanded answers and action.

“Trains made Houston,” the board wrote. “They still do. They’re also standing in its way.” The editorials did not flinch, accusing city leaders of accepting a status quo that treats certain communities as disposable. “We can be a big industrial city,” Mankad said, “but the bargain we make with industry doesn’t include dying.”

The Pulitzer committee praised the work for its “rigorous focus on the people and communities at risk” and its “power to influence public opinion in the right direction.”