Indian Publishing Industry

E-books, print on demand, online sales sites, the boom in mobile phones… new technologies are profoundly transforming the way texts circulate. Developing countries, however, which face serious limitations in infrastructure, have a considerable challenge ahead of them.

What new actors are emerging in the countries of the South, outside of the powerful platforms already existing in the US, Europe and Japan? Is it conceivable that there may be an autonomous evolution of digital publications in developing countries, entirely independent of the richest nations? What support policies could be implemented to promote the growth of this new industry and accompany traditional actors in the process of adapting to the changes involved?

The digital experiences undertaken in the South suggest that new technologies represent a great opportunity for developing countries – particularly in terms of diffusion –, but on the condition that local entrepreneurs seek out original models adapted to the concrete needs of their communities.

The 1947 Partition of British India is reckoned as a momentous event in the annals of this subcontinent and, along with historico-political accounts, has generated an imposing volume of reflections in the socio-cultural realm. Creative writers and artists have variously dealt with the subject in their distinctive ways, contributing to the corpus that has come to be known as Partition Literature in common parlance. Within its ambit, however, there arose over the years a discrepancy in terms of geo-cultural origins, its fallout being that the territorial division on the east received meagre attention vis-à-vis the northern and north-western sectors. It had the regrettable upshot of a fallacious notion forming in the general psyche about the lack and/or inconsequentiality of writings emanating from the eastern region. The impression resulted in the Bengal chapter becoming a marginalised episode–bordering on the postscript–in most Partition discussions, and by corollary literary compositions on this topic too remained relegated to a subordinate status–be it in the pan-Indian or international circles. The present study aims to analyse the probable reasons for such a scenario which have led to a limited circulation of literature emanating from and/or revolving around the rupture of Bengal in 1947. In course of this investigation, issues of provincialism and power-imbalance come to the fore. Politics of representation and the mindscape of the intelligentsia are also exposed, prompting one to view the prevailing situation through a multi-focal lens. The paper proposes translation as an effective method for filling, to a comprehensive extent, the said lacuna, and also touches upon the practices of the academia and the publishing industry in this respect.

A walk through the lanes of Daftaripara, the backyard of Calcutta’s publishing industry known for its concentration of bindery works, printing presses and other related small-scale enterprises.  “There is another Kolkata within Kolkata/ Learn to walk through it and see” (Sankha Ghosh). A loud soliloquy from my current project: Visual stories on life, labour and the city. Join the walk and visit www.daftaripara.org

The Indian legend has it that goddesses Lakshmi and Saraswathi respectively bestow wealth and learning on earth. It was the belief that both the goddesses would never bless the same soul. Such was their mythical rivalry that each would deny her munificence to the one under the other's patronage. In the popular perception, the phenomenon of the rich merchant and the poor pundit was supposedly the manifestation of the goddesses at odds. Thus the merchant accumulated wealth nevertheless contributing to the commerce while the pundit enriched society through his knowledge himself remaining impoverished. Nevertheless, both seemed reconciled to the enmity of their respective patrons in heaven as they got their share of recognition on earth.

When at length, Suresh was finding his moorings at Tihar; Subba Rau was brought in to a near stampede there. Why not, the whole nation knew him by then as the man who had pricked at the Premier's face. When Suresh enquired what the fuss was all about, Rau said it was but a 'literary coup'. Probed by Suresh for an account, Rau unfolded the story of his life and times as an unpublished writer. In his mid-forties, Rau was seized with an urge to bring himself onto the fictional stage. So to lend scope for his boundless creativity, he chose the vastness of the 'novel' as the setting. And for the medium of expression, he bypassed his mother tongue, Telugu, the Italian of the East. Instead, he chose English not only for its ability to nuance the complexities of life but also for the flair of expression he had in it. Drawing from his examined life, he set out to portray a young woman's life on the male canvas of India. Ironically, it was his love for language that impeded the start, but soon enough he got his poetic prose right for the narrative in mind. With his creativity in command over the unique plot he conceived, he wrote with gusto and had his dream novel for his debut in nine months flat. After toiling for a while, for that 'apart title', he pitched in for 'Tangent of Fate'. Then, with a top-of-the-world feeling, he dispatched the manuscript to a leading publisher in New Delhi. While he took the publisher for granted, he received his manuscript post-haste. And that made him see the irony of the title he had chosen for his novel! This bolt from the blue shook Rau to the core, and he came to doubt his abilities as a novelist. Thus, holding the manuscript, as one would his dead child, he had a last look at it, as the father would, before the burial. But seeing it as crisp on its return as it was when he had posted it, he felt cheated. As he realized that none at the publisher's end had an open mind, he saw the rejection letter all again. He felt sad at the ungracious averment of unsuitability on the designer letterhead. Impulsively, he felt like resubmitting the manuscript with a rejoinder that the concerned editor could take her own time to read and reject it, if it were a must. But, on second thoughts, he realized that it would be treated as sour grapes, and thus kept his own counsel. Anyway, he tried his luck with other Delhi publishers, this time, all at a time. To his distress, it was like the quote of a cartel: Read your manuscript with interest but found it unsuitable for our publication. As a last resort, in what was a reverse phenomenon, he looked Westward for salvation, only to be informed that unsolicited souls wouldn't be baptized there. Though he felt it was cruel, he thought it was an honest averment nevertheless. Could it be the unstated policy of the Delhi operatives as well, he suspected, but, couched by the pretentious unsuitability labels! To get a feel of the publishing scene back home, he pored over the periodicals and the newspaper supplements in right earnest. What amused as well as frustrated him was that while some publicized the published titles to the hilt, the others debunked them as junk in the reviews. Taking the reviewers seriously, he forwarded his manuscript to them, indicating that it had all the ingredients they believed a novel should have in it. And as none of them responded, he wondered whether the critics were more interested in condemning a work than commending any. And, to find the pulse of the Indian writing in English, he picked up some of the well-hyped novels. As he scanned through them one by one, he was amused to find the two basic features of the published kind: if it was not a case of the Western characters on the Indian stage, then it must be the Indian Diaspora in the Western setting. It appeared to him as though writing about the Indians in India was passé for the publishing world.