At World Book Fair, a clash of ideologies and a celebration of the republic
In the regional languages section of the fair, large spreads of Hindi literature occupy the most space. The various renditions of Ramayanas and Mahabharats and Vedas — for the millennial, for the beginner, for the coffee table — jump out.
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The New Delhi World Book Fair 2025 commenced on Saturday, February 1, and will continue until Sunday, February 9. (Express Photo by Amit Mehra)
Kids hanging off their parents’ backs, university students with excited squeals that pierce through the crowd, lovers, hand-in-hand, and an ocean of books: At Bharat Mandapam (nee Pragati Maidan), connections, interpersonal and with the written word, are apparent. The World Book Fair, 2025, held between February 1 and 9, is on day five – and in full swing.
“I relate to Jo [from Little Women] so much! I am just like her, I don’t want to get married, I don’t want to have kids, I want to write and settle somewhere outside where no one can bother me,” Shivangi Kumari, 22, a final-year computer science student from Ghaziabad says. This is her first time at the Book Fair; she calls it “a dream come to life”. Dressed in all black, with a striking pair of thin, rectangular, white sunglasses holding her hair up, she gushes about the many Dan Browns and (one) Jane Austen she has read. She adds, “I have already told my parents, I’m never ‘settling down’.” Her and two of her friends, both of whom she met in college, arrived at the fair less than an hour ago — they have bought four books they plan on taking turns reading, already. “Self-help books are stupid!” Prerna Kumari, 20, notes, while others nod aggressively, in agreement. “Go to therapy and actually help yourself… for reading, fiction is best”, Shivangi says: “It makes for an escape, and it helps me grow.”
Them and those they deride are both in luck here, though: Self-help books on “mind, body and spirit” can be found at almost every alternate shelf: Sadhguru and Jordan Peterson sitting side-by-side. But publishers, big and small, also have a wide range for Shivangi and her friends — from Jane Austen to Sally Rooney. At Penguin, the stall that has seen the most footfall by a mile (or feet), there is no room to walk; hardly any to browse. “Thank god, my teachers forced me to go to read growing up… yaar, I want to get back into it,” one in a sea of faces shares with another.
The footfall so far, Amit Kumar Singh of the National Book Trust says, has been at par with the year before. “Over the weekend, there was no room to move, we surpassed capacity.” In the “Kidzkingdom”, the massive IAS and CUET/JEE/NET prep publishing houses and shops almost dwarf the comics and biographies-carrying stalls. Yet, hoards move, almost in tandem, towards those very corners of the kingdom; the prep centres host few customers, far in between. “We are waiting so impatiently for the second volume of Divine 5,” Neeru Bangwal, 42, mother of two, says. “It has Indian characters and stories that the kids can relate to. My younger one devoured the first book quicker than I thought possible,” she adds.
In the regional languages section of the fair, large spreads of Hindi literature occupy the most space. The various renditions of Ramayanas and Mahabharats and Vedas — for the millennial, for the beginner, for the coffee table — jump out. Keshav Anand, 24, a volunteer at Janchetna, a Marxist organisation working to get progressive literature to the masses, says the “bombardment” of a certain kind of literature and its proliferation across the fair is apparent: “What the BJP-RSS shakha is doing to curricula and spaces such as these is clear: Mak[ing] only one kind of ideology available.” (sic) In 2023, he recalls, “Goons showed up and vandalised a stall set up by Christian missionaries. We all witnessed it. Meanwhile, [publishers like] Gita Press and its ilk were selling Bhagavad Gita and Ramayana in the same space.” But all is not lost, he seems to think. “Because of the aggressive propagation of right-wing ideology, today we see, unlike before, class X and XII students are coming to us, wanting to read and explore alternatives. We have been selling a lot of books this time around”.
The theme pavilion outside, “The republic at 75” has a replica of the Parliament building in front of which scores photograph themselves. Shashi Tharoor is slated to speak at the fair today. Speakers on the stage discuss, one after the other, the richness of the Indian republic and the many ways it has kept itself alive — and the Constitution, the book that ties it all together. Around it, a sea of people move, paying attention and not, reading, thinking, listening — the theme of the fair is alive in the exercise of educating oneself, in motion all around.
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