Opinion At World Book Fair, a crowd loots books. It’s about Instagram, not the written word
If we as a society can take note of this, we will be able to recognise the worth of books not by how many or what books they take away, but by what they carry away from those books
The New Delhi World Book Fair 2026 concluded on January 18 at Bharat Mandapam (Image source: @DuttShekhar/X) A viral video from the final day of the New Delhi World Book Fair shows a throng of visitors scrambling to grab books from stalls. The scenes of people pulling books off shelves were described on social media as being “like animals, trying to snatch as many books as possible.”
In this context, many, including this author, harkened back to the adage from Baghdad: “Readers don’t steal, and thieves don’t read”, which does not seem to have found any resonance in this incident. To read that proverb as an exhortation to pay for books would be to grossly misunderstand it.
Think about it. Why is it that a mob looting a book fair raises our hackles, whereas a person downloading a pirated PDF of a book would not in the same way? The answer lies in the context, effect, and finally, intent.
The person downloading the PDF is still seeking knowledge and not causing any inconvenience to other readers. At a fair, we expect a sort of reverence for books as the vessels of knowledge. When people grab books without care, it feels like an insult to the store owners, to the publishers and writers who worked hard to produce those, and to fellow readers who queue up patiently. The upshot is clear: This chaos dishonours not just the books, but also the idea that we value learning itself. It flies in the face of the literary community.
If we get a little deeper into the collective psyche that drives such behaviour, we see that the problem goes far beyond a frenzy of covetous hands at Pragati Maidan. If a person hasn’t internalised a respect for knowledge, one might ask, why go to a book fair at all? Apart from the content they carry, books have taken on new meanings in the age of lifestyle signalling on social media. The new generation of readers has imbued books with secondary values of prestige and aesthetic appeal. To the clout chaser, the secondary value may be of more significance than the primary one. So, when a raucous book fair goer makes a grab for any random book, without even bothering to pick one of their liking, it is this secondary value of the book they are grabbing.
This premiumisation of the appearance of having read, rather than the enjoyment of reading itself, shows up in many other aspects of public life. Take, for instance, the desperation of our teenagers to get into elite educational institutions not for the education, but for their brand value.
While we rightly chastised the unruly crowd at the book fair, it is perhaps time to introspect and attempt to change the deep-seated complexes we all may have which manifests itself in such ugly forms. If we as a society can take note of this, we will be able to recognise the worth of books not by how many or what books they take away, but by what they carry away from those books.
The writer is Advocate on Record, Supreme Court of India
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