The 70th anniversary of India’s Independence is being made into a festival of reading for the new as well as old generation of readers.
Harper Collins and Puffin Books (an imprint of Penguin Random House) are hitting book shelves across the country with a select band of books on Indian independence, described as a unique event in connection with 70th anniversary of Indian Independence.
Puffin Books has published “Indian At 70”, authored by Jawaharlal Nehru University historian Roshen Dalal. The author describes her work as “snapshots since independence”.
She has furnished the synopsis or abstracts of various incidents which took place in the country from the dawn of freedom in 1947 to 2017. Major events from the spheres of Indian politics, arts, literature and culture have been told in staccato style by Dalal.
India At 70 has been told in 71 chapters and that too briefly. The author’s intention is to make history interesting and captivating to the laymen and this could be the reason which may make the work a best seller to her target audience.
“We want to take the readers for a whirlwind journey through the last seventy years. There are some obscure facts portrayed in India At 70 which we are sure would be of interest o the readers,” said Piya Kapur of Puffin Books.
Rivals Harper Collins chose an innovative strategy to marker Freedom at 70.
A specially curated “Freedom list” is what has been offered by the publishers. It is a collection of 15 books, all intertwined with the country’s freedom in one way or other.
Though none of them are newly written or published, what HC has dome is to select some of the popular books published over the years and relaunch them.
“We are offering the readers a kaleidoscopic view of India, replete with its challenges and accomplishments,” said Bhambri Rashi, spokesperson for the publishers. The authors and their works come from women in the freedom struggle to the trauma of Partition, from strife and wars to a deeply personal depiction of life in the pre-Partition era, from poets and patriots to the weary generations.
The fact is that reading habit among the people is not dead and that there are hitherto untold stories about the freedom struggle.
The year 2022 would see more such books hitting the shelves in connection with the platinum jubilee of Indian independence,” said Prof C I Issac, eminent historian and member of the ICHR.
Some of the Freedom list books are Remnants of a Separation: A History of Partition through Material Memory by Aanchal Malhotra, The Weary Generations by Abdullah Hussein, Patriots, Poets, Prisoners: Selections from Ramananda Chatterjee’s The Modern Review, 1907-1947 by Anikendra Singh, Nilanjana S. Roy and Devangshu Datta.