Bloomsbury India’s fall from grace
The publisher’s decision to publish a dodgy book and then hurriedly drop it in the face of backlash offers a window into the troubled state of Indian publishing
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Editor's note: There is no polite way to say this. Bloomsbury India screwed up. On 22 August, the eight-year-old Indian arm of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc said it would not be publishing Delhi Riots 2020: The Untold Story, authored by Monica Arora, Sonali Chitalkar and Prerna Malhotra, following backlash on social media. A number of Twitter users—which included some of Bloomsbury India's most influential authors—had taken exception to a flier announcing the launch event for the book, which would be attended by film director Vivek Agnihotri, OpIndia editor Nupur Sharma and Kapil Mishra, a Bharatiya Janata Party politician from Delhi. Mishra's speeches during a rally in favour of the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Delhi's Jaffrabad area in February are said to have instigated the riots in the city that left at least 50 people dead; OpIndia is a right-wing news portal founded in 2014; and Agnihotri's claim to fame is the term "Urban Naxal", which BJP politicians started using in public speeches to attack anyone who disagreed with their views. The opposition to the book came from mostly individuals who identify with …
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