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
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 …
Pradip is a co-founder at The Morning Context and leads our newsletters vertical. He has previously worked at The Ken as a staff writer, at Mint as an assistant features editor and the Deccan Chronicle as a copy editor. He works with a slew of expert newsletter writers across subjects and domains. His own writing spans the gig economy, farmers caught in the crossfire of technology, global warming and parents trapped in the edtech wave. Some of his best stories have come at the intersection of technology and human endeavour.
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