Visitors at the 20th Delhi Book Fair find books on Narendra Modi’s rise and political ideas worth a read.
It seems the authors and publishers have taken the line Ghar, ghar Modi, quite seriously! At least the ongoing 20th Delhi Book Fair is saying so. The colourful bookstall owners, the publishers and even the writers, all want you to ‘take home’ Modi, but through their books!
Enter any bookstore in the Fair and you will find only one man dominating the shelves – Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Soaring high on the popularity chart post his much written-about Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort, the Prime Minister seems to have captured the imagination of the writers and publishers as well.
From Hindi language to English, bookworms are surely in for a treat if they want to know more about their PM. Although three months is a really short time to know the ‘Pradhan Sevak’ as the Prime Minister calls himself, but authors have already anointed him with names and acronyms like ‘Game Changer’, ‘Common Man’ and ‘Vikas-Shilpi’.
The fair offers a huge variety of books on Modi starting from ones he himself has penned, showcasing the lesser known side of the hard-nosed politician, while there are others that encapsulate his life and times. To mention a few there is Andy Marino’s political biography of the PM, Narendra Modi, a political biography, Modi, making of a Prime Minister by Vivian Fernandes and Abode of Love, a collection of short stories written by Narendra Modi himself.
Amongst the Hindi books written on the 15th and current Prime Minister of India are Namo Vani, Modi ka Vikasnama, Ghar Ghar Modi, Moditva, Commonman Narendra Modi, Game-Changer Narendra Modi, Samajik Samarsata, Kahaani Narendra Modi ki, Vikas-Shilpi Narendra Modi, to name a few.
Asked about the large number of Hindi books on Modi, Raghubir, sales executive at the Prabhat Prakashan bookstore, said, “How many English channels do we have? All the channels that we watch are Hindi only. This language will never die. And moreover, we print what the readers want. The popularity of Hindi books are more and so we publish our maximum books in Hindi only.”
“In our stall one whole section is dedicated to Modiji. Few of the books are even written by him, when he wasn’t even the Chief Minister. We also have books on Lal Krishna Advani, Rajnath Singh, Sushil Kumar Shinde, etc,” added Raghubir.
Karan Mago, director, sales and marketing, said, “The sale of books on Modi has definitely increased after his becoming the PM. Previously he was only confined to Gujarat, but now he has become a national name and face and so people want to read and know about him more.”
One of the visitors at the Fair, Aakash Sharma who was browsing through books on Modi spoke to Metrolife about his new-found interest. “The book that I am planning to buy is called Common Man. But Modi is not a common man. He was never a common man. Infact, he is the most powerful man in our country now and reading about him would be definitely interesting. To know about his political will, his ideas, his journey, his ambitions will be something worth reading about.”
Others who have found a ‘little’ space on the shelves is Aam Aadmi Party chief and Delhi’s former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his ex-mate and fellow activist, Kiran Bedi.
Other than books on politics, the Fair also has books and journals written in other languages like Kashmiri, Bengali, Punjabi, Urdu and Telugu, etc.
