Flipping through old pages reveals Wanaparthy Raja’s love for books

Hyderabad: It reads like a fairy tale. Once upon a time there lived a ‘Raja’ who loved books. The ‘Rani’, Shanta Rameshwar Rao, was a writer. The ‘Raja’s’ love for books was such he would finish at least two in a day. The books were largely British imports. The ‘Raja’, who was involved in India’s freedom movement, was keen on shedding the colonial trappings in the book publishing industry.

Like Guyanese poet and writer David Dabydeen once said “you can’t really have a nation if you don’t have a publishing house,” the ‘Raja of Wanaparthy’, Janumpally Rameshwar Rao, believed this to be true and “published books by Indians and for Indians”.

In 1948, the ‘Raja’ bought a majority stake in ‘Orient Longman’, which was initially set up as Longmans, Green and Company. “Longmans had been in India since the mid-1800s but Orient Longmans was their answer to Indian Independence and the uncertainty surrounding foreign firms at that time. My father was a friend of Mark Longman, the last of the Longmans involved in running Longmans, Green and Co. Mark invited him to buy shares in the company and join the board. Involved as my father was in the freedom movement, he was keen on Orient Longmans becoming a truly Indian company and worked towards making it one,” says Nandini Rao, chairperson and MD, Orient Blackswan Private Limited.

At a time when books (especially English language textbooks) were being imported, J Rameshwar Rao did “what was considered a foolish thing”: he got Indian ELT experts to write a course for Indian children — the Gul Mohar Graded English Readers. “The series changed the face of Indian publishing forever. It was used in many instances, to set up the syllabus for English language teaching in India, and remains a respected, popular and highly acclaimed series even today,” says Nandini Rao.

While some book publishers have died, falling victim to digital books, Orient Blackswan managed to beat the odds and lived over 77 years to narrate its tale. Generations have grown up reading the books published by Orient Blackswan, but has the emergence of e-books (Amazon Kindle) threatened the traditional Indian publishing industry with the young reading on smart phones? “Some move from print to digital media has occurred, but much of the reading that Indians do is for exams and from textbooks; in this segment the dent in the sale of print books is not yet significant. It is reference books and what are known as ‘trade’ titles that have largely been affected by emerging technologies,” says Nandini Rao.

Despite a high level of smart phone usage, so far print continues to dominate the Indian market. In India, the sale of e-books could be less than 2%. Orient Blackswan’s e-book sales are less than 2% of its sales.

Some of the issues that all publishers, including Orient BlackSwan, currently face is the closing down of brick-and-mortar bookshops. “Amazon provides an outlet but does not provide the real experience of browsing, the deep connection that one can develop with a bookstore or its employees,” says Nandini Rao.

One key challenge faced by publishers is the closing down of traditional printing presses that used to cater to printing of books.

Another key issue that looms is the storage of print books as space is now a major constraint for institutions and libraries. “Printed books need more care than digital books if they are to last a long time,” says Nandini Rao.


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