Kindle-like tablet featuring e-books on Mahatma Gandhi to be launched

AHMADABAD: To popularize books on Mahatma Gandhi and cater to the ever-changing reading habits, a city-based trust has decided to come up with their own tablet, lending people the facility to read Gujarati and Hindi e-books published by them on the Father of the Nation.

Kindle-like e-book tablet, which the Navjivan Trust is planning to bring, will have 170 books mostly on Mahatma Gandhi allowing people to read those in Hindi and Gujarati.

This announcement was made by the managing trustee of Navjivan Trust Vivek Desai here today while launching 10 different editions, including 4 e-book versions, of "Hind Swaraj", a book written by Gandhi in 1909.

Till now, the trust, established in 1919 by Gandhi himself, has sold around 10,500 online versions of around 170 of their books, converted into e-books, which according to Desai, is the key motivating factor for the trust to venture into the territory of an exclusive tablet parallel to online conglomerate Amazon's "Kindle" e-book reader.


"During last two years, around 10,500 e-books of 170 different titles published by them, mostly on Gandhi, have been sold in the online market. Our English version e-books are sold on Amazon, while Gujarati e-books are sold through "e-Shabda" portal" said Desai.

"We are seeing a paradigm shift in people's reading habits, as a small tablet allows people to carry hundreds of books in it. Thus, we have decided to come up with our own tablet, like Amazon's Kindle, so that more people can read Navjivan publications, mostly on Gandhi, through our tablet," said Desai.

Giving further details, digital and print publishing consultant of Navjivan Trust Apurva Ashar said that regional language e-books are not compatible with Kindle.

"At present, Kindle does not support Gujarati or Hindi language. Thus, we have decided to create a new platform to reach out to people wanting to read Mahatma's books in those languages. We are in process to make a tablet equivalent to Kindle. This device will allow readers to type and search in Gujarati or Hindi," said Ashar.