One For Independent Publishers
Excerpts from an IANS report
In a big thumbs up to independent publishing and the fight against the caste system, the Indian Young Publisher Award has gone to a journalist who has devoted himself to exclusively bringing out books on caste related issues.
S Anand won the award for his lateral thinking and passion in running the Chennai-based Navayana Book Club, the country’s first publishing house to focus only on the issue of caste.
The job of running an independent publishing house and that too with books exclusively on caste issues is daunting, but the confident 29-year-old is ready to take up the challenge.
Anand’s publishing house Navayana literally means ‘new vehicle’, a term given to Dalit icon BR Ambedkar’s socially and morally concerned, rationalistic, anti-metaphysical interpretation of Buddhism. As a publishing venture, Navayana aims to take forward debates on issues neglected by mainstream publishers.
Navayana has 10 titles to its credit in the past three years, including books like “The Blindness of Insight” by Dilip M Menon.
Anand, who set up Navayana along with Pondicherry-based Dalit activist-theoretician Ravikumar, was selected for the award from a field of 52 stronger applicants across India and a final shortlisted 11. He will now get the opportunity to compete for the International Young Publisher of the Year Award at the London Book Fair in April 2007.