Emperors of the everyday

An interview with David Davidar, in India to launch his second novel

Author-publisher David Davidar had two good reasons for being in Delhi recently: first, the 20th anniversary celebration for Penguin India, which he helped set up in 1987; and second, the launch of his new novel The Solitude of Emperors, about a journalist named Vijay covering communal tensions in a small town in the Nilgiris. In the book, Vijay's understanding of the issues facing India today are illuminated by essays about Ashoka, Akbar and Gandhiji "" "the three greatest men this country has produced" "" written by his mentor, the secularist newspaper editor Rustom Sorabjee

What were your hopes for Penguin India when you started out?

For the first five or six years it was a very small operation and there were no major expectations. We knew it was a low-margin industry; publishing isn't like cement, it's accretionary, you can't just produce the new Vikram Seth.

Also, remember that we were looking for good writers on the one hand and simultaneously trying to create favourable publishing conditions in India. Publishers today have it relatively easy.

Do you still see gaps in Indian publishing?

We have the writers now and we have world-class publishers based in Delhi, but we don't have big investment in retail beyond the big cities. What we need is the equivalent of an Amazon.com, where an impatient consumer can order a book on his computer and have it delivered the same evening. Once that happens, the definition of a bestseller in the Indian market can rise from 7,000 to 70,000 copies, and I see India becoming the third-largest market in the world (after the US and the UK).

Coming to The Solitude of Emperors, which is very different, both in its size and in its writing style, from your first book (the sprawling House of Blue Mangoes): were you aiming for a more journalistic style here?

Yes, I wanted it to be as stripped-down as possible. I felt the subject "" fundamentalism, communal violence "" was so disturbing in itself that the writing didn't need any ornamentation or gimmickry. Also, I was inspired by some of the work of Coetzee and Orwell, which have a journalistic quality. At the same time, it is very much a novel. Vijay's life has a few similarities with my own "" for instance, I worked as a journalist, for a secular paper called Himmat "" but this isn't autobiographical.

So there was no specific catalyst for this book?

If you mean had I experienced riots firsthand "" no, I hadn't. Nothing like that. Besides, novels take time to germinate. But one question I wanted to address through this book was: when are we able to transcend ourselves and become, as Sorabjee in the book puts it, Emperors of the Everyday? To do things that can make a positive difference.

The book has drawn criticism for being didactic in places "" especially in the way you present the essays on Ashoka, Akbar and Gandhiji, separately from the main narrative.

It was a deliberate decision to write it that way. Sorabjee makes it very clear to Vijay that he is writing these essays for a teenage audience, making it as simple as possible for them to understand and be inspired by the lives of these great men. I had read so much on them myself, I could have chosen to write the book in a hundred different ways. But I chose this completely deadpan, functional style. The book suggests that economic disparity plays a big part in encouraging communal tensions.

Yes, and coincidentally I was speaking to Niall Ferguson, the historian, recently and he pointed out that countries are most vulnerable when there is economic volatility "" when some people are racing ahead and others are left behind. In the Indian context, this sort of unrest makes it much easier for politicians to get youngsters worked up about their religion, their differences with other communities, et cetera. There's a line in the book: "No atheist or agnostic could have a vision for this country that would endure." Why?

India is so steeped in religion that the people who can make a real difference, inspire the masses, would have to be men of faith, like Akbar and Gandhi "" people who are secularists in the sense of treating all religions equally, rather than being indifferent to it altogether. Atheists can seem just as fundamentalist in their views as those they oppose.