Exploring caste from an anti-caste perspective

It's never easy to carve out a separate niche, and when the domain in question concerns Dalit literature, S Anand discovers that the battle is harder.

S Anand, publisher, Navayana Publishing House, is a little disappointed that being awarded the Indian Young Publisher of the Year this month in Kolkata didn't carry a cash prize.

"We run a very small operation and want to expand," says Anand, who works with Outlook for a regular income. That is one of the reasons why he is looking forward to April, when he will compete against eight other young publishers of the world for the International Young Publisher of the Year award in London.

The award includes a prize of £7,500 and a free stall at the London Book Fair, 2008. But the recognition by the British Council and the London Book Fair has definitely boosted Anand's morale: "Now I know we are moving in the right direction."

It can't have been easy starting a publishing house trying to carve a niche as one that publishes only Dalit literature.

Navayana started in November 2003, when Anand and his friend Ravi Kumar decided to publish four books, which included Ambedkar: Autobiographical Notes and Anand's own Brahmans and Cricket: Lagaan's Millennial Purana and Other Myths. The impetus behind working on these books was that these books needed to be printed.

"Caste is something I got exposed to in my university days in the 1980s," reveals Anand. For someone who was born a Brahmin and came from a conservative family, public and personal space were clearly demarcated.

But he was confused when a clerk at the University of Hyderabad advised him to take up another room so that he would not have to share the room with a Dalit.

What changed Anand's perspective of the world was Kancha Ilaiah's Why I am not a Hindu, a book by a non-upper caste on the differences "" socio-economic and cultural "" between different castes in the Hindu community.

"But you don't have to rake up rural soil to look at the caste issue," says Anand, "It's there in the media, the movies and sports, too. It is this gap of exploring caste from an anti-caste perspective that Navayana Publishing wants to bridge and deal with ideas that engage with caste critically.

"There is a demand for books that reveal the Kherlanji brutalities, the burning of Dalits in Tamil Nadu in the Keezhavenmani village and so on," he feels.

But this passion for his perspective also means trying to make the publishing house financially viable, which has 10 titles under its belt and will have five more for the stands in the next couple of months.

Anand and Kumar have managed a membership of about 50 who, on payment of Rs 5,000, will get all Navayana titles free for the next five years.

A membership of Rs 1,000 means a discount of 30 per cent. To do away with the distributors' commissions, Navayana has tied hands with eight other publishing houses such as Tulika, Samya and Stri to form the Independent Publisher Distribution Alternative, a distribution collective that sells titles by these and 22 other small publishers.

Right now, Anand is busy with the book Namdeo Dhasal: Poet of the Underworld, a collection of Dhasal's poetry that will be showcased in London as something that the publishing house represents and will be pitched against others' entries.

Anand concludes by saying that he is not in the best-seller race.