The most ambitious, buzzing and rapidly growing publishing house in NCR is one with restricted wifi connection and dozens of unopened cardboard boxes and a zealously guarded book shelf. It is after all the publishing house that takes writers that established houses won’t entertain. It’s Garuda.
It rose to national headlines in 2020 when it published Monika Arora’s Delhi Riots: The Untold Story, a book said to be rife with misinformation. It didn’t stop there. Since then, it has dived into a dizzying range of topics that define new India and its public debate preoccupations –– India’s long-neglected contribution to science and mathematics to the realities of Mughal rule.
The brain behind this is IITian Sankrant Sanu, who worked in Seattle for nearly 30 years and returned home a disappointed man. America was just getting too much for him.
He had learnt that images that shaped the Indian perception of the West were a mirage. They weren’t real. He told a friend he came to the US not for work, but for anthropological purposes. “I went to study their society,” says Sanu.
And he wasn’t impressed by the findings of his study. “1/5th of the US population is on psychiatric medicine. 10 per cent of the population has a negative net-worth [they are in debt],” he says, shooting statistics. What he found in the US was a society on the verge of “breakdown.” There was the breakdown of relationships, the breakdown of marriages. Children weren’t being cared for properly. People were depressed.
This inspired him to return home and reside in the narratives surrounding the Hindu civilisation. “Do we see our strengths?” he asks. He immersed himself in meditation, yoga, sadhana –– and has been so for the past 15 years. And then in 2017, Garuda was born. Sanu’s lifestyle and the genres in which Garuda dabbles, with sections on Yoga and Ayurveda, testify to the belief that these are not just books to be read, but are a way of life. The ideal subject would be practising yoga, consuming ayurvedic food and receiving medical aid via “traditional medicine” and understanding the world around them by reading Garuda and their ilk.
Garuda was founded with a mission in mind –– to bring to the fore long suppressed ‘indic narratives’ and wrest out forgotten Hindu traditions from the dark ages. Yet, even in today’s climate, where truth is fluid and history elixir for politics, Sanu believes Garuda’s books aren’t political. They may be politicised, he says, but they are undeniably producing “serious scholarship”.
Mahabharata: Retold with Scientific Evidence, takes astronomical data, the configurations of stars and planets and claims to discover the exact locations of events that transpire in the myth. Histories of Hindu Mathematics and Indian science, Vivek Agnihotri’s Urban Naxals, and 10 Heads of Ravana: a book of essays attributing Ravana-like qualities to 10 historians at loggerheads with the rewriting of history. “Ravana was a scholar too. But he didn’t further (follow) dharma,” says Sanu. Garuda receives between 50 and 100 submissions per month, and has published over 130 books.
“Through these hypotheses, the Mahabharata can be seen as a set of historical events,” Sanu says. The Mahabharata is the subject of multiple Garuda books, including a coffee-table book that was released at Delhi’s India International Center, and had a powerful guest in attendance –– RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.
He is particularly proud of Urban Naxals, citing Garuda as singularly responsible for the birth of the “meme.” “It started to be used by everyone then. Straight down from the Prime Minister. This is part of our success,” he says.
Garuda believes in holding themselves to what they call standards of “international” publishing. Sanu whips out a copy of Bhaskar Kamble’s The Imperishable Seed: How Hindu Mathematics Changed the World and Why Its Legacy Was Erased. It is hardback, has a glossy deep blue cover, with the title splashed across in gold. It is not a book belonging to an indie-publisher, or the operation of a small-scale venture lacking in funds. Garuda’s covers are dramatic. Stormy clouds above a faceless, saffron crowd and an imposing mythic hero form the cover of Mahabharata: Retold with Scientific Evidence.
Not too long ago, Garuda books were not readily available. They now cover airport bookstands and are bought off Garuda’s online book store. Sanu doesn’t refer to a point of inflection, but says people have become “increasingly aware” and interested in civilisational narratives and traditions.
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The untold stories
Sanu compares the challenge taken on by Garuda to the fierce declaration of Tryst with Destiny –– the speech made by Jawaharlal Nehru at the dawn of Independence. “When the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance,” quotes Sanu. Garuda, according to him, is a channel for voices that have been silenced –– voices that are so-to-speak, the crux of the nation.
“We had a beautiful tradition of scholarship before the British. We need to find our own gaze, find our own voice. We have a foundation and we need to take what we can from it,” he says, and goes on to give China as an example. When Sanu travelled to China, he found that it had taken charge of its narrative. And this was visible in its cities and its museums. China, he says, has interrogated European scholarship, and has ensured its identity has not been manufactured by European historiography.
Sanu and his co-founder, Ankur Pathak, agree that the overarching idea propelling Garuda forward is the decolonisation of the Indian mind. Patha, an avid history reader, says he always observed gaps in the writing of history, particularly when it came to ‘invaders’. One of Garuda’s attempts to fill the void is Saffron Swords, an ode to the unsung warriors of India, who took on generations of ‘invaders’ –– from the Mughals to the British. Pathak recalls feeling dissatisfied with the history syllabus of schools, and gives the writing of Modern India historian Bipan Chandra as an example.
“We put facts on the table,” says Pathak. Both CEOs affirm Garuda’s rigorous editorial process, the back-and-forth a book goes through before publishing, aided by the publisher’s 20 people team. All of their books end with pages of references, the duo is keen to mention.
Aurangzeb’s Iconoclasm: Illustrations from Primary Sources is one such effort. Written by Persian scholar Francois Gautier, it offers no analysis or opinion –– according to Sanu. It uses the Gyanvapi-Kashi case as a shrewd marketing move. “It clearly answers the question on the destruction of the Kashi Vishwanath temple, on Aurangzeb’s orders, the site of the current Gyanvapi Masjid,” states the description on the Garuda website. The book uses miniature paintings and court sermons translated by Gautier to shed light on the true nature of Aurangzeb’s reign.
Marred by controversy, publishing behemoth Bloomsbury withdrew the release of Delhi Riots 2020: The Untold Story –– minutes before its online launch, says lawyer and former ABVP DUSU President Monika Arora. “The cover was finalised. Each chapter was finalised. Then I got a call from Bloomsbury saying that due to international pressure, they have to withdraw it,” she said.
The furore that ensued on social media led to her discovering Garuda. Many urged her to take the book there, and she was pleasantly surprised by its treatment. “They were more professional than Bloomsbury. They took one month to vett the book. They even suggested certain changes that Bloomsbury didn’t,” she said.
What really impresses her is the fact that Garuda stood by the book. “We didn’t want a publisher so afraid of international pressure,” Arora said.
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Culture of publishing and controversies
Sanu is nonchalant about controversy, quick in his dismissal and certain it doesn’t negatively impact their sales. Bhaskar Kamble’s book on Hindu mathematics was criticised on Twitter by a “famous mathematics professor” for “spreading Hindu nationalism.” “There’s a section of Indians who react to everything,” he says matter-of-factly.
The history of mathematics and science in the Indian civilisation is one of the jewels in Garuda’s saffron-dipped crown. “Why is this not part of our history textbooks?” he asks, adding that these are areas which have been neglected and that their books showcase “realistic” assessments.
Sabareesh PA, author of A Brief History of Science in India, has a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Studies in Science Policy. His thesis propounds the benefits of Ayurveda, traditional medicine and deals with other such “ancient philosophies.” Sabareesh, who is also an ABVP member and fought student union elections, calls it “a scientific validation of doshas and Ayurveda.” He met Garuda’s two CEOs at a seminar in JNU, where he approached them. The completion of the book took nearly 3-4 years, with numerous drafts and rounds of editing. It was finally released in February 2022, and according to Sabareesh, has just gone in for its third reprint. It sold 200 copies in its first month.
“When I joined JNU, I had a paper on the history of science. There were a lot of resources available in the JNU library. But there were only research books, not meant for the general public.” As for it coming from a culture and publishing house that looks at history from a certain lens –– Sabareesh is almost offended at the possibility. “Science knows no ideology,” he says.
Garuda is eager to platform young writers who won’t be given opportunities elsewhere. It is not just the writers –– neither will their books. Lawyer Shivam Raghuvanshi approached Garuda with a book on the history of political violence in West Bengal. “The media, the judiciary is very Delhi-centric,” says Raghuvanshi, who approached Garuda in an attempt to combat this.
His second book – Ballot, Blood and Bullet – chronicles political violence as it unfolded in 2021, after Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress won in a landslide victory. Raghavanshi recalls visiting the families of 31 murder victims and five women who were allegedly raped. The rapes were communal, he says, whereas the murders were more political in nature.
At the time of his first book, no other publisher was willing to work with him. They wanted to ‘censor’ his book. There is a publishing house he refuses to name, but confesses they didn’t want him to name any West Bengal political leaders. For his first book, Raghuvanshi’s research didn’t entail groundwork, instead he and his collaborator stuck to speaking with other lawyers and analysing cases.
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Finding a publisher for a Hindu book
In Hindusim, Garuda is a deity. A half-bird, half-man entity who serves as Vishnu’s steed. “Vishnu rides on Garuda,” says Sanu. Garuda also saves Ram and Lakshman, who are tied up in knots. This is similar to the service Garuda is providing, believes Sanu. “Our tradition is tied up in knots,” he declares.
There is no one more besotted by these traditions than Maria Wirth. A German woman, she came to India by accident; on a layover in 1980. She never left, and has spent the last four decades subsumed by the teachings of various gurus and maharishis. She has been writing essays and articles on and off, but primarily for a Western audience. Thank You India, published by Garuda, however, is for the Indian citizenry.
“Several people told me, Maria write a book. I spoke from my heart, I spoke from a wisdom that we [the West] is not having. Indian philosophy and Hinduism are maligned in the press,” she says, adding that it is “not so easy” to find a publisher for a Hindu book and that several publications are “very negative” about India.
The publishing house’s latest offering is The girl from Kathua: A sacrificial victim of Ghazwa-E-Hind, written by Madhu Kishwar. Ostensibly, it is an exposé on how the abduction, rape and murder of 8-year-old Asifa Banu did not take place. “I’m focusing on poor Brahmin families because no one is thinking of them,” Kishwar tweeted.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)