The Guardian, Outlook, and the elite delusion of ‘reading for pleasure’

Despite the proliferation of hundreds of literature festivals across the country, The Guardian published a piece arguing that Indians don't read for pleasure, which generated significant controversy. Some wrote rebuttals; some expressed their opinions on their social media, like Facebook, X, and every other platform possible, dismissing the piece as Western distortions of Indian realities, ill-informed, misinformed, or even irritating and ignorant.

Outlook has published a rebuttal that looks polished, confident, scene-setting, and full of book fairs, book lovers, and publishing statistics, arguing that the Guardian’s question itself is wrong because India’s reading culture is public, collective, and multilingual. It raises some important points. But it also does something very Indian, very elite, and very convenient: it replaces one fragile assumption with another and then declares victory.

Indians have a very strange habit of getting offended easily. We get offended by very trivial things, from the colour of a Bollywood heroine’s bikini to a general comment made on Facebook to a newspaper opinion piece. But I do want to say this clearly: getting offended doesn't change or solve anything, any more than romanticising a book fair does.

What the rebuttal got right, and what it missed

The rebuttal is right on one thing: the Guardian piece is anchored in a very specific slice of the Indian book world, English-language trade publishing. It is also right that “reading” cannot be reduced to Western metrics of solitary leisure time and sales charts. India’s print world is multilingual, informal, scattered, and under-measured. But here’s what the rebuttal misses: you cannot correct “Western metrics” by switching to “Indian spectacles” and calling it evidence.

A crowd at a book fair may mean many things, like curiosity, aspiration, browsing, a school trip, a civic outing, cheap access, a selfie, or a holiday. I am not mocking any of these. However, it is a leap to treat footfall as proof that "India reads," or to consider listening as a substitute for the deeper questions: who has the opportunity to read for leisure and pleasure, who can purchase a best-selling book, who is allowed to belong to these elite spaces, and who is counted as a reader in the first place, let alone as a pleasure reader?

Now, since the rebuttal loves numbers, let’s actually do numbers – somewhat properly.

Take the International Kolkata Book Fair. The latest edition (early 2026) reportedly recorded close to 32 lakh visitors and about Rs 26.4 crore in book sales. That is huge for a city – and even then, if you divide sales by visitors, it comes to roughly  Rs 80 per visitor (which is exactly the point: most people are browsing, strolling, or taking an aesthetic selfie for their Instagram story). 

Now zoom out. India has a population of around 1.45 billion. So even if every one of those 32 lakh “visitors” were a unique person (they are not), that “largest gathering” is roughly 0.22 percent of India's population.  And if you want to be even more honest, “a visitor” is usually counted as an entry, not as a distinct head, so the real share is smaller. Now, take the much-celebrated, to the extent of overhyped, New Delhi World Book Fair. The 2026 edition reportedly drew over 2 million visitors/footfalls (thanks to the free entry). That’s roughly 0.14 percent of India. 

Take the Pune Book Festival: the last edition reported 12.5 lakh visitors over 9 days and sales of Rs 50 crore. That’s about 0.09 percent of the country – again, even on the most generous interpretation. 

Add these three “proofs” together: Kolkata + Delhi + Pune = roughly 64.7 lakh visitors. That still comes to under 0.5 percent of India's population. And remember: those are footfalls, not unique readers, and not necessarily book buyers. The spectacles are real, but the reality is somewhat different.

Reading for pleasure

In India, reading is rarely a leisure activity; it is a necessity driven by the demands of school and competitive exams. Reading for pleasure is a privilege that most Indians simply cannot afford.

The rebuttal tells us that in India, “pleasure arrives sideways” – through browsing, listening, and collective discovery. But why does it arrive sideways? Let me answer that for you, because the straight road – stable schooling, disposable income, time, quiet space, libraries, bookstores, and the social legitimacy of being a “reader” – has never been evenly distributed in this country. Calling sideways access “proof of thriving” is like celebrating jugaad.

Let me give my own example: I am a graduate student at a US university, and now I read academic and non-academic books for my work, and also for pleasure, but it was not always the case. Until my undergraduate years, the only books I had heard of or seen were syllabus-prescribed textbooks or competitive exam guides. I didn't encounter any other books, whether in English (on which this whole argument is based) or in the regional languages (on which most rejoinders are based). Why did I not read a single book in any language? Well, the answer isn't very straightforward; there are historical reasons behind it.

I was born and brought up in a Dalit household. None of my biological forefathers ever attended school, except for my father, who got some basic schooling through 8th grade and had to leave when he failed 9th grade and started working as a daily wage labourer to support his family. He never had a chance to buy books and read them for pleasure and, in turn, bequeath to us two brothers a collection of books before he died from an avoidable medical tragedy last year.

So I never saw a book; my brothers and sisters never saw a book; and our whole family, extended family, and even relatives never had access to reading books for pleasure.

A gullible reader might ask, “Why nobody?” Well, many people were too busy making ends meet for their families. In contrast, others were focused on cramming for competitive exams to secure jobs as clerks or lower-level government officials in hopes of improving their life prospects.

And let’s be honest about the economics of this 'pleasure' question, too. A single book at Rs 300 – a price point that rarely covers high-quality academic or literary titles anyway – is not a 'small’ sum for a vast population. According to the HCES 2023–24, the average monthly per capita consumption expenditure in rural India is Rs 4,122. This means a single Rs 300 purchase consumes over 7 percent of a rural person’s monthly budget. Before we even consider the 'time tax' required to read it, the sheer financial barrier confirms that for most of the country, a new book remains a significant luxury, not a casual discretionary expense. 

Now add the number the festival-romantics avoid because it ruins the mood: 80 crore Indians are receiving subsidised food grains from the government, against an intended coverage of 81.35 crore. That is roughly 55–56 percent of India’s population. 

So when someone claims, with a straight face, that “India reads” simply because a few million people visited a fairground in Kolkata, Delhi, Banaras, or Bengaluru, I just think to myself that either these folks live in some lala land or don't know the country well. Half the country is on government-subsidised grain, and some people want me to believe that leisure reading, “pleasure reading”, is a mass, normalised habit? The math does not support this claim. 

There’s nothing extraordinary about my family. Large sections of India, especially communities historically kept away from stable schooling and cultural capital, have not had the conditions in which “reading for pleasure” can be a normalised habit. Even today, disparities in schooling, discrimination, and institutional exclusion remain widely documented for marginalised communities. 

So, if someone says, “Oh, I grew up in a modest, middle-class household, but we had a lot of books to read,” they often forget to mention that they most likely belong to one of the upper castes. Even if they were not financially well off, they still had the cultural capital acquired over generations. This “modest” middle-class narrative exemplifies the subtle concealment of privilege.

Caste, knowledge, and unequal literary publics

Socially, India is structured by a rigid caste hierarchy. In this system, status dictates access: those at the top hold a historical monopoly on knowledge and education. At the same time, those at the bottom face systemic contempt and are deliberately excluded from intellectual resources. Extensive research confirms that caste remains a primary driver of educational exclusion and inequality in India.

The rebuttal argues that India’s reading culture is multilingual and public, celebrating ‘listening’ as a legitimate form of participation. But this misses the central point: even within multilingual ecosystems, caste determines who is considered ‘serious’ – who curates, publishes, and reviews. It decides who holds the microphone and who is relegated to the audience: forever listening, forever beginning, and never fully arriving.

And since the rebuttal is obsessed with the “English trap”, let’s add one more (maybe uncomfortable) number: the 2011 Census recorded over 10 percent of Indians as being able to speak some English (as a first/second/third language), and a more recent large survey cited in the same discussion found an even lower self-reported figure (around 6 percent). So yes, please, tell me again how the “India reads” argument works when the cultural performance of reading is anchored in elite names – Dostoevsky, Chekhov, or any random celebrated Hindi or English author – and you want to treat that as a national common sense.

India is not one republic of print

India is not just a single landmass but a cluster of different nations. If I borrow the (brutally accurate) phrasing associated with Amartya Sen’s work with Jean Drèze, India can look like “islands of California in a sea of sub-Saharan Africa”. You will see parts of big urban Indian cities, some of which hold these literature fests too, looking like New York City and Dublin, or any city for that matter, but you will also see clusters where people still struggle to get basic amenities for life; reading for pleasure is a distant dream for them.

So when the rebuttal paints a winter afternoon in Kolkata and calls it a “temporary republic of print,” I understand their romance. I have been to one such place. I like that scene too. But a republic of print is not a republic if entry depends on class, caste, schooling, leisure, and legitimacy. Otherwise, it is a carnival built above the Paatal-lok (basement) where most of India (is forced to) live, aspiring despite the structural flaws.

And let’s be honest about where the majority of the country sits while we debate this: more than 60 percent of India still lives in rural areas (please do a Google search). So yes, Delhi, Kanpur, Banaras, Patna, and Jaipur are in India too. But so are the villages and small towns that never make it into these romantic festivals and the pieces written about them – and whose people are treated as a mute mass, only brought into the narrative as “the audience,” or “the crowd.”

Narrowness of the literary public

Let’s discuss this dimension a little further. I want the reader to imagine a random Indian writer, regardless of genre, language, or historical period, including both mythological and recently published authors. The second quick thought experiment: think of all the major literary award-giving organisations of India, from national to regional, from English to any other officially recognised language. I just want you to pull out the names of all the recipients of those awards – those who were runner-ups, the best entries, and the final winners.

You will find that an overwhelming share of the winners, runners-up, and even the award committee and the jury belong to that minuscule minority who argue for or against India’s reading for pleasure, or even the detractors, the upper castes.

Now apply the same to book fairs and festivals, which the rebuttal treats as proof of literary democracy. Who runs these fairs and fests? Who helms the management positions? Who are the sponsors? Who dominates panels? Who becomes the “face” of the festival? Whose two-minute reel goes viral on social media? Who is treated as the default reader? Except for a few, most are completely controlled by a narrow upper-class, upper-caste, urban-educated elite. 

Not just these festivals, but even the publishing industry. Think of the big publishers in India and find out which section of society they come from, who they publish, and who they award. I don't even need to name the names here.

Things are changing, but unevenly

But things are changing. The internet has made things accessible to a large population (which itself is not that large), and people have started getting closer to books, magazines, and book fairs. On an India-wide scale, the digital shift is somewhat measurable: India is a huge smartphone market, and Indians consume massive amounts of mobile data at some of the world’s lowest per-GB prices. So some young people are indeed reading, even on low-budget smartphones, and consuming literature in other forms, like audiobooks and YouTube videos. 

Along with the internet, people from marginalised backgrounds are reading, writing, and publishing in the mainstream as well as on alternative platforms, websites, blogs, social media, and even in print, just like me. As my poet friend, the author himself, Mohan Mukt, remarked, Dalits, as a social group, began reading with a purpose, and some of them are indeed reading for pleasure too. However, the disparity among Dalits is also high.

So, it's not just the overly hyped, fancy literary festivals spreading awareness about reading culture, which they do in part; social media, reels, and other audiovisual content also play a significant role. As my partner, Nisha, had jokingly told me, even if people are attending these events for selfies or social media posts, they are at least getting exposed to books.

So yes: I agree with The Guardian’s diagnosis more than many of its offended critics, and I disagree with the rebuttal’s confidence that festivals and footfalls answer the question. They don’t. They complicate it, yes, and they add texture, yes, but they do not erase the basic structure: reading for pleasure in India remains a privilege, and literary culture remains hierarchically stratified. 

Yes, India reads in different ways, shaped by caste, class, and access, and our task should be to make books accessible to all the Indian masses. I wish that the often-celebrated picture of a kisan reading Bhagat Singh’s book at a protest site, circulated in elite circles, becomes a reality for most, if not all, Indians. Because why should a narrow population of Indians read for pleasure and have all the fun? 

Ravinder Kumar is a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Oregon.

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