It is alleged that Bloomsbury has leaked manuscripts of the book it refused to publish earlier
Bengaluru: Bloomsbury withdrawing itself from the publication of a book on Delhi riots is an example of how biased it is while it published a book on Shaheen Bagh at the same time.
While Garuda Prakashan has taken the onus of publishing it, there are news reports that Bloomsbury has leaked manuscripts of the same.
Leaked parts of the yet-to-be published books are being circulated on WhatsApp groups. It is to be noted that apart from the authors, the editor and the publishers, none would be privy to the document.
Dear and PDF version of the is being circulated massively by some lobby. Definitely I see a malafide here. Please look into this. And quickly need to identify the source from where it leaked first.
— Suresh N (@surnell)
Interestingly, a website also notes that The Quint has also had access to these leaked reports.
The book launch was supposed to happen on August 22, but it did not see the light of day.
“The book launch was planned on 22nd August, 4 pm. At 3:30 pm Bloomsbury India tells us that Bloomsbury UK has pressurised them to withdraw this book. They said that Bloomsbury UK was pressurised by international authors and other social activists who have tweeted and tagged Bloomsbury UK not to publish this book,” the authors had said.
The authors also lamented how the publishers had succumbed to the pressure: “These people have not read this book and without reading they have pressurised Bloomsbury to withdraw the book. This is killing of freedom of expression. It is killing of writers’ right to write. We want to tell Bloomsbury UK that black lives matter, brown lives matter too.”
Garuda Publishers has to its credit, publishing “Urban Naxal” by director and author Vivek Agnihotri, “India Facts: Hindu Human Rights Report 2017” by author Mayank Patel, and “The English Medium Myth” by author Sankrant Sanu.
As the new publishers announced their decision to publish the book, it sold as many as 15,000 copies in just a day, leading to a server crash.
Though the ideal situation would have been to publish another book to counter this book, the move to withdraw has certainly led to censure.
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