Exposé on 2002 India riots publishers wouldn’t touch becomes a sensation
Undercover journalist Rana Ayyub’s self-published investigation into the deadly Gujarat riots and related events, largely ignored by mainstream media, is flying off the shelves as politicians squirm in their seats over its revelations
All the angst fades when you’re India’s latest self-publishing sensation who has, pretty much single-handedly, managed to sell 32,000 copies of a book nobody would touch. It also feels nice to be on the verge of paying back the bank loan you took to do this. To go from new author with no credit line to favourite customer at the country’s largest commercial printer in a couple of months. It’s great when the country’s biggest English language book distributor takes you on board because they know it makes commercial sense, political affiliations be damned.
Along the way, independent journalist Rana Ayyub was called a jihadi on Zee News; Newslaundry’s Madhu Trehan asked her in an interview, that aired live on Facebook, if she wrote her book because she was a Muslim.
One reviewer of Gujarat Files: Anatomy Of A Cover Up said Ayyub’s claim the mainstream media was ignoring her book because it was scared of the ruling establishment was simply a “marketing” or “positioning” device. That’s not entirely true.
While the book has been reviewed by most print publications, television has largely ignored it. Newspapers and magazines have been reluctant to carry excerpts. While the regional media have been extremely supportive of the book, even exhorting readers to buy a copy, only one English language publication, Frontline, interviewed Ayyub.
That’s probably because she rarely thinks before speaking. It’s this couldn’t-care-less attitude that makes Ayyub a hit at college campuses such as new Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, where she spoke to students from midnight to early morning in June.
