The flight from Abuja to the city of Ahmedabad, capital of the Indian State of Gujirat, took 9hrs and 51 minutes. We flew over Cameroon, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Ethiopia and crossed the Indian Ocean. As usual, I tucked with gusto, into the book that I started reading just about 24 hours earlier. Jonathan A. C. Brown’s “Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy”, is a compelling read. Date was Thursday, September 10th, 2026. We were only in Ahmedabad for a couple of hours. One and a half hours of flying later, we touched down in rainy New Delhi. The last time that I passed through the Indian capital city was in 2005.
Five years later, in 2010, I returned to India again, and that time, I was in Hyderabad to attend the World Editors’ Forum, which was hosted in that city. I retain very fond memories of that visit. Hyderabad was one of the most important， certainly, a very powerful and one of the most enduring hearts of Muslim rule, as well as of Islamic culture, in southern India. It would eventually become a prominent provincial city of the Mughal Empire in India.
In 2010, apart from our conference deliberations, we caught a whiff of the remarkable era of Islamic rule in the grand dinner that closed our conference within the settings of one of the old palaces that had been so superbly preserved, as well as the grand cultural display which hacked back to that remarkable era not just in Indian history, but within the continuum of Islam and Islamic history and culture.
In Hyderabad, we saw that old tradition of Mughal India, with mosques often being co-located with Hindu temples. I even followed an Indian Hindu devotee friend, to visit a new temple dedicated by one of the richest people in India. At Hyderabad, we feasted at the Briyani restaurant that TIME magazine at that time, had described as the very best in the world!
Hyderabad in 2010, had deepened my admiration of India, as a civilizational country, that had impacted the treasure house of human culture. I shopped in the biggest bookshop in Hyderabad, and that allowed me access to all the works by Pandit Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, a socialist, and one of the most intellectually renowned fighters against imperialism in the 20th century. Similarly my generation of Africans also knew of the influence that the Indian anti-colonial movement had on Africa’s struggles against colonialism.
This was the background to my return to India and New Delhi, this weekend. Naturally, visiting the bookshops of this sprawling city was certainly on the cards for me. I wanted to also take in the colours, taste and a whiff of the city. New Delhi is hosting the BRICS Summit this year, and the security cordon thrown on the city, impacted movement. Traffic moved slowly in the business district, and the imperious “Keke Napep” of India, was struggling to take traffic space, just as in Nigeria with the same daredevil nonchallence.
Young people, of both genders, strolled the sidewalks, in deep commune with their smart phones, they flowed by us, like the river, to paraphrase Nicholas Guillen, the poet laureate of revolutionary Cuba. The children of neoliberal capitalism of the 21st century, whether in New Delhi, Abuja or Istanbul, have so much in common: jeans trousers, snickers and smart phones, plus a consumerist swagger!
After breakfast, this Saturday morning, the decision had been taken to go out to shop for books. That’s the most cultured response to the very fleeting nature of my visit to India,u this time around. My guide, Dr. Shiksha Arya, holds a PhD in the medical sciences. She has visited Nigeria at least five times in the past few years, and has become very passionate about Nigeria. Together with her brother we parked in front of a vintage building somewhere in the heart of New Delhi.
The building itself tells the story. It’s a classic of colonial architecture and white washed. That is the premises of Jain Book Depot. It announced on its façade that it houses government publications, but it was certainly far more than that. It is a full complement bookshop, housing everything from the arts, politics, strategic studies, espionage, history, literature, through to publications in the sciences, legal matters and of course, government publications.
The great library of Antiquity in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, had emblazoned on its walls, the legend: “Books: Nourishment for the Soul”. And that’s what books have always done, nourish our souls, and as the national hero of Cuba, Jose Marti, also noted, “Books, it is as if they’re of our own minds, and one feels better and greater with every new book”!
I began to plough through the rows upon rows of books, and it was obvious that the African man in white Kaftan and a matching cap, so engrossed in the bookshelves and asking for titles to be set aside, was quite a spectacle, not only for the attendants, but also the customers who were stealing glances.
I noticed that there was an old man by the payment point of the bookshelf. It turned out that he was the owner of the bookshop. Well, he is the second generation owner of the shop. The old man told me that the bookshop was started by his own father in 1935! My late father was only five years old in 1935. It must be more than a labour of love to have kept the bookshop alive for the past 91 years. The longevity of the bookshop also spoke to the fact that there’s a book reading culture in India and that tradition is still very much alive today.
That much was obvious with the example of Jain Book Depot and the next location that we visited not too far away in the same general area of the city. Konark Books in a more recent outfit. It has been in business for only 40 years. However, it’s well laid out rows upon rows of books also spoke to the general vibrancy of the books business in the city as well as the country. The Indian intellectual tradition has been a very vibrant one for at least the past one hundred years.
We drove away from the two bookshops with a fairly good collection of books, enough to sink the teeth into, over the next couple of months, at least. But my experience with books in India, set me thinking about the vibrancy that we also used to experience in Nigerian books affairs: business, publication, and a reading culture, especially during most of the 1970s through to the end of the 1980s.
It all seems a very long time ago now, but Nigeria used to be the home of very impressive bookshops that stocked books from every corner of the world. I recall the CMS Bookshop in Lagos; Odusote Bookshop in Ibadan; the university bookshops in Zaria, Ibadan, Lagos, and Ilorin. The ECWA bookshop; the Challenge Bookshop too. Even in Afikpo, there used to be the KPS Bookshop through who I received quarterly, copies of the publications of the South African Communist Party.
I used to regularly drive from Ilorin to Ibadan, especially during my office duty days, just to shop for books at the University of Ibadan bookshop. I will then go to the Odeku Close residence of Comrade Ola-Oni, opposite the SS Peter & Paul Seminary, at Bodija, to purchase extra books. It was from the ABU Zaria bookshop, that I purchased the 45 Volumes Collected Works of Lenin. That was in 1981. The bookshop manager enjoined me to add an extra Five Naira which I did, and three days later, the ABU Bookshop sent a vehicle to deliver my collection at my residence in Ilorin.
Similarly, the Ife Book Fair, used to be a major international books fiesta. Publishers would come from different parts of the world to set up store inside the University of Ife. We travelled every year to Ile Ife, to get the opportunity to purchase new books as well as take in the cultural fiesta, usually put up around the book fair. I recall that every year, the defunct West Africa magazine used to produce special editions to welcome the Ife Book Fair. It was that important.
Just like several aspects of our lives, forty years ago, in 1986, Nigeria began the implementation of neoliberal policies, and the foreign exchange squeeze directly impacted upon the book industry in Nigeria. The Ife Book Fair ceased, at a time when the University system in the country began to witness the hermmoraging of the very best of our lecturers. University bookshops also began to literally wither as sources of the very best publications from all over the world.
A corollary of this process, was the gradual degeneration of the reading culture, especially with the emergence of the Internet and mobile telephony. This is a worldwide phenomenon, to be honest. There are still a few very good bookshops in Nigeria, where one can still get very serious works that can elevate the cultural level and enhance the mind. The general thing is that books are no longer very serious part of the culture of existence.
In the age of neoliberal surrender, in traffic jams, or small book stores in hotels or airports, the books available today, play to the consumerist propensities that neoliberal capitalism stokes in the contemporary world. These books attempt to chloroform the minds, with titles about “making it”; “hard times don’t last”, “the ideas of successful CEOs”, etc. Today, it is very difficult to find books that interrogate the underdevelopment of Africa, in the way that Walter Rodney, posited. Such titles or such mindsets are too dangerous for contemporary imperialism.
A vibrant book culture is not just a marker of the spiritual level of a society and in that respect, India has come a very long way. I made an online search about books in India and the result was quite impressive. India’s book publishing industry is a massive, fast-growing market valued at roughly $1.0428 billion, making it one of the largest publishing hubs and the third-largest market for English-language books globally. Academic and school textbooks drive the market, making up roughly 70% of total book sales. Exam-prep guides and entrance test materials form the backbone of major publishing revenue.
The trade features around 9,000 publishers and 21,000 retailers nationwide, ranging from multinational giants to small regional presses. While English and Hindi dominate national discourse, regional languages—including Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, and Malayalam—account for over 45% of non-textbook trade sales.
Physical bookstores and online platforms see the highest demand for self-help, mythology, historical fiction, romance, and business management titles. Despite initial fears surrounding digital reading, print books remain overwhelmingly preferred by Indian readers, while e-books and audiobooks serve complementary niches.
On the other hand, given the huge size of its population, the Nigerian book industry is the biggest in Africa. My online search revealed that the exact overall market value or total revenue for the entire book industry in Nigeria is not tracked as a single official aggregate figure, but major listed publishing companies like Academy Press, Learn Africa, and University Press reported combined revenues in the billions of Naira (e.g., over ₦2.1 billion for leading firms in early 2024).
The Nigerian book market is primarily driven by educational publishing for primary and secondary schools rather than general fiction or trade books. Publicly traded and long-standing local firms like Academy Press dominate shares of formal print production, alongside agile digital and self-publishing entrants.
Relatedly, I also discovered that the industry is handicapped by high production costs, rampant inflation, and a severe reliance on imported paper, amounting up to hundreds of billions of Naira. This in fact heavily constrains traditional publishing growth.
Books are a repository of the knowledge of the human species, dating back to a very long time. The great library of Alexandria was a repository of books made from papyrus reeds. Today humanity has advanced to do many different forms of presentation of knowledge. However, books remain the essential heart of the conveyance of knowledge.
In the few days that I spent in New Delhi, the example of two bookshops with their variety of titles in very diverse subjects convinced me that India takes books very seriously. It should not surprise us that it has become one of the most significant countries in the world today. India is now the sixth-largest economy in the world by nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the third-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). India has done really well.
Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, PhD., FNGE.
Aboard the flight from New Delhi, India to Abuja.
Tuesday, September 15th, 2026.
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