OUP publishes Radhakrishna, unseen Corbett

With the Oxford University Press (OUP) finishing a hundred years in the subcontinent, the press is rolling out some of its historic highlights at the OUP stall at the World Book Fair in New Delhi which ends today. Started in 1912, the OUP’s first publication — which is on display at their stall — was former president of India, Sarvepally Radhakrishnan’s Essentials of Psychology, then priced at eight annas (50paise), written when Radhakrishnan was a young man of 24. A limited edition of the book will be issued later this month.

In 1931, the OUP published Jawaharalal Nehru’s Letters from a Father to his Daughter, and his book My Early Life 1869-1914 was published the next year. The other treasure that OUP has in its archives is an unpublished story by Jim Corbett, which it has decided to print. Girish Karnad’s celebrated play Tughlaq, UR Anantamurthy’s Samskara — translated by AK Ramanujan — and Vijay Tendulkar’s plays are being reissued as part of the printing press’ centenary celebrations. The OUP was in the news last year for all the wrong reasons: when Delhi University dropped poet-translator AK Ramanujan’s essay, “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts”, which was became part of the collection of essays by different people in Paula Richman’s Many Ramayanas. There was talk that the press had wanted to drop the essay from the edition of Ramanujan’s works under pressure from right-wing elements. Both Many Ramayanas and Ramanujan’s collected essays are available in OUP paperbacks. OUP had to bow to public pressure in Maharashtra and withdraw James Laine’s book on Shivaji, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, published in 2003. OUP then gave an undertaking to the court that it would reissue the book in the interest of public order.