After the Common Bookshelf
What
Was Lost, What Was Gained, and Why the Age of Shared Reading May Never Return
An Odyssey in 4 parts - PART IV of
IV
"Every
cultural revolution enlarges some freedoms while diminishing others. The
disappearance of the common bookshelf is no exception."
The
Danger of Nostalgia
Every
generation is tempted to believe that its own cultural world represented a
golden age. Historians know better. Every age gains something. Every age loses
something.
The
common bookshelf should therefore be remembered neither sentimentally nor
dismissively. It was not an idyllic world. Nor was it merely a relic of
colonial hangover. It was a remarkable historical arrangement that solved one
problem exceptionally well while creating others. Understanding both sides is
essential.
What the Common Bookshelf Achieved
Its greatest achievement was not literary. It was social. It
gave millions of educated Indians—spread across dozens of languages, religions
and regions—a surprisingly rich common vocabulary. An engineer from Chennai
could converse effortlessly with a civil servant from Patna. A banker in
Kolkata could joke with an army officer from Pune. A professor in Lucknow and a
doctor in Kochi often shared enough literary references to establish immediate
rapport.
In a country as diverse as India, that was no small
accomplishment. Books quietly performed work that politics could not. They
created cultural bridges. Benedict Anderson argued that nations are sustained
by shared acts of imagination. The common bookshelf was one such act. It helped
transform English from a colonial inheritance into a pan-Indian meeting place.
It Rewarded Breadth
The ecosystem also encouraged intellectual range. Because
the number of available books remained manageable, readers wandered widely. One
month might bring Wodehouse. The next Bertrand Russell. Then Arthur Hailey. Then
Isaac Asimov. Then Nehru's Discovery of India. Then Gandhi. Then Orwell.
The educated reader often became something increasingly rare
today: a generalist.
The psychologist Herbert Simon warned that information
abundance inevitably forces specialization because attention remains limited. The
modern reader must choose. The earlier reader often sampled. That distinction
matters. Societies need specialists. They also need generalists capable of
connecting ideas across disciplines. The common bookshelf quietly produced many
of them.
It Created Cultural Confidence
Reading also possessed aspirational value. Books represented
seriousness. Self-improvement. Curiosity. Conversation. Families invested in
them despite modest incomes. Children grew up believing that educated people
naturally owned books.
The bookcase became a moral object. It represented
discipline rather than consumption. Many parents measured success not merely
through possessions but through education. Books symbolized that aspiration.
Independent India invested heavily in institutions of
knowledge—IITs, IIMs, AIIMS, universities, research laboratories and public
libraries. The common bookshelf formed part of the same civilizational project.
But the Common Bookshelf Also Had Limits
To celebrate it uncritically would be equally mistaken. Its
canon was narrow. Overwhelmingly British. Predominantly male. Heavily shaped by
publishing economics inherited from the colonial period. Large parts of world
literature remained inaccessible. Latin America barely appeared. African
literature remained marginal. Japanese fiction scarcely circulated. Korean
literature was virtually unknown. Even Indian-language masterpieces often
remained untranslated into English. Readers believed they possessed wide
horizons.
In retrospect, those horizons appear surprisingly
constrained. Choice was limited partly because distribution was limited. The
common bookshelf unified readers. It also excluded countless voices.
The Democratization of Reading
This is where the twenty-first century deserves enormous
credit. Today's reader enjoys unprecedented freedom. Indian English fiction has
matured dramatically.
Writers such as Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth,
Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, Aravind Adiga, Jeet Thayil, Perumal Murugan (in
translation), Vivek Shanbhag (in translation), Geetanjali Shree (in
translation) and many others have expanded the literary imagination available
to Indian readers. Translations have flourished.
Regional literature travels more easily than ever before. International
publishing has become genuinely international. A teenager in Jaipur can
discover Murakami as easily as Christie. A software engineer in Hyderabad may
read Liu Cixin alongside Tolkien. An entrepreneur in Bengaluru might alternate
between Walter Isaacson, Annie Ernaux and Malayalam novels in translation.
Such diversity would have been almost unimaginable in 1975. The
democratization of publishing has enlarged literature itself.
Britain Lost Centrality; India Gained Confidence
Our earlier discussion identified another parallel
transformation. For much of the twentieth century, educated Indians often
separated politics from culture. Many admired British literature despite
rejecting colonialism. Britain retained enormous cultural prestige because it
represented established institutions, scholarship and publishing. That
psychological landscape has changed. Partly because Britain changed. Partly
because India changed even more.
A country that increasingly sees itself as a major economic
and geopolitical actor naturally reassesses inherited hierarchies. Britain is
no longer viewed through the deferential lens of the early post-Independence
decades. Nor, increasingly, through resentment. Rather, it has become one
important country among many. America, meanwhile, came to embody technological
modernity. Silicon Valley replaced Bloomsbury as the aspirational landscape for
many educated Indians. Hollywood became more familiar than Ealing Studios. Harvard
and Stanford acquired the symbolic status once enjoyed almost exclusively by
Oxford and Cambridge.
Consequently, younger readers instinctively understand
references to Manhattan, Seattle or San Francisco more readily than Whitehall,
Fleet Street or the Home Counties. This is not a judgment. It is a description
of changing cultural gravity.
Why Some Writers Endure
Does all this imply that literature is never timeless?
Not quite. Timelessness exists. But it exists in degrees. Shakespeare
survives because every generation reinvents him. His themes—ambition, jealousy,
power, love, betrayal—remain inexhaustible. Jane Austen continues attracting
readers because courtship, class and family remain recognizable despite
historical change. Conan Doyle survives because Sherlock Holmes has become an
archetype. Christie survives because mystery depends more upon logic than
historical setting. Tolkien created an entirely new mythology rather than
describing his own society. Fantasy ages differently because it invents its own
worlds.
By contrast, writers whose appeal depends heavily upon the
assumptions of a particular society inevitably become less immediate as that
society recedes. This is not failure. It is history. Every classic carries
within it both universality and period detail. The balance differs from writer
to writer.
The Future of the Canon
Will today's bestselling writers enjoy the same longevity?
History counsels humility. Harry Potter seems permanent. So
once did Biggles. Dan Brown once appeared ubiquitous. Erich Segal once
dominated bestseller lists. Pearl S. Buck was once among the world's most
widely read novelists. Walter Scott shaped nineteenth-century Europe more
profoundly than almost any contemporary novelist. Few general readers encounter
him today.
Canons are not fixed monuments. They are living ecosystems. Each
generation edits them. Some writers shrink. Others expand. Some unexpectedly
return.
The literary historian John Sutherland once remarked that
the literary canon resembles a hotel rather than a cemetery: guests continually
check in and out. The observation is apt.
Can There Ever Be Another Common Bookshelf?
Probably not.
At least not in the form it once existed. The structural
conditions have vanished. Publishing is global. Attention is fragmented. Algorithms
personalize recommendations. Social media accelerates novelty. Artificial
intelligence will almost certainly multiply content further.
The economics of abundance make cultural consensus
increasingly difficult. There will still be global phenomena. Occasionally a
Harry Potter, a Game of Thrones, or a viral non-fiction title will
briefly unite readers.
But such moments are increasingly episodic rather than
generational. The twentieth century produced enduring shared canons. The
twenty-first century produces temporary shared moments. That is a profound
difference.
The Common Bookshelf as Cultural Infrastructure
Perhaps the most important lesson of this essay is that the
common bookshelf was not merely a collection of books. It was infrastructure. Like
railways, universities or public parks, it enabled interactions that
individuals alone could not create. Schools. Libraries. Railway bookstalls. British
Council libraries. Publishers. Family bookcases. Teachers. Parents. Newspapers.
Book reviews. All contributed quietly.
No single institution intended to create a national literary
culture. Together they did. When each institution evolved independently, the
ecosystem dissolved. The decline of Wodehouse therefore tells us remarkably
little about Wodehouse. It tells us a great deal about institutions.
Reflection
The period from roughly 1955 to 1995 may ultimately be
remembered as a unique moment in India's cultural history. A relatively small
but influential English-reading middle class, shaped by common schools, common
publishers, common libraries and common aspirations, developed an unusually
coherent literary culture. A banker in Kolkata, an engineer in Bengaluru, a
professor in Lucknow and an army officer in Pune could all laugh at Jeeves,
admire Poirot, remember Kirrin Island and discuss The Guns of Navarone.
That shared imagination was never inevitable. It emerged from scarcity,
institutions and history. Liberalization, globalization, digital technology and
India's changing place in the world did not destroy reading; they transformed
its ecology. Readers gained extraordinary freedom, wider horizons and access to
voices previously unheard. They also lost the quiet assurance that strangers
who shared a language also shared the same stories. Every age creates its own
cultural commons. The common bookshelf was the analogue commons of
post-Independence India's English-speaking middle class. The personalized feed
is the digital commons of today. Neither is inherently superior. Each reflects
the technologies, economics and aspirations of its era. The history of Wodehouse,
Blyton, Christie, MacLean and their contemporaries is therefore not merely a
story about changing literary taste. It is a window into the changing
architecture of modern society itself.
Selected References
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction
Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone
Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education
Herbert A. Simon, "Designing Organizations for an
Information-Rich World"
Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration
Roger Chartier, The Order of Books
Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette and essays on
the history of books
John Sutherland, How to Read a Novel
Umberto Eco, The Library of the Future (essays and
interviews)
Braj B. Kachru, The Indianization of English
Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees
Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading
Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of
Change
Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy
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