Independent Bookshop of the Month: Shalimar Books

November 22, 2024

We’ll be spending 2024 visiting some of our favourite indie bookshops around the UK and Ireland, choosing one bookshop each month to interview. This week, we head to Kennington in South London to hear all about Shalimar Books from owner Chetan Kumria.

Tell us the story of your shop.

The story of Shalimar Books begins in 1940s Kennington, South London. It was Independent Publishing Company (IPCO), established by my father and grandfather, that published two anti-imperialist magazines – the African and Colonial World and the Indian at Home and Overseas (they were later to be amalgamated into one magazine called Asia & Africa Review). It also published books, such as Richard Pankhurst’s book, Kenya: The History of Two Nations. It was IPCO, the company that my father Anand Kumria took over from his father, that started importing Indian books and became the first book business to specialise in this area, long before anyone else came on the scene. IPCO also started to import Indic language books in the late sixties to cater to the needs of immigrant communities of Indian descent. The need was apparent, and my father developed a lifelong passion for providing books that also align with his own social and political outlook.

What are the booksellers reading at the moment?

Being a South Asian specialist means that you come into contact with many historical figures that really require more attention. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) is perhaps the most iconised historical figure in India. Born into a caste deemed ‘unfit for human association’, he came to define what it means to be human. A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B. R. Ambedkar (published by Navayana Books, 2023) is a rigorous effort at both asking questions and answering as many as one can about B. R. Ambedkar. The author, Ashok Gopal, undertakes this mission without parallel: reading the bulk of Ambedkar’s writings, speeches and letters in Marathi and English, and what Ambedkar himself would have read. This is the story of the unrelenting toil and struggle that went into the making of the Ambedkar legend.

What’s your favourite thing about your shop?

I think people appreciate the complementary nature of having the books sitting alongside our unique range of handmade, fair-trade craft and art products. What makes our shop special, I believe, is its ability to provide real insight on cultural art forms and traditions. Where do these beautiful things come from? Who made them? What’s the story behind them? In this way, Shalimar has never been only a book or gift shop. It’s really an experience in culture and aesthetics and a showroom for Indian art in its many, many forms

The above content is taken from a feature piece of our bookshop at Faber.co.uk. You can read the full article here:

https://www.faber.co.uk/journal/independent-bookshop-of-the-month-shalimar-books/

A Part Apart wins NIF Book Prize

Ashok Gopal has won the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2024 for his meticulously-researched biography, A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B.R. Ambedkar. A history student, he had been studying the life of Ambedkar since 2003, and the biography was published in 2023…