YOGENDRA YADAVJanuary 20, 2026 09:02 AM IST First published on: Jan 20, 2026 at 09:02 AM ISTA breakdown is a moment of truth. A political crisis, therefore, is a very special opportunity for political thought, an occasion for deep reflection and long-term reset. It stands to reason, then, that the backsliding of democracy, challenges to the Constitution and to our civilisational values in India today should result in effervescence in political thinking.I spent three days at the World Book Fair (WBF) in that expectation. With every passing year, WBF is less a mela of ideas and more an exhibition of power. You are less likely to encounter that odd little stall that stocks an out-of-print book or the corner for activist magazines, booklets and posters. Or, the instant calligrapher. You can look at giant images of PM Narendra Modi, Amit Shah or Dharmendra Pradhan, take selfies with their cutouts, or with real-life gun-wielding soldiers. (Don’t ask me what they are doing in a book fair.) WBF is less chaotic, less lively, but not censored yet. The world of books is still a shade freer than that of TV and newspapers.AdvertisementThe search for the truth of our times drew me to shelves of poetry more than to those of politics. I picked up Laanat Ka Pyaala (Rajkamal Prakashan), the latest collection of the emerging young poet Adnan Kafeel Darwesh. Parag Pawan (Jab Har Hansi Sandigdh Thee, Rajkamal) and Vihag Vaibhav (Morche par Vidageet, Rajkamal) capture the political alienation and the angst of social marginalisation. Rajendra Rajan’s Yeh Kaun Si Jagah Hai and Javed Alam Khan’s Saleeb Par Nagrikata (both Setu Prakashan) capture everyday vignettes of the breakdown we are experiencing. The trouble, as Pratap Bhanu Mehta registers in the introduction to Apoorvanand’s fine commentary on the troubled relationship between poetry and democracy in Kavita Mein Jantantra (Rajkamal), is that much of this is poetry of despair. It can occasionally inspire us, too, but cannot show the way.You would turn to books on Political Science for that. I have already written in this column about Partha Chatterjee’s For A Just Republic (Permanent Black), arguably the most comprehensive overview of how we have reached where we are today. Yet, the hints it offers for the way forward are too feeble, if not unhelpful. Perhaps we need a release from the “discipline” of Political Science. So I turned to biographies and reflections by activists. Professor-turned-parliamentarian Manoj Jha offers such a release in his In Praise of Coalition Politics and Other Essays on Indian Democracy (Speaking Tiger). Candid reflections by political leaders are rare in our public life, so I look forward to reading Mani Shankar Aiyar’s trilogy that has concluded with A Maverick in Politics (Juggernaut).Books on political history are more helpful. Orient Blackswan has come out with a “landmark” series of edited volumes reflecting on some important events in India’s public life. Peter deSouza and Harsh Sethi’s 50 Years of the Indian Emergency: Lessons for Democracy is not just a leap forward in our understanding of that event but also helps us make sense of the present phase of authoritarianism. I look forward to reading Raag Darbari: Polity as Fiction, Fiction as Reality edited by Satyajit Singh, a book that marks 50 years of my favourite Hindi satire on village politics. I was pleasantly surprised to discover recent books on two less remembered political heroes — Madhu Limaye: Pratirodh ka Parcham (Setu) by Rajgopal Singh Verma and Shankar Guha Niyogi: A Politics in Red and Green (Orient Blackswan) by Radhika Krishnan. I wondered, though, if the values they stood for can still be held up in our times.AdvertisementThe fountainhead of these values is the Constitution of India. It is natural that the present assault on the architecture of the constitutional republic would invite vigorous attempts to research and defend the constitutional vision. Rohit De and Ornit Shani have come out with Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History (Cambridge University Press) that reaffirms the democratic character of our Constitution by documenting popular participation in its making. Ideas of the Indian Constitution is a new series of books from Speaking Tiger that explicate and defend our constitutional values: We, the People, and Our Constitution by Neera Chandhoke, Secularism: How India Reshaped the Idea by Nalini Rajan, Socialism and the Indian Constitution by Prabhat Patnaik, Liberty by John Harriss, Fraternity: Constitutional Norm and Human Need by Rajmohan Gandhi and Dalits and the Indian Constitution by Anand Teltumbde. The political question that we face today is somewhat different, though: How much can we rely on the Constitution to defend our republic? Oddly, it takes a legal scholar, Gautam Bhatia, to place the legal-institutional language in a political context in his The Indian Constitution: A Conversation with Power (HarperCollins India).most readA still deeper question is: How far can we rely upon constitutional values to shape the political morality of the citizens? I happen to believe that forging a new language that anchors our constitutional values in the multiple traditions of our civilisational heritage via the unique legacy of Indian nationalism is among the most pressing intellectual tasks of our time. I have outlined this case in my new book, Ganarajya ka Swadharm (Setu), which made its debut in the WBF. For those who wish to go deeper into how to gather intellectual equipment for this task, there is a new series Unmochan by Vani Prakashan, among the most intellectually ambitious projects in Hindi publication. This series includes the first volume of Abhay Dube’s proposed trilogy Upniveshvad ka Alaukik Samrajya, a historical investigation of the colonisation of the mind. Balram Shukla’s Bharatiya Gyan-Parampara seeks to expand upon how our parampara is not static and conservative but constantly renews itself. Bharat Ki Saraswat Sadhna by the renowned Sanskrit scholar Radhavallabh Tripathi is a badly needed introduction to some of the key thinkers and schools in the Sanskrit intellectual tradition.Do these books match up to my expectation of offering fresh resources for responding to the present crisis? Let me read them and get back to you.The writer is member, Swaraj India, and national convenor, Bharat Jodo Abhiyaan