After Ketaki Sarkar had retired (around 1970), her children urged her to write about her life as an archive of family history primarily for her children and grandchildren. She completed her memoir, entitled “My Life” in 1982. In her preface to the book, Ketaki’s granddaughter, Chandana Dey writes:
My Life traces her life from 1907 to 1946, or till just before India’s Independence. This is the story of a Russian woman who lived through the Russian Revolution, famine and the civil war, and whose family first took refuge in Lithuania and then Switzerland. After marriage to my grandfather, she left her family in Europe and made a new life in India. Calcutta [as it was known then] would become home and where she would become a teacher of spoken French in the Alliance Française, while Nitai [her husband] practised medicine. Kotia always wore a sari, spoke Bengali and was completely immersed in her surroundings. Santiniketan would become an integral part of their lives and she would live here in sylvan surroundings in the family home named “Akanda” (the Bengali name of the large shrub Calotropis gigantea) that she built and added to over the years, with her own earnings and savings.
Kotia to Ketaki: At Home Away from Homeis in two parts: the first is Kotia Jonas or Ketaki Sarkar’s memoir, entitled My Life. The second is the historical background. Chandana Dey begins this account in the 1850s and took it up to the Second World War. She became interested in the Jonas family antecedents and found historical material on the Russian-Jewish bourgeoisie of the mid-nineteenth century. Chandana adds, that she “attempted to write a micro-history, taking up particular aspects mentioned in the memoir and expanding on the history of the period. When I first read the memoir, soon after it was written, I felt a historical backdrop was needed for readers to appreciate the life and times of the Jonas and Sarkar families. The photographs in the book are from family archives.”
The extract that has been published on Moneycontrol is taken from Ketaki’s My Life. It is an account of her witnessing the 1917 Russian Revolution and then experiencing the aftermath, the new government, living with the communist principles, including living in a commune.
Ketaki Sarkar was born Kotia Jonas to a middle-class family in Moscow in 1907. She lived through the Russian Revolution, Famine and the Civil War. The family moved to Switzerland in 1921. Kotya met her husband, Nitai De Sarkar, a medical student. They married in 1930 and came to India in 1934. Kotia learnt Bengali, always wore a sari and made India her home. On one of their visits to Santiniketan, Rabindranath Tagore bestowed the name, Ketaki, on Katia Jonas. This is the name she retained for the rest of her life. Ketaki made Santiniketan her home and died at the age of ninety-one.
Chandana Dey studied Modern Indian History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi and International Affairs at the School of International Studies (SAIS), Washington D.C. She has worked in an NGO for over 25 years. She lives in Santiniketan, in her grandmother’s home, ‘Akanda’. She speaks Bengali, English and French. This is her first book.
The Dark-Coloured Waters is as much the story of a river as it is of a man shaped by its course.
Danesh Rana has had a profound connection with the Chenab. As a child, it flanked family road trips to Kashmir. In the 1990s, it ran through the newspaper headlines of bloodshed and militancy. And in 2002, it flowed past his police station in Ramban during a tense posting in the heart of conflict. In 2018, on election duty in Himachal Pradesh, Rana arrived at the river’s source – a symbolic homecoming that compelled him to write this book.
Spanning decades and landscapes, The Dark-Coloured Waters traces the Chenab from its mythic origins to the violence-scarred landscape of Jammu and Kashmir. Along the way, Rana blends memoir, travelogue and keen observation to chart the river in all its complexity. Every bend reveals something new – culture and conflict, memory and myth, power and resistance. The Chenab is also a river of diplomacy, enshrined in the Indus Waters Treaty and entangled in the acrimony of India–Pakistan relations. From Bollywood to bloodshed, spiritual quests to statecraft, the Chenab reflects the many Indias that surge along its banks.
This is no linear chronicle, but a riverine journey – restless, reflective and deeply human.
Danesh Rana is an Indian Police Service officer of the AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram, and various Union Territories) cadre. He has served for 25 years in different capacities in the three regions of (the erstwhile state of) Jammu and Kashmir. Presently, he is on central deputation with CRPF. His debut novel, Red Maize, won the Tata Literature Live! First book award for fiction in 2015. His second book, a work of non-fiction, As Far as the Saffron Fields: The Pulwama Conspiracy (2022), is a definitive work on the deadly Pulwama blast of 2019.
The Beast Within is the first piece of fiction by Rudraneil Sengupta. It is published by Westland Books. A journalist who is known for his longform writing on sports, crime, human-interest stories. Also, a documentary filmmaker. The Beast Within has an enormous cast of characters, across socio-economic, religion, gender, and castes, based in Delhi. Not necessarily focussed upon South Delhi drawing rooms but the length and breadth of this massive urban space.
Rudraneil Sengupta wrote this book after shadowing various police personnel for a long time. With their permission, he recorded many of their conversations, and later transcribed the tapes. It enabled him to get a technical understanding of the interrogation techniques, the medical procedures such as autopsies, and even dialogues between the police officers while conversing amongst themselves or with various individuals.
This is the book, probably the first of many, but as first books go, it is packed tightly with many incidents that he probably encountered during the course of his reportage. As he writes and creates a series arc with these characters, they will begin to come into their own. Most likely, there will be fewer stories to investigate and the focus will be on one major story and a few minor/peripheral stories that may or may not be played up in later books.
Rudraneil gets the pacing of the story, the plotline, the dialogues, the speech rhythms, the socio-economic context of the origin stories of the characters, and the glimpses into their brutal side very well. His soft corner for sports writing is visible especially in the creation of the former wrestler and now policewoman Meera. There will be more such people in his stories.
JK Paper and the Times of India proudly present 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝟕 of India’s most prestigious literary celebration, AutHer Awards, honouring the brilliance, creativity, and powerful voices of women authors who continue to redefine storytelling.
We invite publishers and Indian women authors to submit their works for the prestigious award. Entries are open across six categories:
Sonora Jha is the author of the novels The Laughter and Foreign, and the memoir How to Raise a Feminist Son. She won the AutHer Award for Fiction 2024 for The Laughter. After a career as a journalist covering crime, politics, and culture in India and Singapore, she moved to the United States to earn a PhD in media and public affairs. Sonora and her work have been featured in the New York Times and literary anthologies, on the BBC, and elsewhere. She is a Loyola Endowed Professor at Seattle University and lives in Seattle.
Her latest novel, Intemperance, is a love story. It is about a middle-aged, twice-divorced, Seattle-based professor, who decides to hold a swayamvar for herself as a fifty-fifth birthday celebration. She decides to lean upon her Hindu roots and resurrect a matrimonial tradition that is no longer practiced but remembered. It is an event held by the bride-to-be’s family where prospective male suitors are invited. Either the suitors line up for the bride to view. The person she likes, she garlands as her betrothed. Alternatively, the assembled suitors have to perform a series of tasks to prove themselves. These could be in the form of one challenging task or multiple rounds. The winner gets the hand of the bride.
The woman, a renowned and respected intellectual in an American town who had once declared she was “past such petty matters as love,” knows she is now setting herself up for widespread societal ridicule. To her surprise, a cast of characters shows up to support her call―a wedding planner looking for the next enchanting thing, a disability rights activist making a documentary film, and even, begrudgingly, her own young adult son. The Men’s Rights Movement protests her project, angry at her objectification of men. She must also reckon with a brutal love story in her ancestry that was endangered by the caste system―a story that placed a generational curse on those in the family who show an intemperance of spirit. As her whole plan spirals into a spectacle, the woman embarks on a journey to decide what feat her suitor must perform to be worthy of her wrinkling hand. What feat will define a newer, better masculinity? What feat will it take for her to trust in the tenderness of love?
Intemperance is at once a satirical feminist folktale and a meditation on how we might reach past all sense and still find love. It is published by Penguin Random House India.
The following interview with Sonora Jha was conducted via email.
What was the genesis of Intemperance?
After my last book, The Laughter, which was a dark satire, I found myself longing to write a love story. I started to toy with the idea of a protagonist who plans a swayamvar in middle age, and then I read bell hooks’ brilliant philosophy on love and marriage in Communion: The Female Search for Love. It all came together for me as I crafted a protagonist who makes the search for love a fiendishly playful act.
2. Why did you choose the title Intemperance? Why not How to live like a Feminist: A Memoir and a Manifesto, echoing your book How to Raise a Feminist Son: A Memoir and Manifesto (2021)?
Well, that was a memoir, and this is fiction. And this is not a manifesto either. The word “Intemperance” fit perfectly the practice of living unabashedly as a woman, living past the cautions of moderation and temperance.
3. For a writer, what is the difference between memoir, autofiction and literary fiction?
I believe there’s a bit of one’s own lived experience in every writer’s work, even if the writer is writing fiction from thin air. The norms of memoir dictate, though, that you hew close to fact. With autofiction, you can use your own life as a diving board and make leaps into fiction. This novel of mine is more fiction than autofiction.
4. When does the authorial narrative and the protagonist’s “I” merge, if at all?
It varies for every writer and every work. Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day uses the first-person “I,” but it’s clearly not Ishiguro writing about himself (he’s writing in the first-person voice of Stevens, an English Butler). In my novel, the “I” is the voice of an unnamed narrator, and I let some of my own ideas and interiority swim into hers even though the plot and characters in the story are not from my own life.
5. Transplanting an ancient Hindu wedding practice like a swayamvar into modern times is a way of testing your feminist ideas, is it not? Although conducting a swayamvar is like reality television today.
Yes, I decided to sharpen the concept of the swayamvar from a contemporary lens of power and agency. I decided to play with it. The protagonist encounters goddesses and princesses from Hindu mythology (as well as one character from Homer’s Odyssey) in the form of present-day people who either warn her against having a swayamvar or cheer her on. The book, however, becomes less about the spectacle and more about the journey, both inward and outward.
6. With every edit of the manuscript, does your feminism become stronger and sharper or does it have to be turned down a notch or two so as to be heard by a vast audience?
I didn’t set out to write a “feminist novel.” I set out to write a novel about a woman looking for love. The search for a true and beautiful love for a cis-gender, heterosexual woman today seems to me and several others to require a feminist way of loving, for her as well as for the man she seeks. I believe a vast audience exists for novels about love and novels with feminist stories. Men, women, non-binary people, everyone is aching for love and for fresh love stories with intemperate characters.
7. On p.167 you ask if “reclusiveness is allowed for women”? So, is it?
The protagonist wonders about this. I don’t. I believe healthy doses of solitude and reclusiveness should be everyone’s right to have. I claim these for myself. If more women claim time for themselves, we will have more delicious, richer partnerships.
8. Your novel has the classic structure of a novel and yet it has many elements of folklore and oral narratives with the interspersing of many micro-stories. Although, the presence of Alokendra and Heera’s story is much more than that. Please comment.
Thank you for appreciating that. I wanted to populate the novel with friends, found family, and community. People of all genders and sexuality. Gods and mortals. Sinners and saints. The fearful and the intemperate. I wanted to also show that the protagonist has a tradition in her ancestry where people loved passionately against all rules and against all odds. Placing a queer, inter-caste love story in the litchi orchards of 1895 Bihar gave me much joy as a writer. The protagonist is who she is today because of all the love that came before.
9. A love story involving an elaborate wedding is the perfect formula for a successful book. So how many conversations and backstories did it take to create this incredibly perceptive feminist commentary to the swayamvar, in itself on the threshold of a very patriarchal institution —matrimony?
Subverting the idea of a swayamvar, stealing it away from the patriarchs and their collaborations (kings marrying off their daughters to other kings), making contemporary men in Seattle perform feats for the hand of an aging, twice-divorced women in her sexual prime…all this just spilled out of me. But yes, I am an academic with a journalistic background, so of course I did a lot of research into these practices and also into caste and disability and more. One of the continued conversations that was invaluable to me was with author and journalist Yashica Dutt, who wrote Coming Out as Dalit.
10. Will you ever consider dramatising this for theatre, say along the lines of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues?
I hadn’t considered that, but that’s a wonderful idea.
This volume marks the fiftieth anniversary of one of the defining moments of Indian history. It examines the Emergency and its aftermath from diverse perspectives – political, historical, legal, economic, philosophical, experiential and cultural, among others. Bringing together leading scholars and writers, it explores how the Emergency transformed Indian polity, and shaped law enforcement and penal practices, the media, student movements, judicial responses, subaltern politics and literary expression, and examines why analysis of the Emergency is still relevant to political discourse in India today.
The extract published on Moneycontrol is from the chapter “Many Meanings of Freedom: The Dandawate Prison Letters” by scholar Gyan Prakash. It is about a set of letters exchanged between the socialist leader Madhu Dandavate (1924–2005) and his wife Pramila Dandavate (1928–2002). 50 Years of the Indian Emergency: Lessons for Democracy is published by Orient Blackswan.
‘. . . a probing and kaleidoscopic reassessment of the origins, . . . the book prompts us to reconsider the multiple dimensions and layers of a compacted historical period and the many frameworks that continue to influence our understanding of it. . . .’ Srinath Raghavan, author of Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India
Peter Ronald deSouza is Senior Research Associate, African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (ACEPS), University of Johannesburg, and Trustee of the Institute of Social Studies Trust. He was Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla, for two terms (2007–13).
Harsh Sethi worked as Consulting Editor of the monthly Seminar for two decades. Earlier he was with Sage Publications as Acquisitions Editor. He also held positions of Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, and Deputy Director at the Indian Council of Social Science Research.
Music is not only widely discussed but also the most readily available form of art known to mankind. At just the click of a button, one can now listen to any song of any genre – even from the last century! But it wasn’t always this way.
In this brisk, breakneck journey across millennia, award-winning musician and broadcaster Andrew Ford paints a glorious picture to show what really draws us to this sonic art form and how it has evolved. He traces the inventions and reinventions that have contributed to the popularity and accessibility of modern music; early oral forms; the invention of notations; the first recording technology and record companies, and explores how the multibillion-dollar industry we know today came to be.
Andrew Ford’s music has been performed and recorded around the world, played by ensembles such as the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Brodsky Quartet and the New Juilliard Ensemble, and sung by the likes of Yvonne Kenny, Katie Noonan and Iva Bittová. He presents The Music Show on ABC Radio National and has written ten books ranging from a study of sound in film to the songs of Van Morrison to the compulsion of composers to explore the primitive in their music.
The charity behind two of the world’s most significant literary prizes announces new £50,000 award for children’s fiction supported by AKO Foundation.
The UK’s Children’s Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce to be inaugural Chair of judges for 2027
The Children’s Booker Prize winner will be selected by a combined panel of child and adult judges
At least 30,000 copies of the shortlisted and winning books will be gifted to ensure more children can own and read the world’s best fiction
Former Booker Prize and Carnegie Medal-winning author Penelope Lively will give the keynote speech at the Booker Prize 2025 ceremony to celebrate the new prize
Watch the Children’s Booker Prize teaser video here
The Booker Prize Foundation today (Friday, 24 October 2025) announces the Children’s Booker Prize supported by AKO Foundation, the first prize for children’s fiction from the charity that awards the prestigious Booker Prize and International Booker Prize.
The Booker Prizes have rewarded and celebrated world-class talent for over 55 years, helping to shape the canon of 20th and 21st century literature, transforming the careers of writers and building a global community of readers. Today’s announcement marks the first major new prize from the Foundation in two decades, since the launch of the International Booker Prize in 2005.
The Children’s Booker Prize, which will launch in 2026 and be awarded annually from 2027, will celebrate the best contemporary fiction for children aged eight to 12 years old, written in or translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland. The aim of the prize is to engage and grow a new generation of readers by recognising and championing the best children’s fiction from writers around the world. Their nominated works will join almost 700 books in the Booker library.
The founding partner and principal funder of the Children’s Booker Prize is AKO Foundation, a grant-giving charitable foundation focused on supporting charities that improve education and the wellbeing of young people, promote the arts, and combat the climate emergency. AKO Foundation has generously committed to supporting the prize for its first three years. The development of the prize over the last three years has been made possible with thanks to donations from a small group of philanthropic supporters.
Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, says:
‘The Children’s Booker Prize is the most ambitious endeavour we’ve embarked on in 20 years – and we hope its impact will resonate for decades to come. It aims to be several things at once: an award that will champion future classics written for children; a social intervention designed to inspire more young people to read; and a seed from which we hope future generations of lifelong readers will grow.
‘In other words, the Children’s Booker Prize is not just a prize – it’s part of a movement: a cause that children, parents, carers, teachers and everyone in the world of storytelling can get behind.
‘We have been laying the groundwork for this prize for the past three years, and in that time we have been buoyed by many fruitful conversations with prospective partners: we could not do this alone. And we absolutely could not have launched it without the generosity of its founding partner and principal funder, AKO Foundation, to whom we are enormously grateful.
‘We’re delighted that Frank Cottrell-Boyce, master storyteller and passionate advocate, will be the inaugural Chair of the judges. And we can’t wait to hear the views of the ultimate judges of the quality of children’s fiction: children themselves.
‘The Booker Prize Foundation exists to inspire more people to read the world’s best fiction – because if you can imagine a different world, you can help to create a better one. The possibility of welcoming young readers into our growing global community is hugely exciting. We hope they discover stories and characters that will keep them company for life.’
Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of Booker Prize Foundation at the Booker Prize 2024 shortlist announcement at Somerset House’s Portico Rooms, London.
Philip Lawford, Chief Executive Officer, AKO Foundation says:
‘We are very pleased to support the Booker Prize Foundation in launching the Children’s Booker Prize. At AKO Foundation we believe strongly in the importance of nurturing a love of reading from an early age. The evidence linking reading for pleasure to improved educational outcomes and greater social mobility is compelling, and this initiative aligns closely with our priorities as a funder. We are proud to contribute to a project that will inspire and empower young readers.’
The multi-award-winning children’s book author and screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce, who is the current Waterstones Children’s Laureate, will become the inaugural Chair of judges for the prize. Uniquely, the prize will be judged by a mixed panel of adult and child judges. Cottrell-Boyce and two other adult judges will select a shortlist of eight books. Three child judges will be recruited – with the support of schools and a range of partners across the culture and entertainment industries – to join the adults in choosing the winning book. The process will give children a direct voice in the outcome, ensuring the book is recommended by young readers to their peers.
Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Waterstones Children’s Laureate 2024-2026 and Chair of judges for the Children’s Booker Prize 2027, says:
‘Stories belong to everyone. Every child deserves the chance to experience the happiness that diving into a great book can bring. The Children’s Booker Prize will make it easier for children to find the best that current fiction can offer. To find the book that speaks to them. By inviting them to the judging table and by gifting copies of the nominated books it will bring thousands more children into the wonderful world of reading.
‘I am absolutely buzzing about the news that I’m going to be chairing the judging panel. It’s going to be – as they say – absolute scenes in there. Let the yelling commence.’
To mark the announcement of the Children’s Booker Prize, the Foundation has created a teaser video featuring children reading from a range of Booker Prize-winning classics, which can be watched here. The much-loved author Penelope Lively will give the keynote speech at this year’s Booker Prize ceremony on Monday, 10 November 2025 at Old Billingsgate, London sharing the reasons she thinks that children’s literature should be celebrated by this new prize. Lively is the only recipient of both the Booker Prize (for Moon Tiger, 1987) and the Carnegie Medal for writing, the UK’s longest-running children’s book award (for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, 1973). Welcoming the announcement of the Children’s Booker Prize, she says: ‘Those who write for children especially need this – and it is needed equally for the children who read the books.’
The inaugural prize will open for submissions from publishers in spring 2026, when the remaining two adult judges will be made public. The shortlist of eight books – and the three child judges – will be announced in late November 2026, with the winner revealed at a high-profile event for young readers in February 2027. The eligibility period for the 2027 prize is 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
Putting children’s books at the centre of our culture
The prize is being launched to inspire more children to discover and read great contemporary fiction and will tackle the challenge in a number of ways.
These include:
consulting with children to inform the ongoing development of the prize
involving children directly in judging so that the winning book is a peer-to-peer recommendation, underpinned by the quality stamp of the Booker Prizes’ rigorous selection process
collaborating with experienced organisations including publishers, schools, libraries, and bookshops
ensuring that more young people have access to the best new children’s fiction through targeted gifting of the shortlisted and winning books, delivered by a range of partners
partnering with brands that children love, creating effective campaigns to engage them outside of traditional book and educational spaces
and tracking trends in children’s reading for pleasure to measure impact and keep the prize relevant.
Delivering the Children’s Booker Prize with partners
The Booker Prize Foundation will be working with publishers and a range of partners, including the National Literary Trust, The Reading Agency, Bookbanks, and the Children’s Book Project to gift and deliver at least 30,000 copies of the shortlisted and winning books each year to children that need them the most.
The Foundation is working with Beano Brain, specialists in kids and youth insight, consulting children on the development of the Children’s Booker Prize, which will include regular co-creation sessions with eight to 12 year-olds. It will also be working with the National Literacy Trust to measure longer term trends in children’s reading.
Industry support for the Children’s Booker Prize
News of the Children’s Booker Prize has been met with enthusiasm from key figures across the books world, including a range of children’s authors and illustrators who have held the position of Waterstones Children’s Laureate, as well as the Publishers Association, the Booksellers Association and Waterstones.
Joseph Coelho, Children’s Laureate 2022-2024, says:
‘I’m incredibly excited by the announcement of the Children’s Booker Prize. This is a brilliant way to invite children into the world of words through a celebration of books, authors and illustrators. I fully welcome a robust prize that celebrates children’s literature in a manner equal to that which adult literature receives and one that makes essential space for the voice of the child.’
‘I am hugely excited about the launch of the Children’s Booker Prize. Children are the toughest critics out there, so literature for children has to be created with the greatest expertise. It has to be exciting, adventurous, funny and wise. And the stakes are the highest they’ve ever been, because children have more competition for their time than ever before: children’s authors and illustrators are fighting for the survival of a medium. Thank you to the Booker for acknowledging that they’re doing this with world-class creativity, and for supporting us all in our quest to get all children reading for enjoyment.’
Chris Riddell, Children’s Laureate 2015-2017, says:
‘It is great news that the prestigious Booker Prizes will honour a children’s book. The books we read as children stay with us and shape our future tastes in literature. It is exciting that the Children’s Booker Prize will consider the children’s books it chooses holistically – not only for the excellence of their prose and storytelling but the beauty of their design and illustration.’
‘The Children’s Booker Prize is a timely and very welcome addition to the children’s book world. Fundamental to the appeal of the prize is the fact that children are integral to the judging process. Children are an honest, discerning audience who deserve the very best stories and this award will highlight and celebrate the literary excellence to which they are entitled.’
‘It’s a marvellous idea to have a Children’s Booker Prize. Now, more than ever, children’s books need a huge boost. It’s so dismaying that only 30% of today’s children enjoy reading for pleasure – and yet there are so many exciting and enjoyable children’s books out there, many sinking without trace. I think a Children’s Booker Prize, like the Booker Prizes for adult fiction, will become a talking point, signposting more children, parents, carers and teachers to the best new children’s literature. The prize will also be a level playing ground, so that new sparkling talented writers will have the same chance of winning the sizeable prize as well as long-established authors. Three cheers for such an exciting project!’
Michael Morpurgo, Children’s Laureate 2003-2005, says:
‘A Booker for children! Great news for children and books! And it comes at a moment when there is much anxiety about the enjoyment of reading amongst our young. A Booker Prize for children will stimulate interest and excitement in books amongst children and amongst grownup children too, shining a light on great writing for children, and crucially, bringing more children to a love of reading, which is such a critical pathway to knowledge and understanding. A truly welcome innovation for all of us, young and old alike. Bravo the Booker!’
Anne Fine, Children’s Laureate 2001-2003, says:
‘When it comes to book prizes we all say, The More The Merrier, and especially when it comes to writing for children, which has all too often been the overlooked Cinderella of the book world.’
Bea Carvalho, Head of Books at Waterstones, says:
‘The Booker Prizes provide us with two of the most prestigious and impactful moments in the bookselling calendar, reliably creating bestsellers and setting the literary tone for the year ahead. At a time when children’s reading for pleasure is so vital, when we should all be doing everything we can to help spark and maintain a love of books amongst the younger population, it is a huge joy that the Booker Prizes are adding a prize for young readers to their roster. Children’s authors deserve to be celebrated and this prize will be a gamechanger for any writers who are elevated by its shortlists. Everyone at Waterstones will look forward to championing the Children’s Booker Prize, and to working closely with the Booker Prize Foundation on reaching young readers everywhere.’
Fleur Sinclair, President of the Booksellers Association for the UK & Ireland and owner of Sevenoaks Bookshop, says:
‘I’m 100% here for anything that shines a light on the joy, wonder and delight of children’s books! We all have nostalgic favourites from our own childhoods, but I’m especially delighted to have a brilliant new platform for children’s authors writing right now, and their newly published books. The Booker Prize has a long legacy of championing noteworthy books for adult readers, so I’m excited to see whole families, the older members and soon the young as well, coming together to read and celebrate great new books uplifted by the Booker Prize spotlight.’
Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association, says:
‘The decline in children’s reading for enjoyment is a tragedy and we should all be doing our best to turn that trend around. Going into the National Year of Reading in 2026, it is so important that authors, publishers, booksellers, prizes, reading charities and all those invested in solving this societal issue support and reinforce each other for the greatest impact possible. The fact that the Booker has stepped up to the plate with the launch of the Children’s Booker Prize is hugely exciting. A high-profile award for children’s fiction is a great opportunity to showcase some of the brilliant books available for children and it could not be launching at a more important time.’
The impact of the existing Booker Prizes
The Booker Prize, first awarded in 1969, is the leading literary award in the English-speaking world, and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over five decades.
The 2024 winner Orbital by Samantha Harvey sold over 20,000 print copies in the UK in the week following its win on 12 November 2024, making it the fastest selling winner of the Booker Prize since records began. It was the bestselling title in the UK that week, topping the Audible audio and Amazon physical and eBook charts. Sales through Waterstones were more than double the volume of each of the last decade’s winners, up 3,000% the day after the announcement.
The UK publisher of Orbital, Vintage, reprinted 250,000 copies in response to the sales demand following its Booker Prize win and it remained top of the mass market fiction chart for eight consecutive weeks. Total sales of Vintage’s edition of Orbital across all formats and including its export markets and exclusive territories (South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India) are now almost 750,000. That includes 357,000 copies of the hardback and paperback editions sold in the UK, up 3,867% since the book’s longlisting. Translation rights deals increased from eight before Orbital’s longlisting to a current total of 44 territories.
The International Booker Prize, the world’s most influential award for translated fiction, continues to build in global importance each year. The winners can expect a worldwide readership and a significant increase in profile and sales, including in the author’s home country.
The announcement of the 2025 winner, Heart Lamp, written by Banu Mushtaq and translated by Deepa Bhasthi – the first collection of short stories to win the prize and the first translated from Kannada – was reported in over 1,826 news stories across 60 countries around the world in the week after its win and the winners’ speech had over 26 million views online. The book rapidly sold out in the UK in the subsequent days, with the UK publisher And Other Stories immediately reprinting 40,000 copies.
According to And Other Stories, sales of the paperback have increased by 351% since it won the International Booker Prize 2025. Prior to the winner announcement in May 2025, it had sold 5,100 copies in the UK; since, it has sold over 23,000 copies. Prior to its longlisting, translation rights to Heart Lamp had been sold in eight languages, including seven Indian subcontinent languages with a further two English rights sales (in addition to the UK, US and India); that has now increased to an additional 13 languages, including five new Indian subcontinent languages.
The prize has helped to drive a boom in translated fiction in the UK: according to the Bookseller, sales have doubled since the International Booker Prize launched in its current form nine years ago, with ‘roughly £1 in every £8 spent through NielsenIQ BookScan’s Fiction category over the past year … on a translated title’. This is largely down to younger readers, with almost half of translated fiction in the UK bought by under-35s. The prize’s influence also extends to other awards, with five authors – Han Kang, Jon Fosse, Annie Ernaux, Olga Tokarczuk, and László Krasznahorkai – recognised by the International Booker Prize going on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Nominated works for the Children’s Booker Prize could also enter into a tradition of Booker Prizes adaptations. More than 74 books that have been longlisted or shortlisted for the Booker or International Booker Prize have been adapted for the big or small screen over the years, with several going on to win Oscars, BAFTAS and Emmys. They range from The Remains of the Day to Atonement, Normal People to The Handmaid’s Tale, Wolf Hall to Life of Pi, True History of the Kelly Gang to The Line of Beauty, The Underground Railroad to Small Things Like These, Hurricane Season to Elena Knows, and in the last year, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Harvest, and Hot Milk.
Frank Cottrell-Boyce is a multi award-winning author, screenwriter and the Waterstones Children’s Laureate 2024-2026 (managed by BookTrust). Millions, his debut children’s novel, won the prestigious Carnegie Medal. His other books include Cosmic, Runaway Robot, The Wonder Brothers and many more which have been shortlisted for a multitude of prizes. Frank is also a highly successful screenwriter and along with Danny Boyle, he devised the Opening Ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics. Frank is a lifelong champion of children’s books. In 2023 he launched a successful podcast with Nadia Shireen, The Island of Brilliant!, celebrating writing and illustration for children of all ages.
The Booker Prizes exist to celebrate the world’s best fiction. The symmetrical relationship between the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize ensures that the Booker honours fiction on a global basis: outstanding fiction is highlighted by the prizes for English-speaking readers, whether that work was originally written in English (the Booker Prize) or translated into English (the International Booker Prize). The addition of the Children’s Booker Prize, supported by AKO Foundation, which recognises the world’s best fiction for children – both originally written in English and translated into English – means that readers can now see the Booker Prizes as a partner for life.
AKO Foundation, based in London, was established in 2013 by Nicolai Tangen, a native Norwegian who had previously founded AKO Capital, an investment business. The Foundation makes charitable grants towards causes which improve education, promote the arts, and combat climate change.
The Booker Prize is the world’s most significant award for a single work of fiction. This year’s judges are chaired by critically acclaimed writer and 1993 Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle. Doyle, who is the first Booker Prize winner to chair a Booker judging panel, is joined by Booker Prize-longlisted novelist Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀; award-winning actor, producer and publisher Sarah Jessica Parker; writer, broadcaster and literary critic Chris Power; and New York Times bestselling and Booker Prize-longlisted author Kiley Reid. They are looking for the best work of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1 October 2024 and 30 September 2025. Find out about the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist at the thebookerprizes.comhere.
The International Booker Prize began life in 2005 as a biennial prize in recognition of an author’s overall contribution to world literature, with no stipulation that their body of work should be written in a language other than English. The winners of the prize in this format were Ismail Kadare, Chinua Achebe, Alice Munro, Philip Roth, Lydia Davis and László Krasznahorkai.
In 2015, after the rules of the original Booker Prize expanded to allow writers of any nationality to enter – as long as their books were written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland – the International Booker Prize evolved to become the mirror image of the English-language prize. Since then, it has been awarded annually for a work of fiction, written in another language and translated into English. Winning author and translators have included Han Kang and Deborah Smith, Olga Tokarczuk and Jennifer Croft, and David Diop and Anna Moschovakis, among many others. The shortlist also brings great acclaim and global recognition to authors, often serving as a talent pool for lifetime achievement awards. The past four winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature were recognised by the International Booker Prize first.
The judges for the International Booker Prize 2026 are chaired by critically acclaimed Booker Prize 2025 longlisted-author Natasha Brown, one of Granta’sBest of Young British Novelists. Brown is joined on the judging panel by: writer, broadcaster and Oxford University Professor of Mathematics and for the Public Understanding of Science Marcus du Sautoy; International Booker Prize-shortlisted translator Sophie Hughes; writer, Lolwe editor and bookshop owner Troy Onyango; and award-winning novelist and columnist Nilanjana S. Roy.
This year’s judges are looking for the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1 May 2025 and 30 April 2026. A longlist of 12 or 13 books will be announced on Tuesday, 24 February 2026, with a shortlist of six books to follow on Tuesday, 31 March 2026. The winning book will be announced at a ceremony in May 2026.
Since 2020, the Booker Prizes has undergone a digital transformation, building an in-house digital team and developing a strategy to expand the reach and appeal of the prizes far beyond traditional audiences, and create a wealth of content optimised for social media.
The website, thebookerprizes.com – supported by Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Bluesky accounts, as well as a YouTube channel and a Substack newsletter – is a unique online space which showcases the almost-700 exceptional books that have won – or been longlisted or shortlisted for – the Booker Prize and International Booker Prize. The website aims to be an entertaining and illuminating content destination that combines practical information about the prizes past and present with fresh and original features to bring the books and their authors to life, including an ongoing Monthly Spotlight series, encouraging readers new and old to visit and revisit titles in the ‘Booker Library’. The website’s average monthly active users have risen by 310% since 2022.
Since 2020, the total number of social followers across all Booker Prizes platforms has risen by 571%, with annual social video views increasing by over 23,000% over the same period. Newsletter subscribers have risen by 1,320% since 2020.
The Booker Prize Book Club is a dedicated online community with over 28,000 members from all over the world, who come together to find out more about and discuss the year’s nominated titles, as well as the almost 700 titles in the Booker Library.
The Booker Prize Foundation is a registered charity (no 1090049) established in 2002. Its purpose is to inspire people to read the world’s best fiction, driven by a simple belief – that great fiction not only brings joy to millions, it has the power to change the way we think about the world. It is responsible for awarding the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize. Other aspects of the Foundation’s work include the funding of Braille and audio editions of Booker Prize books through the RNIB, the annual UEA Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship, PEN Presents x the International Booker Prize, which supports and funds translators from the Global Majority, and Books Unlocked, a long-standing reading initiative in prisons. In 2023, the award-winning singer-songwriter Dua Lipa visited HMP Downview to join a Books Unlocked reading group.
Crankstart, a charitable foundation, is the exclusive funder of the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize.
Booker Group Ltd, which sponsored the prize from 1969 to 2001, is the UK’s leading food and drink wholesaler. The Booker Prizes license their name from Booker Ltd, and Helen Williams, a representative from Booker, sits on the Advisory Committee.
For Moneycontrol, I interviewed Priyamvada Mehra on her recently published memoir The Cost of a Promised Afterlife: My Escape from a Controversial Religious Cult in India. It is published by Simon & Schuster India. I am ever so grateful that Priyamvada replied in the detail that she did as this is not an easy past to revisit. Later, she very kindly wrote, “Thank you for the gentleness and care you’ve put into this interview process, I really appreciate it.”
Here is the interview.
Priyamvada Mehra’s memoir, The Cost of a Promised Afterlife, has been published by Simon & Schuster India. At the age of nine, she was led into the fold of Rampal, a self-proclaimed godman who promised miracle cures and salvation in exchange for submission. What began as her parents’ desperate attempt to save her mother’s life from a brain tumour soon became something far more sinister—a world where faith became a cage, obedience a virtue and control, absolute. By thirteen, Priyamvada was a devoted follower. In 2006, she was inside his ashram, used as a human shield during a deadly clash between Rampal’s followers and a rival sect. Questioning was forbidden, loyalty was everything and defiance came at a cost. She endured heartbreaking losses and grew up with a twisted logic of miracles, bans on medical treatment, and violent sermons.
She witnessed her family fall to pieces under the weight of indoctrination and diseases. For two decades, she stumbled between two treacherous worlds, one ruled by cultic control, and both shaped by patriarchy, caste and class, and the systemic violence they breed.
In The Cost of a Promised Afterlife, Priyamvada Mehra finally tells her story. The memoir exposes how cults take root in a nation of 1.4 billion, and how godmen wield unchecked power. In India, godmen are everywhere. They exist. Their photos hang on walls, their voices fill television screens and their names are spoken in both prayers and scandals. But the word ‘cult’ is rarely used. It stays unspoken until another scandal breaks out, only to be buried under silence again. This silence allows blind faith to thrive and logic to crumble. Deeply intersectional in its lens, it lays bare the psychological and physical toll of being led into blind faith as a girl and the long journey of dissenting as a woman in a ‘man’s world’.
While reading it, I had to put it down many times and take a break. When an individual narrates a traumatic incident, a self-defence mechanism automatically kicks in, and the person recounts the incident(s) in the third person. It is delivered in a deadpan style. It is a self-preservation act to prevent themselves from any further harm while recollecting. This is evident in oral and written narratives. So, to read this memoir that is written in the first person but in a manner that it hammers the reader’s head with a nonstop single dull beat is quite unusual. Read the memoir for yourself and judge. In Sept 2025, Rampal was granted bail, but remains in Tihar Jail as he is considered a “risk to public order” by the Hissar district court.
This interview with Priyamvada Mehra was conducted via email. She now lives between India and Amsterdam, delicately exploring the idea of home and identity.
1. What was the genesis of this memoir? Why did you feel the need to document this story?
After moving to Europe in 2022, I found myself unable to adapt or function as what you’d call a “normal adult”. That failure pushed me to look inward, and that introspection led me straight back to my past, something I thought I had long left behind. To make sense of what I was feeling, I began reading everything I could: books, memoirs, research papers, anything that could bring me closer to understanding my own experiences and help me name them.
Somewhere in that process, I also began pouring my memories out onto paper. It felt like a flash flood. It was overwhelming, intense, and unstoppable. Before I knew it, I was staring at a few hundred pages of what I called “angry notes.” That’s when it struck me, maybe this was a story. So, the memoir wasn’t planned; it was born out of an excruciating process of introspection, a journey I was forced to take in order to move forward in my life.
2. What did it entail to write about your experiences? Did you require your family’s consent to include them in the story?
I tried finding people in India with similar experiences but couldn’t find much that resonated, or any literature on it, barring some investigative work. The only memoirs or academic writings on cults I came across were mostly by Westerners, especially Americans. The first book I read while coming to terms with my reality was Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias. It gave me a language I didn’t have. It laid out the anatomy of a cult, the profile of a cult leader, and the long-term psychological damage caused by indoctrination and abusive relationships. It was a revelation. I hadn’t known I’d grown up in one. I hadn’t realised the relationships I was still chasing were rooted in abuse. That book cracked something open. No one had ever educated me about cults. No one used that word, even in a country like India, supposedly the world’s spiritual centre, where hundreds of thousands of self-proclaimed godmen and godwomen command the devotion of desperate millions. It forced me to see the desperation we lived with; how broken people cling to anything that promises certainty, even if that certainty comes from a ten-year-old boy in saffron robes calling himself a divine messenger when he should be in school, or from gurus protected by politicians, global celebrities, and power.
I returned to that book again and again. From there, I kept reading: memoirs, survivor accounts, research papers, anything that brought me closer to understanding my own experiences. I studied cults and their generational impact, the quiet struggles of those with disabilities and illnesses, and the heavy toll of caregiving. I uncovered the deep scars of caste and class, and traced the violence born of gender and patriarchy. Through that process, I finally found the vocabulary to articulate my own experience, and that’s how the writing began.
Unfortunately, consent wasn’t possible or practical, because my family remains deeply under the sway of the very cult I escaped from.
3. When and how did you find your voice to write this memoir/ your testimony? Recalling these facts could not have been easy.
The long process of introspection and reflection out of which my memoir was born took me through all five stages of grief, perhaps even more. First came the shock and disbelief that this was actually my life, that my entire family, our opportunities, our very existence, had been systematically eroded by a godman who, even while incarcerated, continues to exert control. The realisation that I was the only one who had made it to the other side of that religious dogma, the only one seeing things critically, was both liberating and devastating.
Then came another truth. The realisation that I had been at the receiving end of abuse and violence based on gender and caste. It sucked the soul out of my body. Abuse had been so thoroughly normalised for me for years that it took time to even recognise it for what it was. Then came anger. Each memory ignited such a seething fury within me that I wanted to claw my way back through time to throw the punches I never got to land. That’s when I began purging it all out on paper. All my traumas surfaced in ways I hadn’t expected.
I sought therapy for the first time in my life and was soon diagnosed with Complex-PTSD (please note: I was orally diagnosed and wasn’t prescribed any tests for diagnosis).
I continued to confuse scraps for love, to look for empathy in the wrong places, in the wrong people, hoping they would understand my pain, not realising they were, unfortunately, the source of it. It took immense emotional labour, therapy, and both physical and psychological safety before I could finally see clearly and muster the strength to break free from the chains of fear that had bound me for so long.
It’s hard to put into words how excruciating the entire process was. There were times I felt I was losing my mind. But I learned to take pauses when my mind and body signalled me to. I would return after a week, or a month, or more, whenever my gut told me I was ready again.
4. Writing is cathartic. Even for PTSD survivors. Did revisiting old traumas heal you?
If I had the choice, I would probably have preferred to just enjoy my new life in Europe, the travel, the nature, the quality of life. But I simply couldn’t. Even while exploring, even while trying to distract myself, I couldn’t shake off the emotional and psychological ache. My body kept giving me sensations that made me feel unsafe at all times. It was as if I were constantly confronted by a wild animal, even though, in reality, I was safe and loved.
I didn’t have the option but to try and figure out why I was feeling that way. My sole intention was to feel and act like a “normal,” functioning adult. I hadn’t thought of catharsis at that point because I didn’t even know what was wrong in the first place. When I eventually was able to put a name to my experiences, I still didn’t attach myself to the idea of catharsis or closure, because there was no guarantee it would give me that. So, I wrote, free from the expectation that it would heal me.
Writing or purging my past onto paper had always been my way of confronting difficult times when I had no one to talk to, no one to help me make sense of the dysfunction around me. This time too, I turned to writing without knowing how it would help. Only now, holding the book in my hands, do I feel proud of having stood up for my younger self. I feel deeply satisfied that I was able to find my voice, my identity. It has given me immense hope for the future, and a belief that I can slowly undo the harm.
Revisiting old traumas, again, wasn’t a choice I made. The traumas revealed themselves in their full force and I had no option but to confront them.
The process was painful, excruciating. It drained me, left me low and uncertain the whole time. But now that it’s out, now that it’s tangible, each cell in my body feels as though life has been injected back into it. Holding my book gives me a true sense of catharsis. It’s an acceptance of the reality of my loss: the loss of my family, my childhood, my time. And at the same time, I feel a deep, boundless hope, not just for myself, but for others who may find themselves in similar situations in their own lives.
5. In what manner did you learn to distance yourself from the cult’s teachings and by extension your family? You document some of the friction in the memoir, but please elaborate.
The process of distancing myself from the cult’s teachings was gradual and continuous. It began early in my life, around 2010, when my mother left home. But I couldn’t fully distance myself, because my family remained deeply consumed by the dogma, and I lived with them until 2020.
While reading Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein, I underlined a line that has stayed with me: “Almost anyone, given the right set of circumstances, can be radically manipulated into otherwise incomprehensible and often dangerous acts.” It’s true. The timing was cruel. My parents found the cult when they were at their most vulnerable. Only then did I begin to fully understand how religious extremism had shaped my family and by extension, me.
It wasn’t just about belief. It was tied to my parents’ disabilities, their chronic illnesses, the weight of caste and class, the pressures of marriage, and the desperation of parenting in scarcity. None of these struggles existed in isolation; they fed into one another, creating the perfect storm. And in that storm, a godman found his grip.
Throughout my childhood and beyond, I inherited their fears, their traumas, and their hopes for salvation. They passed it on unknowingly. And I carried the cost. It’s only now that I truly realise the weight of that inheritance.
In writing this book, I made a sincere effort to portray my once beautiful, fun-loving family with both empathy and honesty, to acknowledge the complexity of human beings and their choices, while not softening the harsh realities of the abuse and oppression I endured. Even though they see themselves as “the chosen ones,” I see them as victims of larger manipulative systems.
If I could make one wish today, it would be to free my family from years of religious thought reform and place them back in time, when they accepted their reality, imperfect and flawed. When they didn’t chase idealised, problem-free lives, but embraced life with authenticity, navigating it as best they could. When they refused anyone selling them the illusion of certainty. When they were adults with autonomy, critical thinking, and the ability to question authority. That’s what the cult robbed them of.
6. How much of your objectivity on this past life of living in Rampal’s cult was honed by travelling/living abroad?
Objectivity was always there, that’s probably why I could start asking questions quite early on. But the way it sharpened after I moved to Europe was incomparable. Living abroad brought a massive shift in my perspective, about identity, self-worth, race, gender, caste, the politics of everything.
In India, I never really felt like I was having it the worst. Every day I saw poverty, homelessness, hunger, disease. I saw potholes, road rage, accidents, the daily evidence of systemic failure, and it all felt normal. That social failure had been accepted and normalised; chaos had become culture.
When I moved to Europe, I was suddenly surrounded by people from all over the world who were openly talking about racism, gender, colonial history, power. I saw Black people reclaiming their power, queer people living with pride, women walking safely on streets. These were things I had never experienced before. There was a sense of accountability, of questioning authority, especially in Amsterdam, and I felt that deeply.
In India, I had always been trying to fit into a narrative created by the upper caste, the rich and elite. I was ashamed, never fully confident, always evading questions about my caste, where my parents came from, all those markers of social hierarchy. But living abroad helped me shed that shame that society had forced upon me. I began to remove shame from my caste identity, from gender-based violence, from my experience in the cult, from everything that made me feel small or unsure of myself, all of which had never been my fault.
The more I looked around and heard people’s stories, the more I realised just how abnormal my own life had been. I don’t think I would have been able to write this memoir had I not gone through that cultural shock. In a way, it became a blessing in disguise.
7. Your mother left the family to live in the ashram. Apart from her being sicklier upon her return, were there any fundamental differences that you noted in her as being a woman who had lived in a community governed by a patriarchal authoritarian figure?
Her being sicklier upon her return wasn’t just physical, it was deeply mental. It was terrifying to have my mother back, not only with a broken body but also with a fractured mind. Alongside her treatment for Pott’s spine, she also had to undergo psychiatric care. Watching that was one of the most painful experiences of my life.
She had returned completely consumed by her devotion to Rampal. Her cognitive abilities had deteriorated, and her demeanour had become almost childlike, especially in the presence of visitors. She was the textbook example of someone whose identity and agency had been completely eroded by a religious cult. Post her return, she was delusional, disconnected from reality, and incapable of functioning as an autonomous adult.
Her transformation was the outcome of years of systematic thought reform, compounded by her ill health, an illness that the cult, I believe, deliberately sustained to keep her dependent and submissive. Emotionally and psychologically, she had become unrecognisable. The mother I once knew was gone. What remained was a helpless, fearful child in an adult’s body.
When we were instructed to bring her home from the ashram, she was paralysed neck down at that point, she reportedly didn’t even want to return. She still believed that Rampal was her only saviour, that he alone could deliver her from her suffering. That’s how deeply the indoctrination ran.
What’s even more heartbreaking is that no one in the family, neither my father nor my brother, questioned her condition, or how she had ended up that way. It was just accepted as divine will. We had been so thoroughly conditioned to never question the cult leader, to never question him.
The cult left her incapable of living in society as an independent person. It robbed her not just of her health, but of her sense of self.
On being a woman who had lived in a community governed by a patriarchal authoritarian figure, it wasn’t much different. Her life was still governed by patriarchy even before the cult. The place of the husband was taken by the guru.
8. Rampal had a rule that to criticize him was strictly forbidden/ (The 15th Rule out of 23 rules). He also said that “any alternative ideology or religious teaching was framed as corrupt, further isolating them from outside perspectives”. How is this any different from any other evangelical leader or a patriarch?
Perhaps it isn’t very different at all. Cults, after all, come in many forms and names — eastern or western, religious or political, family-based or corporate. What defines them is not their label, but the methods they use to control, manipulate, and isolate people. Rampal’s system, like many others, followed the classic anatomy of a cult.
Here are some defining characteristics of a religious cult that can help identify whether an individual, group, or organisation fits that description. These have been compiled based on well-established authoritative sources in cult psychology and sociology research.:
Charismatic Leadership – The cult revolves around a self-proclaimed guru, baba, or spiritual figure who demands absolute loyalty and obedience.
Blind Devotion and Control – Followers must surrender entirely to the leader’s authority, often cutting ties with family, education, or mainstream faith.
Exclusive Teachings – The leader claims to possess a unique path to salvation or truth, unavailable anywhere else.
Exploitation – Financial, emotional, and sometimes sexual exploitation is common. Followers may be forced to donate money, perform unpaid labour, or endure abuse disguised as devotion.
Fear and Doomsday Narratives – Members are taught that leaving or questioning the leader will bring divine punishment or disaster.
Isolation from Society – Followers are encouraged to live in communes or ashrams, severing connections with the outside world.
Political or Criminal Ties – Many cults build protection networks through political or financial influence, sometimes operating like criminal enterprises.
Cults use classic psychological manipulation techniques to recruit and retain followers:
Love bombing: overwhelming new recruits with affection and belonging.
Fear and guilt: convincing them that leaving means ruin or death.
Thought reform: constant repetition of teachings to erase critical thinking.
Us vs. Them mentality: portraying outsiders as corrupt or impure.
Gradual commitment: small acts of devotion that escalate into total control.
Public confession and humiliation: used to enforce obedience and shame
So, to answer the question, there isn’t much difference between cult leaders like Rampal, or other leaders who weaponize faith for control, or patriarchs who demand submission. They all thrive on power, fear, and dependence. The only difference lies in the language and setting, the ideology changes, but the mechanics of control remain strikingly similar.
9. With hindsight, what did you lose, what did you gain (if at all!) by spending fourteen formative years in a religious cult from the age of nine? Years later, does the incarcerated Rampal and his cult teachings still have a hold on you?
It took me two decades to realise that I was a victim of a religious cult in India. I continue to lose my family to one, and nothing hurts more. It also took me years to understand that I was a victim of patriarchy, of casteism, and of the violence that these structures of oppression breed, all of it without any fault of my own. Unfortunately, that is what we call our “culture”. The time I lost isn’t coming back. The family I lost isn’t coming back. The long-term psychological and physiological harm cannot be undone. I’ve had to rebuild my life around that loss.
If I’m honest, I don’t think I gained anything, I only lost. The deepest wound has been losing my family to this cult and its relentless thought reform. I wouldn’t wish that on any child. I want parents, especially in India, to understand this, because our culture gives parents immense control over their children’s lives. There’s rarely any real separation, even after eighteen. Their lives are intertwined, but when parents, out of fear or misplaced faith, make decisions that deny their children autonomy, it becomes selfish and irresponsible. Their intentions may be good, but intention often translates into control and fear and that harms a child’s physical, psychological, and emotional wellbeing.
As for Rampal, I feel nothing for him now. But his teachings, the sermons, the rules, the consequences that were drilled into my young mind, have left their residue. They disrupted my relationship with the idea of spirituality itself. Years of indoctrination instilled an irrational fear that something bad would happen to me because I am a “traitor.” That fear is faint now, almost negligible, and it diminishes with each passing day.
Today, I have built a life that is beautiful, authentic, and free. A life that feels completely my own. And in that, I feel very far removed from the world I was once part of.
My story, I believe, can raise awareness about religious cults in India. It can help girls and women truly stand up for themselves and create the beautiful lives they have never stopped dreaming of. My story can help start a dialogue about the rot of caste and patriarchy, in our own minds, in our families, in our homes, and in our society. My memoir offers a deep look into the social issues we remain wilfully naive or ignorant about in India. It takes you through an excruciating journey of my escape from a religious cult, but it is equally a story of hope, possibility, freedom, power, and the beauty of a girl’s rebellion. I have written this book for my nine-year-old self, whose wings were clipped before they had a chance to form. I wrote it for my sixteen-year-old self, who had only known how to exist in crippling fear. I wrote it for my twenty-four-year-old self, who was doing her best just to survive. And then, I thought of the millions of girls who are nine, sixteen, and twenty-four today, in India and elsewhere, abused, helpless, subservient, scared, yet still dreaming. I decided to take them along with me on this journey. And so, I wrote it for them too. Readers will take away inspiration, to take a deep look within, and an even deeper look around. This book will open people’s eyes to their own truths and realities, and how they wish to navigate through them. What they choose to uphold, what they choose to change, and what they choose to let go.
Economica: A global history of women, wealth and power by Dr. Victoria Bateman charts the course of women’s contribution to their national economy and acknowledges work done as being within and without the house too. Quite contrary to what Adam Smith believed that only paid work outside the home was construed as a contribution to the economy. Whereas Dr Bateman shows through empirical evidence marshalled from as far as the Stone Age to the present, the AI age, that women’s contribution, paid or unpaid was an essential part of the economy. Her book is packed with facts, anecdotes, histories, archaeological evidence, data sets etc. For instance, marriage contracts signed between the 11C and 15C included a clause wherein the woman could state she had the right to work after marriage. There are so many bits and pieces of information to share but the most enlightening was her use of the word “overlooked”. To use it constantly in the context of new evidence that confirmed the value of a woman’s work in the past is very empowering use of a simple word. It gives the reader the opportunity to reflect upon situations that they themselves may have been, where their evidence and work is overlooked whereas they are on the right path. It is new evidence so others cannot see it, recognise it, value it, or understand it. Developing faith in oneself and growing from there is what this book helps to achieve. It is not just a revisiting of inherited economic history narratives.
Here are two snippets from the book:
p. 218-9 Mary Wollstonecraft and morality
Wollstonecraft’s family’s attempts to climb the social ladder framed how she saw the world: through the lens of the section of society that lived a life somewhere between aristocrats and ordinary people. She witnessed the way in which this newly expanding class attempted to distinguish themselves from ordinary people through not only money but also morality. And how, by developing what she called this ‘insipid decency’, they could judge themselves to be ‘better’ than the libertine aristocracy. This middle-class monopoly on morality had particularly implications for women, who were expected to be the virginal angels who set a good example to other women in society. By trumpeting the virtues of female purity, the middle classes wanted to ensure that working-class girls, despite their freedom to earn, would not be able to compete with middle-class daughters when it came to attracting the wealthiest husbands. By shrouding the paid labour of women in moral shame, this purity culture risked devaluing the contribution that countless ordinary women were making to the economy, while turning middle-class women into highly-valued, ‘precious’ commodities. Since work for middle-class women was considered nothing more than a stop-gap and could not be allowed to jeopardise their marriage prospect by causing their marriage prospects by causing their virginity to be treated as suspect, ‘decency’ came at the cost of women’s dependence on men. Indeed, the very ability of the middle classes to claim the moral high ground depended on the fact that preserving a young woman’s bodily modesty – ensuring that she was untouched by men – came at a price not only to her but also to her family, who had to ensure that she was chaperoned at all times, was taught separately to boys, and did not have to work alongside men to support herself financially. It was a cost that better-off families were able to bear, but one that working-class families, be design, found unaffordable. Morality, in other words, cost money. And Wollstonecraft had little time for it.
Another one from the book:
I had the good fortune of speaking with Dr Bateman for TOI Bookmark. As soon as the link is released, I will upload it here as well.
