Rajpal & Sons

Rajpal & Sons^[1][2][3] is an Indian publishing house based in Delhi.^[4]

Rajpal & Sons

Parent company	Rajpal & Sons
Status	Active
Founded	1912
Founder	Rajpal Malhotra (more popularly known as Mahashay Rajpal & Mahashe Rajpal)
Country of origin	India
Headquarters location	Delhi
Distribution	Worldwide
Key people	Meera Johri and Pranav Johri
Publication types	Hindi, Urdu and English
No. of employees	More than 50
Official website	www.rajpalpublishing.com

History

Rajpal & Sons was founded in 1912 by Rajpal Malhotra in Lahore. He was assassinated by the Indian Muslim Ilm-ud-Din in 1929 for publishing a book called Rangeela Rasool.^[5] The book was considered highly controversial due to its satire of the marital life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.^[6][7] Its publication led to reforms in India's penal code that made blasphemy illegal.^[8][9]

After Rajpal's killing, his wife and son Vishwanath Malhotra took over the running of the publishing house. In 1947, after the partition of India and Pakistan, the publishing house shifted to New Delhi.^[10] The publishing house is now run by Meera Johri and her son Pranav Johri, the third and fourth generation descendants of Rajpal.^[11]

Business profile

Seven prime ministers and presidents of South Asia have had their works published by Rajpal & Sons, namely A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Benazir Bhutto, Narendra Modi, I. K. Gujral, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and P. V. Narasimha Rao. In the field of classic Hindi literary writing, the works of Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Sachchidananda Vatsyayan, Mahadevi Varma, Amritlal Nagar, Acharya Chatursen Shastri, Vishnu Prabhakar and Kamleshwar have been published by Rajpal & Sons. Hindi translations of Nobel Prize–winning authors Rabindranath Tagore, Amartya Sen and Patrick Modiano are also on its list of published works.^[12][13]

According to the publisher, 70 new titles are published every year, and the publishing house has a catalogue of 1500 books in print.

See also

• Book publishing in India
• Rangila Rasul

Bibliography

• Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji (1945). Thoughts On Pakistan (Google Books) (published 2015). OCLC 5167934. Retrieved 30 April 2022.

• Assad, Ahmed (31 October 2018). "A brief history of the anti-blasphemy laws". Karachi: Herald (Pakistan). Dawn Media Group. Retrieved 6 May 2022.

• Nair, Neeti (7 August 2013). "Beyond the 'Communal' 1920s: The Problem of Intention, Legislative Pragmatism, and the Making of Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code". The Indian Economic & Social History Review. 50 (3). Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publishing: 317–340. doi:10.1177/0019464613494622. S2CID 144068997. Retrieved 8 May 2022.