The Indian bookworm's sexual revolution has begun

Risqué romantic fiction. That’s the hoity-toity way of describing the Mills & Boon novels that are so popular here sales of its books have doubled since publishers Harlequin Enterprises opened the India desk of the company in Mumbai last year.

This month the Random House editorial team in Delhi launches its own semi-erotic series entitled Kama Kahani.

"Mistress to the Yuvraj," "The Zamindar's Forbidden Passion" and "Ghazal in the Moonlight" are the first three historical romances, set in the 18th and 19th centuries and featuring 'old school' Item Girls and bad boy zamindars.

That the women at Random House in Delhi had terrible amounts of fun compiling this is clear from their blog Random Reads, where they asked their first time writers for tips on how to reign in the romance. “We call them the purdah-jhadoka romances in house… These were the books that we’d been longing to read when we were growing up!...[We] asked four rookie novelists to try their hand at writing one, each in a different setting: Jodhaa-Akbar Rajasthan, Parineeta-era Bengal, White Mughal Lucknow and Ranjit Singh’s Punjab. Some of our authors were horrified to be asked, others had been secretly dreaming of writing one for years.”

Meanwhile the Hindu right wing wants to lay down the old law of the land. As reported in Times Online, the Mumbai-based Shiv Sena, a right-wing Hindu nationalist party has called for a government investigation into whether romantic fiction is even legal. “This kind of literature should be banned. It is against the cultural values of the country and is likely to have an unhealthy impact on the minds of teenagers,” said Vinod Bansal, a party spokesman. Another staunchly Hindu party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) seconded the ban, “We don’t think these vulgar things should be allowed.”

And that is how, once upon a time in September 2009, the fight for the right to fantasize began -- by Indians, for Indians.