RED Books Day is celebrated to honour the publication of books that disseminate revolutionary ideas and promote progressive political thought. We celebrate it on February 21, to commemorate the publication of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the year 1848, and also to acknowledge the United Nations’ International Mother Language Day. Red Books Day highlights the importance of publishing, reading, and circulating works that challenge the status quo and advocate for social justice, workers' rights, and anti-imperialism by enabling critical reflection on the obstinate facts of our times. It is a day for Left and progressive publishers, writers, and readers to say that collective reading is a tool for political and social change. Such celebrations hold an important place in the battle of ideas. 

Red Books Day 2025 was not about a single day. It took time for this year's Red Books Day celebrations to be completed in many places. While Red Book Day was celebrated with week-long programmes in some places, some have started planning year-long programmes. This year marks half a decade since February 21st began to be celebrated as Red Books Day. There is no other international day that has been adopted all over the world in such a short period of time. Red Books Day has not spread as part of official systems, but has been adopted by the masses, which made it a festival of the streets. The tradition of more people and new areas being a part of the Red Books Day celebration every year has not been broken this time either.

In addition to the many countries that have celebrated Red Books Day for years, including India, Nepal, Pakistan, Brazil, Indonesia, Cuba, Italy, UK, USA, Ghana, South Africa, and Australia, many countries including Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and the Philippines have also entered the map of Red Books Day this time.

More than half a million people were part of the Red Books Day celebration in Kerala. Under the leadership of the CPI(M), the book containing Lenin's writings and observations on the cooperative movement was read at ten thousand centres. Under the leadership of the Progressive Art and Literature Association, the PG Reading Circle organised programs including book discussions and debates in all units. Chintha Books organised a week-long Red Books Fest in Pappinissery, Kannur district. It turned into a festival with lectures, art exhibitions, book fairs, plays, and art programmes every day.

Sitaram Yechury's book What is Hindu Rashtra? was selected for discussion in Tamil Nadu. Ahead of that, more than one lakh copies were distributed. CPI(M) members, workers and peasants' movements, youth movement activists and cultural activists gathered at about a thousand centres to discuss the book, which is of greater importance in the context of contemporary India.

International Mother Language Day and Red Books Day were celebrated together in campuses across the country under the leadership of SFI. Students discussed Bhagat Singh's writing titled To the Young Political Workers. A year-long monthly Red Book Discussion was started at the IFLU campus in Hyderabad. Students read the Communist Manifesto in their mother tongue at JNU and Hyderabad Central University.

In Karnataka, more than twenty progressive publishers and CPI(M) units organised the Red Books Day celebration. The state-level inauguration was held in Bangalore. This time, Red Books Day was celebrated in Karnataka by reading selected parts of the novel Chirasmarana written by Niranjana based on the historic Kayyur struggle. This is also the year of Niranjana's birth centenary. The Kannada version of “The Joy of Reading", dossier from the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, published by Kriya Madhyama was also released. The dossier which highlights the examples of popular literacy from our time, from Mexico to China to India also talks about Red Books Day, a programme that began in India and which has since – through the initiative of the International Union of Left Publishers – expanded across the world. This dossier has been translated into ten Indian languages. Navayug Prakashan and DYFI jointly organised Red Books Day events in Assam, with discussions on Communist Manifesto and release of the Joy of Reading dossier in Assamese.

Senior communist leader Biman Basu and CPI(M) Central Committee member Sujan Chakraborty participated in the Red Books Day programme held at College Street in Kolkata. In Maharashtra, the Communist Manifesto was read and the Red Books Day Art Calendar was distributed. In Andhra Pradesh, Lenin's State and Revolution, in Telangana, the Communist Manifesto and the draft political resolution of the 24th Party Congress were discussed.

Red Books Day was celebrated with extensive programmes in New Delhi at Studio Safdar under the auspices of Delhi's May Day Bookstore, which lasted until night. The programme included book discussions, sale of Soviet books, dance, music, movie screening, a play – ‘for Palestine’ by Jana Natya Manch, and reading of the Manifesto in various languages.

Red Books Day celebrates not only the Communist Manifesto, but all the red books that contribute to the struggle for human liberation. The day is not only for those who read such books, but also for the importance of the publishing houses that publish red books. It is not about those who print books as commodities. It is about left-wing, independent publishers who approach book publishing to build a collective life. Their books are not necessarily found in the advertising market and in airport bookstores. That is not their goal. But their books are fuelling the protests in the streets. Such publishers deserve the support and attention of society. And more importantly, growing from books, it has evolved into a day of music, paintings, dance, street theatre and films – a cultural resistance, and rescue of the collective life through the acts of internationalism.

By the end of this decade, Red Books Day will be celebrated by more than ten million people across the world.