# Pen, paper and one page a day: how he writes

By Dr. Hukam Chand Jain (from his own talks) · 2026-11-05

After nearly forty years and more than twenty books, Dr. Jain still writes by hand. In his own words, this is how.

In his 2025 interview with RJ Saavi, Dr. Jain spoke at length about the craft behind his books. These are the lessons from that conversation.
He was in his late twenties when the first book appeared, and, he says, he was one of the youngest writers from Rajasthan in the field.

## The first book was raw

When he began, he says, he knew neither the subject nor the language well. He ordered books from America, improved his English to read them, and sat eight to ten hours a day. Looking back, he calls that first edition raw, like half-cooked vegetables; it grew better edition by edition.

## Why Hindi

When his first world-history book appeared, there was no serious book on the subject in Hindi, and IAS aspirants in Delhi’s coaching areas read it for that reason. Promoting Hindi and Indian values through his writing has been part of his mission ever since. He credits the Hindi he absorbed as a student in Jaipur, and his elder brothers, one of whom helped him with his English. Today his best-known book has run to 29 Hindi editions, alongside 18 in English.

## A subject he did not know

His publisher once gave him a subject he knew almost nothing about. He protested that he could not write it; he was told to try. When the work began, he says, tears came to his eyes: eight to ten hours a day at the desk, family matters to attend to, and no money promised at the end. But once he decided it had to be done, the material came together, the book took shape, and the comments and criticism that came along the way stopped mattering.

## Read everything, then choose

Writing history, he says, needs creativity too. Everything available on a subject should be on your table; read it, form your own understanding, and then decide what to keep and what to leave out. Then comes analysis, and how you interpret events.

## Ordinary events, extraordinary ones

A historian, he says, must ask why some events matter and others do not. Everyone is born, but some births become extraordinary: the Buddha, Mahavira, Kabir, Nanak. Great invasions came and went, armies plundered and Maratha raids forced a ruler of Udaipur to sell his queens’ jewels, yet their effect faded. But when Gandhi said “do or die”, or the Buddha taught the middle path, the effect lasted for centuries. Every piece of writing, he believes, needs a philosophy behind it.

> Your writing… should have a philosophy behind it. (आपके लेखन में… एक फिलोसफी होना चाहिए। एक दर्शन होना चाहिए।)

## By hand

He does not write on a laptop. On paper, he feels, the words come out on their own; once he rewrote a page six times, now it takes one or two drafts. Sometimes, he says, words come to him that he does not remember ever hearing, and later he finds them in the dictionary.

> The words that come out come from the soul, and go straight into the reader’s heart. (जो शब्द उभर कर आते हैं, वो आत्मा से निकल कर आते हैं… और सीधे पाठक के हृदय में उतर जाते हैं।)

## Paper, not cut and paste

His family and even his doctor have urged him to use a laptop, he admits, but he cannot. With new technology, he worries, there is more temptation to cut and paste. He does not dismiss the young who write on screens; perhaps they do it better, he says, and this is his own weakness. But for him the words come on paper.

## He trusts his readers

He believes deeply in his readers, he says, and they tell him the words reach them. When he looks at the first book on his shelf today, after more than twenty titles, he calls it rubbish, and laughs. The lesson for a young writer is not to wait until you are good enough. Begin, keep your readers in mind, and let each edition be better than the last.

> I believe deeply in my readers. (मैं अपने पाठकों पर बहुत विश्वास करता हूँ।)

## Keep going

His advice to young writers is the same as to students: be consistent, even one page a day; keep learning, as Michelangelo said he was still learning to hold a brush; and don’t set out to be the best in the world. Start small, and keep going.

> Be consistent, even if it is just one page a day. (आप निरंतरता रखिए। कंसिस्टेंसी रखिए। चाहे एक पेज रोज़ ही लिखिए।)

## To remember

- Every first draft is raw; improve it edition by edition.
- Read everything on the subject, then choose.
- Try writing by hand.
- Write a little every day.

## Source videos

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGZu8qUtp2M

Page: https://www.hukamchandjain.com/articles/how-he-writes/