Cosmopolitan Dreams

v
Cosmopolitan Dreams
v
The Making of Modern Urdu Literary Culture
in Colonial South Asia

Jennifer Dubrow

University of Hawai‘i Press

Honolulu
 © 2018 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

23 22 21 20 19 18   6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Dubrow, Jennifer, author.

Title: Cosmopolitan dreams : the making of modern Urdu literary culture in
colonial South Asia / Jennifer Dubrow.
Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, [2018] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018008661 | ISBN 9780824876692 (cloth; alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Urdu literature—19th century—History and criticism. |
Literature and society—South Asia—History—19th century.
Classification: LCC PK2157.D83 2018 | DDC 891.4/3909954—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008661
Cover art: Cover of 1961 edition of Fasana-e Azad, edited by Ra’is Ahmad Ja‘fri.
Courtesy of Sheikh Ghulam Ali and Sons.

University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free

paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Council on Library Resources.
 Contents

Preface vii
Acknowledgments ix
Note on Transliteration and Translation xv

Introduction: Print, Literary Modernity, and the Urdu Cosmopolis 1

Chapter One: Printing the Cosmopolis 13

Chapter Two: The Novel in Installments 35

Chapter Three: Experiments with Form 62

Chapter Four: Reading the World 82

Conclusion: New Spaces of the Urdu Cosmopolis 109

Notes 121
Bibliography 151
Index 167
 Preface
Cosmopolitan Dreams

In his response to Benedict Anderson’s foundational work on nation-

alism, the historian Partha Chatterjee remarked, “If nationalisms in
the rest of the world have to choose their imagined community from
certain ‘modular’ forms already made available to them by Europe
and the Americas, what do they have left to imagine? History, it
would seem, has decreed that we in the postcolonial world shall only
be perpetual consumers of modernity. . . . Even our imaginations
must remain forever colonized.”1 This book is about how readers
and writers in late nineteenth-century South Asia imagined and
dreamed anew—using the very tools that Anderson had isolated as
providing “the technical means for ‘re-presenting’ the kind of imag-
ined community that is the nation”: the novel and the newspaper.2 In
the chapters that follow, I show how the arrival of affordable print
technology in the late nineteenth century fostered a flourishing and
dynamic literary culture in Urdu. Literature became a site in which
modern daily life could be portrayed and satirized, the protocols of
modernity challenged, and new futures imagined.
Urdu readers and writers envisioned a particular form of affilia-
tion through their participation in print. This is called in this work “the
Urdu cosmopolis.” Urdu was a transregional language in the nine-
teenth century, spoken across a wide swath of present-day South Asia.
It was spoken by the educated classes in northern India and present-­
day northern Pakistan, and was the language of the princely state of
Hyderabad (which comprised parts of present-day Telangana, Karna-
taka, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra). As recent scholarship has
shown, Urdu was also spoken by migrants to the thriving port city of
Bombay, and by Indian settlers in East Africa and Burma. This world
of Urdu speakers was brought together by the spread of lithography, a
print technology invented and brought to India in the early nineteenth
century, and by the proliferating railway and telegraph lines.

vii
viii Preface

The Urdu cosmopolis acted to resist the fractures of religious

communalism—political forms that relied on religion as a “hard”
marker of identity—and incipient nationalism. Against this back-
drop, the actions of members of the Urdu cosmopolis to claim a
shared space and affiliation on the basis of language, rather than reli-
gion, region, caste, or class, became an act of resistance, the construc-
tion of a cosmopolitan ideal that was soon challenged, yet revived in
other forms and other locations. Unlike Urdu’s status in the present
day, when it is often understood as a language used exclusively by
Muslims, this book brings to light a different moment in Urdu’s his-
tory, when its users imagined other forms of belonging. It shows how
languages can be at the center of nonnational, transregional commu-
nities whose borders transcend the modern nation-state, and how
they can be tied to ethical practice.
A modern critical ethos developed in the pages of late nineteenth-
century Urdu periodicals. In the conclusion, I follow the continuation
of this ethos into the present. I close here by citing Mulk Raj Anand’s
1928 novel Untouchable, which follows a day in the life of a young
Dalit sweeper named Bakha. As Bakha debates between different
forms of modernity, he “dreams of a way to access both ethical and
political forms of liberation.”3 Such dreams of liberation began in the
late nineteenth century as modern literary forms became the means
with which to interrogate the self, critique political and social norms,
and model new social relations. Cosmopolitan Dreams suggests not a
vision of liberation that went unfulfilled but rather the critical act of
dreaming in moving toward freedom.
 Acknowledgments

Cosmopolitan Dreams is in part about alternative forms of com-

munity based on language and affective bonds. It gives me great
pleasure to acknowledge here the academic and Urdu communities
without whom this book would not have been possible.
My work in Urdu would never have begun without the early
guidance and encouragement of professor Frances W. Pritchett at
Columbia University. Her passion for Urdu poetry and tireless
work in making visible the many-layered tapestry of Urdu literary
culture have served as model and inspiration. Fran has written of
the Urdu ustad (teacher/mentor) as “a priceless resource”; I can-
not express my intellectual and personal debt to my two ustads at
the University of Chicago, C. M. Naim and Muzaffar Alam. From
my early days as a student in Naim sahib’s Urdu class, to our later
discussions of poetry, literature, and Urdu literary culture in the
classroom and over coffee, Naim sahib exemplified how to be a
scholar, teacher, and public intellectual. Muzaffar sahib supported
and guided my project as it developed over the years; besides serv-
ing as dissertation advisor and mentor, his intellectual curiosity
and wide-ranging scholarship form models that I admire and hope
to emulate. Dr. Aftab Ahmad, now at Columbia University, as di-
rector of the AIIS Urdu language program in Lucknow further re-
fined my Urdu with humor and patience. He has also been a dear
friend. I also thank early Urdu teachers Afroz Taj and John
Caldwell, who first taught me the Urdu script.
My thinking and scholarship have been nurtured and sus-
tained by a number of intellectual mentors and scholars: Dipesh
Chakrabarty, Sheldon Pollock, Ulrike Stark, Priya Joshi, David
Lelyveld, Sudipta Kaviraj, Francesca Orsini, Lawrence Rothfield,
Vasudha Dalmia, Sanjay Joshi, Swapan Chakraborty and Abhijit

ix
x Acknowledgments

Gupta, Gail Minault, Christina Oesterheld, Nile Green, Farina

Mir, Sascha Ebeling, Margrit Pernau, Veena Naregal, Veena Old-
enburg, Francis Robinson, Seema Alavi, and Kavita Datla. I thank
them for their work, and also for supporting and encouraging me
at various stages. Lawrence Rothfield took on my project in the
early days and supported my interest in novel theory. Clint Seely
asked important questions at the beginning. In the field of Urdu
studies, I am grateful for the pioneering and foundational work of
Kathryn Hansen, Gail Minault, Barbara Metcalf, Mehr Afshan
Farooqi, Syed Akbar Hyder, Christina Oesterheld, Frances Pritch-
ett, C. M. Naim, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, Mike Fisher, David
Lelyveld, and Muhammad Umar Memon. At the University of
Chicago, Gary Tubb, Yigal Bronner, Sascha Ebeling, Valerie Rit-
ter, Whitney Cox, Elena Bashir, Rochona Majumdar, Steven Col-
lins, Wendy Doniger, and Ron Inden taught and encouraged me.
Their intellectual and personal guidance has been invaluable.
The archives of the Urdu cosmopolis are spread from the
United States to South Asia. This book would not exist without
the generosity, support, and guidance of the staff of several volu-
minous and extraordinary libraries in India, the United Kingdom,
and the United States. I thank the staff of the Khuda Bakhsh Ori-
ental Public Library in Patna, whose work to preserve and digitize
Urdu, Persian, and Arabic manuscripts and printed books ensures
that these treasures will be safeguarded for future generations.
The staff at the Salar Jung Museum and Andhra Pradesh State Ar-
chives provided invaluable assistance in locating hard-to-find peri-
odicals and pointing me to new sources.
The British Library is where this project really began, in the
sense that it was there that I first became engrossed in the pages of
Avadh Akhbar and glimpsed the incredible breadth and depth of
Urdu print culture. The library staff’s tireless work to preserve
nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Urdu printed material,
and their genuine joy at bringing out old materials made the li-
brary a truly productive and inspiring place to work. I thank Leena
Mitford and Mike Fisher for guiding me through the collections
and providing access to material.
The work of James Nye, Bronwen Bledsoe, SAMP (South Asia
Materials Project), and the Center for Research Libraries in Chi-
cago to disseminate Urdu periodicals and books serves as a guid-
 Acknowledgments xi

ing light for the future. I am especially grateful to Jim Nye for al-
ways encouraging and facilitating my archival research.
I have been fortunate to be surrounded by several wonderful
intellectual communities at the University of Washington. In the
department of Asian Languages and Literature, I thank Nandini
Abedin, Ian Chapman, Justin Jesty, Tim Lenz, David Knechtges,
Amy Ohta, Prem Pahlajrai, Pauli Sandjaja, Wang Ping, and Anne
Yue-Hashimoto for many words of encouragement over the years.
My colleagues in the South Asia program in the department pro-
vided advice, support, and models of how to get things done. I
have been joined by three other scholars of print culture in Asia,
Chris Hamm, Ted Mack, and Heekyoung Cho, whose work has
inspired me. I am especially grateful to Michael C. Shapiro, Da-
vinder Bhowmik, Collett Cox, Chris Hamm, Ted Mack, Zev
Handel, Heidi Pauwels, Richard Salomon, William Boltz, and Paul
Atkins for their mentorship and support over the years.
A brilliant cohort of South Asia scholars at the University of
Washington, including Manish Chalana, S. Charusheela, Radhika
Govindrajan, Sudhir Mahadevan, Vikram Prakash, Priti Rama-
murthy, Cabeiri DeBergh Robinson, K. Sivaramakrishnan (Shivi),
and Craig Jeffrey, provided a vibrant intellectual atmosphere for
the study of South Asia. I thank Keith Snodgrass and the office
staff of the South Asia Center for organizing activities and events
that have made the UW such a warm and productive place.
The thriving Textual Studies community at the University of
Washington has nourished my research. I thank Jeffrey Todd
Knight, Geoff Turnovsky, and Beatrice Arduini for their intellec-
tual and material support, and camaraderie. The Simpson Center
for the Humanities, especially Kathy Woodward, has provided an
intellectually stimulating place to think about and explore the hu-
manities.
Friends and colleagues, located both near and far, have moti-
vated, challenged, and supported me over many years. From afar, I
thank Hajnalka Kovacs, Xi He, Scott Relyea, Anjali Nerlekar,
Krupa Shandilya, Preetha Mani, Priti Joshi, Asiya Alam, Rajeev
Kinra, Walt Hakala, C. Ryan Perkins, Pasha M. Khan, Richard Del-
acy, Jonathan Ripley, Manan Ahmed Asif, Whitney Cox, Blake
Wentworth, Sean Pue, Sunit Singh, Atiya Khan, Arnika Fuhrmann,
Shreeyash Palshikar, Ed Yazijian, Spencer Leonard, Debali
Mookerjea-­Leonard, Juned Shaikh, Madhavi Murty, and Daisy
xii Acknowledgments

Rockwell. In Seattle, the support and friendship of Christian

Novetzke, Sunila Kale, Maureen Jackson, Nalini Iyer, and Purnima
Dhavan have been invaluable.
The South Asia scholarly community lost several wonderful
scholars, mentors, and mensch during this project: Norman Cutler,
who gently nudged me along; Bernard Bate, with whom I had only
a few conversations but who left an indelible impression; Carol Sa-
lomon, Bengali specialist and wonderful colleague; Kavita Datla,
associate professor of history at Mount Holyoke College and
scholar of Urdu; and Aditya Behl, professor of Urdu at the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania. All left us too early. I dedicate this book to the
memory of Ram Advani (1920–2016), the owner and proprietor of
Ram Advani Booksellers in Lucknow, and bibliophile, intellectual,
and Urdu cosmopolitan.
Research and writing of this book was supported by the Roy-
alty Research Fund, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the
South Asia Center, and the College of Arts and Sciences at the
University of Washington. American Institute of Indian Studies
and the Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships supported
language study and research. I thank the department of Asian Lan-
guages and Literature and the College of Arts and Sciences at the
University of Washington for their generous support of the publi-
cation of this book.
For their help in preparing this manuscript for publication, I
thank Corbett Costello, Chris Diamond, Joseph Marino, Nabeeha
Chaudhary, and Michael Skinner. Michael Walstrom listened to
translations; Shariq Khan assisted with Persian translations. I thank
Pamela Kelley and the staff at the University of Hawai‘i Press for
smoothly guiding the manuscript through the publication process.
Paula Friedman brought her longstanding expertise and critical eye
to my prose; I thank her for insightful editing. Bart Wright pro-
duced the beautiful map. To illustrate the wide geographical spread
of Urdu printing in the nineteenth century, the map shows South
Asian cities or towns that housed at least seven Urdu presses be-
tween 1850 and 1900, based on the information collected in Nadir
‘Ali Khan, Hindustani Press: 1556 ta 1900 (Lucknow, India: Uttar
Pradesh Urdu Akadami, 1990).
Earlier versions of portions of Chapter 2 were previously pub-
lished in “A Space for Debate: Fashioning the Urdu Novel in Colo-
nial India,” Comparative Literature Studies 53, no. 2 (2016); “­Serial
 Acknowledgments xiii

Fictions: Urdu Print Culture and the Novel in Colonial South Asia,”
Indian Economic and Social History Review 54, no. 4 Copyright
2017 © The Indian Economic and Social History Association. All
rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the copyright
holders and the publishers, SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd, New
Delhi; and “Sharafat and Bhal Mānsī: A New Perspective on Re-
spectability in Fasana-e Azad,” South Asian History and Culture 9,
no. 2 (2018): https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsac20.
A circle of friends reinvigorated me at every stage of this proj-
ect, offering their knowledge, expertise, support, companionship,
and cheer. I thank Sonal Khullar, Anand Yang, Susan Gaylard,
Beatrice Arduini, and Sareeta Amrute for so many conversations,
and for always inspiring and guiding me. My parents, Linda
Dubrow-­Marshall and Steve Eichel, have exemplified the cosmo-
politan impulses discussed in this book. Finally, this book would
not have been possible without the support and care of my fellow
traveler, Jameel Ahmad.
 Note on Transliteration and Translation

I have used minimal diacritical marks to transliterate Urdu words in

this book so as hopefully not to distract the reader. I have specified
long vowels with a dash above (as in ā) when marking the vowel
length helps to clarify the meaning of the word. I have transliterated
the Persian izafet as -e, as in the Urdu novel Fasana-e Azad, the Urdu
letter che as -ch, and the letter ‘ain (when marked) as ‘. The pen name
(takhallus) of Urdu writers has been placed in quotation marks at
first mention.
All translations are mine unless otherwise attributed. In my
translations I have followed the strategy of trying to maintain the
rhetorical effect of the original. If the original Urdu text was of mid-
dling quality, as in the zamanah ashob translated in chapter 3, then
my translation attempts to convey that. For all satirical works, I have
aimed to express the humor of the original.

xv
Map 1 Major Urdu Publishing Centers of British India until 1900.
 Introduction

Print, Literary Modernity,

and the Urdu Cosmopolis

As soon as it’s morning, our eyes turn toward the mail.

—Sarush Haq, Balrampur, published
October 15, 1879

A passion for printed reading materials developed among Urdu

readers in South Asia in the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury. The technology of lithography, a process for reproducing text
and image on stone, had made Urdu printing newly affordable, and
an explosion of Indian-owned commercial publishing had occurred.
Readers eagerly embraced the new technology, creating an interactive
and dynamic print culture in South Asia. Newspapers, periodicals,
and printed books flooded the market.
Readers’ letters reveal the daily lives of print in the districts and
small towns of colonial South Asia; the letters uncover a rich texture
of small details and local variations that are often lost in macro-level
studies of print culture. The mail might arrive in the morning or in the
afternoon, and on this depended whether a person might be able to
read it the same day or the next. But this was just the beginning of
how people interacted with printed materials. Manalal, the
­sarrishtahdar-e ijlas (superintendent of the court) for the honorary as-
sistant commissioner and ta‘luqdar (landlord) in Pratabgarh (north of
Allahabad) seems to have read his newspaper in isolation: “I’m always
waiting for the postman. As soon as I open the newspaper, I read the
humor section and I’m delighted. When I get to the “to be continued”
[baqi a’indah] at the end, my longing starts all over again.”1 Other

1
2 Introduction

readers spoke of a group experience of print, where newspapers would

circulate among neighbors or members of a district, as in Krishan
Ra’o’s letter from Muth, in Jhansi district: “Every morning when the
mail comes . . . people from the district assemble to listen. First they
listen to or read the humor section, then check out the telegraph news
or [the news of] the victory at Kabul.”2 Print can be, and seems to
have been for these readers, an emotional, affective experience.
These letters come from the Northwestern Provinces and Oudh
(later renamed the United Provinces, in 1902), located in the northern
part of British India. But readers’ letters to the newspaper Avadh
Akhbar (also known as Oudh Ukhbar) originated from all over Brit-
ish India, from what I, in this volume, am calling the Urdu cosmopo-
lis. In the pages of periodicals, Urdu readers and writers created a
distinct form of cosmopolitanism: a form organized around language
rather than religion. This transregional community of Urdu speakers
stretched across the four corners of colonial South Asia, from Rawal-
pindi (in present-day Pakistan) in the north to Madras (now Chennai)
in the south, from Bombay on the west coast of India to Calcutta in
the east. Through print, Urdu readers and writers created a transre-
gional, transnational language community that eschewed identities of
religion, caste, and class. Although this community came into being
through print only to risk being quickly fractured by the forces of
nationalism and communalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centu-
ries, it reappears in other forms and other locations, such as twenty-
first-century Pakistani telenovelas.
Evident from the names of the letter writers above is the
­composite religious identity, or rather the lack of importance of reli-
gious identity, of members of the Urdu cosmopolis: the letter writers
were Hindu and Muslim. This point would not require comment if so
much had not changed since 1879. A process of linguistic separation
began in the 1860s, in which Urdu was presented as the language of
Muslims, whereas Hindi, a closely related language, was portrayed as
the language of Hindus. This divide continued with the 1947 parti-
tion of British India into the present-day nations of India and Paki-
stan, when Urdu was made the national language of Pakistan, and
Hindi was made an official language of India, making the division
between the two seem more rigid and immovable. In the late nine-
teenth century, however, these divisions had not yet taken hold. This
book therefore in some ways concerns a historical relic, a time when
to be a Hindu writer of Urdu required no comment. Yet it is also
 Print, Literary Modernity, and the Urdu Cosmopolis 3

about alternative ways of conceiving of community, language, reli-

gious identity, place, and nation.

Literary Modernity in South Asia

This book uses the term “Urdu literary modernity” to describe the
ways that literature becomes a key lens for debating modernity in
colonial South Asia. One of the central arguments of this book is that
literature in colonial South Asia became one of the key sites in which
the protocols of modernity were worked out. In this, I draw from
Sudipta Kaviraj, who has suggested, “In India, reflection on moder-
nity came primarily through literature.”3 In his formulation, the ar-
rival of modernity in India produced a conflict between two ethical
systems: the moral imagination of classical Indian philosophy,
­focused on ontology, epistemology, logic, and aesthetics, and the
“self-reflexive” nature of modernity, demanding a self-criticalness to
construct a new moral order centered on the self, amid the break-
down of social norms.4
The preceding commentary is not to suggest that modernity
originated in the West and moved outward to non-European periph-
eries, nor that South Asian literary modernity represents a form of
“vernacular” or “alternative” modernity, as has been suggested by
many scholars.5 Recent theories of artistic modernism have stressed
exchange and translation as central to modernist projects around the
world. As Iftikhar Dadi demonstrated in his study of modernist art in
Muslim South Asia, “Modernism [is] inherently transnational.”6
Sonal Khullar in her work on modernism in the visual arts in colonial
and postcolonial India also highlighted the transactional nature of
modernism: “Modernism represented a creative and critical exchange
between Western and non-Western cultures, albeit one freighted with
risks and constrained by asymmetries.”7
Studies of modernism in both the visual and literary arts in South
Asia have tended to begin in the early twentieth century and continue
onward. The 1930s and 1940s are seen as the decades of the begin-
nings of modernism in South Asia, with modernism continuing into
the 1970s and 1980s. The formation of the all-India Progressive
Writers’ Association in 1936, which proposed art for the goal of so-
cial uplift and practiced modernist literary techniques, often stands at
the beginning of the genealogies of modernism in South Asia. Yet, as
literary scholar Aparna Dharwadker has pointed out, the roots of
4 Introduction

modernism lie in the late nineteenth century, with what she describes
as the “initial moment of rupture from indigenous tradition brought
about by colonialism, one that contains all subsequent disjunctions as
extensions of the original breach.”8 But despite scholarly recognition
of literary modernity’s origin in the nineteenth century, work on that
period’s literature has focused on other aspects of its production, aes-
thetics, or concerns.9 The late nineteenth century is often seen as tran-
sitional, lacking in artistic quality, or—to cite Dipesh Chakrabarty’s
well-known phrase to describe historical accounts of Indian moder-
nity—“not yet” modern.10
I use the term “literary modernity” to describe a constellation of
large-scale developments. The most important change to take place in
the late nineteenth century in South Asian literatures was the devel-
opment and dominance of what various scholars have called a self-
critical, ironic, more distant, and self-reflexive narrative perspective.11
To put it simply, modern South Asian literature became that litera-
ture that laughs at itself, and indeed at the moral structure of the
world of the (colonial) present. This is not to suggest that premodern
literatures in South Asia could not be parodic or engage in irony, but
rather to point out that in the second half of the nineteenth century,
this particular narrative consciousness started to dominate.12 Further,
that consciousness was stylized into the narrative form itself, so that
self-critique became central to choice of form, genre, characteriza-
tion, narrative voice, style, and so on.
A second feature of literary modernity in South Asia has been a
rhetorical break with the past. The colonial critique of South Asian
literatures, summarized in British politician and historian Thomas
Babington Macaulay’s iconic statement that all of South Asian litera-
tures were not worth a single shelf of a European library, led to a
wide-scale rejection of tradition by late nineteenth-century writers.
Premodern literatures were recast as “unnecessarily difficult,” infe-
rior, decadent, and obscene.13 Modern writers declared their break
from this tradition, as in the statement by Urdu novelist Ratan Nath
“Sarshar” (1846/1847–190314) in 1879 about his novel Fasana-e
Azad, “I do take pride in the fact that I have done something that no
one else has done—and what is that? I’ve written the novel of all nov-
els” (discussed in chapter 2).15 Yet such statements were often more
rhetoric than reality, as modern writers drew deeply from, reinvented,
and reinvigorated premodern traditions in the process of crafting a
 Print, Literary Modernity, and the Urdu Cosmopolis 5

modern art.16 Dharwadker refers to this feature of literary modernity

as its “paradoxical relation to tradition.”17
South Asian literary modernity is also characterized by the in-
creased use of prose.18 Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, to be a
writer was to be a master of verse. The development of prose as a
literary and scientific means of expression led to the creation and de-
velopment of modern vernacular languages in South Asia.19 This fact
has often led to a false dichotomy between poetry and prose in liter-
ary study. Yet identifying the divide between prose and poetry with
the divide between modernity and premodernity does not apply in
Urdu. Strong traditions of both modern Urdu poetry and prose flour-
ished in the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. One has only
to think of the convention-breaking, Marxist, secular, and protest
verses of the great twentieth-century Urdu poet Faiz Ahmad “Faiz”
(1911–1984), who was nominated four times for the Nobel Prize for
literature, or of the modernist poets “Miraji” (1912–1949) and N.
M. Rashid (1910–1975), who reworked the vocabulary of classical
Urdu poetics, and who used poetry to critique ideologies such as na-
tionalism and create new forms of belonging.20 As I have already
noted, in classical poetry the self-critical mode was indeed there, al-
though not dominant; thus, a prose/poetry, modern/premodern di-
chotomy artificially bifurcates Urdu literature in a way that obscures
more than it shows.

Urdu as a Language of Modernity

Urdu occupies a particularly intriguing and fraught location within
multilingual South Asia. Because of its history as a language that was
split off from Hindi in the late nineteenth century, rebranded as the
language of Muslims, and consequently made the national language
of Pakistan at the time of that nation’s independence in 1947, early
twenty-first-century conceptions of Urdu remain intimately tied to
historical and contemporary concerns.21
On the one hand, Urdu is seen as a language of loss, death,
mourning, and nostalgia. This perception is best summed up in Anita
Desai’s 1984 English novel In Custody, which follows a Hindi lec-
turer’s attempt to interview a prominent Urdu poet in Delhi. The poet
says, “ ‘Urdu poetry?’ he finally sighed, turning a little to one side . . .
‘How can there be Urdu poetry when there is no Urdu language left?
It is dead, finished.’ ”22 This narrative of the death of Urdu in India
6 Introduction

has been repeated in present-day news accounts in India, academic

conferences, and literary histories.23 It is often linked to the traumas
of Partition and the migration of many of India’s Muslims into Paki-
stan. As Anita Desai elaborated in an interview, “Although there is
such a reverence for Urdu poetry, the fact that most Muslims left In-
dia to go to Pakistan meant that most schools and universities of
Urdu were closed. So that it’s a language I don’t think is going to
survive in India.”24 On the other hand, Urdu scholar Amina Yaqin
points out that Desai sees Urdu as connected only to one regional set-
ting, that of north India, and cannot account for its persistence in
other locations; such a view elides the survival of Urdu in many insti-
tutional settings, including Osmania University, the most important
university of Urdu, located in Hyderabad.25
A second, particularly poignant, example of this feeling of loss
can be found in Intizar Husain’s 1979 Urdu novel Basti. Written in
the aftermath of the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence, the
novel details the narrator’s memories of his childhood growing up in
the (fictional) town of Rupnagar, clearly located in present-day Uttar
Pradesh, before the narrator’s migration to Pakistan during Partition.
The narrator’s account of the pleasures and pains of growing up in a
syncretic culture that spans both Hindu and Muslim cultural legacies
of north India before Independence and Partition makes clear that the
novel is in part an elegy for this ganga-jamuni way of life.26 As Hu-
sain detailed in an interview about the novel, he viewed Indian Mus-
lims as having a particular history: “We’re not the same as Arab
Muslims, nor are we Iranian Muslims. We’re Muslims of the Subcon-
tinent, of India [hind].”27 The loss of Urdu in India—in particular,
north India—becomes connected to this sense of loss of a historical
identity, an identity viewed as syncretistic, worldly (even cosmopoli-
tan), and multifaceted. There is a sense that with Partition, this mo-
ment has been lost.
Another dominant narrative concerning Urdu paints it as the
language of bureaucracy, the imperial courts, and commercial trans-
actions. From 1836, when the lieutenant governor of the Northwest-
ern Provinces replaced Persian with Hindustani, a language that later
became known as Urdu, as the language of government administra-
tion, the merits and demerits of Urdu as a language of bureaucracy
were regularly debated. The issue of its suitability continued to be
central to the campaign to recognize Hindi as a language of govern-
ment administration. This debate over language and register reached
 Print, Literary Modernity, and the Urdu Cosmopolis 7

a turning point in 1882 with the Hunter Education Commission, ap-

pointed by the government of India and under the supervision of Sir
William Hunter, to report on the progress of education in India. For
this commission’s hearings, twenty-eight witnesses testified or sent
written testimony. Some of the reports complained that the use of
Persian and Urdu in land records meant that a wrong placement of
dots above or below the letters could change the meaning of a record.
These examples show the second dominant narrative concerning
Urdu; in this narrative, Urdu appears as the language of transaction
and bureaucracy, its worthiness tied to everyday matters of property,
business, and government affairs.
Neither of these dominant narratives leaves much room for the
kind of genres covered in this book. Turning to the rich archive of
newspapers, literary journals, cartoons, readers’ letters, and satire
presents a new picture of Urdu literature. Ask any Urdu speaker what
his or her language is known for, and the answer will be sha‘iri (po-
etry). Such a concept binds Urdu to its classical (and modern) heri-
tage. It defines Urdu as a language of refined sensibility and verbal
elegance. These are traits to be treasured, but it is precisely not this
vision of Urdu that I present in this book. Rather, this book uncovers
Urdu as a language of modernity; it reveals the dynamic world of
Urdu print, the deep engagement with and debates on modernity in
journals, newspapers, novels, et cetera, and correspondence between
writers and readers. Urdu was central to both the experience and the
critique of colonial modernity in South Asia; it was a language in
which modern life was lived, satirized, disputed, and challenged.

The Urdu Cosmopolis

A central concern of this book is the ways that print helped to create
an Urdu cosmopolis in late nineteenth-century South Asia. I have
used the word “cosmopolis” to indicate how Urdu readers and writ-
ers imagined themselves as citizens of an Urdu-speaking, transre-
gional, yet nonnational community that was global in outlook and
consciously resisted national borders or religious identities. Pheng
Cheah defines cosmopolitanism as “primarily . . . viewing oneself as
part of a world, a circle of belonging that transcends the limited ties
of kinship and country to embrace the whole of humanity.”28 For
Urdu readers and writers of the late nineteenth century, the world
was both real and imagined. It was made real, for access to the
8 Introduction

­ odern newspaper, and to the global and globalizing infrastructure

m
on which it relied (the telegraph, the railroad, the postal network, the
steamship), brought the world to one’s fingertips. As South Asia be-
came part of the imperial information network, the events of far-
flung locations were available to read, to hear, to view, and to touch.
Access to the newspaper collapsed geographical distance, as readers
in such disparate locations as Lucknow, Hyderabad, and Rawalpindi
consumed the news almost simultaneously.
At the same time, for Urdu readers and writers the world could
also be imagined—through what Pheng Cheah has called the “world-
making activity” of literature. As Cheah notes, world literature is
“an important aspect of cosmopolitanism because it is a type of
world-making activity that enables us to imagine a world.”29 In the
late nineteenth century, Urdu speakers looked to England, France,
Russia, Persia, and Arabia, and, within South Asia, to Bengal, for
cultural and literary models. Thus they created a global imaginative
space, in which models could circulate freely and be readapted,
mixed, and drawn upon in developing new ways of thinking, similar
to what Partha Mitter has called virtual cosmopolitanism.30 By this
creation, Urdu writers resisted the cultural models offered by colo-
nialism, in which power relations between colonizer and colonized,
West and East, foreign and native, were clearly and sometimes rig-
idly defined.31 Literature became an arena of agency, a site of resis-
tance to British hegemony.32 This project was later taken up by pro-
gressive and modernist artists and writers in South Asia, who were
committed to a vision of art that would awake India’s masses and
“create the forms of the future,” as modernist painter Amrita Sher-
Gil wrote in 1936.33
The Urdu cosmopolis changed the geography of Urdu literature,
democratizing it away from the precolonial literary and cultural cen-
ters of Delhi and Lucknow to the large cities and small towns of the
railway lines. As evident in the map at the beginning of this chapter,
the major Urdu publishing centers of British India comprised metrop-
olises such as Lahore, Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, but also the
towns on the Oudh-Rohilkhand Railway (formed in 1872) such as
Moradabad, Bareilly, and Badaun. The Urdu cosmopolis was con-
nected by the railway lines, built in the late nineteenth century to
move troops, labor, and, eventually, commodities.34 It was not neces-
sary to be a major cultural center or even a big city to be part of the
network of Urdu publishing.
 Print, Literary Modernity, and the Urdu Cosmopolis 9

In stressing affiliations beyond region, religion, caste, and na-

tion, the Urdu cosmopolis acted to resist the fractures of communal-
ism and nationalism that increasingly operated upon it in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Gyan Pandey and others
have traced how British colonial ways of counting and codifying
identities through mechanisms like the census and anthropological
survey served to harden what were previously more permeable and
fluid religious identities.35 As the present book notes, the Urdu cos-
mopolis threatened to be fragmented in the late nineteenth century:
as Urdu and Hindi were redefined along religious lines in the second
half of the nineteenth century, the constellation by which a high-caste
Hindu author such as Ratan Nath Sarshar, author of the Urdu novel
Fasana-e Azad (discussed in chapter 2), can produce a novel in that
language, without feeling any need to comment on this fact, was
pried apart. This fracturing reflected the growing divide between
Hindi and Urdu in the 1860s and 1870s. This divide continued into
the twentieth century, when nationalists debated what should be the
status of Urdu in independent India. The politics of Hindi and Urdu
proved problematic for nationalist figures such as Gandhi, who advo-
cated in 1925 for the use of “Hindustani,” which he saw as a shared
language among Hindus and Muslims. Yet as Kavita Datla has con-
vincingly argued, early twentieth-century Urdu “advocates, educa-
tors, and literary critics” used Urdu to envision “the shape and future
of a secular national culture.”36 She showed that “the Urdu language
in the early twentieth century became a means not only of asserting
difference but also of imagining a common secular future.”37 Despite
this, the identifications of Urdu with Muslims and Hindi with Hindus
has continued into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and con-
tinues to shape present-day language policy in India and Pakistan.
The Urdu cosmopolis is different from other translocal cosmop-
olises identified by scholars, such as the Sanskrit cosmopolis, and Per-
sian, Muslim, and Arabic cosmopolitanisms. Sheldon Pollock used
the term “Sanskrit cosmopolis” to describe the nexus of cultural and
political power exercised in Sanskrit across South and Southeast Asia
in the first millennium CE. Pollock identified how a transregional lan-
guage (in this case, Sanskrit, an elite language to which access was
restricted to male upper-caste Hindus) could unite diverse polities—
that is, through their very usage of this shared language. Such a model
clarifies the interplay among language, culture, literature, and power
in the vastly multilingual space of South Asia. As Muzaffar Alam and
10 Introduction

others have traced, Persian similarly, through the sixteenth through

nineteenth centuries under the Mughal Empire (1526–1857), became
a language of power, literary prowess, and kingship, patronized by
Mughal kings and functioning as a way of securing alliances with
“heterogeneous social and religious groups.”38
The formation of the Urdu cosmopolis in the late nineteenth
century built on this tradition. When the British changed the language
of administration of the Northwestern Provinces to Hindustani in
1837, this language that later became known as Urdu took over the
position of Persian. Urdu became a language necessary to grasp if one
would have access to political power. Urdu’s position was soon chal-
lenged, however; beginning in the 1860s, when a movement to estab-
lish Hindi, written in the Devanagari script and drawing more on the
literary and linguistic heritage of Sanskrit, took hold in the North-
western Provinces and Oudh, resulting in the addition of Hindi, in
1900, as a language of administration.
Other scholars have used the terms “Islamicate” and “Persian-
ate” to denote the complex of social and cultural practices associated
with Muslims and Islam, though not necessarily with the religion of
Islam, which arose out of Arab and Persian literate traditions. These
practices were transnational and cosmopolitan, traveling beyond the
Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Empire to influence a wide range
of artistic and cultural practices in the fourteenth to nineteenth centu-
ries. In South Asia, deep links between the Indian subcontinent and
West Asia led to a particularly interconnected relationship between
India and Iran through the early twentieth century, prompting one
scholar to define a “Persianate modern” selfhood that was the prod-
uct of a shared Indian and Iranian modernity.39
The Urdu cosmopolis stands at the intersection between these
earlier Islamicate modes and what we now think of as modern, reified
religious identities of Hindu and Muslim. Urdu cosmopolitanism
drew upon the networks and cultural modes of being that were com-
mon to both the Islamicate and Persianate idioms, yet in its use of the
modern technology of print, Urdu cosmopolitanism imagined itself
anew. Writers and readers formed a language community that was
transregional. This was not a national unifying, uniform commu-
nity,40 nor was it a community rooted in a particular place or region.
Quite the contrary, the writers and readers consciously envisioned a
world, unified by Urdu, that was larger than region and country.
Drawing on the idioms of the Persianate cultural world, the members
 Print, Literary Modernity, and the Urdu Cosmopolis 11

of the Urdu cosmopolis saw themselves as participating in a shared

cultural idiom that, rather than be geographically delimited, traveled
along telegraph lines and rail tracks, and was carried by the modern
newspaper. This was a culture centered in what historian Seema Alavi
has called the “imperial assemblage,” the constellation of the British
and Ottoman Empires connected by the circulation of information
and networks of travel, as concerned with the daily goings-on of the
Ottoman Pasha as with French theater actresses or as with the par-
ticular conundrums of employment, family relations, comportment,
and self-fashioning in the modern world. The Urdu cosmopolis was
distinctly not organized around religion, as the participation of many
high-caste Hindus attests.
The Urdu cosmopolitanism that I discuss in this volume is differ-
ent from the Muslim cosmopolitanism identified by Seema Alavi in
her 2015 book Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire. Alavi
identified a Muslim cosmopolitanism practiced by South Asian Mus-
lims after the Mutiny of 1857.41 In her study of five Indian Muslim
scholars who fled India to resettle in parts of the imperial Muslim
world (such as Cairo, Mecca, and Istanbul), Alavi locates the forma-
tion of Muslim cosmopolitanism at the nexus of the British and Otto-
man Empires. She delineates how Muslim cosmopolitans resisted
both the nation and the Caliphate, instead forming a “cultural and
civilizational view: a universalist Muslim public conduct based on
consensus in matters of belief, ritual, and forms of devotion.”42 The
Urdu cosmopolis, by contrast, was not based on religion, and should
not be confused with the Muslim ummah, the global community of
Muslims. It should also be understood as distinct from the Arabic
cosmopolis described by Ronit Ricci, which Ricci defined as “a
translocal Islamic sphere constituted and defined by language, litera-
ture, and religion” that developed in South and Southeast Asia in the
sixteenth to twentieth centuries.43 On the contrary, the Urdu cosmop-
olis acts to resist the identification of identity with religion, stressing
instead a shared critical idiom and bonds of affection created through
language.

A Reader-Centric Approach to Print

In this book, I highlight the role of readers in creating print culture in
South Asia. As the French book historian Roger Chartier pointed
out in 1992, reading is a practice that “rarely leaves traces.”44 Yet
12 Introduction

­ nderstanding readership remains central to understanding the ways

u
that people make meaning of texts, and indeed, how texts are con-
structed through the practice of reading. Readership has been a focus
of book history, but remains understudied in South Asia. In his influ-
ential essay “Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel,” Bakhtin
pointed out that readers and listeners comprise the world “that cre-
ates the text, for all its aspects—the reality reflected in the text, the
authors creating the text, the performers of the text (if they exist) and
finally the listeners or readers who recreate and in so doing renew the
text—participate equally in the creation of the represented world in
the text.”45 This is particularly true in the case of South Asia, where
readers were intensely involved in early print culture. The reason for
this intense participation may derive from the prevalence of oral and
performative genres and entertainment forms through the nineteenth
century—what Francesca Orsini has called “a society habituated to
oral and visual entertainment.”46 Despite low literacy rates, readers
took to the new medium of print with incomparable enthusiasm.
Their role in making sense of print, and shaping the course of late
nineteenth-century Urdu literature, is central to this book.
 Chapter One

Printing the Cosmopolis

Authors and Journals in the Age of Print

B y the late nineteenth century, it became possible to make a living,

at least partially, through print. Periodicals became a literary
space, in which literary matters were debated and discussed. By creat-
ing new genres such as the festival vignette and developing them
through intertextual circulation among periodicals, the Urdu journals
helped create a cosmopolis in print, a community of Urdu speakers
not defined by religion, region, or personal identity. Yet to become a
professional author, one also had to become a print entrepreneur. As
Ratan Nath Sarshar, the author of Fasana-e Azad, responded to a
reader in 1879, “I don’t have enough time to write this novel care-
fully. As soon as I write a page I give it to the copyist. Sometimes
mistakes remain even in the proofs.”1 In this instance of print entre-
preneurship, Sarshar promoted both his novel and the demand for it
in the public sphere, using the interactive space of the periodical to
openly address a reader’s complaint.
The study of print culture and the history of the book remains
dominated by Western, largely Anglophone studies. Though research
on the history of the book outside of Western Europe has grown in
recent years, the paradigms for understanding the book, such as
book, manuscript, codex, orality, and literacy, remain rooted in
Western European contexts.2 This prompted Indian book historians
Abhijit Gupta and Swapan Chakravorty to remark in 2004 on the
challenges of practicing book history in India: “Most publishers in
our country have not taken the trouble to preserve their records, pre-
ferring the convenience of selling them off to the friendly n
­ eighborhood

13
14 Chapter One

kabariwala [trash man].”3 In the absence of publishers’ records and

other basic data about the publishing industry in South Asia, periodi-
cals—somewhat better preserved through library subscriptions—be-
come an invaluable archive, a window onto the growth of print
­culture in South Asia. They reveal key features of how print was cir-
culated, enjoyed, performed, and listened to in the early decades of
commercial print culture in that region.
Periodical studies as a subfield of the history of the book has
grown in recent years. In 2006, English scholars Sean Lathan and
Robert Scholes noted that periodicals, which usually present a range
of texts (literary, nonliterary, fiction, nonfiction, essays, articles, etc.)
and display a close relationship with “the culture of commerce and
advertising,” offer unique opportunities for the study of a historical
period.4 Yet periodicals in South Asia have not been well studied, and
when they are read, it is usually as political, social, and historical
documents.
The present volume highlights the central role of periodicals in
establishing print culture in South Asia during the nineteenth century.
Cheaper to produce and buy than many books, periodicals surged in
the early decades of commercial publishing in the region. At the time,
to write, or perhaps edit, a periodical became the mark of a serious
author. Unlike books, periodicals also provided an ongoing, reoccur-
ring relationship between writers and readers. This allowed authors
to shape readers’ tastes, while also trying to respond to them. This
was especially important as readers became accustomed to both the
new medium of print and to the periodical as a print object.
The periodical became a site of literary experimentation. In the
case of twentieth-century Hindi women’s journals, Shobna Nijhawan
has shown that “literary tastes, styles, and the creative exploration of
different literary genres were constitutive of the periodicals . . . if
compared with mainstream Hindi literary publications.”5 I show that
the Urdu periodicals that flourished in Lucknow and the spaces of the
Urdu cosmopolis in the late nineteenth century helped determine the
particular course of literary modernity in Urdu. Periodicals were the
locations in which the new genres of modernity, such as the satirical
vignette, the political cartoon, and the novel, were forged. They were
a space in which the new protocols, aesthetics, tastes, and generic
conventions were worked out. For scholars, reading the periodical as
literary space is central to understanding the shape of modern litera-
ture in South Asia.
 Printing the Cosmopolis 15

The Author as Print Entrepreneur

The new world of print brought a transformative shift to what it
meant to be an author in the region in the late nineteenth century.
Faced with the decline of aristocratic and private patronage, writers
increasingly turned to print’s emerging listening and reading public
for support.6 Authors cultivated readers and created markets for their
work by engaging the possibilities of print, using this technology cre-
atively and entrepreneurially. By the late nineteenth century, writers
could possibly support themselves as professional authors, but to do
so a writer had to become a print entrepreneur. The circle of Urdu
writers active in Lucknow, in particular, negotiated the new possi-
bilities and challenges of the print field. Drawing on the dramatic in-
crease in periodicals from the 1850s to the 1870s, they organized
their careers around engagement in print periodicals; many founded
their own journals, thus becoming print entrepreneurs. In short, the
late nineteenth-century print author often wore many hats, serving
single-handedly as editor, self-promoter, printer-publisher, and au-
thor. Some combined print publishing activities with careers in new
professions such as lawyer and judge—another form of shared career
trajectory.
Following British annexation of the kingdom of Oudh (Avadh)
in 1856, Lucknow was home to the luminaries of late nineteenth-cen-
tury Urdu literature. Among the writers who lived and worked in the
city were Ratan Nath Sarshar, editor of the daily newspaper Avadh
Akhbar (1859–1950) and author of the “first” Urdu novel, Fasana-e
Azad (discussed in chapter 2); Abdul Halim “Sharar” (1860–1926),
also editor of Avadh Akhbar and inaugurator of the historical novel
genre in Urdu; Mirza Muhammad Hadi “Ruswa” (1858–1931), sci-
entist, teacher, and novelist, author of the influential Urdu novel
Umrao Jan Ada (1899); “Akbar” Allahabadi (1847–1921), writer at
the important satirical literary journal Avadh Punch and Urdu’s fore-
most nineteenth-century satirical poet; Sajjad Husain (1856–1915),
founder of Avadh Punch and satirical novelist; Navab Sayyid Mu-
hammad Azad (1846–1917), writer at Avadh Punch and author of a
serialized novelistic drama about Lucknow’s navabs (aristocrats), Na-
vabi Darbar; and Braj Narayan “Chakbast” (1882–1926), early
twentieth-century nationalist poet and writer. That these authors all
began and conducted much of their careers in Lucknow speaks to the
city’s success as an incubator for talent and source for patronage.
16 Chapter One

New professional networks underpinned the development of au-

thor as print entrepreneur. Shortly after the British annexed Avadh in
1856, Lucknow emerged as a major center of commercial print pub-
lishing in north India. This was due largely to the enterprising efforts
of the monumental printer-publisher Munshi Naval Kishore (1836–
1895), who established a publishing empire in the late nineteenth
century, helping to turn Lucknow into one of the major centers of the
book trade. The presence of major printing firms such as the Naval
Kishore Press, as well as Lucknow’s political and administrative im-
portance as the capital of the newly formed state of Northwestern
Provinces and Oudh, contributed to the city’s importance for pub-
lishing and the book trade in north India. Within this framework,
personal and professional networks in Lucknow shaped individual
careers and made possible a new way of being a writer. At the same
time, the individual and the local remained important amid broad
macrolevel changes.
The first generation of professional writers in Lucknow formed
a literary circle, its members tied together through personal and
group affiliations. To belong to this circle often entailed belonging to
a certain caste group and attaining a certain kind of education. Yet
such a circle was also founded in bonds of friendship, bonds some-
times fractured by rivalry and competition. To understand the par-
ticular contours of modern Urdu literary culture, one must be attuned
to both forces and to how they shaped artistic movements, aesthetic
choices, and professional affiliations.
The circle of writers active at Lucknow’s most important satiri-
cal literary journal, Avadh Punch (1859–1950), came together in
1877, twenty-one years after Avadh was annexed by the British
crown. The former elites of the city, landowners (ta‘luqdars), nobles
(ra’īs), and a courtly elite patronized by the Avadh court were in de-
cline. As Sanjay Joshi has established, a new generation of men “with
little more than educational or professional qualifications and/or lit-
erary ability . . . came to represent itself as an Indian middle class” in
Lucknow.7 According to Joshi, this new middle class used the “new
institutions of the public sphere” (i.e., journalism, publishing, and the
creation of new civic associations) to “emerge as the arbiters of so-
cial, political, and cultural conduct in colonial Lucknow.”8 Joshi
traces how these men, who consisted largely of the “service gentry,”
“as well as others who came to see themselves as part of the middle
 Printing the Cosmopolis 17

class,” distinguished themselves from both the former aristocratic

elites and the “lower orders of society.”9
The Avadh Punch circle, broadly speaking, belonged to this
group. They were the sons of Lucknow’s former elites, tasked now
with making a living in the new colonial economy. Most served in
some way in the legal and educational professions, following the
broad shape of the city’s new middle classes. Reflecting the increased
importance of literary and publishing activities in the city, many also
wrote—primarily fiction, but also journalism. These men were edu-
cated at Canning College (established in 1864), one of the few
English-­language institutions of higher learning in Lucknow.10 Many
belonged to the caste of Kashmiri Brahmin, among the Hindu castes,
which formed a large expatriate community in Lucknow. In Luck­
now, Kayasths and Kashmiri Brahmins were known for their close
associations with the navabi courts, adopting many aspects of the
Muslim courtly lifestyle, including familiarity with Persian and
Urdu.11
The founder of Avadh Punch was Munshi Sajjad Husain (1856–
1915), the son of Munshi Mansur ‘Ali, a deputy collector in the Brit-
ish civil service who later became a civil judge and who retired in
Hyderabad. Husain was born in Kakori, a town fourteen kilometers
north of Lucknow. He enrolled in Canning College in 1873 but did
not complete his studies there. After “a short rambling” and a brief
stint as a munshi (scribe, teacher) in the army, Husain returned to
Lucknow and founded Avadh Punch in 1877.12 At Canning College
he was likely exposed to the British Punch magazine, established in
London in 1841, and was inspired by the success of Avadh Akhbar,
the newspaper owned by the city’s most successful Indian printer-
publisher, Munshi Naval Kishore, which, that year, had just become
Urdu’s first daily.13 According to Ram Babu Saksena, an early Urdu
literary historian, “By his charming and intensely attractive person-
ality [Husain] gathered a devoted band of writers” for Avadh Punch.
This band included Mirza Macchu Beg (1835–1894), who belonged
to “a very respectable family which settled in Lucknow” and wrote
for Avadh Punch for thirty years under the pen name “Sitam Zarif”;
Tribhuvan Nath Sapru “Hijr” (b. 1853) and Javala Prasad “Barq”
(1863–1911), both lawyers; Akbar Allahabadi; Navab Sayyid Mu-
hammad Azad; and Ratan Nath Sarshar. Hijr, Barq, and Sarshar all
studied at Canning College, but it is not clear whether their studies
there overlapped (Barq entered Canning College in 1878).14 Most of
18 Chapter One

the men lived in Lucknow, but Azad appears to have lived in Dhaka
(in present-day Bangladesh); he may well have communicated via
the mail.
According to Braj Narayan Chakbast, an early twentieth-­century
nationalist poet, a gathering (suhbat) of “friends of discernment and
wit” would take place “morning and night” in Lucknow, in which
“one was wittier than the next.” This group included Husain and
Hijr. When Sarshar returned to Lucknow in 1877 after serving as a
teacher in the nearby district of Lakhimpur, Kheri, he joined the
group. Chakbast’s description of the gathering recalls the “brother-
hood of authors” who worked for the London Punch, as described
by Patrick Leary.15 These authors met weekly over dinner, and their
working relationships were defined as much by personal intimacy
and informal table talk as by professional matters. Avadh Punch also
functioned as a friendly circle that would often discuss literary topics.
In Chakbast’s account, one day in the gathering Hijr said that “if
there’s any novel so funny that one cannot read a single page without
laughing twenty times,” it was Don Quixote.16
Avadh Punch quickly became very successful; 250 copies per is-
sue were printed for the first few years; by the early 1880s that num-
ber had doubled, bringing Avadh Punch to only 200 copies per issue
less than Avadh Akhbar, which was better endowed.17 A rivalry soon
developed between Avadh Punch and Avadh Akhbar. In 1878, when
Naval Kishore sought a new editor for his newspaper, he hired Sar-
shar, who was then a young and unproven author. One of Sarshar’s
first acts as editor of Avadh Akhbar was to inaugurate a new humor
section called zarafat, where he published satirical vignettes of the
type he had been writing at Avadh Punch. This fact was not lost on
the Avadh Punch circle; once Sarshar’s writing at Avadh Akhbar be-
came successful, Avadh Punch began vigorously attacking Sarshar
and Fasana-e Azad (these attacks are discussed in chapter 4).
The Avadh Punch circle exemplified key elements of the career
of the new professional author. Two authors in Hindi and Bengali,
Bharatendu Harischandra (1850–1885) and Bankimchandra Chat-
terjee (1838–1894), illuminate (as I shall briefly discuss) how similar
career trajectories operated across languages and regions. To become
a professional author in the late nineteenth century, one followed a
general framework that reflected the impact of print in reshaping
what it meant to be a writer in the modern period.
 Printing the Cosmopolis 19

Broadly speaking, there were five key components for becoming

a professional author in late nineteenth-century north India: (1) en-
gage the new print culture by submitting articles to periodicals;
(2) found or edit a journal; (3) innovate with literary forms, possibly
by serializing fiction; (4) serve multiple functions in the publishing
industry: editor, printer-publisher, self-promoter; and (5) become,
perhaps, a full-time writer.
For a beginning writer in late nineteenth-century north India,
the first step in pursuing such a career was often to submit articles
and short fictional pieces to many periodicals. This fact reflected the
quick growth of periodicals in the region since the late 1850s. Sarshar
published his first two articles, in Persian, in the Murāsala-e Kashmīr
journal, a monthly produced for the Kashmiri Pandit community in
Lucknow. He also contributed articles to two weekly Urdu newspa-
pers, Mirāt ul-Hind and Riyāz ul-Akhbar.18 Azad, located in Dhaka,
also began writing in Persian for the Persian journal Dūrbīn, but he,
too, then switched to Urdu, publishing articles in Avadh Akhbar,
Avadh Punch, Akmal Akhbar, Agra Akhbar, and other periodicals.19
Abdul Halim Sharar, the historical novelist, after studying in Delhi
and teaching Arabic in Hardoi (northwest of Lucknow), began his
writing career writing for the weekly newspaper Akhbar Tamanai,
published by Puranchand ‘Ajaz. He was encouraged to do so, when
he returned to Lucknow in 1882, by Munshi Ahmad ‘Ali Kasman-
davi, a columnist for Avadh Punch.
For many aspiring authors, the next step was to found or edit a
journal. In Urdu, founding a journal was relatively affordable, due to
the low-cost print technology of lithography, which made owning
one’s own press or journal financially viable. Husain started Avadh
Punch in 1877. Significantly, he first published the journal from the
Kāyasth Samāchār press in Golah Ganj, Lucknow, but within two
months he established his own press, Shām-e Avadh (An Evening in
Avadh), to publish the journal.20 Abdul Halim Sharar began his first
journal, Dilgudaz, in January 1887 with subscription money from
Bashiruddin Ahmad, son of pioneering Urdu prose writer Nazir
­Ahmad (1830–1912); this journal ran for forty years. Bashiruddin
Ahmad encouraged Sharar to start his own journal after Sharar pub-
lished his first novel, Dilchasp (1885), which was a success. Sharar
serialized most of his novels, as well as a famous series of essays on
Lucknow’s history and culture, Guzashtah Lucknow, in Dilgudaz.21
He later started three additional journals to publish other kinds of
20 Chapter One

material: Muhazzab in 1890, in which he wrote on politics, society,

and literature; Pardah-e Ismat in 1900, in which he published social
novels; and Ittihad in 1904, a journal to foster better relations be-
tween Hindus and Muslims.22
The “father of modern Hindi,” Bharatendu Harischandra,
founded three journals in his early career, allowing him to compose
in a variety of genres, topics, and literary styles. Similar to his Urdu
contemporaries, Harischandra was born to an elite family of rasikas,
a term defined by Vasudha Dalmia in her study of the writer as “pa-
trons and artists all in one.”23 The son of a poet, Harischandra orga-
nized poetic assemblies (kavya sabha) and was active in new literary
and civic associations in Benaras. Harischandra saw the form of the
periodical as a forum to shape public opinion. His first journal,
Kavivachansudhā (established in 1868 and published monthly, then
fortnightly), featured news, letters to the editors, articles in Hindi,
short skits/dialogues, and moral essays.24 Harischandra began his
next journal, Harischandrachandrikā (Harischandra’s Magazine), in
1873 as a literary supplement to Kavivachansudhā. This journal car-
ried poems, essays, tales, and views on many subjects, as well as some
pieces in English directed to colonial authorities. The journal was im-
portant in inaugurating a new, lively, colloquial style of Hindi.25 The
next year, Harischandra founded the first women’s journal in Hindi,
Bālābodhinī, a monthly that was geared toward women readers and
traced the contours of modern domesticity and the ideal Hindu
housewife.
The late nineteenth-century print author often wore many hats.
Harischandra ran Kavivachansudhā as a “one-man show,” filling its
pages “by the labours of his pen alone.”26 Sarshar served as editor of
Avadh Akhbar, wrote short humorous pieces in its humor (zarafat)
section (in addition to serializing Fasana-e Azad), and wrote news
articles, editorials, and essays. He thus was a novelist, journalist, edi-
tor, and humorist.
As these authors’ career trajectories have shown, the profes-
sional writer faced striking new opportunities with the spread of af-
fordable print technology. This generation was the first in South Asia
to write for the emerging reading and listening public. It was now
possible to subsist, at least in part, by writing for the commercial
market. This fact marked a transformational shift in the profession of
author, and a few writers were able to become full-time authors. Sar-
shar’s novel Fasana-e Azad was such a success that it allowed him to
 Printing the Cosmopolis 21

resign the editorship of Avadh Akhbar and become Urdu’s first full-
time novelist; between 1880 and 1893, he published three more ma-
jor novels with Naval Kishore Press.27 Sharar, Sarshar’s successor at
Avadh Akhbar, also resigned the editorship after a trip to Hyderabad
and Bombay, and became a full-time writer. By the end of his career,
he had produced twenty-five historical novels, eight social novels,
twenty-four biographical works, twenty-one histories, two dramas,
four poetical works, and numerous articles and translations.28
It must be noted that when patronage was not available in Luck­
now,29 many Urdu authors of this period moved south to the princely
state of Hyderabad, where they often obtained royal patronage. In
1895, Sarshar traveled to south India to participate in the annual In-
dian National Congress meeting in Madras. On the way back, he
obtained employment with Maharaja Kishan Prasad, the minister for
the army to the Nizam of Hyderabad, to correct Prasad’s Urdu poetry
and prose, for a salary of two hundred rupees per month.30 Even
though this employment resembled older patronage structures, in
which poets were often employed to correct a king’s or noble’s com-
positions, Sarshar also continued his print-publishing activities: he
established a literary journal, Dabdaba-e Āsifī (Āsifian Grandeur—
with Āsif referring to the Nizam of Hyderabad), in which he pub-
lished his own fiction under the series title Khumkadā-e Sarshār (The
Wine Pitcher of Sarshar, in a pun on the meaning of Sarshar’s pen
name as “Brimful”). According to Chakbast, this fiction consisted of
short serialized novels.
There are many examples of other Urdu authors (slightly
younger than Sarshar) who also made their way south to obtain em-
ployment in the princely state of Hyderabad. For example, Abdul
Halim Sharar took three trips to Hyderabad to seek out patronage.
Mirza Muhammad Hadi Ruswa, author of the novel Umrao Jan Ada
(1899), also left Lucknow to pursue his fortunes in Hyderabad, tak-
ing up employment in the translation bureau at the first Urdu-­medium
university in colonial India, Osmania University, founded in Hyder-
abad in 1918.31
It is thus clear that the rise of print capitalism in the late nine-
teenth century in India led to changed conditions of authorship. The
careers of the members of the Avadh Punch circle show that it be-
came possible at that time for an author to make at least part of a
living by writing for the public, instead of relying on aristocratic or
individual patronage—a massive shift in the profession of author.
22 Chapter One

And the commercial writers of the late nineteenth century shared key
characteristics of this new profession: often, they belonged to certain
caste and personal networks; they got their start writing for periodi-
cals; and they filled multiple roles in addition to writer. That this oc-
curred within two decades of the spread of affordable lithograph
technology points to the remarkable speed with which print culture
took hold in literary centers such as Lucknow.
As these career trajectories show, this generation was the first to
write for the reading and listening public, and to find success there;
however, patronage was still important, with the late nineteenth cen-
tury a transitional moment from patronage to the market.32 How-
ever, this period marked a transformative shift: the next generation of
Urdu writers, writing in the early twentieth century, moved further
toward writing for the public, and found their main source of patron-
age from Indian-owned presses. By the time of Independence in 1947,
an Urdu author such as Saadat Hasan Manto (1912–1955) could
make his living fully as an author, writing short stories for literary
journals, radio dramas for the new technology of radio, and dialogue
for the burgeoning film industry. The late nineteenth-century period
thus marks the beginning of the modern literary field in India, a field
shaped by print capitalism as well as by distinct structures of author-
ship and readership.

The Periodical as Literary Space

As part of their new personae as professional writers, journal edi-
tors/authors/printer-publishers exercised authority as experts on lit-
erary matters. Given their access to the world of print, their opinions
on literary issues mattered. A journal editor could decide whether or
not to publish a local poet’s verses, thus conferring on that poet sta-
tus and a certain longevity in print. Avadh Akhbar posed itself as
arbiter of literary taste; it did this by taking part (and sides) in liter-
ary controversies, by declaring itself a space for literature, by publi-
cizing and promoting poetry and printed works of literature, and by
marking important literary events such as the deaths of prominent
authors. In these ways, Avadh Akhbar established the periodical as a
literary space. That this happened in Urdu’s premier newspaper of
the time shows how important a claim over literary authority was
for early print culture. And the work begun by Avadh Akhbar and
late nineteenth-century Urdu periodicals continued into the early
 Printing the Cosmopolis 23

twentieth century, as periodicals solidified their role as a prime arena

for ­literature.33
In their roles as arbiters of literary taste, journal editors wrested
authority away from the traditional poetic masters known in Urdu as
ustads. As described by Frances Pritchett, the ustad was a master of
Urdu (and in many cases, Persian) poetry, and formed the center of
premodern Urdu literary culture. Literary pedigree was of prime im-
portance; to obtain a great and recognized ustad was to “arrive” in
Urdu culture.34 Yet access to the ustad was limited, and even the oral
world of the poetic recitation (mushairah) was an elite space. By es-
tablishing the periodical as literary space, editors democratized access
to what was formerly an elite practice. Poetry and literature could
now be available to all.
Avadh Akhbar intervened in literary debates of the day. In the
mid-1870s, it published articles in support of “natural poetry,” a
movement to reform classical Urdu poetry and poetics. This move-
ment’s foremost proponents were Muhammad Husain “Azad”
(1830–1910) and Altaf Husain “Hali” (1837–1914), who were both
employed by the British colonial government in Lahore and deeply
influenced by colonial critiques of South Asian literature, such as
those of Thomas Babington Macaulay, which portrayed that litera-
ture as backward and artificial. Together Azad and Hali outlined a
new poetics that called for poetry to be direct, emotional, natural,
and pictorial. In one famous lecture, Azad declared the aim of poetry
to be to “as we express it arouse in the listeners’ heart the same effect,
the same emotion, the same fervor, as would be created by seeing the
thing itself.”35 In this pronouncement, Azad rejected the aesthetics of
classical Urdu poetry, which he depicted as artificial and enwrapped
in a “game of words” that did not produce emotion.
Azad and Hali codified the principles of natural poetry in two
influential works, Ab-e Hayat (The Water of Life), the first literary
history of Urdu to follow the Western principle of chronological or-
ganization, and Muqaddamah-e She‘r o Sha‘iri (Introduction to Po-
etry and Poetics), published in 1880 and 1893, respectively. These
works laid out a survey of Azad’s and Hali’s new vision of Urdu poet-
ics. In Ab-e Hayat, Azad divided Urdu poetry into five periods (daurs),
and argued that Urdu poetry should return to the glorious past of its
first period, which had degenerated over the ages. Hali continued this
argument in the Muqaddamah, where he pointed to the importance
of poetry for the progress of civilization and lamented the “bad
24 Chapter One

e­ ffect” of civilization on poetry.36 He quoted liberally from Western

poets and theorists such as Milton, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, al-
though, as Frances Pritchett has shown, his citations and translations
of their words were often liberal, and his real source was Macaulay.
Citing Milton erroneously, Hali claimed that poetry should be “sim-
ple, filled with fervor, and founded on truth.”37 Simple thoughts, a
closer relation to nature and the real world, and the ability to arouse
emotion—these were the key components of Hali’s vision of a new
aesthetic.
Later scholars have relied on Azad’s and Hali’s books, published
in the 1880s and 1890s, to discuss natural poetry. But the debate
over natural poetry began in the 1870s, and its true space for discus-
sion was the periodical. Beginning in 1874, Urdu periodicals from
Lahore and Lucknow publicized, promoted, and often took up arms
regarding natural poetry; this allowed debates about poetry to circu-
late quickly and over large distances. For example, Pritchett mentions
briefly that when Azad delivered a lecture on May 9, 1874, outlining
the reform of Urdu poetry to the Anjuman-e Punjab, a social, ­cultural,
and educational organization founded in 1865, “the text of Azad’s
speech was printed the next day in a local newspaper.”38
Azad held a series of mushairahs on natural themes in 1874 and
1875. The reaction to these mushairahs in the Urdu press was vigor-
ous. In several Lucknow newspapers the reaction was negative.39 The
newspaper of the Education Department of Avadh, a colonial mouth-
piece, published two blistering attacks on Azad’s lecture to the Anju-
man. One was by Munshi Sayyid Ghulam Husain, and the other by
Munshi Gobind Lal Sahā’e, both of the Normal School in Lucknow.
Husain in his response accused Azad of aping the British: “The point
of my speech is that in my opinion, it is not appropriate, or rather, it
is against rationality, that a new invention be made by bringing Urdu
poetry into the style of English. This will be possible when English
education has affected us to the extent that people’s thoughts, lan-
guage, customs and behavior completely change.”40 Husain went on
to promote Lucknow’s literary contribution to Urdu poetry by saying
that Azad’s objections to classical Urdu poetry—namely, that its
themes were too limited—were disproven by the work of Mir “Anis”
and Mirza “Dabir,” Lucknow’s most famous elegy (marsiyah) poets.
Husain continued, “One finds in their work the eloquence, passion,
similes and metaphors, in short all the beauties of poetry, and to top
 Printing the Cosmopolis 25

it off, there are no improper topics of which the Maulavi sahib [Azad]
complains.”41
The other response, by Munshi Gobind Lal Sahā’e, criticized
Azad’s impudence in declaring that he could write a masnavi (narra-
tive poem) in untraditional meters. Sahā’e’s critique had an effect on
Azad; according to sources, Azad removed the last part of his lecture
in which he had discussed this when preparing it for publication.42
Sahā’e pointed to the works of Persian and Urdu poets “Nizami”
Ganjavi, Mirza Muhammad Rafi “Sauda,” and Abdul Faiz ibn
Mubarak “Faizi” to argue that their masnavis had been able to ex-
plore all kinds of themes without the use of a new meter. Sahā’e im-
plied that Azad’s explanation of a new meter was attributable to his
lack of skill rather than to any inherent lack in Urdu poetry.
Avadh Akhbar intervened in these debates. Given its procolonial
stance, it not surprisingly supported Azad and Hali’s reform pro-
gram. In an editorial piece published on February 2, 1875, before
Azad’s last mushairah in Lahore in March 1875, Avadh Akhbar de-
clared its support for the tenets of natural poetry. In an article titled
“Poetry” (Sha‘iri), the newspaper laid out its support for a new kind
of writing. This writing should “express [real] events, and with the
same eloquence and beauty of expression but completely free of stu-
pid [behudah] exaggeration and padding and redundancies [hashv o
zavā’id].”43 This statement followed closely Azad’s lecture on the re-
form of Urdu poetry, in which he had declared:

Eloquence [fasāhat] is not something that flies along on the wings of

exaggeration and high-flying fancy, or races off on the wings of rhyme,
or climbs to the heavens by the force of verbal ingenuity, or sinks be-
neath a dense layer of metaphors. The meaning of eloquence is that
happiness or sorrow, attraction or repulsion, fear or anger toward
something—in short, whatever feeling is in our heart—should as we
express it arouse in the listeners’ hearts the same effect, the same emo-
tion, the same fervor, as would be created by seeing the thing itself.44

Avadh Akhbar followed the framework initiated by Azad and Hali in

their rejection of the aesthetics of classical Urdu poetry. Azad and
Hali reframed the rules of the Urdu ghazal, its classical genre par ex-
cellence, as nothing but a “game of words”; in doing so, they changed
what were virtues of Urdu literary culture—its highly conventional-
ized images and metaphors, its interest in heightened emotional
26 Chapter One

states, and its layers of metaphor—into flaws. Avadh Akhbar fol-

lowed this framework, even using the same key word, fasāhat (“elo-
quence”), associated with classical Urdu poetry but here redefined as
emotional directness and pictorialness.
Avadh Akhbar’s literary and cultural coverage was extensive.
Mushairahs, literary gatherings, and book publications were reported
on as news. In 1875, the death of Mirza Dabir (1805–1875), one of
Lucknow’s most important poets and a master of the marsiya (elegy),
received extensive coverage in the paper. After his death on March 6,
Avadh Akhbar published a brief biographical sketch of Dabir’s life.
Titled “A Brief Biography of the Dear Departed Dabir [hazrat dabir
maghfur],” the article used the genre of biography. Appearing on
March 14, the article outlined major events of Dabir’s life and poetic
career, with particular attention to his patrons and students (shagird).
Although the piece was labeled a “biography” or savānih-e ‘umrī in
Urdu, which was at the time a developing genre, its style and contents
mimicked those of the traditional poetic notebook or tazkirah, an
Indo-Persian genre of remembrance that, prior to the colonial period,
marked the primary mode of recording the details of poets’ lives and
their important works. Accounts of Dabir’s life were reported in an
oral, conversational style, and extended discussion was given to
Dabir’s reception in the public literary/cultural space of the Mu-
harram majlis, assemblies in which marsiyas and remembrances of
‘Ali, the fourth Caliph, were recited and mourned.
Avadh Akhbar put the mushairah into print, bringing what was
previously a restricted space for the recitation and enjoyment of po-
etry into the public sphere. Reports of mushairahs were covered, cir-
culating the news of when and where they had taken place, the poets
and notables in attendance, and some verses that had been recited.
This ensured that news of the events and a portion of the poetry re-
cited received a large circulation. The prestige accrued from these re-
ports is attested by the fact that readers often sent in news of them to
the paper’s correspondence section to gain publicity. The June 30,
1875, correspondence (Khat Kitābat) section, for example, reported
on a mushairah officiated over by the ruler of Rampur, a princely
state north of Delhi. The reader, one Darogha Sayyid Vajid ‘Ali, ex-
plained that although he had arrived late and missed the ghazals of
the Navab of Rampur, another notable, Navab Burhānuddin Haider,
had repeated them and granted Darogha Sayyid Vajid ‘Ali permission
to have them published in the newspaper. The newspaper then pro-
 Printing the Cosmopolis 27

ceeded to list eight ghazals by the Navab, three in Persian and five in
Urdu. This circulation of a prominent figure’s ghazals would not have
been available previously to anyone outside the mushairah.45
Yet the newspaper as literary space was not democratic. Its pub-
lished verses from 1875 to 1877 tended to be by prominent figures
such as the Navab of Rampur, or by poets also published by Naval
Kishore Press. By selecting and publishing these verses, the newspa-
per served as taste maker, its circulation of verses acting as an en-
dorsement. In doing this, periodicals like Avadh Akhbar helped to
shift the role of literary master and expert, formerly held by the us-
tad, to the editor. Beginning in the 1870s, deciding what was good
literature increasingly shifted to actors in the print sphere such as
editors, writers, and printer-publishers.
Thus periodicals became a new space for literature, at least par-
tially democratizing access to the formerly elite spaces of the mushai-
rah by making them available in print. Periodicals took over the role
formerly held by ustads, posing themselves as arbiters of literary
taste. Journal editors became tastemakers and literary critics, wrest-
ing authority away from the former gatekeepers of literary culture
and placing the periodical squarely in the center of modern literary
culture.

The Intertextual Periodical: Festival Vignettes

The periodical was a literary space, but it was also a space in which
alternative conceptions of community were worked out. There were
particular ways that Urdu periodicals helped to create an Urdu cos-
mopolis in print through their marking of religious festivals. By the
marking of these festivals through paratextual materials, such as dif-
ferently colored paper and visual illustrations, periodicals helped to
create the experience of “empty, homogenous time,” an experience
that Benedict Anderson described as helping to produce the imagined
community of the nation.46 However, this periodical reader experi-
ence of empty, homogenous time cannot be mapped onto the nation-
state in South Asia in the way that Anderson suggests. Rather, within
the multilingual space of South Asia, periodicals could constitute a
language community that often saw itself as distinct from a nation-
state. Through their intertextual approach to the festival, Urdu-­
language Punch magazines generated an Urdu cosmopolis in print, a
28 Chapter One

transnational language community that eschewed identities of reli-

gion, caste, and even class.
Festivals took on renewed importance in the 1870s and 1880s as
markers of religious identity, as studies by Sandria Freitag have
shown. Indeed, local communities, which could be organized around
“ties of kinship, neighborhood, caste, occupational group, place of
origin, or leisure activities,”47 created a sense of shared identity
through festivals, binding together urban spaces and connecting ob-
servers and onlookers in a collective experience of sacred time. This
experience is described by Freitag as “communitas,” or the tempo-
rary participation in a utopian view of humanity in which all humans
form a universal community.48 Yet in the 1870s and 1880s festivals
also became the location for religious reformers to assert a revised
religious identity that was more doctrinal and was also more exclu-
sively separated between Hindus and Muslims. British colonial au-
thorities, concerned for public safety and anxious about crowds,
monitored and documented festivals in writing, solidifying and fixing
them in the process.
The carnival—as described by Mikhail Bakhtin in his analysis of
folk culture and popular humor in the Middle Ages and the Renais-
sance—“marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges,
norms, and prohibitions.”49 Similarly, short vignettes of urban life
published in periodicals explored the festival as a space of transgres-
sion and the inversion of social norms. The festival became a met-
onym for an image of the world gone topsy-turvy, and this became a
way to critique the colonial state (see chapter 3). Thus, in an emerg-
ing genre that I call the “festival vignette,” Urdu-language Punches
used the festival to bind together Urdu readers in a shared imaginary.
This imaginary was transregional, carnivalesque, and critical of the
colonial state and colonial modernity.
The importance of festivals in Urdu print culture of the 1870s
and 1880s was shown by the use of colored paper in periodicals such
as Avadh Akhbar and Avadh Punch. Of course, the availability and
quality of paper was “fundamental to commercial mass printing” in
India.50 Until the 1870s, a colonial ordinance ensured that most pa-
per was imported from England, or produced at the Serampore
presses outside of Calcutta. In the 1870s, the “colonial government
introduced special measures to promote the growth of the indigenous
paper industry and to support the establishment of new paper
mills.”51 Naval Kishore took advantage of this by investing in a paper
 Printing the Cosmopolis 29

mill, the Upper India Paper Mill Company Limited, a private com-
pany headquartered in Lucknow, in 1879. Printing on colored paper
was therefore a deliberate, and possibly expensive, decision.
Avadh Akhbar and Avadh Punch marked festivals such as Holi,
Basant, and Muharram with colored paper. Holi and Basant issues
were printed on yellow paper, marking these festivals’ occurrence in
the springtime. Portions of issues during the observance of ­Muharram,
the month of the Islamic calendar when Shi‘a Muslims commemo-
rate the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandsons, used green paper
(­reflecting the association of Islam with green). These paratextual
cues helped demarcate empty, homogenous time, at the same time as
they merged festival space, traditionally the domain of the street and
the city, with the domain of print.
Urdu Punches created and participated in an intertextual space,
where certain literary tropes and genres circulated. One such trope or
genre was the festival vignette, a short piece about the observance of
festivals in particular locations. Various forms of festival vignettes
circulated among the cosmopolis created by Punch magazines; one
Punch would publish a festival vignette to which other Punches
would respond. Urdu Punches were published across the Urdu cos-
mopolis; Avadh Punch often reprinted pieces from Dakan Punch in
Hyderabad, Benares Punch, and others. The characteristics of the
Punch genres would become conventionalized and thus open to fur-
ther interpretation and reinterpretation. The conventions of the festi-
val vignette were established quickly, thus opening up a new vocabu-
lary that could be expanded upon by other Punches and turned into a
form of critique.
A vignette, “Muharram al-Harām” (Holy Muharram), by T. N.
Hijr at Avadh Punch exemplifies some conventions of the festival vi-
gnette. The piece begins with dialogue, as an unnamed spectator
awakened a second speaker: “Now listen! Turn your attention this
way. By God, I don’t believe it, I’ve travelled all the way from Pratab-
garh, bare-footed, munching on nothing but corn, raking up the dust,
and here you are, snoring away, deep in your quilt, oil in your ears!
Praise be to God! A man should be like this!”52 The vignette then
continues with a second speaker, who does not appear separately but
rather is integrated into the text: “By God, who are you? Where are
you from? I’m up now!”53 The oral style and its invocation of multi-
ple voices characterized the festival vignette, and became a strategy
for Urdu novelists as well.
30 Chapter One

The defining characteristic of the festival vignette was its survey

of major places and personages in a city. This aspect drew from the
Urdu poetic genre of shahr ashob, pessimistic poems that often would
describe a “ruined city,”54 but was also likely affected by nineteenth-
century city surveys commissioned by the colonial government. City
histories such as Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s (1817–1898) Asar us-Sanadid
(1847, revised in 1854), a survey of nineteenth-century Delhi, medi-
ated this transition between premodern and modern ways of defining
and viewing a cityscape.55 The city became a landscape to be viewed,
as well as a collection of important buildings, neighborhoods, and
people.
The Muharram vignette surveyed the major locations for Mu-
harram festivities in Lucknow. It traversed the boundaries between
fact and fiction by blending imagined celebrations with real details of
actual festivity locations in the city. Tracing the trajectory of the fic-
tional speaker through Lucknow’s monuments and sites shows how
this worked. First the speaker visited the Shah Najaf imambarah (a
building used for Muharram celebrations), built in 1816–1817 and
containing the tomb of Navab Ghaziuddin Haider, ruler of Avadh
from 1814 to 1827; in the late nineteenth century, this site appears to
have been located near the British-populated sections of the city, so
the speaker visited wearing “coat and pants, with a walking stick in
[his] hand, whistling, with boots clacking.”56 Next he visited the
imambarah of Darogha Mir Vajid ‘Ali, where he observed, “The em-
blem [suraj mukhi] was wonderfully illuminated; it looked like a
shimmering mountain of light.” This imambarah was being main-
tained by Mir Vajid ‘Ali’s son, the fictional speaker mentioned, thus
adding factual information to the vignette. Next the speaker traversed
the neighborhood of Chowk (today in the old part of the city), which
was so crowded that he was turned around this way and that. From
there he proceeded to the Agha Baqir imambarah, the Husainabad
imambarah (now known as the Chota Imambarah, or “Small Imam-
barah,” in Luck­now), and the Kāzmīn and Tal Katora, the latter the
home of a Karbala (a special site where Muharram festivities are
­observed).57 The sketch effectively traces an itinerary through Luck­
now’s important monuments and neighborhoods, presenting Luck­now
as a kind of Shi‘a pilgrimage site.58 And it showed the city as a place
to be viewed, whether mapped through colonial surveys or seen from
above in photographs.59
 Printing the Cosmopolis 31

Festival vignettes invoked a particular view of the city that was

predicated on mobility and a new anonymity enabled by the train.
The Muharram vignette continues with the first man from Pratab-
garh refusing to identify himself, instead reciting a few Urdu verses:
“Though my appearance is of a river of mourning in full flow / I am
quiet, my lips dry, my eyes wet / Why ask my place or abode / I am
like the bubble that wanders aimlessly.” This verse sets up the ano-
nymity of the speaker, carrying water imagery throughout to suggest
that it is as if the speaker has flowed into the city of Lucknow. He
continues, “Only yesterday, this humble servant was sitting in Pratab-
garh celebrating Eid uz-Zuha. I sneezed as soon as I got off the train
in Lucknow.”60 The mobility of the rail network is here thematized as
the unnamed speaker links space with the celebration of religious
holidays such as Eid uz-Zuha. Sneezing upon arrival, considered in-
auspicious in Muslim superstition, highlights the accidental and fleet-
ing nature of the speaker’s movement. Today he is here in Pratab-
garh, and the next day he is in Lucknow.
A second sketch, “Benares’s Muharram,” reprinted from Bena-
res Punch in Avadh Punch on January 22, 1878, inverted these con-
ventions, turning the festival vignette into a tool to critique the colo-
nial government. Whereas the first vignette had celebrated the
cityscape as a place of anonymity, abundance, and beautiful monu-
ments, the Benares vignette turned the cityscape into a landscape of
suffering. This vignette was predicated on poignant reversal: instead
of crying for Muharram, the people of Benares weep for the city’s
economic state. An increase in the prices of common goods has re-
duced the people of Benares to tears. Playing on the traditional weep-
ing and mourning that takes place during Muharram, the vignette
opens, “The year 1877 has caused so much weeping that there are no
tears left in our eyes. But here the dark storm clouds of the grief of
Ashurah [the tenth day of Muharram, the climax of celebrations] re-
mained in the sky. And for three days it rained down such heavy tears
as if there were tear storms. In these days of scarcity [girani], Mu-
harram is just adding salt to the wound. Everyone has been celebrat-
ing Ashurah [as if] for the past twelve months.”61 The Muharram
festivities celebrated in the Lucknow vignette are turned into the tears
of mourning produced by the lack of foodstuffs, perhaps a result of
the Great Famine of 1876–1878, which spread from the Deccan Pla-
teau in 1876 into the Northwestern Provinces and Punjab, with an
estimated death toll of about five million people. Instead of the
32 Chapter One

mourning of Muharram, one is presented with the even more lamen-

table state of the starved people of Benares.
This vignette served as a response or rejoinder to the first. The
beginning of the vignette opposes Lucknow and Benares: “The re-
spect and welcoming of Mr. Muharram will surely be done in Hu-
sainabad [the Husainabad Imambarah in Lucknow] and Lucknow.
But in our city, it’s as if we recited the fatihah-e khair [a prayer for
good health and welfare]. Here Mr. Ashurah has been living so
frightfully that you can’t help but cry at his mournful state.” This
contrast between Lucknow and Benares implies a transregional
­Muslim community (ummah) whose celebrations can be compared
and contrasted. Further, the community is brought close, almost into
conversation, in the vignette’s conclusion, which appeals, “Now
we’ve gone and told you all the real news from here. Please give us
the news from Husainabad [in Lucknow]. ‘I told you the latest, now
you tell me.’ ”62
The Benares Punch Muharram vignette subtly criticizes the colo-
nial government. The streets are muddy because of rain and repairs to
government buildings, suggesting that government priorities are mis-
placed in these days of famine. Further, the vignette implies that the
government incited sectarian violence between Shi‘as and Sunnis by
providing wrestlers and mourners with weapons: “Thanks to the
government, this year weapons have also been distributed. A naked
sword is in every man’s hand and they’re behaving like swordsmen.
By means of Ashurah everyone showed their courage for a few days.
On the day of Ashurah, there was a fair in Fatiman the whole day.
Finally, in the Bara Imambarah [Big Imambarah] the swords of Shi‘as
and Sunnis clashed. Some five or ten people were injured.”63
It is important to recognize that the Urdu cosmopolis that came
into shape in the periodical was not straightforwardly mapped onto
Islam: other festival vignettes took on Hindu festivals, making clear
that the constitution of the Urdu cosmopolis was not the ummah but
rather the community of Urdu speakers spread across South Asia.
However, the Hindu festivals marked were often ones such as Holi
and Basant that were observed by Mughal kings. For example, con-
sider a festival vignette on Holi, the Hindu spring vernal festival, by
Ratan Nath Sarshar, published in Avadh Punch on March 19, 1878.
This vignette investigated the city as a locale of social types and trans-
gression. In Sarshar’s hands, it also took on a didactic purpose,
framed as a warning to the city’s inhabitants to not lose the “cloak of
 Printing the Cosmopolis 33

humanity” in their celebration of festivals. This moral referenced a

shared concern among both Hindu and Muslim social reformers in
the late nineteenth century with the proper observance of festivals
and the reform of popular ritual.64 Set up as a dialogue between two
characters, a wit (zarif) and his opponent (harif), the sketch opens
with the wit waking the opponent out of a drunken stupor, crying,
“It’s here, it’s here!” The two men spar for some time about whether
the day is in fact Holi, with the wit swearing on the name of his local
distiller that yes, the day is in fact Holi. The opponent still does not
believe him and decides to test this out in the marketplace. But in his
craze to arrive, he dresses inappropriately, loosening his pants instead
of his shirt, and placing his shoes on his head instead of his feet
(which was also a sign of disgrace). The two characters soon find the
festivities, at the shop of a local merchant, a Hindu named Lalah
Hari Lal, and the opponent sneaks into the proceedings, where a song
and dance by a local courtesan named Halkah (Light or Silly) are in
progress. All the participants act inappropriately but excuse their
transgression by repeating, “Today is Holi, don’t mind.” By the end
of the vignette, the festival audience has been worked into such a
frenzy by the singing that the opponent recognizes his opportunity,
grabs some of the finest boots present, and absconds with them,
proud of himself. This vignette highlights the excesses to which these
affairs proceeded, and though the vignette seems to offer some voy-
euristic opportunities for readers to vicariously enjoy the unrespect-
able proceedings, it ends with a didactic moral. In a short section ti-
tled “Moral” (Natijah), Sarshar enjoins his readers, “My dear friends,
what kind of foolishness is this! I accept that this is a special occa-
sion. Celebrate it fully, and enjoy yourself, but don’t lose the cloak of
your humanity in doing so.”65
By creating the genre of the festival vignette, writers at the Urdu
Punches helped create an Urdu cosmopolis in print by linking readers
together through shared experience of the festival. The Punches were
intensely intertextual, establishing and then subverting conventions
of a new genre. This genre, tied to the changing valence of the festi-
val, built on the earlier preprint genre of the shahr ashob, but in its
portrayal of the cityscape it reflected the new ways of viewing the city
initiated by colonial surveillance and photography. In short, it be-
longed to the world of print, periodicals, and the train—the world of
colonial modernity.
34 Chapter One

The new experience of print excited readers of Avadh Akhbar

and the periodicals that flourished in the first decades of commercial
publishing in north India. Print restructured authorship, allowing an
aspiring professional writer to make his living, at least partly, by
writing for the public. Journal editors brought literary debate into
periodicals, making them spaces for literature as well as news. By
cultivating intertextuality and the shared experience of festivals, peri-
odicals created new communities in print. In the case of Urdu, peri-
odicals inaugurated a transregional language community of Urdu
speakers, bound together across time and space in their pages. To-
gether, these changes created the conditions under which literary mo-
dernity would develop in Urdu.
 Chapter Two

The Novel in Installments

Fasana-e Azad and Literary Modernity

I n 1879, Ratan Nath Sarshar published an article in the Urdu news-

paper Avadh Akhbar. In it he thanked readers for their praise of his
novel, which had originally been published serially in that very news-
paper:

Writing humorous pieces [zarifānah mazāmīn] daily, without planning

or close consideration, and in the dress [perāyah] of zarafat [wit, witti-
cism] bringing my fellow countrymen [hamvatan] to abandon bad cus-
toms, and keeping in mind at every step that no sentence, no dialogue,
no plotline [dastan], no description should be against propriety [tahzib]
or destroy ethics [akhlaq]. . . .
I do take pride in the fact that I have done something that no one
else has done—and what is that? I’ve written the novel of all novels, the
dastan [romance] of all dastans, the greatest humor [mazaq] and the
greatest ethics [akhlaq].1

The text Sarshar was discussing was Fasana-e Azad, a novel of

over three thousand pages. The work is now considered one of the
first Urdu novels (or an immediate precursor). The work originated
as a series of “humorous pieces,” what Sarshar called zarifānah
mazāmīn (the term is today used for essays or compositions). ­Fasana-e
Azad, like many of the first vernacular novels, was originally pub-
lished serially. It initially appeared between 1878 and 1883 in Avadh
Akhbar.2 Sarshar’s success in bringing out Fasana-e Azad as part of

35
36 Chapter Two

the newspaper is credited with helping Avadh Akhbar become the

first commercially viable Urdu daily in South Asia.
A very lengthy picaresque tale, Fasana-e Azad employs a plot
that is hard to summarize. Most simply, the tale follows a wandering
character named Azad and his sidekick, Khoji, from the streets of late
nineteenth-century Lucknow to the battlefields of the Russo-Turkish
War (1877–1878) in Constantinople and Russia. The work changed
over the course of publication. For about the first five hundred pages,
Fasana-e Azad presented satirical vignettes of city life, usually cen-
tered on a wandering figure such as Azad or some minor character.
As the story progressed and gained popularity, Sarshar decided to
transform the episodic narrative into a longer work (which he labeled
a “novel”). Around the middle of the first volume of book editions of
Fasana-e Azad, Azad falls in love with a beautiful and enlightened
young woman named Husn Ara. Concerned with Azad’s status, Husn
Ara orders him to make a name for himself by fighting in the then
ongoing Russo-Turkish War. The rest of the volumes are concerned
with Azad’s adventures in Turkey and Russia, and with his eventual
triumphant return to India, where he then lives happily with Husn
Ara. But, as a work of over three thousand pages, Fasana-e Azad con-
tained numerous other adventures and subplots. Some concern the
secondary characters: Husn Ara’s younger and more playful sister,
Sipahr Ara, who marries a prince named Mirza Humayun Far; Bi Al-
lah Rakhi, a rambunctious female innkeeper, who becomes a female
ascetic (jogan) and reforms a debauched aristocrat (navab); Khoji,
with his misadventures on the battlefield; and a number of minor
characters from England and Russia.
Jonathan Zwicker in his study of the rise of the novel in
nineteenth-­century Japan has pointed to the “terminological confu-
sion” that often accompanies the growth of new genres.3 To under-
stand the history of the novel, one must also perform “a history of
the concept of the novel.”4 Sarshar’s mixing, in the cited article, of
several generic terms—novel, dastan (romance), zarifānah mazāmīn
(humorous pieces)—points to the process by which the first genera-
tion of South Asian vernacular novelists made sense of the emerging
novel genre. The terms Sarshar used were themselves in flux: the das-
tan, often translated as “romance,” referring to long adventure nar-
ratives popular in Indo-Persian and Urdu from the fifteenth century
in South Asia; the novel, which Sarshar called nāvil in Urdu; zarifānah
(humorous), a reference to the tradition of wit and witticism in Urdu;
 The Novel in Installments 37

and, finally, mazāmīn, the singular form of which is the term now
used for “essay” but which was more open in the late nineteenth cen-
tury. Sarshar used mazāmīn for the humorous vignettes, as well as the
essays and news articles that he wrote for Avadh Akhbar, pointing to
the newness of these genres as well.
The problem of taxonomy—here, the naming of a new genre—
highlights important questions about the travel of concepts, ideas,
genres, and styles from one context to another. Literary scholar Lydia
Liu has suggested the term “translingual practice” to expand the con-
cept of translation to include shifts in “words, meanings, discourses,
and modes of representation” as they traverse east or west. Liu points
to the unequal power relations among early twentieth-century China,
Japan, and the West as disproving the trope of “linguistic equiva-
lence” between languages and concepts. The present volume, by con-
trast, highlights literature in South Asia as a zone of resistance, as a
place where authors were relatively free to imagine, interpret, trans-
late, and relate concepts as they wished. It was an imaginative space
of great agency and relative equality.5
The novel exploded in popularity in late nineteenth-century
South Asia. According to one source, works identified as novels sur-
passed all other narrative genres “in the number of titles as well as in
copies printed” by the early decades of the twentieth century.6 Sascha
Ebeling has speculated that “the reason why the novel genre became
so popular throughout India was the fact that it was the ideal form of
holding a changing Indian world of life under a permanent critical
light.”7 The rise of the novel led Muhib-e Husain, editor of a major
Urdu women’s journal, Mu‘allim-e Nisvan (The Women’s Teacher),
to decry, in 1900, “Every day thousands of romantic novels are pub-
lished the reading of which does not offer any spiritual or worldly
gain apart from a short-lived distraction/entertainment.”8 Husain
worried about the effect of “romantic novels” on his female readers,
echoing a common anxiety among both Indian readers and the Brit-
ish readers of Victorian England. In South Asia, the novel genre
quickly became bound up in dominant discourses about the purposes
and proper aims of literature. British colonial officials saw literature
as an important part of an educational curriculum that would im-
prove and civilize its subjects.9 Literature was to provide “moral in-
struction,” and be “useful.”10
It is clear from the case of Fasana-e Azad that the novel, or at
least the major popular strain of novels, emerged from periodical
38 Chapter Two

c­ ulture and the kinds of short prose genres practiced there. Unlike the
didactic works often produced for government prizes, such as Nazir
Ahmad’s influential trilogy of novels for the instruction of women,
Mirāt ul-‘Arūs (1869), Banāt un-Na‘sh (1872), and Taubat al-Nasūh
(1874), works such as Fasana-e Azad had to please the greatest num-
ber of potential readers-listeners. This tradition of the vernacular
novel investigated the limits of acceptable behavior. It delved into
“liminality”—the phrase used by Sudipta Kaviraj to describe the
works of the Bengali novelist Bankimchandra Chatterjee, which ex-
plored the “central conflict . . . between the inevitability of moral or-
ders and the inevitability of their transgression.”11 This tradition ran
parallel to the social reform novels produced by social and educa-
tional reformers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
some of whom drew in Urdu from a long tradition of moral and im-
proving literature, summarized by the Persian word adab (literature,
culture, civility, manners).12
Sarshar’s concerns for these two parallel traditions can be seen
in his statement about writing the novel of all novels. He joined two
words, mazaq and akhlaq, “humor” and “ethics,” to claim didactic
aims for his humorous writing. He likely was responding to colonial
critiques of Urdu humor, in particular of the genre of hajv (the satiri-
cal poem), as obscene. He also placed Fasana-e Azad within colonial
aims for fiction, by which fiction, “in the dress of zarafat,” would
benefit “fellow countrymen” and bring national progress. By refer-
encing akhlaq, a genre of moral and ethical writing that experienced
a resurgence in the late nineteenth century, Sarshar drew on a long
Indo-Persian and Urdu tradition. As for mazaq, it was not recognized
as a genre at the time; the word itself could mean “humor” but also
“taste” and “relish.” Mazaq drew on a precolonial way of under-
standing humor as a characteristic of a man of taste; in precolonial
Urdu literary culture, to be a cultivated man was also to be a wit. In
connecting mazaq with akhlaq, a choice also probably inspired by the
two words rhyming, Sarshar reframed the practice of wit into an ed-
ificatory and patriotic act.
Yet Sarshar’s choice of terms belied his stated purpose. As liter-
ary critic Meenakshi Mukherjee wrote in 2006, “The early novels in
India need to be read closely, sometimes against the grain, to go be-
yond their stated intentions and pry open the operations of other,
often subterranean forces in their formation.”13 The other term Sar-
shar used to describe Fasana-e Azad was, of course, zarafat, the title
 The Novel in Installments 39

of the humor section in which the novel segments were published (see
figure 2.2). The word zarafat promised humor, wordplay, wit, clever-
ness, fun, and jest; it was a key word used at Avadh Punch, the sa-
tirical literary journal for which Sarshar wrote from 1877 to 1878.
The word promised no edificatory purpose but rather suggested plea-
sure for pleasure’s sake. Sarshar therefore began reframing the word
as an “adornment” (in Urdu, perāyah), an outer form for an inner
purpose. Sarshar tried to blend two competing traditions by suggest-
ing that zarafat was only an ornament for didactic aims.
The tension between zarafat and akhlaq can be seen in the title
page of Fasana-e Azad’s fourth book edition, published by Naval
Kishore Press in 1899 (figure 2.1). The subtitle declares, “From this
Urdu novel, the audience obtains excellent moral [akhlaqi] points
adorned in refined [muhazzab] zarafat.” The word muhazzab is the
adjective form of the noun tahzib, which in the second half of the
nineteenth century came to signify “culture” and “civilization,” in
response to British emphasis, as a justification for colonialism, on the
superiority of its civilization. According to C. M. Naim, the word
tahzib brought together a host of words that “earlier used to be con-
sidered separately under such rubrics as adab (‘protocols’), akhlaq
(‘moral codes’), aʾin (‘administrative rules or constitution’), rusum
(‘customs’), riwaj (‘local practices’), riwayat (‘traditions’), funun
(‘arts and crafts’) and so forth.”14 Sarshar’s attempt to enlist zarafat
within the narrative of civilizing progress reflects this new connota-
tion of “civilization.”
The development of Fasana-e Azad from serialized vignettes in
Avadh Akhbar to what its author called a “novel” illuminates how
the novel genre developed in colonial South Asia. Its early vignettes
dramatized uncertainty in an era of social, political, and cultural up-
heaval. As the series grew in popularity, however, and Sarshar began
to imagine it as a novel, the work became more prescriptive. Yet it
still offered multiple points of view through pairs of contrasting char-
acters. Through this technique Fasana-e Azad subjected its own posi-
tions to debate and criticism, opening up a space for self-reflection
and self-critique in the genre.
Fasana-e Azad illustrates other key features of the evolution of
the novel genre in colonial South Asia. Because it was a work that its
author consciously evolved into a novel, it demonstrates how the
genre developed over time. In particular, its location in the newspa-
per Avadh Akhbar reveals how the novel emerged out of periodical
Figure 2.1. Title page of Fasana-e Azad, vol. 3, 4th book ed. (Naval Kishore Press, 1899).
© British Library Board 14112.ee.3.
 The Novel in Installments 41

culture. Finally, Fasana-e Azad’s reception in print offers many

­materials—readers’ letters, author’s commentary, and (subsequent)
changes in transitioning to book form—that make visible the multiple
negotiations with readers in the public sphere that characterized the
birth of the genre in Urdu.

The Novel and Periodical Culture

Meenakshi Mukherjee has suggested that the novel has a “tangled
genealogy” in South Asia, referring to the genre’s uneasy relationship
with Western predecessors and Western literary criteria. According
to Mukherjee, “The canon legitimized by literary historians was con-
structed on the unarticulated premise that there was a universal para-
digm of novel writing, and because it began in Europe, all subsequent
practitioners would need to be judged by the standards set there.”15
Scholars of the novel in South Asia have assumed Western models or
privileged ancient and classical sources, such as the Sanskrit epics
Mahabharata and Ramayana, to explain modern fiction.16
However, the most important source for the novel in colonial
South Asia was, I would argue, the satirical vignette.17 This was par-
ticularly true in Bengali, where collections of satirical city vignettes
were among the most popular and influential prose works of the early
nineteenth century.18 Bankimchandra Chatterjee, the first novelist in
the Bengali language, published a collection of satirical vignettes, Ka-
malakanter Daptar (1885), that examined city life in the metropolis
of Calcutta as seen through the eyes of a roving opium addict. “Fa-
ther” of modern Hindi literature Bharatendu Harischandra experi-
mented with satirical skits in dialogue form in the column “Panch ka
prapanch” (The Tangles/Gossip-Mongering of Punch), borrowing
the character of Mr. Punch from the British Punch magazine to ridi-
cule the former elites and critique colonialism.19 These vignettes
helped develop the self-critical and ironical tradition that I have iden-
tified as key to literary modernity in South Asia.
Sarshar’s experience with the satirical vignette came from his
short stint at Avadh Punch, Avadh Akhbar’s main rival periodical in
Lucknow. At Avadh Punch, from 1877 to 1878, Sarshar published
around ten vignettes satirizing former elites, their mimicry of proco-
lonial native rulers and intellectuals, and what he saw as wrong cus-
toms, such as marrying young women to old men. Sarshar then
42 Chapter Two

­ irectly exported the concerns and style of those vignettes to the early
d
sections of Fasana-e Azad.
According to Dallas Liddle, “Magazines, reviews, and newspa-
pers were the discursive context and physical medium of most
­important British literature in the nineteenth century.”20 The novel
and the newspaper developed in tandem in South Asia, leading to a
close relationship (which is often occluded in the scholarship, where
literary form and material conditions are usually considered sepa-
rately). As Walter Benjamin noted, the rise of the novel in Europe
was directly tied to the dissemination of the news.21 In South Asia,
there was strong interaction between late nineteenth-century novels,
many of which were serialized, and the periodicals in which they
­appeared.22
The connection between the novel and periodical culture is par-
ticularly evident in Fasana-e Azad, first published in the daily news-
paper Avadh Akhbar. This may be seen in figure 2.2, which shows
two pages from the August 23, 1878, issue of Avadh Akhbar. In the
middle of the first page (on the right) is a column labeled “zarafat,”
in which Fasana-e Azad was published from 1878 to 1880. The pages
shown contain the piece, or section, with which Fasana-e Azad’s
book editions now begin. This piece consists of about three columns
in total, followed by the next section of the newspaper, titled “Trans-
lations from English Newspapers” (Tarjumah-e Akhbarāt-e Angrezi).
That Fasana-e Azad is physically located next to news carried in
translation from English places the novel firmly within the world of
the imperial information network (and discussed earlier in chapter 1
as integral to the formation of the Urdu cosmopolis). In this context,
the zarafat column becomes another way of reading about the world;
its proximity to the news draws a connection between fiction and
contemporary news that was new to Urdu literature.
Ian Watt famously declared “formal realism” as “the lowest
common denominator of the novel genre as a whole.”23 Since then,
scholars have considered realism as a space of difference between
South Asian and Western fiction. Since Meenakshi Mukherjee’s
1986 formulation that realism could not develop the same way in
India as it could in Victorian England because of a difference in the
underlying “reality” of India’s social, cultural, and political cir-
cumstances in the nineteenth century, scholars have argued for an
alternative trajectory of realism in the South Asian colony.24 The
development of the novel in close connection with periodicals
 The Novel in Installments 43

opens up a new line of inquiry into the growth of realism in South

Asian fi­ ction.
Realism in South Asian fiction resulted partly from this issue of
the novel’s physical location within the periodical, close to the world
of news. This physical proximity led to a natural overlap between the
concerns of fiction and the events of the news. For example, a vi-
gnette published on January 14, 1879, subtitled “Lucknow’s Mu-
harram” featured Azad wandering around the major sites and obser-
vations of Muharram.25 Sarshar had Azad visit real places in
Lucknow, specifically those mentioned a few days earlier in the “lo-
cal” news section of Avadh Akhbar.26 Sarshar continued this strategy
in several vignettes, for example, in a January 1879 vignette on the
“childishness” of student test takers that appeared the same day as
the entrance exam results for Avadh were announced,27 and in five
vignettes featuring Azad attending a Parsi drama while a Bombay
Parsi theater company was performing in Lucknow.28 This nexus be-
tween fiction and news, unremarked so far in the scholarship, lay at
the foundation of what scholars have described as the work’s highly
realistic scenes of Lucknow.29
Sarshar’s early vignettes in Avadh Akhbar often featured spar-
ring between two characters, in which each stands on the opposite
end of a spectrum in terms of dress, appearance, belief system or
worldview, or reaction to British rule. An example is the first vignette
that Sarshar published in Avadh Akhbar, “The Master and the Lalah’s
Confrontation” (Mastar sahib aur Lālah ji ki Gulkhap). This vignette,
published on August 13, 1878, dramatized changes in the educational
system from a traditional maktab (which might teach Arabic and Per-
sian) to a colonial school.30 A portion of the main debate follows:

lalah: You’re very tricky, on one hand you’re very nice to me,
and then you don’t pass my son? He’s been in the same
grade for years, and all the other students advanced.
master sahib: Is that all it is? I thought there was some real
problem.
lalah: Oh, it’s nothing to you. He wastes his whole life in the
same studies, the same books, the same grade, the same
Master—
master: The same whining, the same barking—
lalah: This is all a joke to you. What did we ever do to you
that you should punish us in this way?
Figure 2.2. The first installment of Fasana-e Azad as serialized in Avadh Akhbar,
­August 23, 1878.
© British Library Board OP285.
46 Chapter Two

[The Master informed him that the reason his son was not advancing
was because the son’s studies were “spotty.” If he came for two days,
he missed the next four.]
master: Now how can I pass him? That would only make his life
harder, like giving a horse the load of a camel. If his addition is
bad, then his mathematics are nonexistent!
lalah: Ha! The son of a Kayasth [merchant caste], and he can’t add?
master: Please, get some medicine for your head! What difference
does it make that he’s the son of a Kayasth? He has to do the math
himself, doesn’t he? And anyway, I swear by Husain, if you can do
better math than a fourth-grader, I owe you a month’s salary.
lalah: Please, don’t say anything more. The students that gave you
some nice pula’o [savory rice] had no problem passing. If I had
known, I would have sent some delicacies for you. But it’s too
late now.31

In this vignette, the two characters represent opposites in several re-

spects. First, the lalah is identified only by his caste name (as a Kay-
asth, or a member of the administrative and record-keeping caste32),
here portrayed as a country bumpkin, while the Master, a Shi‘a Mus-
lim, is a teacher in a colonial school, and belongs to the urban gentry.
Second, the two men embody opposite responses to the colonial re-
form of the education system.33 The Master suggests that a student’s
individual merit is the only way to advance through the grades,
whereas the lalah implies that somehow belonging to a particular
family or caste background guarantees knowledge. There is also a
third, linguistic distinction. The lalah speaks Avadhi, a form of early
Hindi and Urdu redefined in the late nineteenth century as a village
dialect and therefore “backwards,” as opposed to the Master’s re-
fined, educated Urdu.34
Yet the vignette’s real aim is the ridicule of both positions. Both
men appear laughable in their obstinacy and extremeness. On the one
side stands the perhaps correct yet corrupt Master, whose arguments
might be a thinly veiled attempt to extract a bribe, and on the other
side is the backward lalah who fails to understand the logic of the new
school system. Although the vignette ends with an admonition about
the necessity of studying in the new colonial schools, the reader can-
not help but laugh at both men in this scene, each equally intransigent
in his position, and each ready to sling insults to prove his point.
 The Novel in Installments 47

The link between vignette and novel is apparent when one com-
pares this first lalah/Master vignette with the series of vignettes that
open Fasana-e Azad. In the latter, Sarshar introduces an anonymous
wandering figure, identified only as Azad (“Free” or “Independent”).
This empty figure possesses no family background, no class or profes-
sional identity, and no past. He in some ways appears to be the
“modern man,” free to make his own destiny, able to define himself
as an individual separate from a social group.35 Yet reading Fasana-e
Azad in the original serialized version shows that in the early vi-
gnettes, Azad in fact originated as a form of the Anglicized babu, a
social type ridiculed in other genres of social parody of the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries, including farces (naql), Kalighat
scroll paintings (pat), and Hindi literary journals.36 Whereas later in
Fasana-e Azad’s development, Azad transformed into a social re-
former and idealist, in the early vignettes he was meant to be mocked.
It becomes apparent how Azad originated as an example of the
Anglicized babu by reconsidering his first appearance in the serialized
version: “Khaki pants, black jacket, yellow ‘coat’ and loose waist-
coat; a dense beard like a rabbit’s thicket; a half-pint [of alcohol]
raised and a cigarette dangling from his lips; a fat walking-stick in
one hand and opium-pestle in the other, he was racing along ‘double-
time,’ his knee-high boots clicking and clacking.”37 This description
is significantly different from that in revised book editions of Fasana-
e Azad, in which Azad enters without the hilarious list of “Western”
objects: half-pint, cigarette, fat walking-stick, and opium-pestle.38
These objects in fact contain the key to the story. That Azad carries
more Western objects than can possibly fit in two hands points to the
larger satire of the description. Azad has put on multiple articles of
Western clothing, including a black jacket (perhaps a blazer) and yel-
low overcoat (kot, which could mean “blazer” or “overcoat”; Azad
wore both, and in clashing colors). He has also adopted behaviors or
modes of comportment that would have aligned him with his colonial
masters in India: the ideal of “efficiency,” here seen in the speed with
which Azad carries himself, as well as the “fat walking-stick” which
points to the Victorian pastime of “taking the air.”39 Sarshar signaled
the foreignness of some of these behaviors and objects by sprinkling
in English words: Azad wore a kot (coat) and walked dabal (double)
chāl (“double-step”), perhaps in the sense of a quick march. The
overall impression is of sycophancy and overattachment to Western
symbols and outward signs.
48 Chapter Two

In contrast, the second man, who later is introduced as Chammi

Jān (a woman’s name), has put on all the adornments associated with
old aristocratic (navabi) Lucknow, particularly the ornaments of
courtesans. Sanjay Joshi has traced how the burgeoning middle
classes of colonial Lucknow increasingly targeted courtesans, for-
merly “a valued and honored part of respectable society in nawabi
Lucknow,” as immoral and nonrespectable figures who served as “a
glaring challenge to new middle-class constructions of woman-
hood.”40 In contrast to the Westernized Azad, the foppish Chammi
Jān represents the old and now obsolete practices of Lucknow’s tradi-
tional elites. Chammi Jān is as attached to Lucknow’s aristocratic
and so-called effete court culture as Azad is to Western trappings.
Chammi Jān first appears thus:

The second man was of attractive and delicate figure. He had on a

light-green tunic of sheer gauze, on top a tight tunic bound with not
one but three rupee-per-yard fine muslin sashes, and finally, tights of
embroidered silk that he had gathered into pleats going up to his knees.
Like the courtesans, he had parted his hair carefully in the middle,
adorned himself with perfume, and put on a delicate small two-­cornered
hat fastened with a pin. His hands covered in henna, eyes lined with
kajol [collyrium], and feet adorned in pointed yellow velvet shoes, he
sauntered along carefully, his waist swaying from side to side.41

After facing off in this scene, Azad and Chammi Jān engage in a
spirited debate as to the proper way to spend the morning. Chammi
Jān declares that one should listen to the appropriate morning raga
(song in a musical mode), bhairvīn, as sung by some accomplished
singer, whereas Azad proposes attending an edifying lecture by a Pro-
fessor Locke on the excellence of the Sanskrit language. Their debate
poses the “edifying” activity of listening to an example of a European
Orientalist figure (distinguished by his interest in Sanskrit, an activity
associated with nineteenth-century German Orientalists in particular)
against the old elite practice of listening to classical music. The debate
proceeds:

Azad: Today Professor Locke Sahib is giving a lecture on the nobleness

of the sacred Sanskrit language. This great man is very pious, a singular
scholar and unmatched in the world, famous in all the major cities and
countries. When he visits a shrine, it’s considered a blessing.
 The Novel in Installments 49

Chammi Jān: God forbid! I swear, how ugly you are. What bad taste.
Yuck! Even if one person testifies to Professor Sahib’s fame, still, I’ve
lived my whole life and if I heard even his name before today then you
can put me under oath. Is he more famous than Dunni Khan? You just
say his name and you can already feel the joy of his presence, that’s all
I know. Honestly, if you hear him sing “Tumhāre Ghongariyāle Bāl”
[Your Curly Locks] just once, you won’t forget it your whole life. My
God, what a melodious voice. You’d think you were hearing a stringed
instrument. But what does a thick-headed person like you care about a
beautiful or elegant voice? You’re caught in Professor Sahib’s web. You
just woke up, and you’re saying “Let’s go to a lecture.” There are only
three letters [lām ‘ain nūn, short for la‘nat, or “damn”] for such taste.

Azad: Your Honor, you can curse me as much as you want. Make a
fool out of me. But for God’s sake, don’t talk idly about such a good-
natured, eloquent, and discerning man, the pride of the human race.
Nowadays in Europe he’s considered the most distinguished of scholars
and thousands have benefited from the remarkable inquiries made by
this ocean of knowledge.

...

By God, this singing and dancing has turned you into the kind of man
who trims his moustache, gets his beard cut, applies henna to his hands,
and dresses up like a woman! For God’s sake, at least be a man now
and give up these things.

Chammi Jān: Right. So I should go see your Professor Locke and swear
allegiance to your fire-worshipper and go from being a man to an ani-
mal? By God, dogs must tear at your legs when you go out and act like
this. Look at your own behavior [vaz‘]. “You disgrace yourself and
preach to others.”42

Featured in this debate is the theme of masculine behavior (iden-

tified by colonialist discourse with British colonialism) versus femi-
nine behavior (posed by colonial discourse as a symbol of native ef-
feminacy and thus native inability to rule).43 Azad’s derisive comment
to Chammi Jān that he should “be a man” points at this opposition.
Yet, as is typical with these early Fasana-e Azad scenes, no position is
supported. Chammi Jān’s forceful rebuke to “look at your own
50 Chapter Two

­ ehavior” represents a powerful rejoinder to Azad. And indeed, in his

b
caricatured obstinacy, Azad appears equally ridiculous to Chammi
Jān in these scenes, as extreme in his sycophancy as Chammi Jān is in
his adoption of navabi accoutrements. Both men appear as ridiculous
extremes, laughable in their obstinacy.
Sarshar lashes out at the Anglicized babu in the subsequent
scenes. Both the quoted vignette and the next vignette in this series44
end with Chammi Jān critiquing or challenging Azad, a challenge
that Azad fails when he attends Chammi Jān’s dancing party and falls
madly in love with a courtesan there. Azad, and by extension the An-
glicized babu figure, is exposed as a hypocrite, all talk and syco-
phancy, whose behavior fails to justify his condemnation of the old
elites.45
The early sections of Fasana-e Azad developed directly out of
the satirical vignette, a form that Sarshar learned at Avadh Punch.
The early vignettes delighted in the satire of extreme positions. As
shown in the just-quoted dialogue, they used opposing characters to
examine social change in the context of colonialism. They rarely of-
fered solutions, instead laughing at those who propose them. In con-
trast to the didactic fiction of Sarshar’s contemporaries, Fasana-e
Azad makes the dramatic argument that uncertainty, or at least hu-
mility, is the only nonlaughable response to colonialism.

The Novel and Interrogating Modernity

Sarshar began to envision Fasana-e Azad as a novel a year or so after
he began publishing the zarafat vignettes in Avadh Akhbar. He had
signaled this change in the weekly review column, published on Sat-
urdays. In that column, he promised edificatory motives for his tale.
As he wrote in a column in Avadh Akhbar on May 17, 1879, “I have
not included a single story, a single dialogue, a single topic in this
enticing tale without a reason. Those gentlemen who have read nov-
els closely will applaud my efforts. At the moment, it might seem I’ve
brought in Bi Allah Rakhi just for amusement’s sake, but this is in-
correct. How can there be amusement [mazaq] without a moral pur-
pose [akhlaq] lurking behind it?”46 In this programmatic statement,
Sarshar again attempted to link humor (mazaq) with ethics (akhlaq).
Fasana-e Azad had just featured a plotline in which a low-class fe-
male innkeeper, or bhatiyārī, had sued the hero of the novel for offer-
ing to marry her and then reneging. This commitment to didacticism
 The Novel in Installments 51

promised a new mode for Fasana-e Azad. If the earlier sections had
satirized all positions, Sarshar’s new vision of Fasana-e Azad sug-
gested the promotion of an ideal. Readers’ letters highlighted what
they saw as the work’s edificatory purpose. According to one reader,
“you have provided hundreds, no, thousands of counsels for our
countrymen and ways to eradicate evil customs . . . we can never
thank you enough.”47
Yet Sarshar’s rhetoric did not reflect reality. Despite his and
readers’ comments promising edificatory motives for Fasana-e Azad,
Sarshar did not turn the novel into a didactic tale. Rather, he shifted
the anticolonial critique to the minor characters, maintaining the
work’s ideological complexity but making it less visible. Whereas in
the early vignettes Azad was a parody of the Anglicized babu, in later
parts of the novel Azad became a procolonial hero who fought on
behalf of the British Empire in the Russo-Turkish War and emerged
as a proponent of modernity. Yet Sarshar did not let Azad’s new re-
formed views go unquestioned. It was at this very moment in the de-
velopment of Fasana-e Azad that Sarshar introduced a new sidekick
for Azad, an opium-addicted, dwarfish buffoon named Khoji. As
Azad became more idealized, the character of Khoji questioned and
challenged the hero, and also opened up the novel as a space for de-
bate on contemporary issues.48
To see this requires reading Fasana-e Azad historically. Fasana-e
Azad went through several rounds of revisions between its original
serialized version that appeared in Avadh Akhbar between 1878 and
1883, and the novel’s later book editions (first edition, 1881–1883;
second edition, 1886–1887; third edition, 1889–1891; and fourth
edition, 1898–1899). The text transformed between the newspaper
and book versions, as I have shown elsewhere.49 Sarshar toned down
some of the very liberal ideas contained in the newspaper version. He
also sanitized his hero, Azad, by attributing some of his earlier misad-
ventures to other characters, or by removing from book editions non-
respectable behaviors, such as drinking alcohol and fighting with
lower-class characters such as a washerwoman (dhobin).50 The open
nature of serialization in South Asia, in which novels were not
planned in advance but rather could develop and change while in
progress, meant that serialized versions of novels were often more
experimental than their later book editions.
It has been common to regard Khoji as Azad’s “backward” coun-
terpart, the Sancho Panza to Azad’s Don Quixote, a personification
52 Chapter Two

of Lucknow’s “debauched” feudal culture to be reformed under colo-

nial rule.51 Yet Khoji cannot be reduced to simply the comic sidekick.
He took on a more important role—the critical interlocutor to Azad,
engaging him in debate on some of the important and controversial
issues of the day.
In one discussion of pardah, which included the practice of a
woman’s veiling her face for the sake of modesty, Khoji challenges
Azad’s liberal ideas. When Azad expresses support for the idea that
modesty resides in one’s gaze rather than in veiling, Khoji replies,
“What, has a dog bitten me that I should parade around my wife?
That’s fine advice! You belong to the New Light, and Husn Ara
[your fiancée] has even more ‘refined’ ideas than you do!”52 Khoji is
clearly meant to be laughed at in the scene; he at one point laments,
“A wretch like me doesn’t have a wife worth taking out for a stroll.
I’ll get laughed at for nothing.”53 But Khoji also reframes the de-
bate in terms not of ideology but rather of respect for local cus-
toms. Reminding Azad, “You are very liberal,” Khoji continues,
“Every region has its own customs. In our region [i.e., Hindustan]
even kahārs [palanquin carriers] and gardeners keep pardah, not to
mention sharif [respectable] ladies.”54 Azad replies that pardah has
become a sickness in north India, and that in Turkey and Egypt
women do not observe pardah; he adds that even in Kashmir, both
Hindu and Muslim women go out in burqas or cover their faces a
little with their hands, “but there is not this illness where women
don’t step foot out of their houses—this sickness has spread only in
Hindustan.”55
It is significant, then, that Azad’s liberal ideas on pardah were
toned down by Sarshar in the first book edition. In the serialized
newspaper version, Azad won the debate on pardah. Three young
women come walking along with two young sharif boys. When the
girls see the boys, they blush, leading the boys, “seeing the girls’
shame-filled anger,” to “lower their heads, ashamed.”56 One of the
boys then comes forward and says, “Forgive us, we didn’t [look at
you] on purpose. This kind of thing happens at such places. You are
all my sisters.”57 This position echoes social reform movements such
as the Brahmo Samaj, which sought to recast women as men’s part-
ners in the private sphere and repositioned them as sisters and moth-
ers, a strategy later appropriated by nationalist discourse.58 The girls’
demonstration of modesty in one’s glance supports Azad’s position
that pardah should be kept in one’s eyes, not by veiling, but the posi-
 The Novel in Installments 53

tion was contentious enough that Sarshar revised the ending of this
scene for the first book edition. The newspaper version ends with
Azad saying, “Did you see how respectfully the women were treated?
Remember that in countries where there is no pardah, virtue flour-
ishes along with independence. Pardah exists in one’s heart. If women
are bad, it won’t matter how much pardah they keep. And if they are
good, they keep pardah through their virtue, modesty, and honorable
thoughts.”59 By contrast, the first book edition contains the addi-
tional sentence “But giving too much independence to women is not
appropriate,”60 essentially bringing Azad’s position in this edition
closer to Khoji’s in the newspaper version.
In other scenes, Khoji serves to bring Azad down to size.61 Azad
becomes an increasingly didactic character in the second half of vol-
ume 1; a picaro, a drinker, and a trickster in the first half of that
volume, Azad transforms into a Muslim religious figure, and a man
of status and respectability.62 Yet, even after this transformation of
Azad’s, Khoji remains the character that can chasten him, bringing a
critical light to an otherwise somewhat idealized and model hero.
Khoji can serve as the voice of reason to Azad’s English sycophancy
in the first half of the novel, replying to Azad’s praise of English gar-
dens, “Indians don’t have enough to eat and you’re worrying about
bungalows, flowers, and nightingales?”63 When Azad becomes a
Muslim religious figure, and a bit ostentatiously begins to call himself
Maulana Muhammad Azad, Khoji responds by renaming himself
Janab Mufti Khvajah Badī‘ Sahib (His Excellency the Learned Lord
Amazing), a comic title that also points out that giving oneself a fancy
name does not prove one’s qualities.64 One hundred pages from the
end of volume 1, Khoji opens a chapter by reminding Azad, and by
extension the readers, of Azad’s foibles and misadventures before he
became a hero:

One day Khoji said, you know, this is very unfair. On the way to Tur-
key, where haven’t you gone—you enjoyed the youth of the fairies at
the Parsi’s house, spouted nonsense with Muhammad Abdus Qudūs,
and spent so many days [cheating] at the navab’s. And if I may say
more . . . you fell in love with a beauty at every place—Miss Virginia,
Nazir Begam—but too bad for you, you have to keep your promise to
someone [Husn Ara]. When are you going to go to Turkey, in the after-
life or on the Day of Judgment?65
54 Chapter Two

The speech conveniently serves as plot summary for readers who may
have missed earlier chapters of the novel. But it also reminds readers
of Azad’s past, before he became a more didactic figure. Khoji in this
case serves as a narrative device, a way to recall past events while also
providing a critical commentary, and to remind readers that Azad is
not a straightforward hero but rather a man who has transformed at
the behest of a woman.
In addition, not only does the character of Khoji allow Sarshar
to voice some anticolonial and critical positions after Azad becomes a
more idealized hero, but also, in moving some ideological positions
formerly associated with Azad to Khoji, Sarshar could maintain the
self-critical ethos of the early pages of Fasana-e Azad but shift them
to other characters. This reading goes against prior readings of Khoji,
which have portrayed him as an icon of Lucknow’s feudal culture
now overthrown by colonialism, and therefore backward and in need
of reform. Khoji may have been such an icon in some scenes, but his
main role was to serve as an interlocutor for Azad, and, by extension,
for Azad’s new procolonial positions.

“Society as It Should Be”: Women Characters in

F asana - e A zad
In response to a letter from a “true friend,” Maulavi Mir Iqbal ‘Ali, a
judge in Gonda, in regard to Fasana-e Azad, Sarshar wrote, “In this
novel, I have shown, in various guises, not only how society is, but
also, according to my taste, how it should be.”66 Sarshar faced a dif-
ficult task in depicting his female characters. As Francesca Orsini has
argued, “One of the main tasks of Indian literature in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth century was to tackle, in various guises,
the problem of imagining relations between unrelated men and
women, both in private and public.”67 Indeed, on the topic of gender,
Fasana-e Azad shows how one aim of the nineteenth-century novel
was to model, and thereby create, new social relations. Sarshar ac-
complished this in creating the central female character pair in the
novel: the educated, respectable heroine Husn Ara, and her more
worldly, unrespectable counterpart, the female innkeeper Bi Allah
Rakhi. If Husn Ara was the bourgeois, domesticated housewife in-
tended as a model for respectable women in the late nineteenth cen-
tury, then Bi Allah Rakhi was the worldly wise “public woman,” able
to inhabit and maneuver through both male and female spheres.
 The Novel in Installments 55

Through this character pair, Sarshar subverted old norms and pro-
posed the norms of a reformed female respectability, one centered on
moderation and on agency within the home.
In doing so, Sarshar responded to debates on women’s educa-
tion and reform in late nineteenth-century South Asia. As is well
known, by the end of the nineteenth century women’s roles were at
the center of constructions of national identity. As pointed out by
Partha Chatterjee, women were increasingly portrayed as protectors
of tradition and partners of men within the private sphere. However,
at the same time, as Gail Minault has argued, the intense debate
among religious and social reformers, both Hindu and Muslim, about
women’s education contributed to women’s roles becoming a part of
the public sphere.68 Women’s roles were intensely debated in Urdu-
language periodicals, especially in the early twentieth century, with
the beginning of periodicals written for and by women.
The project of redefining respectability and creating middle-class
identity was a gendered one. Using Lucknow as a case model, Sanjay
Joshi has examined how middle-class reformers defined proper wom-
en’s roles against two models: on the one hand, the courtesan, for-
merly an example of education and relative autonomy; on the other
hand, the “low-class woman.”69 As scholars such as Francesca Orsini
and Charu Gupta have traced, this project of refashioning women’s
respectability continued into the twentieth century, when the param-
eters of middle-class and largely Hindu women’s respectability were
debated and consolidated.70 Sarshar appears to have had less freedom
with female characters than with his male characters. His initial main
female character in Fasana-e Azad was Bi Allah Rakhi; at about the
same time that the author developed Azad into a hero, he introduced
a new love interest for him, a respectable heroine who “had it all”:
named Husn Ara, she was beautiful, intelligent, and educated but
also extremely devoted to modesty and propriety. Fasana-e Azad in-
tervened in the debates over women’s roles as well but carefully
skirted the main issues.
This introduction of Husn Ara as a respectable love interest for
Azad occurred on July 11, 1879, about ten months after Fasana-e
Azad had started serial publication. Husn Ara and her younger sister,
Sipahr Ara, were introduced, from their beginning, as a successful
compromise between new and old. They were described as chaste and
modest, well educated, and sufficiently familiar with Western ideals
such as cleanliness and “taking the air.” They were introduced by a
56 Chapter Two

passerby: “They’re grown up and belong to noble and respectable

families. I’d say they’re not more than thirteen or fourteen years old.
They’re well mannered, good-natured, and of pure thought. . . . In
their glance is decorum, in their natures modesty, and in their gaze
and dress chastity. Despite being brought up in luxury, they’re edu-
cated and well read, they don’t just know the alphabet like other
girls. In the evenings, they greatly enjoy taking the air on their boat.”71
In this description, the sisters blended modern education, which in-
cluded being not only literate but also well read, with traditional ide-
als of female modesty and decorum. They were to be reformed sharif
women, with the benefits of both traditional upbringing and modern
education.
However, the Ara sisters also thought for themselves. In a cru-
cial plot device that successfully detached Husn Ara from the fiancé
selected by her mother, Sarshar has her sister Sipahr Ara discover that
Husn Ara’s fiancé had been proven a thief and a felon, as revealed in
a newspaper article. The article, which Sipahr Ara reads aloud to
Husn Ara, details how this son of a nobleman (ra’īs) had ruined him-
self by not going to school, keeping bad company, and smoking
opium.72 Representing a debauched sharif man, he then broke into
the home of a merchant and hurriedly stabbed the merchant’s son
upon being discovered. This unquestionable condemnation of Husn
Ara’s fiancé allows Sipahr Ara, the younger sister, to reprove their
mother for arranging a “marriage with a spouse unseen” for Husn
Ara: “Sipahr Ara consoled her elder sister, then took the newspaper
off to her old mother and approached her in tears, beseeching her,
‘Look, Mother! See what calamity has befallen us because you agreed
to this marriage with a person you’ve never seen, without a care or
thought!’ ”73 This ruse removes the Aras’ mother as a source of au-
thority, and also proves the Ara sisters’ capacity to think for them-
selves, even when that includes questioning their elders.
Husn Ara is acutely aware of her status as a new respectable
woman, distinct from the old ashrāf (respectable people), and thus
scrupulously manages her growing love affair with Azad. She makes
several demands of Azad before they can be married. These include
testing Azad in logic, Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), literature, philoso-
phy, mathematics, and Urdu poetry and prose; having Azad solve a
chess problem; testing his reaction to an unbecoming statement by a
respectable lady; declaring six conditions that he must fulfill to win
her hand; and, finally, demanding that he fight in the Russo-Turkish
 The Novel in Installments 57

War and emerge victorious. These conditions were laid out over a
series of episodes in Avadh Akhbar, and testified to Husn Ara’s care-
ful calculation as a new sharif woman.74 As she said to her cousin
after declaring her conditions, which even her cousin objected were
too onerous, “I swear to God, I will not marry without thoroughly
testing and examining him.”75
In stressing her own agency in choosing a marriage partner,
Husn Ara enacts the model of the “new woman” imagined by Hindu
and Muslim reformers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies.76 Yet in her emphasis on the bride’s consent, Husn Ara pushes
the role of the new wife further than suggested by reformers. Here
was a “respectable” woman demanding that a man should satisfy her
conditions for marriage, without recourse to parental advice or con-
sent (in fact, the mother is shown to be incapable of choosing a suit-
able marriage partner).77 This was one way that Fasana-e Azad imag-
ined the “world as it should be” rather than the world that was. Husn
Ara exercised remarkable agency and independence—more than re-
formers imagined.
Concerns in Asia and the Middle East for women’s roles and
respectability in modernity appeared in other locations, such as colo-
nial Korea and early twentieth-century Egypt. They were part of a
transnational formation of the “new woman” that accompanied the
rise of print and periodicals in these regions. In late nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century Korea, periodicals and literature investigated
the modern Korean woman, who through education was to “become
[a] good mother for modern citizens.”78 A similar discourse arose in
turn-of-the-twentieth-century Egypt, where a flourishing market in
women’s periodicals linked debate about proper roles for women
with antiimperial nationalism.79 In contrast to these formations,
Husn Ara’s focus on her own happiness and individual pleasure, sep-
arate from her possible future status as wife and mother, appears
even more revolutionary.
Toward the end of volume 1 of Fasana-e Azad, Husn Ara lays
out a new vision for respectability (called sharafat in Urdu), based on
moderation. She begins by commenting on the respectable girls of her
time, saying, “God knows, the problem with the sharif ladies
[sharifzādī] of this country is that they know nothing except how to
cook and feed and raise children. They’re completely uneducated.
Boys can get educated, but women think that sharafat comes only
from light skin and pretty clothes.” Husn Ara’s critique then went on
58 Chapter Two

to distinguish respectability as a middle ground between the lower

classes and prostitutes. Husn Ara used logic to prove her points: “If
sharafat comes from having fair skin, then who is more sharif than
the milkmaid [a low-caste profession]? As for clothes, does ‘being a
good person’ [bhal mānsī] come from satin and ribbons? . . . Sister, if
you think about it [bahin, agar zarā ghor karo], then you will see that
if sharafat came from dressing up, there would be no one more sharif
than a prostitute.” Note Husn Ara’s emphasis on individual reflec-
tion, using the verb ghor karnā, which signifies deep thought and re-
flection. In contrast to these two figures, the milkmaid and the prosti-
tute, Husn Ara proposes a middle ground, a reasonable and restrained
respectability: “Do all the adornments, but with some rhyme or rea-
son [qarīnah] to it. There should be the scent of propriety [shāistagi]
in it.”80 The word that Husn Ara uses for propriety, shāistagi, con-
noting refinement and appropriateness, sketched out a new middle-
class aesthetic, based on moderation.81
It might be tempting to see Husn Ara as an idealized character in
a didactic system.82 Yet Fasana-e Azad’s other major female charac-
ter represented in many ways the opposite of Husn Ara. Bi Allah
Rakhi, a female innkeeper (bhatiyārī) and therefore a “public”
woman, was able to enjoy relative sexual and other freedoms and
could inhabit the world in a way that Husn Ara could not. And as a
bhatiyārī, in the nineteenth century a figure known for her wit and
wordplay, Bi Allah Rakhi was able to jest, flirt, and use her wit. In
opposition to Husn Ara’s restrained modesty and intelligence, Bi Al-
lah Rakhi possessed experience and cunning.
The bhatiyārī figure was common in nineteenth-century South
Asian literature. Bhatiyārīs became the subject of great tension and
interest in qissahs (short prose tales) in the nineteenth century;83 in
the twentieth century, the figure of the “fallen” public woman, by
then represented by the courtesan, served as the foil for the middle-
class domestic housewife in reformist rhetoric and literature.84 Yet in
Sarshar’s hands, Bi Allah Rakhi became a threateningly powerful
presence, a woman able to traverse public society and also to critique
it. This ability allowed her to subtly criticize elements of colonial gov-
ernance such as the kacheri (colonial court), exposing them as fa-
cades. Bi Allah Rakhi’s ability to negotiate society made her perhaps
Fasana-e Azad’s most attractive and transgressive character, leading
Sarshar to have to constrain her later in the narrative.
 The Novel in Installments 59

Bi Allah Rakhi had originated as Azad’s love interest. After at-

tending the Parsi theater with Azad (as shown in several scenes), Bi
Allah Rakhi then accuses him of having asked to marry her; when he
refuses, she then hauls him into court. The result is a series of scenes
satirizing the colonial court system under the British. The kacheri was
increasingly important in the late nineteenth century as a milieu that
the upper and middle classes had to dominate to obtain access to
power.85 Yet the kacheri was shown in these scenes as a place of utter
dysfunction. It was thronged by loafers, whose sole purpose was to
make nasty comments on whoever arrived. When Bi Allah Rakhi ap-
pears, “strutting in confidently and flinging her dupatta [scarf] this
way and that,” to deliver her petition to the law clerk, she is given
directions by four different men, all of whom mislead her: “One says,
go to the right. Another says, ‘left!’ A third said, ‘Now why are you
misleading the poor woman? Look, [the law clerk] he’s in front of
you.’ ” When Bi Allah Rakhi delivers the petition, the clerk, who is
“old-fashioned, looked her up and down.”86 The juxtaposition of Bi
Allah Rakhi’s confident, feminine power with the loafers, tricksters,
and old-fangled men of the court milieu posed the kacheri as both a
site of danger and a sign of the new (in this scene represented by the
bhatiyārī).
The kacheri system is presented satirically, but, as with similar
court scenes in Dickens’s novels, an underlying didacticism pervades
the scenes. The kacheri is made a place of humor and ridicule through
the figure of Bi Allah Rakhi. She, who, as a public woman, is unable
to persuade a supposedly respectable man like Azad to marry her, ap-
peals to the courts in an attempt to raise her status. These courts are
then shown to be not guardians of law but rather the setting for ri-
diculous rituals and attempts at defrauding. Even the servant who
brings Azad his summons demands a “reward”—that is, a bribe—
from Bi Allah Rakhi, since, he says, she was sure to receive some
compensation from the court. Fasana-e Azad depicted the kacheri
milieu as an empty marker of colonial power, futile for most of the
empire’s subjects.
Bi Allah Rakhi’s threateningly powerful character is later tem-
pered in the text, as Sarshar made her more respectable as he saw the
sequences more firmly as a novel. In the final chapter of volume 1, he
reintroduced the character, dramatically marking her entrance in the
text with a bigger and bold font: “Tell me, who is this r­avishing
beauty? It’s not Husn Ara, Sipahr Ara, Ruh Afza or Bahar ­un-Nissa,
60 Chapter Two

they’re all sleeping. It’s Bi Allah Rakhi.”87 This reintroduction also

set up a dramatic transformation of Bi Allah Rakhi’s character: she
becomes an argument for widow remarriage, a central topic for late
nineteenth-century Hindu and Muslim social reformers. In a didactic
speech against marriages between old men and young women, Bi Al-
lah Rakhi explains that she was married off by her parents to an
­elderly man, who ignored her and died soon afterward. Her mother
refused to marry her to someone else because of pressure from neigh-
bors. Declaring, “No one should have the shameless life that I have
led,”88 Bi Allah Rakhi swore to give up her jewelry and other posses-
sions and live as an ascetic (jogan) until Azad returned from ­Turkey.89
She then reforms a debauched aristocrat (navab) whom Azad
had briefly served by convincing the navab to expel his sycophantic
courtiers from his court, and they eventually marry. Yet this transfor-
mation of Bi Allah Rakhi felt heavy-handed and artificial to readers,
and the question of her respectability prompted protest from them,
one writing in a letter to Avadh Akhbar, “Why in the world did you
make Bi Allah Rakhi respectable [a sharifzādī]? This wasn’t right.
There’s no sin in calling her respectable, it’s not profane in any way,
but it just doesn’t sound good to the ear. Why did you write it? What
did you gain from it? Please tell me.”90
Sarshar’s views on women’s respectability were topics of partic-
ular discussion among the reading public. The passages quoted in this
chapter comprise the only occasion within volume 1 of Fasana-e
Azad in which Sarshar directly inserted the readers into the text—in
order to manage their reaction. In Husn Ara’s first speech that I’ve
quoted, she begins by declaring, “Sister, only I and God know the
extent of my own modesty,” to which Sipahr Ara adds, “and dear
Azad,” followed by the text’s narrator adding, “And I, who find out
what’s going on every day, and record it in this tale which is written
in a new way.”91 This endorsement by the internal narrator playfully
played with the conventions of realism by advocating for the truthful-
ness of what he was writing, and at the same time letting his in-text
presence expose its fictionality. As if this endorsement were not
enough, Sarshar then inserted the “readers” into the text as well, hav-
ing them say, “And we too, who know even Husn Ara’s inner
thoughts and believe wholeheartedly in Sipahr Ara’s modesty.” Sar-
shar must have felt insecure about what he was about to write: in no
other passage of this volume did he thus insert readers’ reaction into
the text. Indeed, a female reader wrote, in the only surviving letter
 The Novel in Installments 61

from a female reader, expressing doubt as to the realism of a woman

like Husn Ara: “You’ve made Husn Ara completely according to
your own taste.” If Husn Ara had not learned English, this reader
asked, then from where had she learned these “enlightened” ideas?
“If not [from reading English], then she could have learned this from
only two sources: either from the company she keeps or because of
her education. As for her company, who was there from whom she
would have learned English ideas? As for her education, she was edu-
cated in Persian, so why doesn’t she believe in omens?”92 In creating
Husn Ara, Sarshar seems to have been mindful of public reaction
from the beginning. He makes sure that through her great respect for
sharafat and her calls for a reformed respectability, Husn Ara suc-
cessfully blended those ideals of modern education and traditional
values that would have appealed to Fasana-e Azad’s readers, and
suited its reception in the public sphere.
Fasana-e Azad participated in literary modernity in colonial
South Asia. Through contrasting character pairs, the crucially path-
breaking novel opened up elements of colonial modernity to critique
and debate. Its opening sections satirized all sides, and suggested un-
certainty as the only true response to social change under colonial-
ism. Later, despite his declared didactic aims, Sarshar preserved the
ideological complexity of the earlier serialized portions by shifting
the more critical positions onto minor characters. In this way Sarshar
maintained the novel’s self-critical position. In its depictions of
women, especially the powerful character of Bi Allah Rakhi, Fasana-e
Azad pushed the bounds of what was possible, using literature as a
way to conjure new social relations. Building out of periodical ­culture,
the novel became the space in which the protocols of modernity were
worked out. Literature unpacked and interrogated colonial moder-
nity, allowing new imaginations of personhood and subjectivity
to occur.
 Chapter Three

Experiments with Form

Avadh Punch, Satirical Journalism, and Colonial Critique

I n his four-line ruba‘i, the satirical poet “Akbar” Allahabadi (1847–

1921) attacked the rhetoric of British colonialism:

Kaisi taraqqi kaisa mel

Hum se sun lo us ka khel
Jis ki lathi us ki bhens
Fel-un fel-un fel-un fel

What do you mean? “Progress,” “Association”—

Listen to me, I’ll tell you how it’s done.
He who wields the cudgel owns the buffalo.
Ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum.1

Akbar insisted that the basis of British power in South Asia was
might, citing an Urdu proverb, “He who wields the cudgel owns the
buffalo.” In the first two lines, Akbar pries apart two key words of
British civilizing discourse. “Progress,” the word by which British co-
lonialism was justified, and “association,” the close relationship be-
tween ruler and ruled desired by some pro-British elites, were shown
to be ruses, empty signifiers disguising more material aims. The last
line, which consists of the Arabic syllables used to count meter in
Urdu poetry, suggests that after exposing the true nature of colonial
rule, nothing more need or can be said.
Akbar Allahabadi, a lawyer, government servant, and judge,
was one of the earliest writers at Avadh Punch. Avadh Punch, pub-

62
 Experiments with Form 63

lished in Lucknow from 1877 to 1936, was part of an explosion of

satirical journalism across nineteenth-century South Asia. By one es-
timate, there were seventy Urdu journals using the name Punch dur-
ing this period. Indeed, satirical literary journals inspired by the Brit-
ish Punch, established in London in 1841, appeared in English,
Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Hindi, and Urdu in this region. These
journals carved out a space for dissent and ridicule of Westernizing
elites. They inaugurated a new literary and visual language, introduc-
ing the modern political cartoon to the area and innovating with liter-
ary form and genre.
Satire formed an important critical voice of dissent in the late
nineteenth century, evading colonial censorship laws and surveil-
lance. As Ulrike Stark has traced, in nineteenth-century India the co-
lonial state alternated between censorship and encouragement of the
native press; after the Mutiny of 1857 under Queen Victoria, the ver-
nacular press was allowed but closely surveilled; regular reports and
summaries of vernacular-language newspapers were produced. In
1867, the government passed the Press and Registration of Books Act
(Act XXV), which required that every book published in India be
registered and a copy sent to England for safekeeping.2 Under these
conditions, satire, with its coded language, formed a particularly po-
tent way to “talk back” to the colonial state. That this was done us-
ing the Punch format shows how a Western form could be repur-
posed for very different aims.
As studied by Hans Harder and Barbara Mittler, the spread of
Punch-inspired satirical magazines was a trans-Asian phenomenon.
In the late nineteenth century, vernacular-language Punches appeared
in Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, South Asia, Japan, and China. Ac-
cording to Mittler, citing the work of art historian Partha Mitter,

Print culture created the conditions for a globally “imagined commu-

nity,” which gave rise to a form of what one could call “virtual cosmo-
politanism” that brought the centre and the periphery closer in a “free
circulation of ideas.” . . . Illustrated papers are one example to show
the development of a global imaginaire in which images, perspectives,
scenes, plot lines, and readers’ attitudes were increasingly shared be-
tween virtual equals in Leipzig, London, New York, and Shanghai. In
this context, asymmetrical conceptions of centre and periphery seem to
have lost at least some of their epistemological force.3
64 Chapter Three

This model is helpful in explaining how a transcultural form such as

the Punch magazine could remake relations between colonizer and
colonized. It is part of the “world-making activity of literature” de-
scribed by Pheng Cheah in his work on world literature and cosmo-
politanism.4 But the Punch magazine also represented a particular
example of how “a concept or technology originating in one culture
undergoes transformations of meaning and inflection subsequent to
its introduction in a culturally different society.”5 The Asian Punch
magazines “offered a particularly effective challenge to British claims
of liberal governance.”6 Unlike the British Punch, which became less
radical in its later years, “the Asian Punch versions . . . tend to be
much more radically political and much less conservative than the
original.”7
A variety of prose and poetry published in Avadh Punch in its
first two years of publication shows how writers at the journal inno-
vated with literary form as part of their practice of literary moder-
nity, as this chapter makes clear. In their use of parody and critique
to challenge the Westernizing middle classes, the Avadh Punch writ-
ers developed a rich tradition of self-critique and irony, which I iden-
tified in the introduction as central to literary modernity in South
Asia. By ridiculing modern forms such as the dictionary and British
symbols of power such as shikār (hunting for sport), Avadh Punch
lampooned colonial modernity.
It was Avadh Punch that inaugurated a rich tradition of Urdu-
language Punches in South Asia. According to one Urdu journalism
scholar, forty Urdu-language Punches began between 1877 and 1887
alone.8 Avadh Punch was the most influential and successful of these.
By the early 1880s, it sold only two hundred copies less than Avadh
Akhbar, its much-better-funded rival published by the Naval Kishore
Press. Avadh Punch also housed many of the period’s best Urdu writ-
ers, including Akbar Allahabadi, Ratan Nath Sarshar, Sajjad Husain,
Navab Sayyid Muhammad Azad, and Braj Narayan Chakbast.
Avadh Punch has been considered as primarily a visual phenom-
enon. Although its importance in establishing the form of the politi-
cal cartoon in South Asia has been studied by cultural anthropologist
Ritu Khanduri and art historian Partha Mitter, its role in developing
Urdu literary modernity has not been well studied.9 There are good
reasons for this: its writing was highly intertextual, and relied on the
audience’s familiarity with contemporary events to which it referred
only obliquely. Further, its writers used very colloquial and idiomatic
 Experiments with Form 65

late nineteenth-century Urdu, which is somewhat different from to-

day’s language and thus perhaps less than transparent to modern
scholars. The difficulty and obliqueness of Avadh Punch’s style may
have helped it avoid colonial censors. Its language formed a strategy
for satire to speak back to power, representing a “gaze that returns”
to “provincialize Europe.”10

P unch in India
Writing in 1862, Charles Dickens remarked on the appearance of
Punch magazines in India: “Punch in India. The idea seems unprom-
ising. A professed jest must surely be out of place among people who
have but little turn for comedy.”11 Archibald Constable, member of
the Asiatic Society of Bengal, tried to refute Dickens’s orientalist at-
titude toward humor among Indians. In his introduction to a book of
Avadh Punch cartoons sent to the British government in 1881, Con-
stable wrote,

The Inhabitants of India are supposed by many to have no sense of

humour, and to be as impervious to a joke as Sydney Smith’s Scotch-
man, but any one who has studied them or who has made himself ac-
quainted, with a few even, of the many quaint and humourous stories
and songs current in their vast and splendid country, will at once be
able to demonstrate by quotation or other reference, how unfounded
such a supposition is.12

Neither Dickens nor Constable anticipated the tremendous rise

of vernacular Punches in India. Beginning in 1860 and increasing
rapidly in the 1870s, Punches in South Asian languages proliferated
through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “The high
tide of such journals seems to have been in the last decades of the
nineteenth and first three of the twentieth century,” eventually com-
ing to an end around World War II.13 Some of the earliest South
Asian Punches were in English,14 but vernacular-language journals
followed soon thereafter. While Hans Harder cites the first Punch in
a South Asian language as the Marathi-language Hindu Panca, pub-
lished from 1870 to 1909, other sources list Madras Punch, an Urdu
magazine, which began in 1859.15 These were followed by two illus-
trated satirical magazines in Bengali, Basantak and Harbola bhār, in
1874, both short-lived. In Urdu, Punches proliferated beginning in
66 Chapter Three

the 1870s. The first major Urdu-language Punch was probably Avadh
Punch; it was joined by a rival Urdu Punch in Lucknow, The Indian
Punch, which appears to have begun the same year.16
The Indian Punches were in dialogue with the English Punch.
Itself an adaptation of the French magazine Le Charivari (established
in Paris in 1832), Punch developed into one of the most popular Vic-
torian British periodicals. In the 1840s and 1850s, it housed success-
ful writers such as Dickens and W. M. Thackeray, and established
some of the most important illustrators of the time, including Sir
John Tenniel,17 John Leech and Richard Doyle,18 and Charles
Keene.19 The magazine has been read as exposing the “trials and trib-
ulations of the still emergent middle classes,” and constantly reas-
serted a particular type of bourgeois respectability.20 Punch also
helped establish the illustrated satirical magazine as a format.21 As
argued by Brian Maidment, its particular square page format and use
of wood engraving allowed the interplay between visual and textual
elements, as images could be dropped into the text and proliferated
“in carnivalesque profusion,” “deconstruct[ing] the centrality of the
word.”22
The visual style of the Avadh Punch cover page referenced con-
ventions of the London Punch while translating them into the Urdu
literary milieu (figure 3.1). The preponderance of images spread
about the page, with a table scene in the center, a band of musicians
underneath, and carnivalesque scenes of acrobats, street performers,
and circus entertainers along the sides, echoed Punch’s characteristic
visually prolific style. The central image of a Mr. Punch dressed as a
jester, seated at the head of a table, surrounded by diverse social
types, referenced the legendary Punch table, described by Patrick
Leary as a weekly gathering over dinner in which the issue was
planned over conversation and gossip.23 More specifically, the Avadh
Punch table was posed as a literary symposium that mediated be-
tween East and West. Mr. Punch is seen seated between a caricature
of a navab, Lucknow’s former king, on his right, and an Englishman
on his left. If Avadh Punch bridged these two opposing figures, the
remainder of the dinner gathering included a diverse group of social
types. According to Constable, Mr. Punch’s companions consisted of
a Sikh, a Maratha, a Persian, a Bengali, a Parsi, a Jew, and a Turk.
Constable interpreted this in ethnographic terms, stating, “The Artist
who drew this title page, Ganga Sahai (Shauq-Intense), has delineated
very cleverly the characteristic features and dress of each of the Na-
Figure 3.1. Avadh Punch cover page, 1878.
68 Chapter Three

tionalities represented.”24 The scene may, however, better be read as

a cosmopolitan soiree, a visual argument that the magazine appealed
to all. It also may have pointed to a nationalist invocation of multiple
ethnicities, anticipating Avadh Punch’s support in 1885 for the In-
dian National Congress.
If the Avadh Punch title page’s visual style referenced its English
predecessor, the chronogram under the title placed the journal within
the realm of Urdu literary culture. Underneath the words Avadh
Punch (spelled Oudh Punch), a square box contained a chronogram,
a literary device using the letters of the Persian, Arabic, and Urdu al-
phabets for their numerical value.25 In a chronogram, a line of verse
would add up to a number; this device was used to mark the publica-
tion date of early printed Urdu books. On the title page referenced
here, the chronogram read, Azad o Zarif Hai Avadh Punch (“Avadh
Punch is free/independent and witty”). The letters of this verse added
up to 1295 in the Islamic calendar, 1878 in the Gregorian. The verse
not only referenced the magazine’s political stance as free or indepen-
dent but also claimed its belonging within the tradition of Urdu hu-
mor (zarafat), which linked pleasure to verbal wordplay and wit.26
Avadh Punch’s use of the word azad was also likely a jab at its rival
Avadh Akhbar, which was procolonial. Of course, as already said,
the choice of words was also influenced by their intended use in the
chronogram.
Like many late nineteenth-century Urdu literary journals, Avadh
Punch combined the roles of newspaper and literary magazine. A
typical issue during the early years (1877–1882) included the tele-
graph news, a “local” news section, at least one full-page political
cartoon, and a variety of satirical poetry and prose. Smaller litho-
graph illustrations were sometimes scattered throughout the paper,
and letters from readers were prominently featured. Avadh Punch
highlighted the breaking news by placing the telegraph news first in
the contents or by including special supplements to cover major
events. As for fiction, in general the fictional genres were short, as one
would expect in a periodical. They drew on a range of preexisting
narrative and poetic traditions, including the naql (“an umbrella term
covering all sorts of short stories and anecdotes based on tradition
[written or oral or both]”); the latīfah (joke or anecdote); classical
poetic genres including ghazal, ruba‘i, masnavi, and shahr ashob; and
the vibrant tradition of Urdu satire.27
 Experiments with Form 69

The exceptionally good translatability of the word “punch” (as

in the title Punch) in multiple South Asian languages has been cited as
one reason for the journal format’s success in South Asia. As Hans
Harder explains,

Sanskrit panca, which is common in most modern Indo-Aryan lan-

guages along with derivatives such as panc/pāc and similar words,
means “five,” a number with manifold cultural and sacred connota-
tions. Moreover, there is the headman of the village council or judge
(sarpanc/panc) in a number of languages, and the word also figures in
“mixture” (prapanc in Hindi)—a term that actually comes quite close
to the colourful bowl or satura lanx that is the most widely accepted
etymology of “satire,” and, of course, to the “punch” as a mixed drink.
So the appellation “punch” covered a rich semantic field and didn’t
even have to be translated.28

Scholars have also noted the translatability of the Mr. Punch figure,
itself derived from the Pulcinella of the commedia dell’arte tradition.
Indeed, the trickster or clown figure has a long lineage in South Asia.
As Vasudha Dalmia points out, “The Punch character was, among
other things, a fusion of the vidushaka (clown and commentator) tra-
ditions of Sanskrit drama.”29

Satirizing the Empire

Avadh Punch innovated with literary form. Like the British Punch,
which parodied a range of print genres, such as the almanac, conduct
books, children’s books, history textbooks, and letter-writing manu-
als,30 Avadh Punch ridiculed official print culture, repurposing some
conventions, such as the modern dictionary and the news report, to
satirize British government and colonial rhetoric. The following three
examples of Avadh Punch’s short prose and one example of poetry
highlight how Avadh Punch writers experimented with form to cri-
tique modernity.

Mr. Azad’s New Dictionary

A recurring segment by Navab Sayyid Muhammad Azad that ap-
peared during Avadh Punch’s early years presented key words of
British policy and “civilizing” rhetoric, redefined in satirical form.
70 Chapter Three

Later anthologized as “Mr. Azad’s New Dictionary,”31 the segment

parodied the form of the modern dictionary, at a time when diction-
ary practices were going through major change. As Walter Hakala
noted, whereas precolonial dictionary practices in Indo-Persian and
Urdu showed how to be at home in the sphere of elite cultural
power, the new dictionary was linked to the concept that modern
languages were tied to national identity.32 The “modern” dictionary
was thus a symbol of power in transition.33 Azad used the form of
the dictionary to attack terms such as “civilization” and “policy,”
posing them as empty signifiers that disguised the true nature of
British rule.
In the segment published on January 22, 1878, Azad redefined
the words “policy,” “honor,” “rights,” “party feeling,” “civiliza-
tion,” and “female education.” Emulating the visual look of a mod-
ern dictionary, the terms being defined were listed to the right, with
the English word (“policy,” “honor,” “civilization,” and so on)
transliterated into Urdu and the Urdu translation listed below. Here
is Azad’s definition of “policy” (hikmat-e ‘amali):

Building castles in the air. . . . Self-interest. Not fulfilling your prom-

ises. A jackal’s threat [i.e., bluster, bravado]. Firing a gun in the air.
Members of Parliament pleading with one another. Oppressing the
weak and fearing the strong. Exaggerating your imaginative power.
Self-praise. Worshipping expediency. Taking pride in imagined victo-
ries over enemies. Being a yes-man. Chasing the weak and joining the
strong. Making excuses. Warming yourself with someone’s burning
house. Impressing the nobles with your ABC’s. . . . Bestowing on some-
one the title of general to make him fire an air gun.34

Showing his familiarity with British political workings (Azad was a

lawyer and judge employed by the British colonial administration in
Calcutta), Azad posed “policy” as an act of braggadocio, the show-
ing off of one’s imagined power rather than political negotiation or
diplomacy. By referring to “impressing the nobles with your ABC’s,”
he seemed to allude to native councils such as the Imperial Legislative
Council (also called the Governor-General’s Legislative Council),
which after 1861 included some prominent Indians along with British
officers. Azad depicted natives’ participation in such councils as an
act of mimicry.
 Experiments with Form 71

In another entry, Azad took aim at his procolonial compatriots,

accusing them of mimicry and sycophancy. He defined “civilization”
(transliterated as “sivilizeshan”) as follows:

Considering your fellow countrymen to be uncivilized, calling your

elders “old goose.” Wearing jacket and pants. Whistling, swinging
your walking stick, and clacking your boots when you walk. Abusing
your neighbors. Enjoying eating potatoes, drinking alcohol, and
wearing a tasseled hat. Slitting a chicken’s throat [in a nonhalal way]
and calling it halal. Getting your hair cut in the “Albert fashion.”
Importing a mem [memsahib, or white woman] from England. Read-
ing a newspaper whether you know English or not. Dancing to the
harmonium’s tune, drunk with brandy, while tapping the time on
your backside.35

“Civilization” was a key term of pro-British middle-class activists

and reformers. Azad robbed the term of its rhetorical function, sug-
gesting that using it was another act of sycophancy toward the Brit-
ish, like adopting a walking stick or whistling. He also ridiculed the
Westernizing of physical appearance and dress, elements of increas-
ing significance in the late nineteenth century as outward signs of
beliefs and ideology became more important during the period’s
great social changes. In accusing the middle classes of aping the West,
Azad suggested that they were most attached to outward signs of
modernity, such as reading a newspaper or cutting one’s hair in the
popular Prince Albert (husband of Queen Victoria) style. The refer-
ence to a “tasseled hat” likely referred to the new habit among men
in the late nineteenth century of wearing an Ottoman fez, which had
connotations of cosmopolitanism and sophistication. Azad’s use of
“dancing to the harmonium’s tune” apparently referred to the British
practice of viewing a nautch, a performance by female dancers and
singers (sometimes courtesans [tava’if]), often highly trained. Azad
subtly positioned the word “civilization” (tahzib, in his translation)
against former standards of cultured behavior among the elites of
north India, standards that would include respect for one’s elders.36
Finally, his invocation of “fellow countrymen” hinted at a national-
ist undertone.
In his definition of the word “thanks” (shukriyah), Azad ­attacked
British pleasantries:
72 Chapter Three

The “old papa” of English-knowing words. False (khushk) praise, false

greetings, false favors, a tried-and-true prescription for making every-
one happy with one word! A reward for a year’s worth of pain and
suffering. . . . That magic charm that tamed India’s native rulers. That
neverending wealth which is spent limitlessly in the civilized world. . . .
An excellent and affordable tool to make everyone satisfied! That
laughing gas that can make even the saddest burst into laughter!37

Here Azad portrayed English pleasantries as a wolf in sheep’s cloth-

ing: through this one word, British policy was disguised.
Satirical dictionaries were of interest not only in South Asia but
also in the United States, where Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dic-
tionary (serialized beginning in 1885, first published in book form in
1906) satirized forms of everyday life.38 Azad’s accomplishment was
to use the dictionary, itself a changing form, to comment on British
colonial rhetoric. Like Akbar Allahabadi’s ruba‘i, Azad’s new dic-
tionary tried to unveil British colonial ideology, decentering its rheto-
ric in an anticolonial act.

Fever Is Hunting You

Symbols of British power in India came under attack in Avadh
Punch. A faux news report, “Lakhimpur, Kheri: Hunting Is a Job
for the Capable,” satirized native rulers’ mimicry of Western prac-
tices such as shikār, hunting for sport.39 As discussed by Joseph
Sramek, the practice of tiger hunting became a symbol of British
­virility and control over nature,40 as well as a way that the British
appropriated a Mughal kingship practice, emulated by rulers of re-
gional kingdoms such as Tipu Sultan, ruler of the kingdom of
Mysore (r. 1782–1799).
Published on June 18, 1878, the report was signed anonymously
“From a Lucknow-ite, may God protect him, from Lakhimpur,
Kheri.” The report’s location in Lakhimpur, Kheri, suggested that it
had been filed from a regional correspondent, using a new and excit-
ing convention of modern print journalism. Regular readers would
have recognized this “Lucknow-ite” as Ratan Nath Sarshar,41 who at
the time signed his name R. N. Lakhnavi (Lucknow-ite). The name
was a key: Sarshar was a schoolteacher in Lakhimpur, Kheri, a dis-
trict outside of Lucknow, until 1878, when he was hired as editor in
chief of Avadh Akhbar,42 and during this time he submitted several
 Experiments with Form 73

fake news reports from Lakhimpur, Kheri, presenting himself as a

kind of regional correspondent for the magazine. Known for its tiger
population, Lakhimpur was not a particularly important location for
Urdu literary culture, but through its inclusion in the literary journal,
this otherwise culturally insignificant district was incorporated into
the Urdu cosmopolis.
The report began in self-parodic fashion, poking fun at its title
and the occupation of journalist. It adopted a characteristically oral
style, beginning with a dialogue between the journalist and an un-
named observer:

Lakhimpur, Kheri
Shikār Kār-e Bākarān Ast (“Hunting Is a Job for the Capable”)

Excuse me? What? A job for the capable or the stupid? Praise God, you
don’t remember your basic grammar and you want to be a journalist
for Avadh Punch?
Why not? In these upside-down times, when potters are called “sir,”
children “baba” [Grandpa], and the silver-bodied [i.e., beautiful
women] “Miss,” why shouldn’t I confuse “capable” and “stupid”
(bākār and bekār)?

This opening relied on a linguistic pun for its humor. The report’s ti-
tle, which was in Persian, used the word bākār (“capable” or “use-
ful”) to describe shikār (“hunting”) in a rhyme. However, bākār also
sounded like the common Persian and Urdu word bekār (“useless” or
“pointless”). The report’s title played with the similarity in the sounds
of the words shikār, kār (“job” or “work”), bākār (“useful,” “capa-
ble,” comprised of the prefix bā (“with”) plus kār), and bekār.
The report also engaged the trope of “upside-down times,”
which circulated in north Indian languages as a way to comment on
and critique rapid social change. In Bengali, this theme was expressed
through the trope of Kaliyuga, the mythical “last age” of Hindu cos-
mology, in which the world devolves into chaos and destruction. But
whereas in Bengali the trope of Kaliyuga was used as a “language for
expressing the anguish, frustration, and resentments of less successful
educated men of the higher castes,”43 in Urdu the trope came to sym-
bolize a general state of upheaval and reversal. The unnamed com-
mentator suggested that in such upside-down times, the difference
between “useful” and “useless” had become meaningless.
74 Chapter Three

Recalling Azad’s dictionary, Sarshar used the practice of shikār

to critique the language of reform and lampoon what he saw as the
foolishness of native rulers in imitating British colonial officers. The
report proceeded:

The point is, when in the end of April, the District Commissioner of
Sitapur got the itch for “reform” (rifāh), he decided to rid the forest of
tigers. You know the man, he took a six-barreled rifle and hightailed it
into the forest. Such a renowned officer, a Colonel and all. The “wild
man” invited everyone.
“All the gazelles of the desert have put their head on the line
In the hopes that one day he/she will come to hunt.”44
Now Mr. Deputy Commissioner of Kheri thought to himself, I’ll be
left behind. With one stride he ran right into the tiger’s claws. Then the
real fun began. Now the top lords, nobles, and honorable of this tiger-
less district are looking for lions, tigers, and deer. The eminent Raja
Indra Bikram, ruler of Kheri, has made the hunting-ground the envy of
heaven with his auspicious arrival:
“On top of his head, from his intelligence
shone a lofty star.”45
Then for several days the forest was assailed by bullets and hunting
knives. If a wild pig came out, boom! A deer? Boom! A leaf rustling in the
breeze? Boom! A rabbit stuck out its neck? Boom! A fox? Boom, boom,
boom! Several tigers got lost in the swamp [in their fleeing]. As for the Raja
sahib, he never misses his mark. Even the children of Kheri have hunting in
their blood. As the saying goes, “Even the mice of the wise are logical.”

The report presented shikār as carnivalesque abundance, an exten-

sion of the “upside-down times” trope from the opening. Shikār, an
exercise of control over nature, was here turned into chaotic excess,
as the forest, rather than being emptied of tigers, filled up with hunt-
ers, weapons, and the sounds of gunfire.
The report’s punch line came at the end, as the irony of Kheri’s
rulers being tied up in the foolish exercise of shikār was brought
home: “Now listen. While everyone was out hunting tigers, here Mr.
Fever was hunting them! But the doctor’s healing arrow hit its mark
for which the Raja sahib quickly rewarded him. At least the Doctor’s
pots are cooking.”46 As the local rulers hunted, that is, the fever
stalked the region’s residents; this is probably an oblique reference to
the several cholera epidemics that struck British India in the nine-
 Experiments with Form 75

teenth and early twentieth centuries; between 1890 and 1919 the dis-
ease was estimated to have killed around four million people per de-
cade.47 In a final ironic twist, the report pointed to the profit made by
doctors from the disease: doctors seemed to be the only residents of
Kheri who benefitted from shikār.

A Prescription for Promotion

Avadh Punch often reprinted short pieces or poetry published in
other Urdu-language Punches from across the cosmopolis. An exam-
ple is a short piece, copied from Benares Punch, that used the form of
the medical prescription (nuskhah) to satirize the British practice of
conferring honorary titles on important Indian as well as British ad-
ministrators in India. Begun in 1861, this practice bestowed recogni-
tion on individuals for their service to the empire. Drawing on the
form of the nuskhah, itself at the center of debates about moderniza-
tion and medicine in the late nineteenth century, the piece suggested a
simple method for obtaining a metal insignia. Published in Avadh
Punch on January 22, 1878, the prescription read:

Prescription for the Fabrication of a Medal

He who wants [to obtain] a medal should bring the following:

1. Worship of the rulers of the district

2. Scheming and flattery [kānā phūsī o chāplusī]
3. Faith [aqidat], [that] “mother, father, brother,” you’re all to them.
4. Attendance at court
Grind these things together for several years. Then as necessary add
donations [chandah] and “address,” until you get a good medal. Which
is very useful for your standing and respect.

This prescription thus presented the process of obtaining British

honors as corrupt, the result of flattery and attendance at court rather
than merit. The nuskhah was an established genre in the Indo-­Muslim
medical tradition known as yunani (a Greek word, so-called from the
tradition’s roots in Greco-Arabic philosophy), which developed in
South Asia between 1600 and 1900. In the wake of British “modern”
medicine, established practitioners of yunani medicine, called ha-
kims, responded by professionalizing their craft, a response that
76 Chapter Three

Seema Alavi has identified as an attempt to fend off Western medicine

and a new generation of doctors using the public sphere of print.48
The art of writing a prescription, called nuskhah navīsī, was prized
and passed down from generation to generation and, as yunani medi-
cine became more professionalized, from master to student.49
The unnamed author of the “Prescription for the Fabrication of
a Medal” article played with the conventions of prescriptions, sug-
gesting that one “grind” together the ingredients, then add chandah,
donations or subscriptions, and addresses. From a debate about mod-
ern medicine, the piece moved on to the symbols by which social and
political power were obtained under British rule. The word chandah
became synonymous with the donations and subscriptions requested
by modernizers such as Muslim reformer Sayyid Ahmad Khan; it was
a “modern” strategy for collecting funds, and was satirized by Akbar
Allahabadi as a ritual almost equivalent to becoming a (good) Mus-
lim. As Akbar wrote regarding supporters of Khan’s Aligarh Muslim
University (then called the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College),
which combined Islamic teaching with a modern Western curriculum,
“Better that I go to Aligarh and ask Sayyid [Ahmad Khan] / Take my
donation [chandah], make me a Muslim.”50 The word “address” (the
English word transliterated into Urdu) signaled, by being an English
word, its foreignness in Indian society. It likely referred to official ad-
dresses delivered in ritualized public forums such as the committee
and the government commission. After all, committees such as those
investigating language policy, education policy, and the state of In-
dia’s Muslims (such as the influential Hunter Commission of 1884)
were important mediators of power in the late nineteenth century.
The prescription addressed another aspect of colonial modernity
not seen in the earlier examples: how to succeed under British rule.
David Lelyveld has described how the nobles and elites of north India,
whose power used to rest in their adoption of Indo-Persian c­ ultural
norms and the etiquette of the Mughal court, now had to dominate
the “kacahri milieu,” or the “complex of courts and government of-
fices that marked any administrative center.”51 Late nineteenth-­
century Urdu novels such as Mirāt ul-‘Arūs examined this process and
offered suggestions for how to navigate the kacheri milieu.52 The in-
troduction of merit-based civil service exams in British India also con-
tributed to lessening the importance of family background and norms
of etiquette.53 By contrast, the prescription suggested that flattery,
corruption, and the use of personal connections were required.
 Experiments with Form 77

Poetry of Fallen Times

Avadh Punch’s innovations with genre were not limited to prose. Po-
etry was central to Avadh Punch, likely reflecting the preeminent re-
spect still given to poetry in late nineteenth-century Urdu literary
­culture. The pages of Avadh Punch abound with a bouquet of Urdu
poetic forms: the ghazal (lyric), ruba‘i (quatrain following certain
rhyme schemes), qita‘ (poem consisting of four lines), masnavi (narra-
tive poem), and tarji‘ band (poem with a repeating end line, with five
stanzas in musaddas format). Unlike the prose genres discussed ear-
lier, which were new forms innovated by Avadh Punch writers, the
poetry these authors wrote drew on established traditions but rein-
vented them anew. Old genres were used for new topics: for example,
masnavis, long narrative poems traditionally about love and mystical
quests, were written about political events;54 ruba‘is, a prominent
genre of classical Urdu and Persian poetry, were written about smok-
ing opium; ghazals, lyric poems of love, were written about taxes and
the degradation of the times. The revitalization of classical poetic
forms for modern purposes was part of South Asian literary moder-
nity—as traced by David Shulman in the case of Tamil and by Va-
sudha Dalmia and Valerie Ritter in the case of Hindi.55 In Urdu, the
link between poetry and periodical was particularly strong, as journal
editors sought to claim literary authority in place of traditional mas-
ters (ustads), and to establish periodicals as a literary space.56
Avadh Punch’s paradigmatic poetic genre was a reworked form
of the Indo-Persian and Urdu poetic genre or topos called shahr ashob
(literally, [poems of] “destroyed cities”57). The shahr ashob genre in
Urdu began in the early eighteenth century, following the sack of
Delhi by the Persian king Nadir Shah in 1739.58 The Avadh Punch
writers adapted this genre to describe a world turned upside down
and a society fallen into ruination. They expanded the shahr ashob’s
earlier focus on the city to reframe it as a comment on the times, wid-
ening its worldview to conjure a shared landscape of suffering, their
imagined landscape of the Urdu cosmopolis.
This widening can be seen in the poem’s titles, called zamanah
ashob or dahr ashob (“ruined times” / “the world in tumult”). (Both
terms, zamanah and dahr, can refer to the times, a chronological age
or period, and the world, in the sense of present society and its
­customs, manners, and social mores.) The poems suggested that the
age was degraded; they rejected the cityscape to present a wider
78 Chapter Three

­worldview. According to Carla Petievich, the classical shahr ashob

expressed the dismay of Muslims at social, cultural, and political
breakdown in “the period of Mughal decline in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.”59 Shahr ashobs were written by major Mughal
poets such as Mirza Rafi Sauda (1713–1781), Mir Taqi “Mir”
(1724–1810), and “Nazir” Akbarabadi (1735–1830).
It should be noted that there is scholarly debate about the formal
definition of the shahr ashob. Fritz Lehmann in his study of Bihar
poets’ responses to the eighteenth-century transition from the Mu-
ghal Empire to British colonialism defined the shahr ashob as “pessi-
mistic” poems about “cit[ies] of discontent.” They were “extremely
localized: that is, Delhi poets write of the past greatness and present
wretchedness of Delhi; Agra poets, of Agra; Lucknow and Patna po-
ets, of those cities.”60 This view has been challenged, however, by
Urdu scholars Frances Pritchett and Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, who,
in an analysis of shahr ashobs by the eighteenth-century poets Nazir
Akbarabadi and Shaikh Qalandar Bakhsh “Jurā’t,” expanded the
definition of shahr ashob to “include the generic category of poems
using ‘world turned upside down’ imagery.”61 The genre has been
noted for its realistic depictions of everyday life in cities, and used as
a source for historical and sociological analysis.
Avadh Punch’s use of the shahr ashob gave the form new rele-
vance for the colonial period. The shahr ashob provided a vocabulary
for dissent and critique of the British government. As described in a
previous chapter, the trope of fallen times operated in Bengali and
Urdu; the zamanah ashob’s use of the “fallen times” trope extended
this critique to life under colonial rule.
This zamanah ashob, published in Avadh Punch on April 23,
1878, by A. Shauq (Ahmad ‘Ali Shauq Qidwai [1852–1925]62) ex-
plored a world in decline. It painted a picture of inversion and up-
heaval. Titled simply “Zamanah Ashob,” the full poem reads:

Zamanah Ashob [A Poem of Fallen Times]

These baniyas [merchants] oppress us all

They raise the prices then make them fall
They keep the hungry in grief’s thrall
The baniyas, a curse on them all!
But if things turn for them, then we’ll see
Let them suffer [for] once, then we’ll see
 Experiments with Form 79

The world is lean from hunger these days

No bread, rice, or lentils these days
A handful of sugar? Forget it these days
No point flossing your teeth these days
I go to the market empty-handed
Just to see the shop boy candid63
No hens for fighting, the quail’s cages are clear
They’re all dead from hunger, no pigeon’s nests are near
Not even a handkerchief, a scarf is dear
The opium box is empty, the sugar bowl is clear
Not a stick of sugarcane to be found
No sugar for the sweet-cakes is around
I crave pān [betel-nut] but can’t afford it
I long for weed [ganja] but couldn’t hoard it
A smoking huqqa? Who has stored it?
Where’s the opium? My tongue adored it
People die for bread, but no bread’s to be found
They wander barefoot, but no waist-cloth’s around
The priest [faqir] now is powerless
The tobacco now is tasteless
The dancing girl is rhythmless
The tabla’s [drum’s] boom is soundless
The prostitute has no cash in hand
The pleasure-boats are moored on dry land
The loafers are quiet, the tavern’s closed
The singers all are indisposed
The courtesans’ stomachs have been foreclosed
Their coy glances go unopposed
If one’s pants are ripped, there’s nothing to do
If one’s fortune is tattered, there’s nothing to do
This famine has made matters worse
I can’t depict it all in verse
The poor’s state is only more adverse
Every desire has become a curse
The nobles have lost everything
While baniyas dance around and sing!64

The poem consists of seven stanzas of six lines each. Formally it

is a musaddas, a poem comprising six-line stanzas, with the rhyme
scheme AAAABB, CCCCDD, and so on. (The musaddas was a
80 Chapter Three

c­ ommon form used for classical shahr ashobs.) The first four lines of
each stanza are organized around a theme. For example, the second
stanza focuses on foods (hunger, bread, rice, lentils, sugar); the fourth
stanza lists various kinds of intoxicating substances: pān (betel nut
similar to tobacco), ganja (marijuana), the huqqa, and opium; the
fifth stanza has no discernable theme, however, with its lines seeming
to have been determined by the requirements of the rhyme scheme.
Other stanzas focus on birds and elite pastimes (stanza 3), the end of
pleasurable activities (stanza 6), and a general mood of calamity and
misfortune (stanza 7). This poem is of middling quality; compared to
some of the premodern shahr ashobs, it lacks complexity of meta-
phor and sophistication of language.65
This poem specifically attacks merchants, who are referred to as
baniyas, a term that can describe merchants, traders, shopkeepers,
grocers, and the like but can also have a derogatory connotation of
pettiness, small-mindedness, and miserliness. Avadh Punch thus took
aim at the mercantile classes, suggesting that they had risen to good
fortune under the colonial administration but lacked intelligence and
good breeding. The term baniya here may have also expressed frus-
tration among the Muslim former elites and aristocrats of north India
against a rising middle class, in which Hindu traders and mercantile
families had an increasingly large role.66 In Avadh Punch, baniya also
took on the particular connotation of “sellout,” which according to
the journal meant selling out to the causes and concerns of the British
government. The periodical frequently lobbied the term baniya at
Naval Kishore, the owner and proprietor of the Naval Kishore Press,
and at Avadh Punch’s rival, Avadh Akhbar, which it called Baniya
Akhbar (The Baniya’s Newspaper).
Yet the poem’s real target is famine, as depicted in the last
stanza. In fact, the poem as a whole presents an overall picture of suf-
fering and want, in which both bare necessities and elite leisure ac-
tivities are no longer available. The stanzas alternate between descrip-
tions of common suffering as experienced by both rich and poor
(“People die for bread, but no bread’s to be found”), and a lament for
the end of elite pastimes: hen and quail fighting, keeping and training
pigeons, consuming opium, pān, ganja, or alcohol, and visiting the
kotha (bordello) of the elite courtesan, whose assistant (“dancing
girl”) and musicians the poem mentions. Thus the poem shows both
the end of the elite’s pleasures and the wretched state of the general
population. It ends with a final two lines that borrow the theme of
 Experiments with Form 81

inversion from the classical shahr ashob. In the fallen times of the
present, only the merchants profit, while the rest suffer.
As this chapter’s examples show, Avadh Punch writers inno-
vated with literary form, producing short prose genres that parodied
official print culture in the forms of the dictionary, news report, and
medical prescription. This periodical used fiction to address impor-
tant late nineteenth-century issues, from cholera to the ways to suc-
ceed under British rule to famine. It used satire as a voice to express
dissent, opening up aspects of British colonial rhetoric to critique and
ridicule. It also criticized what it saw as the mimicry of Western be-
havior and actions by native rulers. Through all of these innovations,
Avadh Punch established itself as a purveyor of literary modernity. It
helped establish literature as the premier mode for interrogating mo-
dernity in South Asia.
 Chapter Four

Reading the World

The Urdu Print Public Sphere and the Hindi/Urdu Divide

R eaders were central to print’s success in late nineteenth-century

South Asia. Newly empowered to “write back” to authors and
editors, readers took to the new medium of print with incomparable
enthusiasm. They wrote letters to newspapers and literary journals,
intervened in ongoing fictional narratives, and debated, expounded,
and discussed the new literary genres and aesthetics developing at the
time. An exchange between a reader of the Urdu novel Fasana-e
Azad, one S. Barsar from Dholpur (in eastern Rajasthan), and the
author, Ratan Nath Sarshar, demonstrates this. As Barsar wrote,
“The tale of Azad offers a strange pleasure. . . . But I have one objec-
tion. People say that you pay attention to all other things, but you
forgot one thing: when Azad set out for Turkey, from whose house
did he get the money [for the expenses]? If anyone asks, what answer
will you give?” Published in Avadh Akhbar on August 30, 1879, the
letter prompted a playful and lively reply from Sarshar:

For his words of praise regarding my novel, that is the story of Azad, I
credit Mr. S. Barsar’s personal judgment and courtesy. That leaves his
friendly objection, to which my answer is this: First, in a novel it is not
even considered where the hero, that is, the particular man or woman
whom the novel is about, got travel-money. In Pickwick’s novels [i.e.,
The Pickwick Papers], or Walter [Scott’s] novels or Monte Cristo,
which the English regard as dearer than life itself, money was never ar-
ranged for, and this is not illegitimate. . . . Now you’ll say, “But if Azad

82
 Reading the World 83

had money when he left, why wasn’t it mentioned in the novel?” Lis-
ten, it was because there was a fear of robbers, thieves, and pickpock-
ets. I said to Zarāf’s wife, let Azad take the money quietly. Don’t let
anyone know about it. These are delicate times.1

This lively exchange between S. Barsar and Sarshar reflected the

highly interactive and participatory nature of South Asian print
­culture.
Readers of a newspaper such as Avadh Akhbar in the late
1870s found a print public sphere that already catered to their inter-
ests and encouraged their participation. Even though Avadh Akhbar
received the majority of its subscriptions from the government, like
most periodicals of the day, it oriented itself directly toward readers.
As readers’ letters attest, subscription numbers do not tell the full
story of a newspaper’s circulation, since groups of readers would
often gather to listen to a periodical being read aloud.2 Even monu-
mental enterprises such as Avadh Akhbar realized that in the com-
petitive environment of commercial publishing, the support and en-
gagement of readers was crucial to success, even if not needed
financially.
As noted, interaction between authors and readers often came in
the form of readers’ letters. For example, in the letter that follows, a
reader adopted the persona of a male character, Mirza Humayun Far,
in the novel Fasana-e Azad. The letter concerned Far’s dressing up as
a woman named Ashiq un-Nissa to meet a female character, Sipahr
Ara. Such a meeting would have been a breach of the norms of re-
spectability among elite families of north India. As if a reader of
J. K. Rowling’s work had written to the author in the voice of Her­
mione Granger, this late nineteenth-century Urdu reader took on the
fictional guise of Mirza Humayun Far to complain of being “dis-
graced” in the text:

Listen my friend Pandit sahib [the author], you’ve completely

disgraced me. What did I ever do to you? I was born to love
Sipahr Ara. Although my going as Ashiq un-Nissa and embracing
Sipahr Ara was against the rules of propriety [khilaf-e tahzib],
what could I do? I couldn’t control my raging heart.
Sir, if anyone had ever fallen in love, he’d have to stay away
from your “propriety” [tahzib]! But honestly, what a name you
gave me—Ashiq un-Nissa [lover of women]! Adieu! What else is
84 Chapter Four

there to say? I’d die for Sipahr Ara’s simplicity and loveliness.
You go on defaming me, I’m not afraid of you.
—Signed Humayun Mirza, from Eranpurah,
December 22, 18793

Such a rich reception accompanied the publication of the Urdu

novel Fasana-e Azad. Published between 1878 and 1883 in various
serial formats, Fasana-e Azad engendered a cavalcade of responses in
print.4 Hundreds of readers’ letters were received and published in
the Urdu newspaper Avadh Akhbar. The discussion there sometimes
prompted the author to make changes to his ongoing tale, responding
to this reader feedback. This novel became such a success that rival
journal Avadh Punch attacked it over several years, sometimes in
line-by-line critiques.
Readers of Avadh Akhbar, Avadh Punch, and Fasana-e Azad
formed a critical public. And, as Michael Warner points out, publics
have particular protocols and forms as part of their self-definition:
“Public discourse says not only: ‘Let a public exist,’ but: ‘Let it have
this character, speak this way, see the world in this way.’” It does this
“not only through discursive claims . . . but also at the level of prag-
matics, through the effects of speech genres, idioms, stylistic markers,
address, temporality, mise-en-scène, citational field, interlocutory
protocols, lexicon, and so on.”5 The Urdu print public sphere that
developed in periodicals and journals had distinct features. In partic-
ular, it played with intimacy amid the potential for anonymity al-
lowed by the print medium. Indeed, print opened up new possibilities
for anonymity and play, making visible the distance between public
writer and private person. The print public sphere theoretically was
open to all; at the same time, respectability and status remained im-
portant issues for readers, in terms both of their own identities and of
those of the fictional characters they were reading about.
As is well known, the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas
traced the development of a bourgeois liberal public sphere in seven-
teenth- and eighteenth-century Europe; this public sphere was defined
by private citizens coming together to form a public through the use
of their reason.6 The Urdu public sphere was characterized by public
employ of reason, with readers of Avadh Akhbar emphasizing ratio-
nal argument and logic in their discussion of literary topics. They
thus sketched out the contours of a new kind of public culture: open,
democratic, and modern. Yet in their concerns for respectability
 Reading the World 85

(sharafat in Urdu), readers continued to pay close attention to status

and class. This fact might seem to complicate Habermas’s model, but
studies of other public spheres have shown that Habermas’s ideal has
rarely applied to actually existing democracies.7
Print served as the platform where a secular, modern public
­culture was born. Yet a divide between the secular and the religious
in colonial South Asia should not be assumed. Public spheres could
be modern and rational, yet also use the tools of religious discourse.
As Barbara Metcalf and others have documented, Islamic religious
scholars (‘ulama) in the nineteenth century used the tools of public
culture, including print and public debates, to propagate revivalist
Islamic movements.8 Religious reformers were among the first
groups of people to use the printing press as a modern means of
communication.9
The print public sphere in Urdu also became personal. The
highly competitive print market in the late nineteenth century, in
which many periodicals quickly went bankrupt, and in which finding
paying subscribers was difficult, led journals such as Avadh Punch to
attack relentlessly, and sometimes viciously, their institutional and
personal rivals. Avadh Punch began attacking Sarshar as a Hindu
and as a Kashmiri, implying that, as such, he was not a true master of
the Urdu language. This rationale drew on premodern Urdu literary
culture, in which linguistic dexterity was often the primary criterion
by which literary prowess was judged. But Avadh Punch’s context in
the 1870s, which contained a movement to redefine Urdu as the lan-
guage of Muslims, and separate from a language called Hindi, gave
this attack political and historical significance.
As what became known as the Hindi/Urdu controversy, which
began in the 1860s, gathered steam in the Northwestern Provinces
and Oudh (also known as Avadh), Avadh Punch drew on an emerg-
ing discourse that aligned vernacular languages with religious com-
munities. This discourse had far-reaching consequences for language
politics in British India, connecting language to region and religion.
These politics affected the choice of Urdu as the language of Pakistan,
as well as the reorganization of many Indian states along linguistic
lines, and remain an area of contention for present-day politics in
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Further, Avadh Punch’s
participation in this discourse contributed to realigning Urdu with
Muslims, thus threatening to rupture the very Urdu cosmopolis it had
helped to create.
86 Chapter Four

Participating in Print: Readers as Patrons and Critics

Readers embraced the opportunity to participate in print. If the jour-
nal editor had come to be considered a tastemaker and literary critic
through his arbitration of literary taste in the periodical, then readers,
too, claimed authority in these matters. By intervening in ongoing
serialized fiction such as Fasana-e Azad, and interjecting themselves
into debates on aesthetics, readers posed themselves as literary pa-
trons and critics, and they played a major role in making literature
and literary discussion part of the public sphere. Further, readers
demonstrated a cosmopolitan imaginary in their worldly approach to
literature, drawing from their own understandings of Western litera-
ture and Urdu, Persian, and Arabic aesthetics to make sense of mod-
ern genres such as the novel.
This letter from Haider ‘Ali of Amravati, in present-day Maha-
rashtra, posed the reader as patron and critic of Urdu fiction:

I agree with the opinions you gave in your September 15 article

called “Dastan-e Azad” (The Tale of Azad). It’s true that no one
has ever written a story in this guise [perāyah] before. Even
though it’s an invention [bandish], every aspect seems totally true
to the readers. Nothing is against reason. People who know
English really like this novel because English novels have bad
taste [bura mazaq]. You should publish this as a book so it will
be preserved, and our fellow countrymen [hamvatan] will keep
benefiting from it, learn culture [tahzib], and be saved from evils.
And other people should write novels like this and not give place
to any old-fashioned [daqiyānūssī] ideas. Even though I’m from
the Deccan and speak Dakkani [a form of Hindi-Urdu spoken in
southern India], I enjoy your language. I belong to a Muslim
organization in Amravati. Whenever Avadh Akhbar comes, I
turn to Miyan Azad’s tale right away, and that is what most
people do.10
—Haider ‘Ali from Amravati, Berar province

Published on September 25, 1879, on the last page of the four-page

installment of Fasana-e Azad, the letter responded directly to an ar-
ticle published by the author, Ratan Nath Sarshar, on September 15.
In that article, Sarshar had declared his work a “novel,” whose pur-
pose was to “make our fellow countrymen aware, through the guise
 Reading the World 87

of zarafat [humor, wit/witticism], of bad customs and bring their at-

tention to their actions and speech.”11 In his response to the article,
Haider ‘Ali addressed the emerging aesthetics of the time. Even fic-
tion, he suggested, could be realistic, having nothing “against rea-
son.” Further, Urdu fiction must accord to a higher moral standard
than English novels, which readers did not like because of their “bad
taste.” Finally, intervening directly in the production of the text, the
reader entreated the author to republish the narrative in book, rather
than serialized, form.12
In their new roles as patrons and critics, readers engaged in a
comparative project. They compared Fasana-e Azad to English, Urdu,
Arabic, and Persian models, posing themselves as experts on both
Eastern and Western aesthetics. One reader, Muhammad ‘Ali “Bi-
mar,”13 a ra’īs (nobleman) in Daulatpur, compared Fasana-e Azad to
not only the Urdu and Indo-Persian genre of dastan (romance) but
also to English novels: “The tale [dastan] of Azad has become famous
all over Hindustan and whoever you meet eagerly enjoys reading it,
listening to it, or seeing it. And why not? This is the kind of enticing
dastan that you never feel like putting down. And this dastan is the
first in Hindustan to be written in the style of an English novel; you
are the first to take up the task of writing a novel in Urdu.”14 Mu-
hammad ‘Ali subtly implied that Fasana-e Azad was different from
other dastans, the Urdu and Persian romance genre that remained
immensely popular through the nineteenth century. By referring to
the dastan, ‘Ali helped to domesticate Fasana-e Azad, slotting it in
with this older, more familiar genre, but, without spelling it out, Mu-
hammad ‘Ali also suggested that Fasana-e Azad was precisely not like
the old dastans.15 According to him, this new kind of dastan was new
and different and created passion and curiosity all over Hindustan.16
But ‘Ali then went further, comparing this new dastan to English
models. Without delineating what the “style of English novels” was,
he declared this new work the first novel in all of Hindustan to be
written in that English style. Thus, in performing the new role of lit-
erary expert and critic, Muhammad ‘Ali both translated and domesti-
cated the Urdu novel, differentiating it from previous genres while
declaring its stylistic affinity with English models.
Other readers echoed Muhammad ‘Ali’s comparison of Fasana-e
Azad with both Eastern and Western genres. Readers drew on both
what they understood to be Western fiction, such as the “novels” of
Shakespeare, and on their understandings of Persian and Arabic
88 Chapter Four

a­ esthetics. A long and complex letter from Muhammad Masiuddin,

published on November 15, 1879, best illustrates this:

The truth is that that excellent novel of Azad, the happy-natured,

has started coming out from the pen of Mr. Editor, which is as
perfect as it can be. In comparison, it’s not better than Shake-
speare’s novels, but it’s better than many, approximately, other
English and foreign novels, and it’s an excellent copy of our
Arabic novel, Alf Laila and the Persian Bostan-e Khayal. Even
though I haven’t read the whole Bostan-e Khayal, I saw the first
volume, which is about five hundred pages long, and read a few
of its stories. I’ve heard its author wrote several volumes, and I
saw all four volumes of Alf Laila because of the beauty and
eloquence of its poetry and prose. The truth is that this novel of
Azad in Urdu resembles that one [i.e., Alf Laila], and what I
wrote about how it compares to Shakespeare was not correct,
because almost all his novels are tragedies and comedies, which
are called hamāsah and taghazzul in Arabic, and razm and bazm
in Persian; they’re all true stories or true histories which he
augmented with poetic topics. It’s the same with Italian operas.17
—Muhammad Masiuddin, dated October 16, 1879
[location unspecified]

In this letter, Masiuddin performed a complex act of translation. He

used the Urdu cosmopolitan imaginary to compare Fasana-e Azad to
Shakespeare’s “novels,” as well as to two classic texts in Arabic and
Persian, Alf Laila (better known as A Thousand and One Nights),
and Bostan-e Khayal, an Indo-Persian imitation of the renowned Per-
sian romance Dastan-e Amir Hamza. Masiuddin’s reference to
Shakespeare’s plays as “novels” likely reflected the popularity of
prose ­retellings of Shakespeare, such as Charles Lamb’s Tales of
Shakespeare, in India.18 Masiuddin’s letter also shows that the term
“novel” was considerably open for Urdu readers in the late 1870s.
Masiuddin equated tragedy and comedy, which he understood cor-
rectly to be the two types of Shakespeare plays, with hamāsah and
taghazzul in Arabic, and razm and bazm in Persian. Hamāsah is a
genre of chivalrous poetry in Arabic, whereas taghazzul refers to “ro-
mantic speech with women” and is used to describe the quality fun-
damental to ghazal (lyric) poetry in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu.19
Razm and bazm referred to war and courtly life, the paradigmatic
 Reading the World 89

activities associated with kings in Persian literature, and major

­aesthetic categories for the “national poem” of Iran, the Shahnameh.
In fact, Masiuddin collapsed these categories, most of which referred
to poetry. The reference to Italian “opera” most likely reflected the
use of the word “opera” to advertise late nineteenth-century Urdu
dramas (which began to incorporate music in the late nineteenth cen-
tury), but also pointed to Masiuddin’s “worldly affiliations.”20 Masi-
uddin’s letter was thus marked by multiple acts of translation, across
a wide cultural universe. (Finally, it should be noted that though
­Masiuddin admitted that he had not read all of Bostan-e Khayal, he
still felt himself an expert on it.)
Readers not only felt comfortable participating in printed dis-
cussion of literature; they also tried to intervene in ongoing fictional
narratives. Some readers wrote in to ask Sarshar to send his fictional
characters to the letter writer’s town, or to ask Sarshar to make his
hero more religious. The pleasure of intervening in an ongoing story,
in print, must have enhanced the experience of reading a printed
­narrative.
The potential of this pleasure to sell newspapers was not lost on
entrepreneurial authors such as Sarshar, who actively encouraged
reader participation in a number of ways. First, he began including
readers’ letters at the end of each four-page installment in which
Fasana-e Azad was published, placing them in a separate section. Sec-
ond, he created a weekly review section that appeared in Avadh Akh-
bar on Saturdays, in which he would comment in more detail on the
evolving narrative, as well as on the letters he had received. Third,
Sarshar addressed readers directly in the text on select occasions. Fi-
nally, he also published news articles about Fasana-e Azad, and in
these he might print, and comment on, readers’ letters.
It is possible that some of the letters that Sarshar received were
faked—probably written himself. After all, he did write a few times
using a pseudonym, producing some short humorous pieces for
Avadh Akhbar using the name Pandit Shiv Shankar. The ruse seems
to have been known to readers, as he also had Pandit Shiv Shankar
once appear in an episode of Fasana-e Azad. However, in light of
Sarshar’s already staggering output of four pages of fiction a day plus
his editorial duties, the sheer volume of letters published, as well as
their frequency (appearing daily), suggests that the majority of the
letters could not have been faked. Yet the fluidity of a writer’s iden-
tity in print made for interesting possibilities for play.
90 Chapter Four

Affinity and Anonymity

Print made possible a dynamic play between anonymity and personal
relationships among authors and readers. The author of the letter
written as if from Fasana-e Azad’s character Mirza Humayun Far
adopted a fictional name, Humayun Mirza (itself a reversal of the
character’s name), to subtly play with anonymity. Other readers, too,
adopted this strategy, and a particular tension between intimacy and
anonymity emerged in the print public sphere.
One example of this can be seen in a reader’s letter published on
September 11, 1879. It appeared in a separate news article, “Thanks
for criticism” (nuktah chini ka shukriyah). In this article, Sarshar
thanked his readers, whom he called “sympathetic friends,” for in-
forming him of mistakes in Fasana-e Azad.21 Reflecting the competi-
tive atmosphere of late nineteenth-century Urdu print culture, he was
careful to frame his readers’ criticism as benefitting the newspaper
and its audience. He offered praise, saying, “These [readers] who
read my writing with a fine-toothed comb [nuktah chini] and whose
goal from this criticism is to make this newspaper free of faults and
errors, bring benefit to our countless dear readers.” Sarshar then
thanked these attentive criticizers, saying, “Our truth-seeing readers
understand that I am as grateful to my friends who inform me of my
errors as a sick patient receiving a wise diagnosis from his doctor.”22
The bulk of the article then discussed a letter from a reader who
identified himself only as Nairang from Sultanpur (in the present-day
state of Uttar Pradesh). In this letter, Nairang pointed out factual er-
rors in Fasana-e Azad:

My main purpose is [to point out] that in the September 1 humor

section, I couldn’t tell if the girls that Miyan Azad met on the
train were Hindu or Muslim. If they were Hindu, then [why] in
today’s section did it seem like their father was Muslim, because
he observes prayer and fasting? There seems to be little consis-
tency (munāsabat) in today’s and yesterday’s installments. And
there also seem to be mistakes by the scribe [kātib], that is, the
copyist [kāpi navīs]. For example, the following sentence, “Come
in, Mr. Azad of noble disposition (Ā’iye Miyan Azad va ‘ala
nizhād) [the Urdu sentence is also misspelled].” You can’t tell
who’s speaking! I respectfully ask you, for the sake of my
enthusiasm [shauq], please tell the copyist to pay greater atten-
 Reading the World 91

tion to the correctness [saht] of the humor section. Please also

tell us what happened to Akhtar un-Nissa and Zeenat un-Nissa
in the next installment.23

Nairang’s letter suggested new expectations for factual accuracy and

consistency in print. He demanded munāsabat, literally accordance
or connectivity, across installments. This word munāsabat referred to
older literary aesthetics—munāsabat would be used to describe the
accordance of words or phrases with each other in classical Urdu po-
etry. But unlike older forms of oral storytelling in South Asia, each
day’s portion of Fasana-e Azad could, as a printed text appearing in
installments, be compared and cross-checked. Nairang’s letter also
mediated between different pleasures: he showed concern with who
speaks a line of dialogue, an issue specific to printed texts, yet he con-
nected this concern to his pleasure, an already-established literary
value, entreating Sarshar to correct such mistakes for the sake of his
shauq, a word that connotes interest, passion, zeal, enthusiasm, and
pleasure.
Nairang’s name itself seems to have been a ruse: the word nai-
rang can mean “magic” and “sorcery,” but also “deception,” “trick,”
and “fraud.”24 This reader claimed semianonymity, giving a location
but not a name; such attempts were somewhat common in Avadh
Akhbar, especially when the reader in question was writing some-
thing critical or that could be taken as controversial. Yet these at-
tempts at semianonymity also set up the name as a possible field of
play, pointing to the distance between the public persona (the author
of a letter) and the perhaps private individual. This distance may have
been being reconfigured in the late nineteenth century.25
As editor of Avadh Akhbar, Sarshar stressed the importance of
readers revealing their names. Names were important in the public
sphere of print, as they signaled status, conferred legitimacy on the
novel as an object read by real people, and helped locate readers
within the print public sphere. When readers wrote in anonymously,
Sarshar usually entreated them to reveal their names. In Nairang’s
case, Sarshar concluded his published response with a request (iltimās)
to “kindly inform us of your noble name [nam-e name se hamen
matla‘ farma’en].” Names were also personal: since Nairang had
asked Sarshar to pay more attention to errors, the last, short para-
graph of Sarshar’s reply addressed this request but then asked Nai-
rang to disclose his name in return: “According to the kind request
92 Chapter Four

made by my absent reader [ghaibānah] Mr. Nairang, I promise to pay

greater attention to the proofs. But in his service [unki khidmat men]
I submit my request that he kindly inform us of his noble name.”
Sarshar posed his response as an individual, reciprocal exchange.
This intimacy perhaps seemed even more important in light of the
anonymity afforded by print. Significantly, readers’ names, once so-
licited, were never divulged: if anonymous readers did inform Sarshar
or the press of their identities, such information still was never pub-
lished in the paper. Intimacy along with anonymity was an important
part of the print public sphere.26
Sarshar also revised Fasana-e Azad’s book edition to delineate
that Akhtar un-Nissa and Zeenat un-Nissa were Muslim. He did this
on a few other occasions, editing the narrative in direct response to
readers’ complaints or pointing out of errors. This level of interaction
between author and readers is not readily apparent—in the case of
Fasana-e Azad, one must read the serialized newspaper version, along
with readers’ letters and Sarshar’s responses, and then compare those
sections under discussion between the newspaper version and first
book edition. But doing so reveals that early print authors such as
Sarshar revised their work in accordance with reader feedback.

Respectability and Status in the Print Public Sphere

Respectability was of paramount concern among readers. Despite an
air of openness regarding status and respectability, Sarshar and his
readers often emphasized the novel’s elite readership. The democra-
tizing potential of print existed in tension with readers’ continued
attention to social position, a fact pointing to the contested nature of
the print public sphere. Most readers signed their names and occupa-
tions, showing the importance of these status markers during this pe-
riod of social change.27 Judging from their signatures and from lists
of subscribers published regularly in Avadh Akhbar, Fasana-e Azad’s
readers constituted both traditional elites and new urban profession-
als. Many identified themselves as ra’īs, a real or honorary title for
governors or lords of an area, or as a nobleperson of similar stand-
ing.28 Others belonged to the traditional land-holding classes; Madhu
Prashad Singh, honorary assistant commissioner and ta‘luqdar (large
landowner) of Dalippur, Pratabgarh, is an example. Still others en-
gaged in new professions, including judges, lawyers, schoolteachers,
and doctors.29 Finally, many held positions in the colonial govern-
 Reading the World 93

ment, such as sarrishtahdār (record keeper) and sarrishtah-e ta‘lim

(education inspector). Letter writers were Hindus and Muslims, but
most shared an educated or elite background.

“Please Don’t Try to Find Out Who I Am”

The most controversial letter to be published in regard to Fasana-e
Azad was also the only letter written and published by a woman
reader. The letter, appearing on December 12, 1879, inspired a flurry
of activity in Avadh Akhbar. Sarshar gave the letter special attention
when publishing it. He printed it in a separate section, with a clever
title, “The Ponderings of a Judge’s Pious Wife.” Giving the section a
separate title set the letter apart from the other letters that Sarshar
published; it also emphasized the status of the reader even as it
granted her anonymity. This reader identified herself only as “Iffat,”
a word that means “chastity,” “purity,” “modesty,” and “virtue.”
She must have been aware of the uproar that the letter would cause,
and chose this alias to guard her respectability. The reader went on to
explain that she had sent the letter from another address as a further
guarantee that her identity would not be revealed. She dated it with
the Islamic calendar date, thus aligning herself with the modesty ex-
pected of elite Muslim women at the time. Her concern for her own
anonymity and respectability is clear from this and from her stern fi-
nal paragraph: “I only dared to write these things because I like your
story [fasanah] so much. Please don’t try to find out who I am. The
address on the letter will seem wrong. I wrote it in one place and sent
it from another.”30
The female reader’s main concern in the letter was to object to
Sarshar’s portrayal of a bhatiyārī, a female innkeeper, as respectable,
a sharifzādī. As the reader put it, “I like this tale. It teaches daughters
of ‘good people’ [bhale mānus] how they should be. . . . But in some
places your pen has gone astray. Why in the world did you make Bi
Allah Rakhi a sharifzādī? This wasn’t right. There’s no sin in calling
her a sharifzādī, it’s not profane in any way, but it just doesn’t sound
good to the ear. Why did you write it? What did you gain from it?
Please tell me.”31 In short, the female reader expressed doubt about
Sarshar’s transformation of a bhatiyārī named Bi Allah Rakhi into a
respectable woman. The reader’s terminology reflected the highly
contested nature of respectability in the late nineteenth century, as
traditional structures of class and status were overturned under the
94 Chapter Four

British.32 The reader alternated between two terms for “respectabil-

ity,” one new and one old: bhale mānus, which I have translated here
as “good people,” and sharifzādī, an older term that connoted the
daughter of a sharif, or respectable, family. Under the Mughals,
sharafat was defined by one’s birth as well as adherence to certain
codes of conduct. These codes covered behavior, temperament, and
taste. As David Lelyveld has usefully summarized, “A sharīf (respect-
able) man was one of dignified temperament, self-confident but not
overly aggressive, appreciative of good literature, music, and art, but
not flamboyant, familiar with mystical experience, but hardly im-
mersed in it.”33 In the second half of the nineteenth century, defini-
tions of sharafat changed.34 Respectability was no longer to be asso-
ciated with family background, or the Islamicate culture of the
Mughal court. Rather, civility and proper behavior and actions were
to be the basis of the new respectability.
The female reader alluded to this distinction between respecta-
bility based on birth and that based in civility and proper behavior, in
claiming that the novel was instructive for “daughters of good peo-
ple.” In using the term bhale mānus, she proposed a secularized defi-
nition of respectability, which transcended religious categories. The
term bhal mānsī, literally the quality of being a good person, was
used in Fasana-e Azad to move sharafat away from the connotations
of court culture and the nobility.35 The term bhale mānus did not
suggest much by itself; it was unclear by which qualities a person was
determined to belong to the group of “good people.” Yet attachment
to the notion of sharafat persisted—the reader expressed discomfort
with the idea of a bhatiyārī (low-class by virtue of profession) being
called a sharifzādī, at the same time as she opened up the idea of re-
spectability to all “daughters of good people.”
The tensions inherent to the Urdu print public sphere can be
seen in the continued controversy regarding Iffat’s letter among
Fasana-e Azad’s readers. The January 5, 1880, installment carried
another anonymous letter, this time reprimanding Sarshar for pub-
lishing, and therefore publicizing, a respectable woman’s letter. The
letter read,

Mr. Editor—after the formalities you deserve, I’d like to say that
when you get letters from proper, pardah nashin [veiled, i.e.,
respectable] women, or some veiled woman writes you something
or takes the courage to challenge something you wrote, or accord-
 Reading the World 95

ing to her understanding, submits her criticisms, that doesn’t mean

you should publish them in your newspaper. That’s not good.
You should consider that if a pardah nashin woman writes
you a letter, you shouldn’t involve others for no reason. I also
want to pay my compliments to your writing, and I’m also
sending a misra [a line of poetry] for Husn Ara to look at like
the ones [she] recited to Azad and he didn’t like: “I fear the artist
himself, that he may become [the lover’s] rival / This is why I
never had her likeness made [Khauf hai mujhko masavvir khud
nah ban baithe raqib / Isliye tasvir-e jānān main ne khinchvā’ī
nahin].”36

This reader, too, played with the conventions of fact and fiction, also
intervening in the text by suggesting a line of poetry for Husn Ara to
read. Yet Sarshar’s response focused on the reader’s anonymity,
which he connected to the rail network. He suggested that the letter
was a “fake” and could not have been written by a woman: “The
envelope only has the stamp from Lucknow. I was able to find out
that someone mailed it from a railway post office somewhere between
Kanpur and Etawah. So I couldn’t find out the address. But in my
opinion, the letter’s fake. It’s not written by any woman. God knows
all [va allah ‘alam bis savāb].”37 This issue inspired a response from
other readers as well as from Sarshar. Another reader wrote in anon-
ymously to defend Sarshar and Fasana-e Azad from the female read-
er’s charges. He explained that the female reader had focused too
much on the category of birth, emphasizing too much the suffix -zād
(to be born of) in the word sharifzādī. Giving the examples of Shaha-
razad and Dīnazad, the heroine and her younger sister of A Thou-
sand and One Nights, both of whose names ended in -zād, the reader
explained, “Regarding Bi Allah Rakhi’s character, using the word
sharifzādī is appropriate, but it’s not an [illegible] idiom [so it’s a lit-
tle unusual to hear it used in this way]. Whoever . . . has only heard
the words ‘shahzādah’ [prince] and ‘shahzādī ’ [princess], how can
they understand one’s nature just from the word zād [literally, “born
of”]? From the word zād they get stuck on this issue of being born of
someone or other.”38 Despite this rather dubious argument being
based on an amateurish linguistic analysis, the reader’s objection
seemed to cause Sarshar to make an important intervention in the
novel. In the next two days’ installments, he had Bi Allah Rakhi have
an epiphany after being called a common bazaar woman. She r­ evealed
96 Chapter Four

that she had led a “shameless” life, but, in an important moment in

the narrative, blamed this on her misdeeds (kartūt), rather than her
lineage. She went on to explain that her parents married her off to an
old man, whom she saw only once, and after he died she wanted to be
married to a good young man (bhale mānus), but the neighbors ob-
jected to a widow’s being remarried. Finally she left home, but main-
tained a chaste life.
As this example shows, readers felt comfortable intervening in
ongoing narratives such as Fasana-e Azad. In their discussions of lit-
erature and literary aesthetics, they formed a critical public, democra-
tizing literary authority away from elites and experts. Sarshar and
Fasana-e Azad’s readers fostered personal relationships in print, cre-
ating intimacy through close exchanges. Print served to deepen and
expand personal networks.39 It made possible conversations over
large geographical distances, and created a new kind of literary pub-
lic that did not operate face to face. This represented a new formation
in Urdu literary culture. Yet in their concerns for respectability and
status, readers also displayed considerable anxiety about the more
open access of print. They sketched out the contours of a public cul-
ture that was open and democratic yet highly attuned to status.
The Urdu print public sphere was contested from the very begin-
ning of commercial print culture, a reminder of how tensions over
access and authority characterized public spheres in South Asia and
elsewhere.40

A vadh P unch and the Hindi/Urdu Divide

Writing about Hindi journals and the creation of a Hindi public
sphere in the 1920s and 1930s, Francesca Orsini commented, “It was
journals, more than public associations, that carried controversies
and created news.”41 Fifty years earlier in Urdu, the print public
sphere was wracked by controversy and debate. Journals such as
Avadh Punch created literary controversies, likely in an attempt to
garner publicity and attract readers. From its founding in 1877,
Avadh Punch attacked Avadh Akhbar, its more successful competing
periodical in Lucknow. It also relentlessly denigrated Naval Kishore,
Avadh Akhbar’s owner and proprietor of the Naval Kishore Press, by
calling him a baniya, a sly reference to Kishore’s caste, which was
originally Dhusar, a merchant caste for which baniya could be a de-
rogatory term.42 In 1879, Avadh Punch began attacking Fasana-e
 Reading the World 97

Azad and Sarshar, using Sarshar’s ethnic and religious identity as a

Kashmiri Hindu, to imply that such a writer could not be a master of
the Urdu language. In doing so, Avadh Punch participated in a lan-
guage movement begun in the 1860s to separate Urdu, recast as a
language of Muslims and written in a script derived from Persian and
Arabic, from Hindi, cast as a language of Hindus written in the Deva-
nagari script derived from Sanskrit. With its attacks on Sarshar, the
personal became political, and the Urdu cosmopolis quickly became
splintered by a new, late nineteenth-century association between lan-
guage and religion, which linked “vernacular languages [with] reli-
gious communities,” an association in which print played an impor-
tant role.43
A brief summary of the Hindi/Urdu controversy deserves a short
paragraph here. Until British colonialism, the official language of ad-
ministration of the Mughal Empire had been Persian. In 1837, the
colonial government in the Northwestern Provinces changed the lan-
guage of administration from Persian to Hindustani, the language
that later became known as Urdu, arguing that the language of ad-
ministration should be the vernacular; in 1858, the government did
the same in Oudh (Avadh). However, the question of determining the
vernacular was complex; in colonial South Asia many languages
flourished, sometimes written in multiple scripts and with many pos-
sible linguistic registers, vocabularies, and literary styles. The rise of a
movement arguing for a language called Hindi, which would be writ-
ten in the Devanagari script and associated with Hindus, began in the
1860s. This process culminated at the turn of the twentieth century
with the formation of the Nagari Pracharini Sabha, an organization
that promoted the use of Hindi in the Nagari (short for Devanagari)
script, one of the key features by which Hindi was separated from
Urdu.44 As Farina Mir has usefully summarized,

From the 1860s, the partisans of Hindi argued that Urdu was a Muslim
language and Hindi was the language of Hindus. Since Hindus consti-
tuted a majority in the area, their logic went, Hindi should be the offi-
cial language in these provinces. Partisans of Urdu argued its merits as
the official language, suggesting that Hindi would be ill suited to gov-
ernment use. Advocates from both camps petitioned the colonial state
and tried to sway public opinion through literary journals and societ-
ies. Hindi agitators succeeded in gaining official recognition for Hindi
in 1900, but this was only a partial victory because Hindi did not
98 Chapter Four

r­ eplace Urdu. Rather, it was recognized alongside Urdu as an official

language in NWP [Northwestern Provinces] and Oudh.45

As Avadh Punch was an Urdu magazine, it never advocated for

Hindi, nor did it comment explicitly on the Hindi/Urdu controversy.46
However, in associating Urdu with Muslims, Avadh Punch partici-
pated in the reframing of Urdu as a Muslim language, though it at-
tacked Sarshar as much for being a Kashmiri as for being a Hindu.
The print public sphere in Urdu mediated between old and new
literary tastes and qualities, often seamlessly blending a focus on lan-
guage (long an interest of Urdu poets) with debates on the role of
newspapers in late nineteenth-century print culture. Over the period
1880–1884, in a series of articles titled “Avadh Akhbar ki Dhajjiyān”
or “Fasana-e Azad ke Parakhche” (The Scraps of Avadh Akhbar or
Fasana-e Azad), the writers at Avadh Punch attacked both, on the
grounds of improper language use, of moral impropriety, of Avadh
Akhbar’s not living up to its claim to be a cultured and uplifting
newspaper, and finally, of Naval Kishore’s being a member of the
Hindu merchant caste. In these attacks, Avadh Punch referred to
older literary standards and codes of conduct in the public sphere, by
which the proper use of language was often the sine qua non for judg-
ing literary quality.47 Yet Avadh Punch also referred to distinctly late
nineteenth-century concerns for moral propriety, against the back-
drop of a colonial discourse on obscenity, and in accord with the idea
that newspapers could and should be instrumental in bringing about
national progress.
During this period, Avadh Punch, in its “Scraps of Fasana-e
Azad” articles, suggested that it had torn the novel to shreds. It also
published line-by-line critiques, showing the propensity of a printed
text to be dissected and discussed as a public object. In 1882, Avadh
Punch published a four-part series, signed by three authors, which
attacked Fasana-e Azad on four bases: its depiction of love, its lan-
guage, the possibility that it might not constitute a novel, and its
­failure to be edifying and promote moral progress.
One article, “The Scraps of Baniya Akhbar” (Baniya Akhbar ki
Dhajjiyān), published in Avadh Punch on July 20, 1880, presents
these concerns. This article was featured prominently, its title printed
in an extralarge font. The article may have been the work of several
writers at Avadh Punch: each “scrap” was signed separately, with
some signed “Allahabad,” most likely a reference to Akbar Alla-
 Reading the World 99

habadi, and others signed with anonymous or facetious names: “A.”

in the case of the second “scrap”; “Readers of Tahzib ul-Akhlaq [the
journal published by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan] and Well-Wishers of
the Urdu Language” in the third “scrap”; and “Let it be known! A. B.
has defeated Mr. P.!” (Alif Be nigāra (naqqārah) Pe ko khet men
pichāra) (in the fourth, a “scrap” about using Fasana-e Azad as fod-
der for oxen). Anonymity seems to have been useful for this particu-
larly venomous attack, while the fact of multiple authors suggested
that the piece was a group effort, representing the opinions of the
entire journal.
The first “scrap” attacked Avadh Akhbar for not producing real
zarafat, or humor. Sarshar was also concerned for the moral propri-
ety of zarafat in Fasana-e Azad (as I discussed in chapter 2). Yet
Avadh Punch, a satirical journal that declared its primary aim to be
zarafat, consistently attacked Avadh Akhbar, and Sarshar, for not
producing “real” zarafat. If Fasana-e Azad’s readers were keen to
promote their understanding of zarafat as an “ornamentation” for
moral aims, Avadh Punch insisted, this was not zarafat at all. Avadh
Punch referred to Avadh Akhbar as Baniya Akhbar, which could
mean the “Hawker’s Newspaper,” or the “Sellout Newspaper,” re-
ferring to its loyalist policy toward the colonial government.48 The
main attack follows:

The Scraps of Baniya Akhbar

The First Scrap

(Zarafat)

Avadh Akhbar’s use of [the word] zarafat in this “cultured fashion,”

though understanding it is quite difficult, still must be praised. Upon
seeing the title “zarafat,” one thinks that some humorous topic [latīf
mazmun] decorated by zarafat would be presented, which would please
the heart. But whenever you see the topics, there’s no zarafat, never
mind latāfat [subtlety]. There’s just the “force of culture” [shiddat-e
tahzib] and the “requirements of knowledge” [dānishmandī ka iqtizā].
You call it zarafat and then write a story [afsānah].
Under the title of zarafat, you’re reading marsiyas by Anis and
Dabir. In the July 10 installment, under the title of zarafat, you have a
topic that is very clearly about how the people of Hind blame fate for
100 Chapter Four

their problems and cause their own misfortune, and then there was a
naql [anecdote] completely against reason.
In conclusion, this is a style of writing zarafat that never occurred to
Avadh Punch or Delhi Punch, but only because he is a very capable
man, untouched by foolishness, who is capable of writing these topics,
we have included here some examples below:

Zarafat, Zarafat, Zarafat

[Example 1.] Avadh Akhbar is published daily and contains transla-

tions from English newspapers as well as Fasana-e Azad.
Audience: Bravo, what artistry! Ha ha ha ha ha.
[Example 2.] “O Benevolent One [i.e., God], forgive us our sorry state /
For I am trapped in the snares of sin [the word for sin could also
here be understood as flatulence].”49

Audience (smiling): All right. Let’s hear another.

“The day that the plane trees are frosted over in Badakshan /
The snake’s [fine] skin becomes Damascus faluda” [i.e., a nonsense
verse].

Audience (chuckling): Hilarious!

[Example 3.] There was a man named Azad who was superstitious.
He asked a Pandit to find an auspicious time for him to marry, but by
coincidence, a Pandata’in [female Pandit] who was beautiful [in Urdu a
set of rhyming words: rangīli chel chabīlī, shakar lab sīm ghabghab,
malā’ik-e nazar fareb, tā’ūs-e zeb . . . ] passed by, but what’s this? She
suddenly disappeared [fauran ghā’ib ya mazhar ul-ajā’ib]. Azad was a
naughty person and thought nothing of flirting with women, at that
time he said nothing but in the evening he went straight to her house,
“Whatever will be, will be.”
Audience: Ha ha ha ha.
—“Allahabad”50

This “first scrap” attacked Avadh Akhbar on the basis of its

zarafat. It suggested that Avadh Akhbar’s zarafat was too edifying,
too full of serious topics to be considered true zarafat. The writer
 Reading the World 101

connected two terms, zarafat and latāfat, “humor”/“wit” and

“delicacy”/“elegance.” Both zarafat and latāfat suggested verbal wit
and pleasure, and elegance of construction. The writer suggested that
humor required a certain sophistication and artfulness: for real zara-
fat, one needed an appropriately humorous and delicate (latīf, the
adjective form of latāfat) topic, ornamented by clever and beautifully
constructed words—that is, zarafat. Avadh Akhbar, with its serious
topics and concern for “culture,” was missing the purpose of zarafat,
which was pleasure, artfully made.51
Avadh Punch’s point about zarafat was strengthened by the fol-
lowing three examples, labeled sarcastically “Zarafat, Zarafat, Zara-
fat.” The first example represented unembellished prose, with no hu-
mor whatsoever. Yet, in a critique of Fasana-e Azad’s readers, Avadh
Punch showed the audience extolling this example’s artistry. By con-
trast, the third example was embellished, using the rhyming prose
style characteristic of the dastan (romance) genre, but the ideas
within it were ridiculous and morally untenable. This third example
parodied Fasana-e Azad’s prose style, with only slight exaggeration
showing its rhyming prose to be excessive. The Avadh Punch writer
would say it lacked latāfat: it was not balanced or elegant but rather
seemed layered on, as if to disguise the baseness of its subject matter.
The second example criticized Avadh Akhbar for its poor taste in
verse by citing two verses; the first was copied from a standard ethi-
cal text, yet its last word, havā, could be misunderstood in Urdu as
meaning “flatulence,” thus making the verse appear course and un-
cultured; if this was Avadh Akhbar’s zarafat, Avadh Punch implied,
then it lacked sophistication and linguistic skill. The second verse
was nonsensical yet was celebrated by the audience. Thus, this re-
view claimed, both Avadh Akhbar’s zarafat, and its audience’s taste,
were shown ­deficient.
In another “Scraps” piece, “The Scraps of Fasana-e Azad” (pub-
lished on July 6, 1880), Avadh Punch attacked the moral impropriety
of Fasana-e Azad, suggesting that what it lacked in originality and
literary quality was made up for in sensational indecency. The article
was posed as a critique of Fasana-e Azad’s second volume, which had
just begun publication that July 1. Bold and very large-font letters
highlighted the key words of the article. It began,

The first installment of the next volume of Fasana-e Azad, which is full
of lust, and the granny of the sandfish [a kind of lizard that hides in the
102 Chapter Four

sand],52 appearing on July 1, 1880, in Baniya Akhbar, has caused great

excitement [bilbilāhat] among the youth. Alas, that before marriage
[we should have] this kissing and lip-sucking! Now hold on a minute.53
We hope this is fictional [farzi], otherwise the high-class, modest ladies
of Europe must not kiss the lips of their intended husbands before mar-
riage, although there is nothing wrong with this. And for the protection
of the principles of modesty, to the extent that there is nonsense [ghach
pach], it is for the progress of their community and the cultivation of
their society, but even in Europe there hasn’t been this much culture
yet. Anyway, whatever was written is for the beauty of the writing and
the correctness of the morals of the women of India and for the prog-
ress of the culture of the youth, so as far as it’s exaggeration disguised
as real events it’s appropriate and for our own benefit.54

This passage attacked the beginning of Fasana-e Azad’s second vol-

ume. The opening of this volume contains a long flashback regarding
the courtship of a young Englishwoman named Vanessa and a Lieu-
tenant Appleton, an officer in the British army. Azad met both per-
sons on the steamship to Constantinople when he was en route to
fight in the Russo-Turkish War. The scene represents a startling ex-
ample of an Indian “writing back” to Empire, picturing a young Eng-
lish woman and her lover, translated into the Urdu language and an
Urdu idiom. The two lovers suffer the pangs of separation, as did
Azad and his fiancée, Husn Ara, in the novel, and when they reflect
on this, both Vanessa and Lieutenant Appleton recite Urdu verses to
express their longing. Within this indigenization of English charac-
ters, Sarshar also offered a notable critique of racism by British army
officers. When Vanessa asks Appleton about life in Hindustan, and
he replies that it was excellent, since costs were low and the natives
were afraid of British people, Vanessa protests that the Hindustani
people should be treated as the British would treat their own country-
men [hamvatan] and not be called “niggers.” She adds that, if she
lived in Hindustan, she would mix freely with rich Hindustani ladies
and good people [bhale mānus], though Appleton responds that the
entire Hindustani way of life [tarz-e mu‘asharat] is different and this
task would not be so simple.
Significantly, Avadh Punch singled out the two characters’ kiss-
ing as the most important element of the episode, ignoring the others.
It appears that Avadh Punch tried to attack Fasana-e Azad and Avadh
Akhbar on any grounds it could, justified or not. But Avadh Punch’s
 Reading the World 103

particular attention to moral propriety—a concern it echoed in the

third “scrap,” suggesting there that including Fasana-e Azad in
Avadh Akhbar was like having prostitutes testify before Sir Sayyid
Ahmad Khan, the nineteenth-century Muslim reformer and modern-
ist55—also indicates the larger discourse on obscenity that was devel-
oping in the late nineteenth century. Charu Gupta and others have
documented how, in that period, middle-class Hindu reformers en-
tered a “moral panic” about obscenity.56 The first obscenity laws in
India were passed in 1868 and were a subject of great debate among
British officials there through the 1870s. Avadh Punch drew on this
discourse in attacking Fasana-e Azad for moral impropriety.
Avadh Punch also responded to Sarshar and Avadh Akhbar’s
claims to be working for the moral benefit and progress of the com-
munity (qaum). In his first editorial as editor of Avadh Akhbar, Sar-
shar had announced that among his goals were “to teach [readers]
ethics [akhlaq ki bāten]” and to “illuminate the dark chambers of
their hearts with the light of the sun of culture [tahzib].”57 Avadh
Punch picked up on these very key words in its attack, suggesting
that these were ruses behind which Sarshar was happy to publish li-
centious material.
Although Avadh Punch’s attack may have been unjustified, Sar-
shar was keenly aware of it; he made changes to Fasana-e Azad in
response not only to readers but also to Avadh Punch. No sooner had
Avadh Punch’s attack been published than Sarshar had his ­Lieutenant
Appleton repent his kiss, in that very day’s installment of Fasana-e
Azad. The speed of this response was striking: Sarshar would have
had to have read the July 6 issue of Avadh Punch, then written the
Fasana-e Azad installment immediately.
The most common criteria by which Avadh Punch criticized
Fasana-e Azad concerned its usage of language. Some of the “Scraps”
were dedicated wholly to this, and criticized Fasana-e Azad by page
number, quoting from the text. In these critiques, Avadh Punch sug-
gested that Sarshar and his readers did not know proper Urdu—a
mode of critique that referenced a long tradition of debate and analy-
sis based on the proper use of Urdu language and idioms.58
Such a practice made more sense in the extremely competitive
atmosphere of classical Urdu poetry, whose mainstay was the ghazal,
a lyric poem in which the basic unit was a couplet. An entire couplet,
and by extension a poet’s works, could be dismissed on the basis of a
misplaced or less-than-ideal word.
104 Chapter Four

Debates over poetic diction also extended to regional rivalries.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an intense rivalry devel-
oped between the writers in two different literary centers (markaz)
for Urdu, Delhi, and Lucknow. Writers in both centers claimed that
only their style of Urdu was the most esteemed and proper style of the
language. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was commonplace to as-
sert a “two school” theory of Urdu literature; literary critics asserted
that poetry produced in either Delhi or Lucknow had its own set of
characteristics. More recently this theory has been disproven, but it
points to the ardor with which debates over language use raged in
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Urdu literary culture.59
Avadh Punch in many respects continued this attention to
­correct and proper language use, but then it added another compo-
nent. In a continued attempt to create grounds on which to criticize
Fasana-e Azad, the paper insinuated that, as a Hindu whose family
had migrated from Kashmir, Sarshar did not belong to ahl-e zabān
(“people of the language”), a category used to distinguish natural
masters of the language. In this critique, Avadh Punch drew on an
emerging discourse of language and religion—a discourse in which
Urdu was redefined as a language of Muslims, and separated from
Hindi, defined as a language of Hindus. It is unclear why Avadh
Punch chose to involve itself in this debate, but it extended this policy
into the early twentieth century, when the Urdu historical novelist
and journalist Abdul Halim Sharar viciously attacked Gulzar-e Na-
sim, an Urdu poem by Daya Shankar “Nasim,” another Hindu and
Kashmiri, on the same grounds.60
In attacks on Fasana-e Azad, Avadh Punch writers depended
on Fasana-e Azad’s existence in print to allow line-by-line compari-
sons. When Fasana-e Azad’s second volume began publication in
September 1880, the articles expanded the “Scraps” method of at-
tacking Fasana-e Azad by page number and text quotation, to in-
clude page, column, and line number. Such a line-by-line critique
was not only consistent with preprint Urdu literary culture’s atten-
tion to fine detail, but also allowed readers to “follow along,” per-
haps with Fasana-e Azad open before them for comparison. This
fact points to the ways that book culture continued previous oral
practices while at the same time democratizing access to them. In
the moment of following along with such a critique, readers formed
a critical community of interpretation, united by the act of simulta-
neous analytical reading.
 Reading the World 105

Avadh Punch in these critiques asserted itself as a literary au-

thority, one that could chasten Fasana-e Azad’s language usage. The
October 5, 1880, “Shreds of Fasana-e Azad” piece began, “On your
guard! Please write Fasana-e Azad a little more carefully and prop-
erly! Mr. Avadh Punch is here on your head to correct your senses
[havās].”61 Avadh Punch posed itself as a vigilant critic, ready to
pounce on any mistakes. In doing so, it appropriated the function of
the preprint ustad, who might nitpick an author’s language use both
for the good of literary quality and to demonstrate his superiority
(and that of his students). Whereas the preprint ustad operated largely
in private contexts, Avadh Punch’s attacks were public. The journal
thus posed itself as a public-sphere, print counterpart of the private
ustad of oral Urdu literary culture.
Some of Avadh Punch’s writers moved quickly from attacking
an error or unidiomatic usage to attacking Sarshar personally for his
religion and ethnicity. For example, in an anonymous piece, “This is
no piece of cake!” (literally, “What does he know of the taste of gin-
ger?” [Che dānad būz nah lazzat-e adrak]), Avadh Punch moved di-
rectly from criticizing Sarshar’s language to a personal attack based
on his identity as a Hindu. The article took on Sarshar’s second novel,
Fasana-e Jadid, which had begun serial publication in Avadh Akhbar
in July 1880.62 It began by saying, “Baniya Akhbar, and claiming to
know about Muslim foods! That’s a hard nut to crack!” (Yeh munh
yeh masale! [This mouth and trying these spices!]). The politics of
this review were clear: because Avadh Akhbar was run by a high-
caste Hindu, Naval Kishore, and since, by extension, this new novel
was also written by a high-caste Hindu, it was impossible that either
would have expertise on Muslim foods. This claim was inaccurate,
however, as Sarshar had grown up in Lucknow, and both Sarshar
and Kishore actively participated in the shared elite culture of Luck­
now, which adopted many of the cultural practices of the previous
Avadh court.63 But the attack continued, spelled out by the reviewer
at the end of the article: “Our point is, before you show your stupid-
ity by claiming your prowess in a field in which you have none, you
should first spend some time in the company of the people you write
about, and become familiar with their language, behavior, customs,
demeanor, and cuisine. Otherwise writing a novel, and that too about
Muslims and in the language of Muslims, is a hefty task indeed.”64
Clearly, the anonymous reviewer has moved quickly from denounc-
ing minor mistakes to concluding that Sarshar lacked familiarity with
106 Chapter Four

Muslims and Urdu, the latter now redefined as “the language of

­Muslims.”
Other “Scraps” articles took on the issue of women’s respecta-
bility, particularly Muslim women’s, to insinuate that Sarshar, as a
Hindu, was not familiar with Muslim cultural practices. For exam-
ple, the October 5, 1880, piece singled out Sarshar’s portrayal of the
heroine’s sister as using the Divan-e Hafiz, the poetic anthology of
Persian poet Hafiz Shirazi (1315–1390), to auger good “omens”
(fāl). The article cited by page number and quotation the offending
passage:

On page twenty-three . . . Sipahr Ara [said], “Look mother, I’ve

brought Divan-e Hafiz,” and her mother [replied], “Good, now look
for an omen and Khurshid, your brother-in-law, will explain what it
means.” Well done! An omen [to explain] the Evil Eye, and that too in
Divan-e Hafiz! Don’t you at least know they [Muslims] don’t look for
omens this way? And to make things worse, you decide to write a novel
about Muslims! Devīs, bhavānīs [both words for Hindu goddesses],
puja [worship of Hindu deities], daises and hymns—better you “show
your skill” on these rather than set foot in this difficult field [of writing
about Muslims].65

This same review had also objected to Sarshar’s depiction of the hero-
ines’ drying of their hair: “[Page] 35. ‘Husn Ara’s hair dangled here
and there from the bed.’ Most [women] keep their hair braided or
tied. For a woman as refined and ‘delicate’ as Husn Ara to keep her
hair unbraided for no reason like this would be considered improper
[ma‘yūb].” Here the reviewer suggested that Sarshar was unfamiliar
with respectable Muslim ladies, showing his lack of familiarity by
referring to the still common practice of drying one’s hair by spread-
ing it out along some horizontal surface, or in the sun.
Finally, a writer at Avadh Punch, Sitam Zarif, the pen name for
Mirza Macchu Beg (1835–1894), implied that as a man of Kashmiri
background, Sarshar did not truly belong to the set of writers who
could be considered true masters of the Urdu language (ahl-e zabān).
This critique accused Sarshar of not knowing the language of “the
city,” meaning Lucknow, which Avadh Punch considered the c­ ultural
center (markaz) of Urdu.
In the third segment of a multipart critique of Fasana-e Azad’s
next (that is, second) volume, Sitam Zarif flayed Sarshar’s language
 Reading the World 107

for being influenced by Dakkani (also known as Deccani) and Pun-

jabi, from the southern and northwestern regions of South Asia, re-
spectively: “On page twenty-six [he wrote], ‘Now I’ll tell you clearly.
Hū, understand what I’m saying.’ I’ve tried to read this ‘hū’ every
which way, but I can’t make sense of it. I even tried making it a Dak-
kani ‘hū,’ but it still makes no sense. There must be something
elided—perhaps the Pandit sahib learned it from some textbook of
rhetoric.” And Sitam Zarif continued to attack Sarshar’s language:
“On the same page, column 2, line 3, ‘We used to play together, sis-
ter, we played together for years.’ All right, we understand you used
to play together—why don’t you say, ‘We were fed out of the same
laps [godiyon khilāyā]’ [a play on the proper idiom god khilānā (‘to
feed from one’s lap’ or ‘to raise’ a child)].” And “Oh, I’m sorry, that
would be incorrect,” Sitam Zarif continued mockingly, “or correct
only in Punjabi,” probably referring to the northwestern registers of
Urdu spoken around Delhi (not the language spoken in present-day
northwest India and Pakistan). “Here you’re playing with our city’s
idioms,” Sitam Zarif concluded, having come to the main point, “and
feeding them [to children] out of the same laps”—a turn of wit, it
would appear, on Sarshar’s original objectionable idiom “We used to
play together.”66
Avadh Punch, in its attacks on Fasana-e Azad, exemplified the
ways that literary discussion shifted in the late nineteenth century’s
age of print. On the one hand, Avadh Punch drew on previous con-
cerns in Urdu literary culture for the correctness of language: it was
calling on the idea that humor (zarafat) should be artfully constructed
and show elegance (latāfat), and, even in its personal attacks on
Avadh Akhbar and Naval Kishore, it continued the tradition of com-
petition between ustads and their students in the combative atmo-
sphere of classical Urdu poetry. On the other hand, however, Avadh
Punch’s critiques were also unmistakably located in the context of
late nineteenth-century aesthetic, literary, cultural, and social de-
bates. They made use of the conventions of print, attacking Fasana-e
Azad line by line to enable wide-scale critique and public judgment.
They participated in an emerging discourse on obscenity, as well as
on Victorian concerns for moral propriety in literature, concerns
­promoted by British government officials in India and adopted by
many Urdu reformers. And finally, they furthered a new connection
among language, religion, and region that grew in nineteenth-century
South Asia.
108 Chapter Four

Indeed, debates about literary aesthetics were at the center of

new connections among and reconfigurations of identity, language,
and linguistic and religious communities in the colonial period. The
Hindi/Urdu controversy of the 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s even-
tually led to a formal divide between Hindi and Urdu, at least on the
level of rhetoric (on the spoken level, however, even today the two
languages remain almost indistinguishable in everyday speech). In the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Hindi intellectuals, at-
tempting to pose Hindi as the national language of India, turned their
efforts toward creating a “national literature,” whose growth would
reflect “the degree of development of the nation itself.”67 Literature
became a key arena in which categories such as “the people” were
worked out.68 The divisive politics between Hindi and Urdu activists
continued into the twentieth century, through Independence and the
partition of British India into India and Pakistan, after which Urdu
became the national language of Pakistan, thus cementing its status
as a language of Muslims. Even though early twentieth-century Urdu
“advocates, educators, and literary critics . . . employed Urdu not
simply as a tool in the articulation of their identitarian claims but as
the grounds on which they grappled with the most pressing questions
of early twentieth century South Asian political history, namely the
shape and future of a secular national culture,”69 Urdu’s identifica-
tion with Muslims continued into Independence and p ­ ost-Independence
South Asia. The late nineteenth-century critical public of the Urdu
cosmopolis, defined by its debating modernity, appeared to have been
mostly lost.
Yet the critical space that I have identified in this volume as
opened up by the Urdu cosmopolis through print, in which readers
and writers debated and critiqued modernity in its locally competing
forms, represented a powerful force of dissent. The ability to critique
the colonial state, to satirize new forms of personhood, and to open
colonial discourse up to dispute and argument was not lost in the
twentieth century. Rather, it reappeared in other forms and other lo-
cations, sustaining aspects of the Urdu cosmopolis through the colo-
nial period and into the postcolonial present.
 Conclusion

New Spaces of the Urdu Cosmopolis

T his book has traced the formation of an Urdu cosmopolis, a

transnational language community that eschewed identities of
religion, caste, and even class. This community came into being
through print, as readers-listeners from across British India were
brought into mutual contact and formed a critical community in the
pages of periodicals. Yet the Urdu cosmopolis would be quickly frac-
tured and risked being broken by the forces of nationalism and com-
munalism. Many factors threatened to split the secular critical ethos
that had been central to the Urdu cosmopolis in the late nineteenth
century: the split between Hindi and Urdu from the 1860s onward;
the birth of the nationalist movement and the eventual call for a sepa-
rate homeland for Muslims, whose language would be Urdu; and the
traumas of Partition.
Yet the Urdu cosmopolis persists into the present, though in dif-
ferent forms. Although it originated in the publishing centers and
railway cities and towns of British India, today the Urdu cosmopolis
flourishes in film, television, and online. It has moved beyond the ar-
eas discussed in this book; its centers have shifted and expanded to
Pakistan, the Middle East, and the global Urdu-speaking diaspora.
This expansion goes against the narrative of the decline of Urdu in
India; Urdu flourishes in spaces and media outside its core. In its use
among migrant communities in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Ara-
bia, Qatar, and Oman; in the Pakistani diaspora in the United King-
dom, United States, Canada, and Europe; and most recently as a
world-girdling circulating language of electronic media, Urdu contin-
ues to be a global language. Its strong tradition as a language of

109
110 Conclusion

s­ ecular, critical modernity does not end in the late nineteenth century
but rather reappears in other forms and locations.
Two moments of Urdu cosmopolitanism from the colonial and
postcolonial periods illustrate this. The first moment comes from the
1930s through 1960s, when a wave of radical artistic movements,
called “progressive,” swept across the emerging nation-states of India
and Pakistan. Taking inspiration from both the Russian Revolution
and the Bloomsbury Group, the progressives called for a new vision
of art that would uplift the “masses” and achieve social and political
progress. The all-India Progressive Writers’ Association promoted so-
cial realism, rejecting fantastical and epic modes and advocating for
literature as a mode for awakening political consciousness rather
than for entertainment.1 In his inaugural address to the first Progres-
sive Writers’ Conference, held in Lucknow on April 9, 1936, the
Hindi-Urdu novelist and short story writer Premchand (1880–1936)
explained,

As long as the aim of literature was only to provide entertainment, to

put us to sleep by singing lullabies and make us shed a few tears in or-
der to lighten our hearts, it had no need for action. It was like a mad
lover whose sorrow was felt by others; but in our mind literature is not
only a plaything for entertainment and sensual enjoyment. The only
literature that will pass our test is that which contains high thinking, a
sense of freedom, the essence of beauty, the soul of creativity and the
light that emanates from the truths of life, a literature which instills in
us dynamism and restlessness, not sleep; because to go on sleeping now
would be a sign of death.2

Calling for a literature that awakens humanity’s capacity for action,

Premchand outlined a vision of art in which art would work to “re-
fine” readers’ minds, thus preparing them to work for social uplift.
He declared that the goal of literature is to produce progress, which
he defined as “the condition which produces in us the resolve and
energy to act, that which makes us realize the unhappy state we are
in, the internal and external causes which have brought us to this
wretched and lifeless state, and that which makes us strive to remove
them.”3
The circle of writers active in the all-India Progressive Writers’
Association, which during its heyday included such renowned Hindi-
Urdu prose writers as Sajjad Zaheer (1905–1973), Rashid Jahan
 New Spaces of the Urdu Cosmopolis 111

(1905–1952), Mulk Raj Anand (1905–2004), K. A. Abbas (1914–

1987), Rajinder Singh Bedi (1915–1984), Krishan Chander (1914–
1977), Ismat Chughtai (1915–1991), and Saadat Hasan Manto
(1912–1955), produced pathbreaking short stories and novels from
the 1930s to the 1960s. Their writing explored themes of gender,
sexuality, psychological violence, physical distress, and the material
conditions of human suffering. For their open and frank explorations
of sexuality and violence, including the traumas enacted during the
Partition of India and Pakistan, Ismat Chughtai and Manto both
faced legal charges of obscenity, which they successfully defended
against in several court cases. In the decades leading to the Indepen-
dence of India and Pakistan, progressive writings also interrogated
the idea of the nation, casting it as a “terrain of struggle,” an imagi-
nary to be explored and constructed rather than a political given.4
Progressive writing often advocated a humanist vision contrast-
ing shared humanity to national, communal, religious, and class
boundaries. This continued the self-critical tradition inaugurated by
late nineteenth-century novelists such as Sarshar and Bankimchandra
Chatterjee. An example is Rajinder Singh Bedi’s short story
“Lajwanti.” Published after Partition, the story examines the return
of the female protagonist Lajwanti, whose name is also the name of
the touch-me-not (chu’i mu’i) plant, after her abduction by Muslims
during the family’s migration from Pakistan to India during Partition.
The story is focused largely on the efforts of Lajwanti’s husband,
Sunder Lal, in campaigning for the reintegration of abducted women
in Ludhiana (Punjab, India), site of the tale. Using the slogan “Reha-
bilitate them in your hearts,” Sunder Lal argued relentlessly for ab-
ducted women to be accepted, bolstering his arguments through both
patriarchal views of women and the Hindu epic story Ramayana:

Once, if only once, I get my Lajo back, I shall enshrine her in my heart.
I shall tell others that these poor women were blameless, it was no fault
of theirs that they were abducted, that they fell prey to the brutal pas-
sions of the rioters. . . . With all the eloquence at his command he
pleaded and preached that such women be given the status normally
accorded to wives, sisters, mothers and daughters in a home, and that
not even by hint or suggestion should they ever be reminded of the hei-
nous torments to which they had been subjected. Their hearts were
torn and bleeding, for they were delicate, tender, like the touch-me-not
plant.5
112 Conclusion

On the one hand, Sunder Lal portrayed women as innocent victims,

as fragile as the plant that is Lajwanti’s namesake. He thus robbed
them of sexual agency, instead drawing on nationalist discourse that
framed women as “wives, sisters, mothers and daughters.” On the
other hand, he responded to “a group of devoted and god-fearing
men,” who used the Ramayana story of Ram turning out his wife Sita
after she had been abducted by the demon king Ravana to argue that
abducted women should not be accepted: “Today, Ram has again
rejected and expelled Sita from his house because she has spent some
time with Ravana. But what was Sita’s fault? Was she not the victim
of treachery and betrayal, like so many of our mothers and sisters?
. . . Today, our sisters have been turned out of their homes for no
fault of theirs . . . Sita . . . Lajwanti. . . .”6 Here Sunder Lal marshaled
Hindu scripture to compare Lajwanti directly with Sita, emphasizing
both women’s innocence and maltreatment. Both arguments posed
woman as an abstract ideal.
In contrast, Bedi highlighted the embodied reality when describ-
ing female bodies, such as Lajwanti’s tattoo marks “that she had fan-
cifully got pricked into her body while yet a child,”7 or the “rosy
dimple” that appears on a woman’s flesh when touched by the finger
of a seller in the marketplace: “Where the finger touches the flesh, a
rosy dimple appears and around it a pale circle and then the rose and
the pale rush and run into each other, fusing and changing places.”8
This contrast between the concrete reality of the body and Sunder
Lal’s abstract arguments led to the key irony at the heart of the sto-
ry’s climax, in which Sunder Lal was reunited with Lajwanti, only to
reidealize her as a devi or goddess. This abstraction is based on Sun-
der Lal’s misrecognition of Lajwanti’s physical appearance after she
returned:

Sunder Lal realized with something of a shock that Lajo’s complexion

had become fresher and brighter, that she now looked healthier—she
had almost become plump. Whatever Sunder Lal had thought about
her had turned out to be wrong. He had imagined that the suffering
and torture would have reduced Lajo to a mere skeleton and that she
would not even have the strength to utter a few words. . . . He did not
know that it was suffering that made her look plump: her flesh had
loosened from her bones and sagged. This was a kind of plumpness
which is but an illusion of health.9
 New Spaces of the Urdu Cosmopolis 113

This final idealization alienated Lajwanti from her physical form:

“She curled up, sobbing in her helplessness and gazing at her body
which had become the body of a devi and was not her own—not
Lajwanti’s.” Her initial happiness at Sunder Lal’s kindness turned to
doubt, as Lajwanti became lost in the relationship of “devi” and
“worshipper.” The story ended with a paradox: “She had got back
everything and yet she had lost everything. She was rehabilitated and
she was ruined.”10
Lajwanti’s “rehabilitation” rested on Sunder Lal’s transforma-
tion of her into a goddess and refusal to hear her suffering. It stripped
her of her individual humanity, reducing her to an idea, echoing the
objectification of Lajwanti as a non-Muslim female body to be ab-
ducted during Partition. The story suggested that Lajwanti’s individ-
ual, corporal reality had been lost within the abstract categories of
Hindu and Muslim, Indian and Pakistani, male and female, abducted
and rehabilitated, victim and goddess.
“Lajwanti” has been read as a site of female silence. Sunder Lal’s
refusal to hear Lajwanti narrate her suffering indexes the difference
between history and memory, or that which is captured in official
narrative versus survivors’ accounts of what was experienced.11 Be-
di’s focus on the body resisted official accounts and historiography
that focused on causes and the “ ‘high politics’ of major players such
as the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League, Gandhi, Ne-
hru, Jinnah, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Master Tara Singh, and oth-
ers,” leaving “much else . . . pushed aside, silenced, and left unexam-
ined.”12 It offered, instead, individual experience as physically
embodied and radically unnarratable.13
The all-India Progressive Writers’ Association was consciously
cosmopolitan, and resisted both communalism and nationalism in its
work to redefine literature as dedicated to the uplift of the masses.
This work included resistance to the split between Hindi and Urdu.
Early in its formation, founding members Premchand and Sajjad Za-
heer tried to affect a rapprochement between writers working in
Hindi and those writing in Urdu. In a letter addressed to Zaheer in
1936, Premchand explained that he had formed a Hindustani Sabha,
an organization to promote the use of Hindustani as a simple lan-
guage of everyday speech, so that “writers of Urdu and Hindi might
exchange their ideas through it. The damage which has been done by
politicians has to be overcome by writers.”14 This effort failed, but
the movement did eventually come to include Urdu writers from a
114 Conclusion

spectrum of religions, personal backgrounds, and regions. In its ide-

ology, the all-India Progressive Writers’ Association consciously
aimed to resist the divisive forms of identity politics that increasingly
occupied the Indian and Pakistani nationalist movements of the years
immediately preceding Independence and Partition.
In our time, another moment of Urdu cosmopolitanism is emerg-
ing in the digital present. The liberalization of Pakistani electronic
media in 2002 has produced a thriving television scene. In 2002,
Paki­stan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, concerned about Pakistanis’
consumption of Indian media coverage of the 1999 Kargil conflict
between India and Pakistan, deregulated the media.15 Despite re-
peated crackdowns by the Pakistani government on private television
and radio channels since then, the spread of private electronic media
has been prodigious. From approximately four state-owned PTV
(Pakistani Television) channels prior to 2002, there are, as of this
writing, around one hundred private television channels operating in
Pakistan, an increase from approximately forty in 2008.
A frequent feature of the television scene is what the Pakistani
media calls “dramas”—that is, telenovelas, often adaptations of nov-
els told in serialized format. These Pakistani television “dramas” cir-
culate well beyond Pakistan, and help viewers create a global Urdu
imaginary. Since 2014, these dramas have been shown on Indian tele-
vision, and they have a growing presence online, first through free
sharing websites and now, increasingly, on mainstream platforms
such as Netflix.16 Pakistani dramas are the subject of vibrant discus-
sion and debate online, where viewers from around the world have
access to them. That the serials have subtitles also means that they
can be watched by non-Urdu speakers and by those who haven’t
quite enough Urdu to fully follow without subtitles.
The Pakistani serials perpetuate certain features of the late nine-
teenth-century Urdu cosmopolis. The newness of the digital technol-
ogy produces a moment that in one way mimics the experimentation,
interaction, and cosmopolitanism of the late nineteenth-century Urdu
cosmopolis. In particular, there is vibrant discussion on online fo-
rums dedicated to Pakistani television dramas. One example is the
website dramapakistani.net, dedicated wholly to discussion of dra-
mas. Titled Drama Pakistani: We Take Dramas Seriously! the website
features extended and thorough discussion of ongoing (as well as of
completed) serials. The website is organized by Pakistani television
channels (A Plus TV, Geo TV, Hum TV), but also has a “Book Re-
 New Spaces of the Urdu Cosmopolis 115

view” section, in which the novels on which the dramas are based
are, in many cases, broken into segments and uploaded. In the case of
the superhit drama Humsafar, shown in Pakistan from 2011 to 2012,
the “Book Review” contains the text of the novel in romanized script,
expanding the possible readership to include those who know Hindi
or might speak Urdu but cannot read it. This feature makes clear the
textual basis of the dramas and promotes comparison between novel
and television versions, and the website also contains video inter-
views with actors from the series. Thus the website in essence creates
a broad, self-contained reading/viewing public for the serials, reward-
ing connoisseurship by the site’s extra materials.
I followed the reception online for the serial Mataa-e Jān Hai
Tu, which aired on the Hum TV channel from March to June 2012,
in seventeen episodes of about forty minutes each. It has shown in
Pakistan, Europe, the UAE, India, and the United Kingdom on vari-
ous Hindi or Urdu TV channels, pointing to the ways in which the
new media landscape allows for greater fluidity between Hindi and
Urdu by focusing on spoken language. The show featured a young
third-generation Pakistani American woman named Haniya and her
love affair with a young Pakistani man who is in the United States for
graduate school. About half of the serial takes place in New York
City, and was shot on location at Columbia University. The show
deals with many issues that occupy second- and third-generation im-
migrants in the United States, especially young women. These include
domestic violence, arranged versus “love” marriages, negotiating
family relations to marry a person of one’s own choosing, and the
professional lives of young educated women in Pakistani cities.
The bulk of Drama Pakistani is dedicated to reviews and discus-
sion of each episode of the dramas. A regular commentator usually
presents a long review of the episode, and this is followed by viewers’
comments. Each episode of Mataa-e Jān usually received between
eighteen and fifty comments; a more popular serial such as Zindagi
Gulzar Hai, which aired on Hum TV from late 2012 to early 2013,
often received one hundred comments per episode. The user names of
commenters point to a diverse viewership of Mataa-e Jān.17 Continu-
ing the possibilities for play between a writer’s public persona and
private identity (discussed in chapter 4 of this volume), the user names
of viewers could be funny (“[Pakistani] Drama Buff,” “Howzzat”) or
anonymous (“SK,” “MJ,” etc.). One particular feature of the recep-
tion of Mataa-e Jān was that Farhat Ishtiaq (the author of the novel
116 Conclusion

on which the serial was based), Sarwat Gilani (its main actress), and
Momaina Duraid (a producer at Hum TV) all participated online in
the discussion. The interactivity of the late nineteenth-century print
public sphere continues in the early twenty-first-century digital age.
Discussion of social and cultural issues, which was a feature of
the late nineteenth-century Urdu cosmopolis, is energetic, passionate,
and argumentative on Drama Pakistani. For example, this is the final
note presented in the review of the season finale of Mataa-e Jān:

Mataa-e Jaan began on a very rocky note. The overt nods to Mr. Hun-
tington’s tired old thesis of the clash of civilizations had many of us
grinding our teeth. The Born-in-the-USA but dil-hai-desi [literal trans-
lation “my heart is South Asian”] Haniya’s characterization as the ho-
lier than thou bearer of mashriqi [Eastern] values, her perfect Urdu
diction, and her lovely, but oh not so tomboy-ish, wardrobe, became
another bone of contention. Add to that the lack of palpable sizzle be-
tween the lead pair, and it seemed impossible to see the serial leaving its
mark. What kept it going though, or at least kept me hooked through
the first few episodes, apart from the beyond gorgeous cinematogra-
phy, was the Adam/Yamina track. I loved the fact that after such a long
time a very important issue was being highlighted on our TV screens.
For too long we’ve treated spousal abuse as an issue specific to the il-
literate, lower-/lower-middle-class households. Here we saw an upper-
middle-class, supremely confident, and highly educated Yamina being
abused by Adam, her equally successful and ostensibly charming hus-
band. Sanam Saeed and Junaid Khan [the actors] were fabulous.18

Striking here is how the reviewer alternated between discussion of

serious concerns, such as the Samuel Huntington thesis about the
clash of civilizations between East and West, and more superficial
concerns, such as the chemistry between the lead pair. The lead char-
acter’s femininity is also at issue, as is her negotiation of values as
part of the South Asian diaspora. The reviewer’s criticism of the lead
character (as an ideal) is reminiscent of the woman reader’s letter,
discussed in chapter 4, which criticized the characterization of the
heroine of Fasana-e Azad, Husn Ara, as unrealistic.19 The issue of
feminine respectability, so central a concern to the late nineteenth-
century readership of Fasana-e Azad, continues in the early twenty-
first century, likely the result of the predominantly female viewership
of the Pakistani television dramas. But one can also see that the
 New Spaces of the Urdu Cosmopolis 117

r­ eviewer wants the serial to push further on social issues, a push made
possible in this cultural space to a degree beyond what might be pos-
sible in the political and social spheres. The reviewer is satisfied with
the serial’s depiction of domestic violence, especially the fact that it
has not been relegated to the lower classes but is here shown to also
be a part of the upper middle class.
In the last several years, Pakistani dramas have begun to be aired
on Indian television, bringing a kind of telediplomacy to the often-
contentious political relations between India and Pakistan. In 2014,
Zee Network in India launched the Zindagi (Life) channel with the
slogan “Jore Dilon Ko” (Connecting Hearts).20 The channel began by
showing four Pakistani television dramas, including the hits Humsa-
far (aired in 2011–2012 in Pakistan) and Zindagi Gulzar Hai (aired
in 2014). The dramas are wildly popular in India.21 For many Indi-
ans, the television serials represented their first exposure to daily life
and culture in Pakistan. Viewers found familiar the social and cul-
tural contexts in the serial, as well as the language and issues it pre-
sented. As indicated by Madhu Goswami, a retired government offi-
cial in New Delhi, “It was a surprise to see that they used Hindi
words in their day-to-day conversations and that they face the same
problems in daily life as we do. After watching these soaps it oc-
curred to me, culturally we are so similar. Then why is there such a
divide between us.”22 The political implications of the dramas’ suc-
cess is clear to its parent company, Zee Entertainment Enterprises
Limited, whose next project, Zeal for Unity, was a commission of
twelve short films, six by Indian directors, and six by Pakistani direc-
tors, released around the seventieth anniversary of Partition.23 Ac-
cording to the project’s press release, it is intended to “inspire people
from either side of the border towards fostering peace and harmony,”
building on the work of the Pakistani dramas to “continue this cul-
tural dialogue between people from both sides of [the] border through
varied forms of art.”24 The dramas may therefore effect a rapproche-
ment between Indian and Pakistani viewers after decades of mistrust
and political tension.
The crossover appeal of Pakistani television actors in India has
not gone without controversy. The romantic leads of Humsafar,
Fawad Khan and Mahira Khan, have landed roles in the major Bol-
lywood films Kapoor and Sons (directed by Shakun Batra, 2016), Ae
Dil Hai Mushkil (directed by Karan Johar, 2016), and Raees (directed
by Rahul Dholakia, 2017) (with Fawad Khan opposite Aishwarya
118 Conclusion

Rai in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, and Mahira Khan opposite Shah Rukh
Khan in Raees). Then, Fawad Khan’s role in one of these, the 2016
film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (This Heart Is Complicated) became the sub-
ject of political controversy when a right-wing nationalist party, Ma-
harashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), called for the film to be banned
for featuring a Pakistani actor. The film’s director and writer, Karan
Johar, eventually apologized in the media and declared that he would
no longer cast “talent” from Pakistan.25 Thus the fractures of the
nineteenth-century Urdu cosmopolis continue into the present.
There is a peculiar irony, I think, to the resurgence of the Urdu
cosmopolis in the digital and visual realms. A transregional language
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Urdu has been a language
without a state, unlike South Asia’s other mother tongues, most of
which are connected to a geographical space.26 Yet it is precisely
Urdu’s fluidity that allows it to transition easily into the cross-re-
gional space of electronic media. The current practice of writing
Urdu in transliterated Roman script while using electronic media,
due to the lack of widespread computer fonts for Urdu, collapses the
distance between Hindi and Urdu that was created in the colonial
period largely on the basis of script. The circulation of television
dramas makes Urdu into a spoken language, which has also divorced
it from the divisive issue of script. Urdu is again becoming Hindu-
stani, the shared language of everyday speech envisioned by Gandhi
as a possible unifying force among Hindus and Muslims in indepen-
dent India.
New digital forums and the revival of performance traditions
are also revitalizing the Urdu cosmopolis. In a recent issue of the New
York–based magazine Café Dissensus dedicated to “Urdu in Con-
temporary India: Predicaments and Promises,” contributor Soheb Ni-
azi noted, “[The] democratizing of the [Urdu] language entails mov-
ing beyond literary texts as a medium for the propagation of ideas
and visions in Urdu, to oral and visual traditions that are more pow-
erful with a far-reaching appeal.”27 And this has indeed been the case,
as online projects such as rekhta.org digitize and make available in
Urdu, Hindi, and Roman scripts prose and poetry from the past five
centuries.28 The website at present houses a spectacularly rich collec-
tion of Urdu prose and poetry, augmented by audio and video re-
cordings of renowned poets, musicians, and actors performing the
material, a collection of searchable Urdu dictionaries, and other sup-
plementary material. It has recently added online Urdu lessons. Given
 New Spaces of the Urdu Cosmopolis 119

the limited circulation of Urdu books and the limited availability of

Urdu language courses, the potential of this website and others like it
to democratize access to Urdu language and literature is of exciting
importance.
The revival of the art of Urdu storytelling known as dastan-goi
by a group of Urdu performers who call themselves dastan-gos is cur-
rently bringing new audiences to Urdu literature and performance
traditions. The group’s artists perform classical narratives, such as
the Dastan-e Amir Hamza, as well as new stories on political, cul-
tural, and literary themes. These latter include a dastan on sedition,
about the 2010 trial and incarceration of activist Binayek Sen, who
criticized the Indian government’s violent crackdown on Maoist in-
surgents in Chattisgarh. This Dastan-e Sedition (story of sedition)
continues the Urdu cosmopolitan practice of critiquing the state and
the practices of modernity.
I began this book by discussing the passion of late nineteenth-
century readers for the new technology of print and the modern
newspaper. As websites such as dramapakistani.net testify, participa-
tion and interaction among viewers and artists continues to charac-
terize membership in the Urdu cosmopolis. With the expansion of
new medias and technological tools in the twenty-first century, it is
certain that as the century continues, the Urdu cosmopolis will be
further marked by both continuity and change.
“Ek Darkhvāst (A Petition/Request),” a poem by progressive
writer Ahmad Nadim Qasmi (1916–2006), encapsulates the modern
Urdu critical ethos presented in this book. The poem benefits from
oral performance; rekhta.org includes a video recording of Qasmi re-
citing it in a 1998 mushairah.29 I have formatted my translation to
mimic the rhythm of Qasmi’s performance:

All life’s doors are

Closed around me

To look
Beyond the horizon
Is banned

To think
Beyond one’s faith and beliefs
Is banned
120 Conclusion

In every sky
Lifting the veil of secrets and looking beyond
Is banned

Asking HOW is banned

Saying WHY is banned

The freedom to breathe is available to all

however

We need something more to live

And to express that “more”
Is banned

Oh, [you] owners of the palaces of belief

Oh, masters of laws and politics

In the name of Life, I demand only one kindness:

Permission to commit all that is banned!

The poem redefines life and freedom as moving and thinking beyond,
the transgressing of social norms toward new imaginative horizons.
A celebration and invocation of critical thinking, the poem professes
that to be human is to question and to challenge. It is no accident that
the poem’s form is a nazm (free verse), a genre inaugurated in the
early twentieth century to challenge the formal and intellectual re-
strictions of classical Urdu poetry.30 The poem demands that all reli-
gious and social authorities be disputed. It satirizes religious authori-
ties and politicians, and suggests that true faith and freedom lie
outside social norms.
In the late nineteenth century, Urdu readers and writers devel-
oped a modern critical ethos by participating in and dreaming the
cosmopolitan dreams of Urdu print. Literature and the print public
sphere became key sites in which the protocols of modernity were
challenged and new futures imagined. Especially now, we must con-
tinue to recognize the power of literature and the arts to allow us to
think and dream anew.
 Notes

Preface
1.   Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolo-
nial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 5.
2.   Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins
and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991), 25.
3.   Jessica Berman, Modernist Commitments: Ethics, Politics, and Transna-
tional Modernism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 3.

Introduction: Print, Literary Modernity,

and the Urdu Cosmopolis
1.   Avadh Akhbar, October 11, 1879, 3192.
2.   Avadh Akhbar, October 29, 1879, supplement 132.
3.   Sudipta Kaviraj, “Laughter and Subjectivity: The Self-Ironical Tradition in
Bengali Literature,” in The Invention of Private Life: Literature and Ideas (Rani­
khet, India: Permanent Black, 2014), 221.
4.   Sudipta Kaviraj, “Literature and the Moral Imagination of Modernity,” in
Invention of Private Life, 24.
5.   For example, see Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, ed., Alternative Moderni-
ties (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); Aamir Mufti, Enlightenment in
the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture (Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); and Mehr Afshan Farooqi, Urdu Liter-
ary Culture: Vernacular Modernity in the Writing of Muhammad Hasan Askari
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
6.   Iftikhar Dadi, Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 1.
7.   Sonal Khullar, Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity,
and Modernism in India, 1930–1990 (Oakland: University of California Press,
2015), 18. The development of literary modernity as a product of exchange and
translation was not limited to South Asia, but rather characterized modern Asian
and Middle Eastern literatures. In early twentieth-century Korea and Taiwan, liter-
ary modernity was produced through the interchange between colonialism,

121
122 Notes to Page 4

­ esternization, and the global circulation of commodities, capital, and labor that
W
marked what Jina Kim calls “material modernity.” See Jina Kim, “The Circulation
of Urban Literary Modernity in Colonial Korea and Taiwan” (PhD diss., Univer-
sity of Washington, 2006). Lydia Liu’s examination of “translated modernity” in
early twentieth-century China concentrates on the new “words, meanings, dis-
courses and modes of representation” that “arise, circulate and acquire legitimacy”
from the interaction between Chinese and Western ideas. Lydia H. Liu, Transling-
ual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China,
1900–1937 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 26.
8.   Aparna Dharwadker, “Mohan Rakesh, Modernism, and the Postcolonial
Present,” South Central Review 25, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 143.
9.   For example, in Hindi the work of Agyeya and the “New Story” move-
ment writers, active in the 1950s and 1960s, has received attention, as has the
work of the postindependence playwright Mohan Rakesh. A recent dissertation
comparing Bengali, Hindi, and English modernisms in South Asia focuses on the
early to mid-twentieth century. See Rita Banerjee, “The New Voyager: Theory and
Practice of South Asian Literary Modernisms” (PhD diss., Harvard University,
2013).
10.   Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and
Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
11.   See Kaviraj, “Laughter and Subjectivity”; David Shulman identifies
“irony, broadly defined, and self-parody” as themes of Tamil modernity. David
Shulman, Tamil: A Biography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016),
249. In his far-reaching analysis of modern Tamil prose and poetry, Shulman also
points to a more distant narrative voice, which he describes as “self-conscious
comment by the narrator” in the sixteenth-century Tamil poem Naitatam; ibid.,
252. Bakhtin considered “laughter” one of two defining characteristics (the other
being polyglossia) of the novel. See Mikhail Bakhtin, “From the Prehistory of Nov-
elistic Discourse,” in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, ed.
Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1981), 50.
12.   Cf. Shulman (Tamil, 287), who notes, “The modernizing impulses pres-
ent in the hyper-realistic and naturalistic modes of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, often couched in parodic tones, developed further in the nineteenth
century.”
13.   Sascha Ebeling, Colonizing the Realm of Words: The Transformation of
Tamil Literature in Nineteenth-Century South India (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2010), 16; cf. Shulman, Tamil, 290.
14.   There is disagreement about the date of Sarshar’s birth and death. See
Braj Narāyan Chakbast, “Sarshar,” in Intikhāb-e Mazāmīn-e Chakbast, ed. Hukm
Chand Nayyar (Lakhnau, India: Uttar Pradesh Urdu Akadami, 1984); Qamar
Ra’īs, Ratan Nāth Sarshār (New Delhi: Sahitya Akadmi, 1983); Firoze Mookerjee,
Lucknow and the World of Sarshar (Karachi, Pakistan: Saad Publication, 1992).
 Notes to Pages 4–5 123

Chakbast, Sarshar’s earliest biographer, gave his date of death as January 21, 1903.
See Chakbast, “Sarshar,” 145–146.
15.   I have marked an Urdu writer’s pen name (takhallus) with quotation
marks the first time the pen name appears.
16.   For the Urdu novel’s relationship to the Indo-Persian genre of dastan (ro-
mance), see Jennifer Dubrow, “A Space for Debate: Fashioning the Urdu Novel in
Colonial India,” Comparative Literature Studies 53, no. 2 (2016): 289–311. For
the relationship between modern Indian art and tradition, see Khullar, Worldly Af-
filiations, as well as Sonal Khullar, “National Tradition and Modernist Art,” in
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture, ed. Vasudha Dalmia and
Rashmi Sadana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). David Shulman
analyzes “daring experimentation both within the traditional forms and beyond
them” in nineteenth-century Tamil; see Shulman, Tamil, chaps. 7–8. For the Ben-
gali poet Michael Madhusudan Datta’s reimagining of the kavya (classical) form,
see Michael Madhusudan Datta, The Slaying of Meghanada: A Ramayana from
Colonial Bengal, trans. Clinton B. Seely (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
17.   Dharwadker, “Mohan Rakesh,” 143. Javed Majeed described this as
“how the self-conscious sense of being ‘modern’ was used by South Asian writers
as an ideology of aesthetics in order to distinguish themselves from their ‘tradi-
tional’ predecessors.” Javed Majeed, “Literary Modernity in South Asia,” in India
and the British Empire, ed. Douglas M. Peers and Nandini Gooptu (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 2012), 264.
18.   Franco Moretti, in “The Novel: History and Theory,” argued that the use
of prose served as a defining feature of the novel across multiple contexts (he lists
ancient Greek, Japanese, French, and Chinese examples), because prose tends to
move the narrative forward and to increase complexity. To determine whether this
applies in Urdu, which features a well-established genre of narrative poetry (mas-
navi), would require further research. See Franco Moretti, “The Novel: History
and Theory,” in Franco Moretti, Distant Reading (London: Verso, 2013).
19.   On this, see Walter N. Hakala, Negotiating Languages: Urdu, Hindi, and
the Definition of Modern South Asia (New York: Columbia University Press,
2016); and Sudipta Kaviraj, “The Two Histories of Literary Culture in Bengal,” in
Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, ed. Sheldon Pol-
lock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
20.   On Miraji, see Geeta Patel, Lyrical Movements, Historical Hauntings:
On Gender, Colonialism, and Desire in Miraji’s Urdu Poetry (Stanford, CA: Stan-
ford University Press, 2002); on N. M. Rashid, see A. Sean Pue, I Too Have Some
Dreams: N. M. Rashed and Modernism in Urdu Poetry (Oakland: University of
California Press, 2014). One might also point out that the classical Urdu poetic
genre of the ghazal, which developed in South Asia in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries, already possessed a kind of modernity, as seen in its celebration of
individual experience and subjectivity and rejection of social norms. The couplet
by the late-classical Urdu poet Asadullah Khan “Ghalib” (1797–1869), “I’m
124 Notes to Pages 5–6

­ either the loosening of song nor the close-drawn tent of music / I’m the sound,
n
simply, of my own breaking,” translated by the poet Adrienne Rich, is exemplary
of this kind of modern consciousness. Rich’s translation was part of Aijaz Ahmad’s
collaborative translation project of Ghalib’s ghazals: Aijaz Ahmad, ed., Ghazals of
Ghalib: Version from the Urdu by Aijaz Ahmad, W. S. Merwin, Adrienne Rich,
William Stafford, David Ray, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Mark Strand, and William
Hurt (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971).
21.   About this, Kavita Datla has written, “Tied as Urdu has become to the
fate of India’s largest religious minority, Muslims, and to the emergence of the in-
dependent state of Pakistan, for which Urdu is the official national language, histo-
ries of the Urdu language are particularly—and understandably—preoccupied
with explaining how the shared and flexible literary and linguistic traditions of
South Asia’s Muslim community came to be politically focused on the Urdu lan-
guage.” Kavita Datla, The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Co-
lonial India (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013), 7. Urdu, currently the
national language of Pakistan and one of twenty-two constitutionally recognized
languages in India, remains in some ways a language without a state. Whereas
other South Asian vernacular languages have been studied in terms of their relation
to place, Urdu does not fit the dominant paradigm in modern South Asia in which
languages have been connected to regions and particular communities. See, for
example, Lisa Mitchell, Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Mak-
ing of a Mother Tongue (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); and Su-
mathi Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India,
1891–1970 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). On Urdu’s status in
Pakistan, see Alyssa Ayres, Speaking Like a State: Language and Nationalism in
Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). In the nineteenth cen-
tury, Urdu was a lingua franca spoken by the educated classes across northern
Pakistan and India, and parts of southern India. After being separated from Hindi,
Urdu retained its transregional status, as the work of Nile Green has illuminated.
See Nile Green, “Africa in Indian Ink: Urdu Articulations of Indian Settlement in
East Africa,” Journal of African History 53, no. 2 (2012): 131–150; Nile Green,
“Urdu as an African Language: A Survey of a Source Literature,” Islamic Africa 3,
no. 2 (Fall 2012): 173–199; and Nile Green, “Buddhism, Islam and the Religious
Economy of Colonial Burma,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 46, no. 2 (June
2015): 175–204. On the production and circulation of Urdu books in colonial
Bombay, also see Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West
Indian Ocean, 1840–1915 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
22.   Anita Desai, In Custody (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1984), 42.
23.   For example, see Athar Faruqi, ed., Redefining Urdu Politics in Urdu
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010).
24.   Quoted in Amina Yaqin, “The Communalization and Disintegration of
Urdu in Anita Desai’s In Custody,” in Alternative Indias: Writing, Nation, and
Communalism, ed. Peter Morey and Alex Tickell (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), 92.
 Notes to Pages 6–10 125

25.   On Urdu at Osmania University, see Datla, Language of Secular Islam.

26.   Ganga-jamuni is one of several terms often used to describe precolonial
Urdu syncretic culture. See Kathryn Hansen, “Who Wants to Be a Cosmopolitan?
Readings from the Composite Culture,” in Indian Economic and Social History
Review 47, no. 3 (2010): 294.
27.   Included in Intizar Husain, Basti, trans. Frances W. Pritchett (New York:
New York Review of Books, 2007), 237.
28.   Pheng Cheah, “What Is a World? On World Literature as World-Making
Activity,” Daedalus 137, no. 3 (Summer 2008): 26. For a fuller exploration of
postcolonial literature as world literature, see Pheng Cheah, What Is a World? On
Postcolonial Literature as World Literature (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2016).
29.   Cheah, “What Is a World?,” 26.
30.   As Mitter describes the virtual cosmopolis, “The hybrid city of the imagi-
nation engendered elective affinities between the elites of the centre and the periph-
ery on the level of intellect and creativity.” Partha Mitter, The Triumph of Modern-
ism: India’s Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1922–1947 (London: Reaktion Books,
2007), 11–12. For more on this, see chapter 3.
31.   This resistance took place especially in South Asian vernacular languages,
in which the overpowering influence of English was less. Cf. Rashmi Sadana,
“Writing in English,” in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture,
ed. Vasudha Dalmia and Rashmi Sadana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2012), 125–126.
32.   This goes against the arguments made by Gauri Viswanathan in Masks of
Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1998), and Sudhir Chandra in The Oppressive Present: Literature and Social
Consciousness in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994).
33.   Cited in Khullar, Worldly Affiliations, 21.
34.   Marian Aguiar, Tracking Modernity: India’s Railway and the Culture of
Mobility (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), “Introduction.”
35.   Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial
North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990); Sudipta Kaviraj, The Imagi-
nary Institution of India: Politics and Ideas (New York: Columbia University Press,
1990); Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in
India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).
36.   Datla, Language of Secular Islam, 9.
37.   Ibid.
38.   Muzaffar Alam, The Languages of Political Islam in India, c. 1200–1800
(Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), 133.
39.   Mana Kia, “Indian Friends, Iranian Selves, Persianate Modern,” Com-
parative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 36, no. 3 (2016):
398–417.
126 Notes to Pages 10–14

40.   A community of the kind imagined by Benedict Anderson in Imagined

Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London; New
York: Verso, 2006).
41.   There is substantial historiography that refers to the mutiny as the First
War of Independence. It has also been called a rebellion. I use “Mutiny of 1857”
here because this was how the event was identified during the time period covered
in this book.
42.   Seema Alavi, Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 6.
43.   Ronit Ricci, Islam Translated: Literature, Conversion, and the Arabic
Cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2011), 4.
44.   Roger Chartier, “Labourers and Voyagers: From the Text to the Reader,”
Diacritics 22, no. 2 (1992): 50.
45.   Mikhail Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel,”
in Dialogic Imagination, 253.
46.   Francesca Orsini, Print and Pleasure: Popular Literature and Entertain-
ing Fictions in Colonial North India (Ranikhet, India: Permanent Black, 2009), 9.

Chapter One: Printing the Cosmopolis

1.   Avadh Akhbar, September 25, 1879, supplement 36.
2.   It is well known that the concept of literacy has remained problematic in
the study of print cultures. Colonial government statistics point to low literacy rates
among the Indian population. For example, according to the Northwestern Prov-
inces Census of 1872, around 3 percent of men in the area were literate, as com-
pared to an almost 0 percent literacy rate among women. Quoted in Ulrike Stark,
An Empire of Books: The Naval Kishore Press and the Diffusion of the Printed
Word in Colonial India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007), 14. Yet this method
of calculating literacy has been challenged by scholars. Historian Christopher Bayly
argues that precolonial India represented “a society acutely aware of literacy.” He
introduces the term “literacy awareness” to convey the ways in which Indians had
access to literacy without necessarily being literate themselves: “Even the poor
could gain access to writers and readers at a cost,” and illiteracy “did not preclude
sophistication in using others’ learning.” Christopher Bayly, Empire and Informa-
tion: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 13, 38. Francesca Orsini highlights how
commercial publishers in north India appealed to “neo- or non-­literate audiences”
by publishing oral genres such as songbooks, and including visual material such as
illustrations. Francesca Orsini, Print and Pleasure: Popular Literature and Enter-
taining Fictions in Colonial North India (Ranikhet, India: Permanent Black,
2009), 5.
3.   Abhijit Gupta and Swapan Chakravorty, eds., Print Areas: Book History
in India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), 6.
 Notes to Pages 14–20 127

4.   Sean Lathan and Robert Scholes, “The Rise of Periodical Studies,” Publi-
cations of the Modern Language Association of America 121, no. 2 (2006): 517.
5.   Shobna Nijhawan, Women and Girls in the Hindi Public Sphere: Periodical Lit-
erature in Colonial North India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), 231–232.
6.   As shown by Ulrike Stark in Empire of Books, the book became an afford-
able commodity in South Asia in the 1840s, leading to a boom in commercial
publishing across South Asia. The spread of lithography across north India al-
lowed Indians to set up their own presses, transforming the nature of printing in
South Asia away from government or missionary presses, and toward Indian-
owned commercial printing.
7.   Sanjay Joshi, Fractured Modernity: Making of a Middle Class in Colonial
North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 23.
8.   Ibid., 24.
9.   Ibid., 23.
10.   It appears Sarshar studied only at the secondary school “associated” with
Canning College (S. Joshi, Fractured Modernity, 37), but I have been unable to find
more specific information.
11.   See S. Joshi, Fractured Modernity, chapter 1.
12.   Ram Babu Saksena, A History of Urdu Literature (Delhi: Cosmo Publica-
tions, 2002; repr., Allahabad: Ram Narain Lal, 1927), 322.
13.   On Naval Kishore, see Stark, Empire of Books.
14.   Saksena, History of Urdu Literature, 322.
15.   Patrick Leary, The Punch Brotherhood: Table Talk and Print Culture in
Mid-Victorian London (London: The British Library, 2010).
16.   This statement reportedly inspired Sarshar to write the pieces in Avadh
Akhbar that would later become Fasana-e Azad. See Braj Narāyan Chakbast,
“Sarshar,” in Intikhāb-e Mazāmīn-e Chakbast, ed. Hukm Chand Nayyar (Lakh-
nau, India: Uttar Pradesh Urdū Akadamī, 1984). On why Chakbast’s account is
most likely inaccurate, see Jennifer Dubrow, “From Newspaper Sketch to ‘Novel’:
The Writing and Reception of ‘Fasana-e Azad’ in North India, 1878–1880” (PhD
diss., University of Chicago, 2011).
17.   Mushirul Hasan, Wit and Humour in Colonial North India (New Delhi:
Niyogi, 2007), 36.
18.   Chakbast, “Sarshar,” 121.
19.   Saksena, History of Urdu Literature, 323–324. These authors’ shift from
Persian to Urdu reflected the growth of Urdu publishing and Persian’s decreasing
political and cultural importance in the late nineteenth century.
20.   Sayyid Shafqat Rizvī, Avadh Panch aur Panch Nigār (Karachi, Pakistan:
Avadh Adabī Akādamī Pākistān, 1995), 10–11.
21.   See C. Ryan Perkins, “Partitioning History: The Creation of an Islāmī Pablik
in Late Colonial India, c. 1880–1920” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2011).
22.   Muhammad Qamar Salim, Ishāriya-e Dilgudaz, vol. 1 (New Delhi: Mak-
tabah Jamiah Limited, 2003).
128 Notes to Pages 20–24

23.   Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhāratendu

Hariśchandra and Nineteenth-Century Banaras (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1996), 232.
24.   Ibid., 236–238.
25.   Ibid., 242.
26.   Ibid., 237.
27.   These novels were Fasāna-e Jadīd (aka Jām-e Sarshār) (1883?), Sair-e
Kuhsār (1897?), and Khudā’ī Faujdār (1893), a transcreation of Don Quixote.
Mookerjee, Lucknow.
28.   Salim, Ishāriya-e Dilgudaz.
29.   On the causes for lack of patronage, including the declining fortunes of
many elites of the city, see Richard Barnett, Rethinking Early Modern India (Delhi:
Manohar, 2002); and Francis Robinson, The ‘Ulama of Farangi Mahall and Is-
lamic Culture in South Asia (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001).
30.   Sarshar reported this in an article for the journal Kashmiri Prakash in
March 1899; an excerpt from that article was printed by Chakbast in Chakbast,
“Sarshar,” and translated by Firoze Mookerjee, Lucknow and the World of Sar-
shar (Karachi, Pakistan: Saad Publications, 1992), 4–5.
31.   On Osmania University, see Kavita Datla, The Language of Secular Islam:
Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013).
32.   For more on this in the Tamil context, see A. R. Venkatachalapathy, The
Province of the Book: Scholars, Scribes, and Scribblers in Colonial Tamilnadu (Ra-
nikhet, India: Permanent Black, 2012).
33.   The term “arena for literature” is from Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Pub-
lic Sphere, 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002); see chapter 1.3.
34.   Pritchett has described the ustad as the guardian and gatekeeper of tradi-
tion, “the living bearer of the tradition” who acts as a “priceless resource.” Frances
W. Pritchett, “A Long History of Urdu Literary Culture, Part 2: Histories, Perfor-
mances, and Masters,” in Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from
South Asia, ed. Sheldon Pollock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003),
899. In her earlier work Nets of Awareness, Pritchett described the ustad as a
“book” deciding matters of literary taste and “mediating between the past and the
future.” Frances W. Pritchett, Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 81.
35.   Pritchett, Nets of Awareness, 35.
36.   Ibid., 136.
37.   Ibid., 148–149.
38.   Ibid., 34.
39.   The negative response in Lucknow newspapers may have been related to
cultural rivalry between Lucknow’s poets and the claims to prominence being
made by Azad and Hali in Lahore. Moreover, Azad and Hali were both born in
Delhi, Lucknow’s major rival markaz (literary and cultural center).
 Notes to Pages 24–30 129

40.   Quoted in Aslam Farrukhi, Muhammad Husain Azad, 2 vols. (Karachi,

Pakistan: Anjuman Taraqqi-e Urdu, 1965), 244.
41.   Farrukhi, Muhammad Husain Azad, 243.
42.   Ibid., 245.
43.   Avadh Akhbar, February 2, 1875, 158.
44.   Pritchett, Nets of Awareness, 34–35; Pritchett’s translation.
45.   Avadh Akhbar, June 30, 1876, 943–944.
46.   Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006).
47.   Sandria Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and
the Emergence of Communalism in North India (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1989), 118.
48.   Ibid.
49.   Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 1984), 10.
50.   Stark, Empire of Books, 188.
51.   Ibid., 190.
52.   I have used the version reprinted in Kishan Prashad Kaul, ed., Guldasta-e
Panch (Lucknow, India: Hindustani Press, 1915).
53.   Kaul, Guldasta-e Panch, 97.
54.   For more on the genre of shahr ashob and its use in Avadh Punch, see
chapter 3.
55.   On Asar us-Sanadid, see C. M. Naim, “Syed Ahmad and His Two Books
Called ‘Asar us-Sanadid,’” Modern Asian Studies 45, no. 3 (May 2011):
669–708.
56.   Kaul, Guldasta-e Panch, 97.
57.   Karbala refers to the city (in present-day Iraq) where the Prophet’s grand-
sons Hasan and Husain were martyred in battle. On the enduring legacies of
Karbala and the institution of Shi‘a commemoration, see Syed Akbar Hyder, Reliv-
ing Karbala: Martyrdom in South Asian Memory (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2006).
58.   Sophie Gordon has suggested that early photographs of colonial Luck­
now functioned similarly. See Sophie Gordon, “A Sacred Interest: The Role of
Photo­graphy in the ‘City of Mourning,’” in India’s Fabled City: The Art of Courtly
Lucknow, ed. Stephen Markel (Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of
Art, 2010).
59.   Photographic panoramas of cities were produced by Felice Beato, who
photographed Delhi in 1857 and Lucknow in 1858, as well as by early Indian pho-
tographers such as Ahmed ‘Ali Khan, who photographed Lucknow from the top of
the royal residence (Chattar Manzil) in 1856. I am grateful to the Alkazi Collection
of Photography in Delhi for allowing me to view Ahmed ‘Ali Khan’s photograph.
Beato’s panorama can be viewed in Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, Lucknow: City of Illu-
sion (New York: Alkazi Collection of Photography, 2006).
130 Notes to Pages 31–37

60.   Sneezing upon arrival at a new place was a bad sign according to supersti-
tion in late nineteenth-century Lucknow.
61.   Avadh Punch, January 22, 1878, 2.
62.   Ibid.
63.   Ibid.
64.   See Barbara Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi’s
Bihishti Zewar; A Partial Translation with Commentary (New Delhi: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2002); and David Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the
Modern Indian Mind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).
65.   Avadh Punch, March 19, 1878, 7.

Chapter 2: The Novel in Installments

1.   Avadh Akhbar, September 15, 1879, 2899.
2.   As mentioned earlier, Sarshar also served as editor from 1878 to 1880.
3.   Jonathan Zwicker, “The Long Nineteenth Century of the Japanese Novel,”
in The Novel, vol. 1, ed. Franco Moretti (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2006), 573.
4.   Ibid., 576.
5.   Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and
Translated Modernity—China, 1900–1937 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1995).
6.   Christina Oesterheld, “Entertainment and Reform: Urdu Narrative Genres
in the Nineteenth Century,” in India’s Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth
Century, ed. Vasudha Dalmia and Stuart Blackburn (New Delhi: Permanent Black,
2004), 188.
7.   Sascha Ebeling, Colonizing the Realm of Words: The Transformation of
Tamil Literature in Nineteenth-Century South India (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2010), 212–213.
8.   Quoted in Oesterheld, “Entertainment and Reform,” 192. On Muhib-e
Husain, see Gail Minault, Secluded Scholars: Women’s Education and Muslim So-
cial Reform in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999),
107–110.
9.   See Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British
Rule in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998).
10.   Colonel Holroyd, the director of public instruction in Punjab, quoted in
Frances W. Pritchett, Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1994), 35. See also C. M. Naim, “Prize-Winning
Adab: Five Urdu Books Written in Response to the Gazette Notification No. 791A
(1868),” in Urdu Texts and Contexts: The Selected Essays of C. M. Naim (New
Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004). These two tropes occupied British colonial officials
and government prizes.
 Notes to Pages 38–42 131

11.   Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chatto-

padhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1995), 2.
12.   On adab, see Barbara Metcalf, ed., Moral Conduct and Authority: The
Place of Adab in South Asian Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1984); and Naim, “Prize-Winning Adab.”
13.   Meenakshi Mukherjee, “Epic and Novel in India,” in The Novel, vol. 1,
History, Geography, and Culture, ed. Franco Moretti (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2006), 596.
14.   C. M. Naim, “Interrogating ‘The East,’ ‘Culture,’ and ‘Loss,’ in Abdul
Halim Sharar’s Guzashta Lakhna’u,” in Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition, ed.
Karen Leonard and Alka Patel (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 196.
15.   Mukherjee, “Epic and Novel in India,” 596.
16.   One of these scholars is Edwin Gerow, “The Persistence of Classical Es-
thetic Categories in Contemporary Indian Literature: Three Bengali Novels,” in
The Literatures of India: An Introduction, ed. Edward C. Dimock Jr., Edwin
Gerow, C. M. Naim, A. K. Ramanujan, Gordon Roadermel, and J. A. B. van Bu-
itenen (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1974). See also Jennifer Dubrow,
“A Space for Debate: Fashioning the Urdu Novel in Colonial India,” Comparative
Literature Studies 53, no. 2 (2016): 289–311.
17.   A similar finding has been made in regard to the Victorian novel. See
Amanpal Garcha, From Sketch to Novel: The Development of Victorian Fiction
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). The link between sketches (which
I call “vignettes” to avoid confusion with visual sketches) and novels has been un-
derstudied thus far.
18.   Such collections include Pyarichand Mitra, Alaler Gharer Dulal (1858)
and Kaliprasanna Sinha, Hutom Pyanchar Naksha (1862). On both works, see T.
W. Clark, “Bengali Prose Fiction up to Bankimchandra,” in The Novel in India: Its
Birth and Development, ed. T. W. Clark (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1970). For more on Hutom, see Ranajit Guha, “A Colonial City and Its Time(s),”
Indian Economic and Social History Review 45, no. 3 (September 2008): 329–
351. Hutom has been recently translated as Kaliprasanna Sinha, The Observant
Owl: Hootum’s Vignettes of Nineteenth-Century Calcutta: Kaliprasanna Sinha’s
Hootum Pyanchar Naksha, trans. Swarup Roy (Ranikhet, India: Black Kite, 2008).
19.   See Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhāratendu
Hariśchandra and Nineteenth-Century Banaras (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1996), 252–257; and Bharatendu Harishchandra, “The Tangles of Panch,” trans.
Vasudha Dalmia, in Nationalism in the Vernacular: Hindi, Urdu, and the Literature
of Indian Freedom, ed. Shobna Nijhawan (Ranikhet, India: Permanent Black, 2010).
20.   Dallas Liddle, The Dynamics of Genre: Journalism and the Practice of
Literature in Mid-Victorian Britain (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,
2009), 1. Work on what Liddle called the “intimate relationship between periodi-
cals and literary texts” in South Asia awaits further study.
132 Notes to Pages 42–46

21.   Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai

Leskov,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York:
Schocken Books, 1968), 88–89.
22.   This relationship requires additional analysis.
23.   Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Field-
ing, with an afterword by W. B. Carnochan (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2001 [1957]), 34.
24.   Meenakshi Mukherjee, Realism and Reality: The Novel and Society in
India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999 [1986]). More recently, Ulka
Anjaria has defined “realism in the colony” as “a meta-fictional mode by which
authors not only represented the world around them but also considered the stakes
of representation itself.” Ulka Anjaria, Realism in the Twentieth-Century Indian
Novel: Colonial Difference and Literary Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2012), 4.
25.   For more on the festival vignette and how it helped create the Urdu cos-
mopolis, see chapter 1.
26.   See Avadh Akhbar, “Lokal” section on January 8, 1879, 65, and January
10, 1879, 88, which mentioned the Husainabad, Najaf Ashraf, Agha Baqir and
Daroghah Mir Vajid ‘Ali imambarahs, as well as the [Tal Katora] Karbalā.
27.   Avadh Akhbar, January 23, 1879, 227.
28.   Avadh Akhbar, April 21, 1879, 1281–1282; April 22, 1879, 1294–1295;
April 23, 1879, 1309–1310; April 24, 1879, 1325–1327; and April 25, 1879,
1338–1339. A brief announcement, titled “Tamasha,” in Avadh Akhbar on April
21, 1879, 1271, praised the company’s April 17 performance of Indra Sabha, and
then referred readers to that day’s zarafat sketch, which mentioned the Indra Sabha
performance directly (April 21, 1879, 1281).
29.   For example, Shaista Akhtar Bano Suhrawardy, A Critical Survey of the
Development of the Urdu Novel and Short Story (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2006 [1945]); ‘Ali Abbas Husaini, Navil ki Tarikh aur Tanqid (Lahore, Paki-
stan: Lahaur Akedami, 1964). On the nexus between fiction and news in “install-
ment fiction” and early novels in early twentieth-century China and Korea, respec-
tively, see Alexander Des Forges, “Building Shanghai, One Page at a Time: The
Aesthetics of Installment Fiction at the Turn of the Century,” Journal of Asian
Studies 62, no. 3 (2003): 781–810; and Cho, Translation’s Forgotten History.
30.   Avadh Akhbar, August 13, 1878, 2560–2561.
31.   Avadh Akhbar, August 13, 1878, 2561.
32.   Karen Leonard has described Kayasths (also spelled Kayasthas) as “writ-
ing castes,” and distinguishes between the three regional groups of Kayasths lo-
cated in north India, Maharasthra, and Bengal. See Karen Leonard, Social History
of an Indian Caste: The Kayasths of Hyderabad (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1978).
33.   Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest.
34.   Throughout the nineteenth century the urban literary centers (markaz) of
 Notes to Pages 47–51 133

Delhi and Lucknow were privileged in Urdu literary histories. See Muhammad
Husain Azad, Ab-e Hayat: Shaping the Canon of Urdu Poetry, trans. Frances
Pritchett (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001); C. M. Naim and Carla
Petievich, “Urdu in Lucknow / Lucknow in Urdu,” in Lucknow: Memories of a
City, ed. Violette Graff (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).
35.   Francesca Orsini, Print and Pleasure: Popular Literature and Entertain-
ing Fictions in Colonial North India (Ranikhet, India: Permanent Black, 2009),
171.
36.   Sumanta Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture
in Nineteenth-Century Calcutta (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1989); Hans Harder,
“The Modern Babu and the Metropolis: Reassessing Early Bengali Narrative Prose
(1821–1862),” in India’s Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth Century, ed.
Vasudha Dalmia and Stuart Blackburn (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004). The
Anglicized babu trope also appears in early twentieth-century Hindi literary maga-
zines; see Charu Gupta, The Gender of Caste: Representing Dalits in Print (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2016).
37.   Avadh Akhbar, August 23, 1878, 2700.
38.   Pandit Ratan Nath Sahib Dar Kashmiri Lakhnavi, Fasana-e Azad, vol. 1,
1st ed. (Lucknow, India: Naval Kishore Press, 1880), 1.
39.   Both of these elements would have contrasted with the “decadence” and
“frivolity” of the aristocratic upper classes as maligned by the middle classes in
1870s Lucknow. See Sanjay Joshi, Fractured Modernity: Making of a Middle Class
in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 46–48.
40.   Ibid., 61.
41.   Avadh Akhbar, August 23, 1878, 2700.
42.   Avadh Akhbar, August 23, 1878, 2700–2701.
43.   See Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and
the “Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester, UK: Man-
chester University Press, 1995).
44.   Avadh Akhbar, August 28, 1878.
45.   Cf. Kalighat paintings and farces satirizing the overly Westernized Ben-
gali babu. See Banerjee, Parlour and the Streets; Harder, “Modern Babu.” This
powerful rejection of the Anglicized babu figure has been lost in the book editions
of Fasana-e Azad. Sarshar removed some of Azad’s misbehavior in the book edi-
tions. Because the episodes have been combined into one chapter, their narrative
rhythm is also different: the vignettes end with Chammi Jān critiquing or challeng-
ing Azad; their rhetorical punch has been lost in the book editions. For more on the
Anglicized babu figure in Fasana-e Azad, see Jennifer Dubrow, “Serial Fictions:
Urdu Print Culture and the Novel in Colonial South Asia,” Indian Economic and
Social History Review 54, no. 4 (2017): 403–422.
46.   Avadh Akhbar, May 17, 1879, 1580.
47.   From Madhu Prashad Singh, Honorary Assistant Commissioner and
Ta‘luqdar, Dalīppur, published in Avadh Akhbar, November 6, 1879, supplement 154.
134 Notes to Pages 51–55

48.   The Azad/Khoji pair derived in significant part from the dastan tradition.
The romance of Amir Hamza, the most popular example of the Persian romance
genre known as dastan in South Asia, featured a trickster figure named Amar
Ayyar. As I have argued elsewhere, Amar Ayyar served to humanize the hero Amir
Hamza, and also formed an alter ego and shadow self to Amir Hamza, the ideal-
ized and moral hero. Sarshar and other early Urdu novelists drew from the dastan
tradition in using and developing character pairs in their early novels. See Jennifer
Dubrow, “Space for Debate.”
49.   Dubrow, “Serial Fictions.”
50.   Jennifer Dubrow, “From Newspaper Sketch to ‘Novel’: The Writing and
Reception of ‘Fasana-e Azad,’ in North India, 1878–1880” (PhD diss., University
of Chicago, 2011).
51.   As Ralph Russell noted, the roles are reversed in Don Quixote, in which
Don Quixote is the “backward” character to Sancho Panza’s more realistic and
modern mindset. See Ralph Russell, “The Development of the Modern Novel in
Urdu,” in The Novel in India: Its Birth and Development, ed. T. W. Clark (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1970).
52.   Lakhnavi, Fasana-e Azad, 527. The “New Light” refers to the modern-
izing Muslim reformist movement associated with Sayyid Ahmad Khan.
53.   Ibid.
54.   Ibid., 526.
55.   Ibid., 527. In Fasana-e Azad, “Hindustan” refers to north India; when
Azad and Khoji visit Bombay, this is described as external to Hindustan.
56.   Ibid., 528.
57.   Ibid.
58.   See Rochona Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Co-
lonial Bengal (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).
59.   Avadh Akhbar, October 15, 1879, supplement 91.
60.   Lakhnavi, Fasana-e Azad, 528.
61.   This is reminiscent of Amar Ayyar in Dastan-e Amir Hamza. See Du-
brow, “Space for Debate.”
62.   Dubrow, “Newspaper Sketch”; Orsini, Print and Pleasure.
63.   Lakhnavi, Fasana-e Azad, 500.
64.   Ibid., 549.
65.   Ibid., 570.
66.   Avadh Akhbar, December 3, 1879, supplement 218.
67.   Orsini, Print and Pleasure, 177.
68.   Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolo-
nial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Minault, Secluded
Scholars.
69.   S. Joshi, Fractured Modernity, 61.
70.   Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940: Language and
Literature in the Age of Nationalism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002);
 Notes to Pages 56–58 135

Charu Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims, and the Hindu
Public in Colonial India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001).
71.   Lakhnavi, Fasana-e Azad, 279.
72.   Ibid., 307–308.
73.   Ibid., 308.
74.   Avadh Akhbar, July 28–August 7, 1879. This quality has been the subject
of debate among scholars. Firoze Mookerjee, a scholar of Sarshar’s works, has ar-
gued that Husn Ara’s conditions for marriage showed her to be “an unattractively
hard and calculating person,” who represented an unsuccessful mix of female ar-
chetypes, “the as yet unknown emancipated woman of Sarshar’s ideal,” the hero-
ine of romance narratives, the courtesan, and “the hard and calculating house-
wife”; Firoze Mookerjee, Lucknow and the World of Sarshar (Karachi, Pakistan:
Saad Publication, 1992), 110, 112. Francesca Orsini has argued that Husn Ara’s
demands demonstrate her concern for respectability, and reflect “her definition of
how to become a sharif,” which involved practicing proper conduct, acting accord-
ing to established modes of respectability, and becoming proficient in modern ways
of life (Orsini, Print and Pleasure, 180).
75.   Lakhnavi, Fasana-e Azad, 343.
76.   Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and
Cultural Nationalism (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001); Minault, Secluded
Scholars; Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity.
77.   The issue of consent in conjugal marriages in late nineteenth-century
South Asia is an important one that awaits further study.
78.   Ji-Eun Lee, Women Pre-scripted: Forging Modern Roles through Korean
Print (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015), 8.
79.   Marilyn Booth, “Women in Islam: Men and the Women’s Press in Turn-
of-the-20th-Century Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33, no.
2 (2001): 171–201.
80.   Lakhnavi, Fasana-e Azad, 623.
81.   This is similar to the ideal of restraint outlined by Minault as part of the
values associated with “both sharif culture and reformist Islam” (Minault, Se-
cluded Scholars, 51). However, the difference is that Husn Ara moderates between
what she sees as two extremes (the sharifzādī and the courtesan), proposing a mid-
dle ground between the two.
82.   I have argued elsewhere that Husn Ara’s model behavior was somewhat
tempered by her less restrained sister, Sipahr Ara. See Dubrow, “Space for Debate.”
83.   Kumkum Sangari, “Multiple Temporalities, Unsettled Boundaries, Trick-
ster Women: Reading a Nineteenth-Century Qissa,” in India’s Literary History:
Essays on the Nineteenth Century, ed. Vasudha Dalmia and Stuart Blackburn
(New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004).
84.   Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community; S. Joshi, Fractured Modernity;
Krupa Shandilya, Intimate Relations: Social Reform and the Late Nineteenth-­
Century South Asian Novel (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017).
136 Notes to Pages 59–65

85.   David Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British

India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Ruby Lal, Coming of Age in
Nineteenth-­Century India: The Girl-Child and the Art of Playfulness (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013).
86.   Lakhnavi, Fasana-e Azad, 223.
87.   Ibid., 676.
88.   Ibid., 680.
89.   Ibid., 683.
90.   Name unpublished, “A Lovely Letter from a Lawyer’s [munsif] Pious
Wife,” December 12, 1879, supplement 247–248. This letter is discussed in more
detail in chapter 4.
91.   Lakhnavi, Fasana-e Azad, 622.
92.   Avadh Akhbar, December 12, 1879, supplement 247.

Chapter 3: Experiments with Form

1.   Ralph Russell, The Pursuit of Urdu Literature: A Select History (London:
Zed Books, 1992), 130; the translation is Russell’s.
2.   Ulrike Stark, An Empire of Books: The Naval Kishore Press and the Diffu-
sion of the Printed Word in Colonial India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007),
86; see chapter 1 section 5 for an overview of surveillance.
3.   Hans Harder and Barbara Mittler, eds., Asian Punches: A Transcultural
Affair (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2013), 424.
4.   Pheng Cheah, “What Is a World? On World Literature as World-Making
Activity,” Daedalus 137, no. 3 (Summer 2008): 26.
5.   Partha Mitter, “Punch and Indian Cartoons,” in Harder and Mittler, Asian
Punches, 47.
6.   Ritu Gairola Khanduri, Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and His-
tory in the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 54.
7.   Barbara Mittler, “Epilogue,” in Harder and Mittler, Asian Punches, 440.
8.   Abdus Salām Khurshid, Sahāfat Pakistan o Hind Men (Lahore, Pakistan:
Majlis-e Taraqqi-e Adab, 1963), 248–249.
9.   Good overviews of Avadh Punch in Urdu are Muhammad Abdur Razaq
Faruqi, Avadh Panch ke Adabi Khidmat, vol. 1 (Delhi: Educational Publishing
House, 2003); Pandit Kishan Prashad Kaul, ed., Guldasta-e Panch, with an intro-
duction by Braj Narayan Chakbast (Lucknow, India: Hindustani Press, 1915); Vazir
Agha, Urdu Adab men Tanz o Mizah (Lahore, Pakistan: Jadid Nashirin, 1966),
chapter 2. For a good overview of Urdu humorous genres, see Khalid Mahmud, ed.,
Urdu Adab men Tanz o Mizah ki Ravayat (Delhi: Delhi Urdu Academy, 2005).
10.   Khanduri (Caricaturing Culture, 48), citing Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provin-
cializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2000).
11.   In All the Year Round (1862), cited in Khanduri, Caricaturing Culture,
50. For further discussion of this, see Khanduri, Caricaturing Culture, 50.
 Notes to Pages 65–66 137

12.   Archibald Constable, “Introduction,” in A Selection from the Illustra-

tions Which Have Appeared in the Oudh Punch from 1877 to 1881 (Lucknow,
India: Oudh Punch Office, 1881), ii.
13.   Hans Harder, “Prologue,” in Harder and Mittler, Asian Punches, 2.
14.   Hans Harder lists Gujarati Punch and Hindi Punch as early English-­
language Punch magazines in South Asia. Harder, “Prologue,” in Harder and Mit-
tler, Asian Punches, 2.
15.   As with many “first” genres in South Asia, there is debate about which
example remains the first. Abdus Salām Khurshid claims there were several earlier
Urdu Punch magazines. The earliest was a humorous magazine called Mazāq
(Humor), published from Rampur on January 7, 1855, by Hakim Ahmad Raza
Lakhnavi, with its editor Abdul Jalil Nu‘mani. Khurshid also lists Farhat ul-Ahbāb,
a humorous paper published from Bombay; Rohelkhand Punch, from Muradabad;
and Bihar Punch, from Patna, all begun in 1876. These were followed by Avadh
Punch, in January 1877. Khurshid, Sahāfat Pakistan o Hind Men, 234–235.
16.   There is conflicting information about The Indian Punch; Khanduri dis-
cusses a journal named The Indian Punch founded in 1859, while Khurshid lists an
Indian Punch begun in Lucknow on May 1, 1880. Khanduri, Caricaturing Cul-
ture, 49; Khurshid, Sahāfat, 248. Avadh Akhbar regarded a journal called The In-
dian Punch as a rival; in a vignette that Sarshar removed from Fasana-e Azad’s
book editions, Azad read an issue of The Indian Punch and then criticized its po-
litical stance and selection of poetry. Avadh Akhbar, October 14, 1879, supplement
85–88. Avadh Akhbar also published news articles about The Indian Punch and
reprinted a few of its humorous vignettes: Avadh Akhbar, July 25, 1879; August
20, 1879; September 17, 1879; and January 5, 1880. It is unclear whether this In-
dian Punch mentioned in Avadh Akhbar is the same as either the journal discussed
by Khanduri or by Khurshid. I saw one issue of The Indian Punch from 1880 at
the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library in Patna, India.
17.   Sir John Tenniel was an illustrator who worked at the magazine for fifty
years and later illustrated Lewis Carroll’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the
Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.
18.   John Leech and Richard Doyle illustrated for Dickens and Thackeray,
among other authors.
19.   Charles Keene produced drawings, sketches, and etchings, mostly in
black-and-white. He illustrated for The Illustrated London News and Punch. See
Joseph Pennell, The Work of Charles Keene: With an Introduction and Comments
on the Drawings Illustrating the Artist’s Methods (London: T. Fisher Unwin and
Brandbury, 1897), “Introduction.” Brian Maidment provides a good list of Punch
illustrators. See Brian Maidment, “The Presence of Punch,” in Harder and Mittler,
Asian Punches, 18–19.
20.   Ibid., 17.
21.   This format was later taken up by rival Fun, established in 1861 in direct
competition with Punch, and The Graphic, established in 1869.
138 Notes to Pages 66–70

22.   Maidment, “Presence of Punch,” in Harder and Mittler, Asian Punches, 23.

23.   For details of the Punch table, see Patrick Leary, The Punch Brotherhood:
Table Talk and Print Culture in Mid-Victorian London (London: The British Li-
brary, 2010), 17. The Punch table was immortalized in W. M. Thackeray’s 1847
poem “The Mahogany Tree,” and was also rendered in an 1891 cartoon by John
Tenniel.
24.   Constable, “Introduction,” explanation after plate 2.
25.   See Mehr Afshan Farooqi, “The Secret of Letters: Chronograms in Urdu
Literary Culture,” Edebiyat 13, no. 2 (2003): 147–158. I discuss the use of chrono-
grams for dating books in Jennifer Dubrow, “Serial Fictions: Urdu Print Culture
and the Novel in Colonial South Asia,” Indian Economic and Social History Re-
view 54, no. 4 (2017): 403–422.
26.   See chapter 2 for a discussion of zarafat in the context of the novel.
27.   Christina Oesterheld, “Entertainment and Reform: Urdu Narrative
Genres in the Nineteenth Century,” in India’s Literary History: Essays on the
Nineteenth Century, ed. Vasudha Dalmia and Stuart Blackburn (New Delhi: Per-
manent Black, 2004), 173.
28.   Harder, “Prologue,” in Harder and Mittler, Asian Punches, 9.
29.   Khanduri (Caricaturing Culture, 54), referring to Vasudha Dalmia, The
Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhāratendu Hariśchandra and Nineteenth-
Century Banaras (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996).
30.   Maidment, “Presence of Punch,” in Harder and Mittler, Asian Punches, 25.
31.   In Kaul, Guldasta-e Panch.
32.   Walter N. Hakala, Negotiating Languages: Urdu, Hindi, and the Defini-
tion of Modern South Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
33.   Dictionaries were a matter of controversy in mid- and late nineteenth-
century India. Drawing on precolonial Urdu literary values, in which one’s linguis-
tic mastery proved one’s literary qualifications, the dictionary represented literary
and linguistic authority. The great classical Urdu poet Ghalib (1797–1869) became
embroiled in a controversy surrounding the Persian dictionary Burhān-e Qāte,
compiled in the seventeenth century by Muhammad Husain bin Kalaf Tabrizi
(whose pen name was “Burhān”), and considered an authoritative lexicon. Ac-
cording to his first biographer, Altaf Husain Hali, while reading through the dic-
tionary Ghalib discovered many mistakes, and began compiling a list of errors.
This list grew into a book, which Ghalib titled Qāte-e Burhān, or “The Cutting of
Burhān,” which he published in 1862 and then again in 1863 under the title
­Durafsh-e Kāviyānī. Ghalib’s criticism of the dictionary sparked a raging debate in
the contemporary press, with several pamphlets published in support of Burhān-e
Qāte, to which Ghalib responded. On this debate, see Altaf Husain Hali, Yadgar-e
Ghalib, available online at http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ghalib
/hali/, 42–49; Ram Babu Saksena, A History of Urdu Literature (Delhi: Cosmo
Publications, 2002; repr., Allahabad: Ram Narain Lal, 1927), 162.
34.   Avadh Punch, January 22, 1878, 3.
 Notes to Pages 71–76 139

35.   Ibid.
36.   For more about the word tahzib in the nineteenth century, see chapter 2.
37.   Kaul, Guldasta-e Panch, 147.
38.   On The Devil’s Dictionary, see David Mason, “The Dark Delight of Am-
brose Bierce,” Hudson Review 65, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 81–89.
39.   On shikār, see Swati Shresth, “Sahibs and Shikar: Colonial Hunting and
Wildlife in British India, 1800–1935” (PhD diss., Duke University 2009); Shafqat
Hussain, “Forms of Predation: Tiger and Markhor Hunting in Colonial Gover-
nance,” Modern Asian Studies 46, no. 5 (2012): 1212–1238; Joseph Sramek,
“‘Face Him Like a Briton’: Tiger Hunting, Imperialism, and British Masculinity in
Colonial India, 1800–1875,” Victorian Studies 48, no. 4 (Summer 2006):
659–680.
40.   “Tiger hunting was an important symbol in the construction of British
imperial and masculine identities during the nineteenth century”; Sramek, “Face
Him Like a Briton,” 659.
41.   Ratan Nath Sarshar was author of Fasana-e Azad, discussed in chapter 2.
42.   Abida Samiuddin, ed., Encyclopedic Dictionary of Urdu Literature,
vol. 2 (New Delhi: Global Vision, 2007), 538.
43.   Sumit Sarkar, “Renaissance and Kaliyuga: Time, Myth and History in
Colonial Bengal,” in Writing Social History (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1997), 191.
44.   This verse is from a famous ghazal of Amir Khusrau (1253–1325), with
the matla‘ (opening verse): “Khabaram rasida imshab ke nigar khwahi amad.” I
am grateful to Shariq Khan for identifying this verse.
45.   This is from the Gulistan of “Sa‘di” (Abu Muhammad Muslih ud-Din
bin ‘Abdullah Shīrāzī), from the section dar sirat padashahan (“on the conduct of
kings”). The story is about a wise and enlightened young man who eventually at-
tracts the attention of the sultan of the time and gains a high position. His peers are
jealous of him and try to have him killed but fail. The king asks him why they tried
to kill him, and he then recites a few verses about jealousy and how it is an incur-
able illness. The lines quoted describe this young man. I am grateful to Shariq Khan
for providing this information.
46.   Avadh Punch, June 18, 1878, 2.
47.   On these epidemics, see David Arnold, “Cholera and Colonialism in Brit-
ish India,” Past & Present 113 (November 1986): 123.
48.   The “prescription” is from Avadh Punch, January 22, 1878, 2. Seema
Alavi, Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical Tradi-
tion, 1600–1900 (Ranikhet, India: Permanent Black, 2007).
49.   Alavi, Islam and Healing, 201–204.
50.   Akbar Allahabadi cited and translated in Russell, Pursuit of Urdu
Literature.
51.   David Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British
India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 57.
140 Notes to Pages 76–78

52.   On Mirāt ul-‘Arūs, see Frances W. Pritchett, afterword to The Bride’s

Mirror (Mirāt ul-‘Arūs): A Tale of Life in Delhi a Hundred Years Ago, trans. G. E.
Ward (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001); Jennifer Dubrow, “A Space for De-
bate: Fashioning the Urdu Novel in Colonial India,” Comparative Literature Stud-
ies 53, no. 2 (2016): 289–311. Muhammad Hadi Ruswa’s 1900 novel Sharifzada
also explores this new milieu. See Oesterheld, “Entertainment and Reform”; and
Francesca Orsini, Print and Pleasure: Popular Literature and Entertaining Fictions
in Colonial North India (Ranikhet, India: Permanent Black, 2009).
53.   On changes to the concept of sharafat, or respectability, in the context of
the Urdu novel, see Jennifer Dubrow, “Sharafat and Bhal Mānsī: A New Perspec-
tive on Respectability in Fasana-e Azad,” South Asian History and Culture 9, no. 2
(2018): 181–193.
54.   On the Urdu masnavi, see Aditya Behl and Wendy Doniger, Love’s Subtle
Magic: An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition, 1379–1545 (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2012).
55.   David Shulman, Tamil: A Biography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 2016); Dalmia, Nationalization of Hindu Traditions; Valerie Ritter,
Kāma’s Flowers: Nature in Hindi Poetry and Criticism, 1885–1925 (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2011).
56.   See chapter 1 for more on this.
57.   In Indo-Persian, the genre originated as “a form of satire written on the
negative aspects of a city” but soon developed into a genre that catalogued the
beauties of young boys in the city. See Sunil Sharma, Persian Poetry at the Indian
Frontier: Mas‘ūd Sa‘d Salmān of Lahore (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2000), 107–
116. The quotation is from 108.
58.   This devastating sack of the Mughal capital city produced wide-scale fam-
ine and violence; twenty thousand people were massacred and the city was plun-
dered. See Carla R. Petievich, “Poetry of the Declining Mughals: The Shahr Āshob,”
Journal of South Asian Literature 25, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 1990): 99–110.
59.   Ibid., 99.
60.   Fritz Lehmann, “Urdu Literature and Mughal Decline,” Mahfil 6, no.
2–3 (1970): 127.
61.   Frances W. Pritchett, “‘The World Turned Upside Down’: Sahr-Āsob as a
Genre,” Annual of Urdu Studies 4 (1984): 41. Pritchett summarized the develop-
ment of the shahr ashob in Urdu as follows: “The trajectory of the shahr āshob
(‘city-destruction’) genre [proceeded as follows:] . . . from its Turkish origins as a
sexy, witty, wordplay-filled inventory of beautiful boys (whose looks made them
‘city-destroyers’) and their various professions, the genre evolved into a still-witty
‘world-turned-upside-down’ poem in which the poet exulted in his verbal prowess
and gloated over his upstart rivals or expressed a variety of other opinions about
different professions and classes in his city (the world might be going to hell, but
his art remained supreme). It also came to include some melancholy, rather ab-
stract, ghazal-influenced evocations of the utter ruin of a city. Over time, critics
 Notes to Pages 78–83 141

have increasingly sought to reify such accounts as much as possible and to view the
genre as one filled with actual, reliable historical descriptions of urban decay.”
Frances W. Pritchett, “A Long History of Urdu Literary Culture, Part 2: Histories,
Performances, and Masters,” in Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions
from South Asia, ed. Sheldon Pollock (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2003), 904.
62.   For a brief biography of Shauq’s life, see Musubāh ul-Hasan Qaisar,
Mu‘āvinīn-e Avadh Panch (Lucknow, India: Nami Press, 1984). Shauq was active
later in a controversy about Gulzar-e Nasim; see Ryan Perkins, “From the Meḥfil
to the Printed Word: Public Debate and Discourse in Late Colonial India,” Indian
Economic and Social History Review 50 (January–March 2013): 47–76.
63.   This line implied the speaker’s physical attraction to the shop boy. It re-
fers to the Indo-Persian and Turkish traditions of the shahr ashob, which cata-
logued young boys’ beauty. See note 61 above. Attraction to young boys was a
trope of classical Urdu and Persian poetry. This has often been read as evidence of
same-sex love in medieval South Asia. But the trope was also a common literary
device in Urdu ghazal, where the beloved could be male or female, human or di-
vine. In its open use of gender pronouns the Urdu ghazal drew on the Persian po-
etic tradition, in which gender is often not defined (the Persian language does not
mark gender). See C. M. Naim, “The Theme of Homosexual (Pederastic) Love in
Pre-Modern Urdu Poetry,” in Studies in the Urdu Gazal and Prose Fiction, ed.
Muhammad Umar Memon (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1979); and, more
recently, Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, eds., Same-Sex Love in India: Readings
from Literature and History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000).
64.   Avadh Punch, April 23, 1878, 2. My rhyming translation renders the
rhetorical punch of the original Urdu. It is not a literal translation.
65.   See Frances W. Pritchett and Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, trans., “‘The Vile
World Carnival’: A Shahr-Ashob by Nazir Akbarabadi,” Annual of Urdu Studies 4
(1984): 24–35; and Frances W. Pritchett and Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, trans., “‘In
the Presence of the Nightingale’: A Shahr-Ashob,” Annual of Urdu Studies 3
(1983): 1–9, for two examples of excellent premodern shahr ashobs.
66.   Ritu Khanduri reads this as evidence of caste shaping commercial rival-
ries. See Khanduri, Caricaturing Culture, 58–59.

Chapter 4: Reading the World

1.   Published in Avadh Akhbar, August 30, 1879, 2732.
2.   As Muhammad Mahbub Khan, a reader from Montgomery (district) in
Punjab (now in Pakistan), wrote to Avadh Akhbar, “Before the mail even comes,
an audience of listeners circles around, starting two hours before. A fight breaks
out among the readers. One says, ‘I’ll read.’ Another cries out, ‘It’s my turn.’”
Avadh Akhbar, November 26, 1879, supplement 200. Another reader, Yusuf Hindi
Abdul Malik Khan, assistant to the Sadr ul-Mahām of the Nizam of Hyderabad,
commented, “In the morning friends assemble and when the mailman comes, the
142 Notes to Pages 84–87

newspaper is taken from him first, and as soon as they take the paper, they start
reading the humor supplement and everyone listens attentively.” Avadh Akhbar,
November 12, 1879, supplement 172.
3.   Published Avadh Akhbar, December 29, 1879, supplement 288.
4.   On Fasana-e Azad’s serial formats, see Dubrow, “Serial Fictions.”
5.   Michael Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics,” Public Culture 14, no. 1
(Winter 2002): 82.
6.   Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An
Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1991 [1962]).
7.   For example, see Nancy Armstrong, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A
Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” and the other con-
tributions in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1992), as well as Jacob Soll, Publishing the Prince: History, Read-
ing, and the Birth of Political Criticism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2009).
8.   As Barbara Metcalf, in her study of the Deoband Islamic seminary, notes,
“The reformers not only preached and debated, but were among the first to take
advantage of the new printing presses of the day. . . . Indigenous leaders welcomed
cheap publications and public preaching not as a source of a new world-view but
as a way of spreading their own new formulations of self-statement and identity.”
Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002 [1982]), 67, 198. Also see Francis Rob-
inson, The ‘Ulama of Farangi Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia (Delhi:
Permanent Black, 2001), for similar findings in relation to the Farangi Mahall
seminary in Lucknow.
9.   On this, also see Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of
the West Indian Ocean, 1840–1915 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011).
10.   Avadh Akhbar, September 25, 1879, supplement 36.
11.   “Miyan Azad ki Dastan,” Avadh Akhbar, September 15, 1879, 2899.
12.   Sarshar responded to this reader, “This novel will be published separately,
but still needs a lot of revision. . . . In my opinion, this dastan cannot be published
separately without serious consideration [ghor o fikr]. It really needs revision and
changes. Sometimes when my health was not good, the topic becomes vapid
[phīka], and the story [qissah] isn’t finished yet. But this qissah will be published
separately.” Avadh Akhbar, September 25, 1879, supplement 36.
13.   His pen name, “Bimar,” meant “Lovesick.”
14.   Avadh Akhbar, October 6, 1879, supplement 64.
15.   For a discussion of how Fasana-e Azad developed a technique of using
contrasting character pairs from the dastan genre, see Jennifer Dubrow, “A Space
for Debate: Fashioning the Urdu Novel in Colonial India,” in Comparative Litera-
ture Studies 53, no. 2 (2016): 289–311.
 Notes to Pages 87–90 143

16.   Another reader, Pandit Dahram Chand from Simla, echoed this assertion.
In his letter published on November 6, 1879, Chand described the genre of qissah
(short tale) as having “made everyone fearful and cowardly with their ghosts, spir-
its, witches, magic spells, and incantations. By mentioning ridiculous, false, imagi-
nary, illusionary forms they’ve deceived everyone.” Avadh Akhbar, November 6,
1879, supplement 156.
17.   Avadh Akhbar, November 15, 1879, 3546.
18.   On Shakespeare in India, see Poonam Trivedi and Dennis Bartholomeusz,
eds., India’s Shakespeare: Translation, Interpretation, and Performance (Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 2005); and Shormistha Panja and Babli Moitra
Saraf, eds., Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures,
and Cultures (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2016).
19.   Ch. Pellat, H. Massé, I. Mélikoff, A. T. Hatto, and Aziz Ahmad,
“Ḥamāsa,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bos-
worth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs, 2nd ed., accessed May 5, 2017, http://
dx.doi.org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/10.1163/1573–3912_islam_COM
_0258. R. Blachère and A. Bausani, “Ghazal,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, ac-
cessed May 5, 2017, http://dx.doi.org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/10.1163
/1573–3912_islam_COM_0232.
20.   The phrase “worldly affiliations” refers to Sonal Khullar, Worldly Affilia-
tions: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930–1990
(Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 14. Khullar there drew from Ed-
ward Said’s concept of “affiliation,” which she defined as “a critical act by which
naturalized bonds, or ‘filiation,’ between the state and culture (or between empire
and culture) are dissolved and the worldly conditions, or social and political hori-
zons, of cultural production are revived.” On the incorporation of music into Urdu
drama, see Kathryn Hansen, Stages of Life: Indian Theatre Autobiographies (Ran-
ikhet, India: Permanent Black, 2011), 14.
21.   This reflected a larger “culture of corrections” that developed in early
Urdu print culture, as a legacy of manuscript culture. The work of Peter S­ tallybrass,
Anthony Grafton, and others has established continuities between manuscript and
print culture in early print culture in Europe. Readers in sixteenth-­century Eng-
land, for example, were encouraged to submit handwritten corrections to popular
printed texts such as almanacs. This “culture of corrections” developed in South
Asia, as well. On connections between manuscript and print culture, see Peter Stal-
lybrass, “‘Little Jobs’: Broadsides and the Printing Revolution,” in Agent of
Change: Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, ed. Sabrina Alcorn
Baron et al. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 340–367; and
Anthony Grafton, The Culture of Correction in Renaissance Europe (London:
British Library, 2011). On corrections to almanacs, see Peter Stallybrass, “Benja-
min Franklin: Printed Corrections and Erasable Writing,” Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society 150, no. 4 (2006): 553–567.
22.   Avadh Akhbar, September 11, 1879, 2857.
144 Notes to Pages 91–94

23.   Ibid.
24.   On a similar use of the word nairang, also by a reader of late nineteenth-
century Urdu print, see C. Ryan Perkins, “Partitioning History: The Creation of an
Islāmī Pablik in Late Colonial India, c. 1880–1920” (PhD diss., University of Penn-
sylvania, 2011). As Perkins has shown, print provided greater anonymity than a
face-to-face exchange. Yet it also made possible greater deception and fraud. See
C. Ryan Perkins, “From the Mehfil to the Printed Word: Public Debate and Dis-
course in Late Colonial India,” in Indian Economic and Social History Review 50
(January–March 2013): 47–76.
25.   Francesca Orsini notes that the private was not primary in Hindi fiction
of the 1920s and 1930s. See Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–
1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 14–15. Margrit Pernau in her study of the history of emo-
tions in South Asia argued that private life became emotionalized starting in the
1870s. See Margrit Pernau, “From Morality to Psychology: Emotion Concepts in
Urdu, 1870–1920,” Contributions to the History of Concepts 11, no. 1 (Summer
2016): 38–57.
26.   On intimacy in the public sphere, see Lauren Berlant, The Female Com-
plaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2008); on contradictions within public spheres, see
Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2002).
27.   See Francesca Orsini, Print and Pleasure: Popular Literature and Enter-
taining Fictions in Colonial North India (Ranikhet, India: Permanent Black, 2009),
chapter 5, especially 164–165 and 191–197.
28.   Examples include ‘Ali Khan sahib, ra’īs of Surat, in Gujarat, in western
India, and Muhammad ‘Ali “Bīmār” (“Lovesick”), ra’īs of Daulatpurah, possibly
in Rajasthan or Punjab, both with letters published on October 6, 1879, supple-
ment 64.
29.   For example, Sayyid Ghulam Haidar, a subjudge in Sitapur, near Luck­
now in Uttar Pradesh; Ram Nath Saha’e, a lawyer in the divani (civil) court, dis-
trict Allahabad; Ibrahim Husain, a teacher in Lāharpūr, near Lucknow; and
Dr. Muhammad Fazl Khan from Assam, in northeastern India, whose letters ap-
peared on October 1 and 24, 1879.
30.   Avadh Akhbar, December 12, 1879, supplement 248.
31.   Ibid., supplement 247.
32.   On this, see Margrit Pernau, Ashraf into Middle Classes: Muslims in
Nineteenth-­Century Delhi (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013); David Lelyveld,
“Ashraf,” Keywords in South Asian Studies (School of Oriental and African Stud-
ies: South Asia Institute), accessed December 5, 2016, https://www.soas.ac.uk
/south-asia-institute/keywords/; and Jennifer Dubrow, “Sharafat and Bhal Mānsī:
A New Perspective on Respectability in Fasana-e Azad,” South Asian History and
Culture 9, no. 2 (2018): 181–193.
 Notes to Pages 94–99 145

33.   David Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British

India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 30.
34.   See Dubrow, “Sharafat and Bhal Mānsī”; Margrit Pernau, “Middle Class
and Secularization: The Muslims of Delhi in the Nineteenth Century,” Middle-
Class Values in India and Western Europe, ed. Imtiaz Ahmad and Helmut Reifeld
(New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2001); and Pernau, Ashraf into Middle Classes;
Sanjay Joshi, Fractured Modernity: Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North
India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002).
35.   Dubrow, “Sharafat and Bhal Mānsī.”
36.   Avadh Akhbar, January 5, 1880, supplement 12.
37.   Ibid.
38.   Avadh Akhbar, December 30, 1879, supplement 292.
39.   What Perkins calls the “social dynamic of print.” As Perkins points out,
“the evidence we have from South Asia after the advent of lithographic print tech-
nology and through at least the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century dem-
onstrates that print was hardly an individualistic private enterprise, in both its
production and reception.” Perkins, “Mehfil,” 49.
40.   See Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere, in particular the chapters
by Nancy Fraser and Mary Ryan, on challenges to Jürgen Habermas’s 1962 model
of the public sphere. Habermas, Structural Transformation.
41.   Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, 57.
42.   On Kishore’s changing caste, see Ulrike Stark, An Empire of Books: The
Naval Kishore Press and the Diffusion of the Printed Word in Colonial India (New
Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007), 100–104.
43.   Farina Mir, The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British
Colonial Punjab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 22.
44.   See Christopher R. King, One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Move-
ment in Nineteenth-Century North India (Bombay: Oxford University Press,
1994).
45.   Mir, The Social Space of Language, 23.
46.   According to Mushirul Hasan, Avadh Punch’s declining readership in the
early decades of the twentieth century can be partly attributed to the Indian Na-
tional Congress’ support for “cow-protection societies and Hindi Sabhas,” which
estranged Muslims. See Mushirul Hasan, Wit and Humour in Colonial North
India (New Delhi: Niyogi, 2007), 107.
47.   Attacks on rival poets and their students were often personal. See Frances
W. Pritchett, “A Long History of Urdu Literary Culture, Part 2: Histories, Perfor-
mances, and Masters,” in Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from
South Asia, ed. Sheldon Pollock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
48.   In a cartoon published on January 22, 1878, Avadh Punch cartoonist
Wazir Anjum had satirized Avadh Akhbar by depicting it as a Don Quixote–like
figure on a pony, racing against the modern train of Avadh Punch. The cartoon
was captioned “How strong is his staff of serious exposition! Bent in a thousand
146 Notes to Pages 100–105

places. . . . These are his materials and he wants to stop Avadh Punch’s progress!”
Avadh Punch, January 22, 1878, 6.
49.   This is from Sa‘di’s Karima, an ethical/didactic masnavi that was stan-
dard memorization for children in the Persianate world. I am grateful to Shariq
Khan for this information. I am also thankful to Hajnalka Kovacs for her help with
Persian verses.
50.   Avadh Punch, July 20, 1880, 233.
51.   Avadh Punch was also likely responding to Sarshar’s claims that his
writing contained latāfat. In a prominently featured article in Avadh Akhbar pub-
lished on July 1, 1880, Sarshar declared the second volume of Fasana-e Azad a
“sea of latāfat.”
52.   The phrase māhi-e saqanqūr ki nani refers to a literary fracas between the
poets “Mushafi” and “Insha” in Lucknow, in which ghazals and rejoinders were
written that had “garden” as the radif (refrain) and “hur,” “saqanqūr,” “langur,”
and so on as the qafiyah (rhyme). C. M. Naim, personal communication, Janu-
ary 4, 2018.
53.   What I have translated as “Now hold on a minute,” is actually “A ra ra
ra kabir” (translatable as “a R. R. R. a Kabir”), which I suspect is a play on the
name of the poet Akbar Allahabadi, who probably wrote the piece. The rest of the
piece is signed “Allahabad.”
54.   Avadh Punch, July 6, 1880, 223–224.
55.   Avadh Punch, January 20, 1880, 234.
56.   Charu Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims, and
the Hindu Public in Colonial India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001); Orsini, Hindu
Public Sphere.
57.   Avadh Akhbar, August 8, 1878, 2500.
58.   Such debates were common among Urdu poets in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. It was common practice for Urdu poetic masters, known as
ustads, to pay extremely fine attention to matters of poetic diction and the proper
use of idiom.
59.   See Carla R. Petievich, Assembly of Rivals: Delhi, Lucknow, and the
Urdu Ghazal (New Delhi: Manohar, 1992); and C. M. Naim and Carla Petievich,
“Urdu in Lucknow / Lucknow in Urdu,” in Lucknow: Memories of a City, ed. Vio-
lette Graff (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).
60.   See Perkins, “Partitioning History” and “Mehfil to the Printed Word,”
for more on this attack.
61.   Avadh Punch, October 5, 1880, 327.
62.   At this same time Sarshar also began writing volume 2 of Fasana-e Azad
(in a testament to Sarshar’s remarkable productivity during this period).
63.   On Kishore’s participation in the elite culture of Lucknow, see Stark, Em-
pire of Books.
64.   Avadh Punch, July 20, 1880, 239.
 Notes to Pages 106–111 147

65.   Avadh Punch, October 5, 1880, 327.

66.   “Fasana-e Azad kī Jild-e Sānī,” Avadh Punch, October 12, 1880, 334,
emphasis added.
67.   Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhāratendu
Hariśchandra and Nineteenth-Century Banaras (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1996), 222.
68.   Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere. A different but related formation occurred
in Punjabi, in which members of what Farina Mir has called the Punjabi “literary
formation” formed a social “collective based not only on a shared language . . . but
also on shared literary practices and ideas.” This formation, though independent
of the colonial state, focused on “sociality and reliogiosity” but was not defined by
religion, imitating in some ways the Urdu cosmopolis. Mir, Social Space of
­Language, 98.
69.   Kavita Datla, The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and
­Colonial India (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013), 9.

Conclusion
1.   The all-India Progressive Writers’ Association was officially launched in
Lucknow in 1936. This was only one among several groups associated with the
Progressive Writers’ Movement. For more on the Progressive Writers’ Movement,
see Rakhshanda Jalil, Liking Progress, Loving Change: A Literary History of the
Progressive Writers’ Movement in Urdu (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2014), and Gopal, Literary Radicalism in India. Since this book was completed,
Carlo Coppola’s book, a much-revised version of his dissertation on progressive
Urdu poetry, was also published: Carlo Coppola, Urdu Poetry, 1935‑1970: The
Progressive Episode (Karachi, Pakistan: Oxford University Press, 2017).
2.   “The Aim of Literature,” translated by Francesca Orsini, afterword to The
Oxford India Premchand (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004).
3.   Ibid. Another founding member of the all-India Progressive Writers’ Asso-
ciation, Mulk Raj Anand (1905–2004), in the foundational manifesto for the group,
written in London in 1935, defined “progressivism” as the following: “Radical
changes are taking place in Indian society. . . . We believe that the new literature of
India must deal with the basic problems of our existence today—the problems of
hunger and poverty, social backwardness, and political subjection. All that drags us
down to passivity, inaction and un-reason we reject as reactionary. All that arouses
in us the critical spirit, which examines institutions and customs in the light of rea-
son, which helps us to act, to organize ourselves, to transform, we accept as pro-
gressive.” Quoted in Priyamvada Gopal, Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Na-
tion, and the Transition to Independence (London: Routledge, 2005), 13–14.
4.   See Gopal, Literary Radicalism in India, 4.
5.   Rajinder Singh Bedi, “Lajwanti,” in The Penguin Book of Classic Urdu
Stories, ed. M. Asaduddin (New Delhi: Penguin, 2006), 13. This is Bedi’s own
translation.
148 Notes to Pages 112–117

6.   Ibid., 16.
7.   Ibid., 17–18.
8.   Ibid., 19.
9.   Ibid., 20–21.
10.   Ibid., 23.
11.   Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, History, and Na-
tionalism in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 8.
12.   Amritjit Singh, Nalini Iyer, and Rahul K. Gairola, eds., Revisiting India’s
Partition: New Essays on Memory, Culture, and Politics (Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2016), xvi–xvii.
13.   Parvinder Mehta, “A Will to Say or Unsay: Female Silences and Discur-
sive Interventions in Partition Narratives,” in Singh, Iyer, and Gairola, Revisiting
India’s Partition.
14.   Cited in Carlo Coppola, “Urdu Poetry, 1935–1970: The Progressive Epi-
sode” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1975), 108.
15.   Zafarullah Khan and Brian Joseph, “Pakistan after Musharraf: The
Media Take Center Stage,” Journal of Democracy 19, no. 4 (October 2008):
32–37.
16.   As of this writing, Netflix has four Pakistani dramas; this is likely to
increase.
17.   A sample of usernames that appear in the comments for episodes 3, 11,
and the finale for Mataa-e Jān includes names that point to a diverse viewership.
Many usernames are marked as Muslim, but others appear non–South Asian
(Annie, Maria) or preserve anonymity by using only initials.
18.   Drama Pakistani, http://www.dramapakistani.net/mataa-e-jaan-finale/,
accessed March 25, 2016.
19.   The discussion of feminine respectability also builds on the tradition of
Pakistani television dramas from the 1970s, which frequently examined women’s
issues as their central topic. See Saleha Suleman, “Representations of Gender in
Prime-Time Television: A Textual Analysis of Drama Series of Pakistan Television”
(PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1990).
20.   The Zee network spells it Jodey Dilon Ko.
21.   Zindagi Gulzar Hai was so popular that it has now shown six times on
Indian television. Times News Network, “Zindagi Gulzar Hai Is Back on TV,”
Times of India, August 13, 2014, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tv/news/hindi
/Zindagi-Gulzar-Hai-is-back-on-TV/articleshow/40121634.cms?.
22.   Madhu Goswami quoted in Deepak Dobhal, “TV Shows Helping Bridge
Divide between India, Pakistan,” Voice of America, October 16, 2014.
23.   Indo-Asian News Service, “In ‘Zeal for Unity,’ Indian, Pakistani Film-
makers to Bridge Divide,” Indian Express, February 10, 2016.
24.   Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited, “Zee Entertainment Enterprises
Limited Announces ZEAL FOR UNITY, a Historic Peace Initiative to Bridge the
Gap Between India and Pakistan through Cultural Experiences,” http://www.zee
 Notes to Pages 118–120 149

television.com/media-relations/press-release/zee-entertainment-enterprises-limited
-announces-zeal-for-unity-a-historic-peace-initiative-to-bridge-the-gap-between
-india-and-pakistan-through-cultural-experiences.html, accessed April 30, 2017.
25.   Sonup Sahadevan, “Karan Johar on Ae Dil Hai Mushkil Controversy: I
Will Not Work with Pakistani Talent in Future,” Indian Express, October 19,
2016.
26.   Urdu continues to have a fraught existence in Pakistan—it is the official
language of the nation, yet not the mother tongue for the majority of the nation’s
inhabitants. This unusual fact continues to play out in present-day Pakistan, where
there are Sindhi, Siraiki, and Baluchi language movements, to refer to three major
languages spoken by the people of Pakistan. There has also been a longstanding
and important movement on behalf of Punjabi, the first language of the majority of
Pakistan’s population. See Alyssa Ayres, Speaking Like a State: Language and Na-
tionalism in Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
27.   Soheb Niazi, “The Politics of Imagining (in) Urdu in Contemporary
India,” Café Dissensus 33 (2017), https://cafedissensus.com.
28.   Rekhta.org is based in Gurgaon, outside of New Delhi.
29.   The video is available at https://rekhta.org/nazms/ek-darkhvaast-ahmad
-nadeem-qasmi-nazms?lang=ur, accessed May 31, 2017.
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 Index
Page numbers in boldface type refer to illustrations.
Abbas, K. A., 111
age of print, 1, 13–14, 15–22, 34. See
also periodicals; Urdu print
culture; print technology
Agra, xvi, 78
Ahmad, Nazir, 19, 38
Alavi, Seema, 11, 75–76
Aligarh, xvi, 76
Allahabadi, Akbar, 72, 76, 146n53;
Avadh Punch and, 15, 17,
62–64
all-India Progressive Writers’ Associa-
tion, 3–4, 110–111, 113–114,
147n1, 147n3. See also realism
Anand, Mulk Raj, 111, 147n3;
Untouchable, viii
Anderson, Benedict, vii, 27, 126n40
Anjuman-e Punjab, 24
anticolonialism, 69–72
Arabic (language), 19, 43, 62, 68, 97
Arabic cosmopolis, 9, 11
Arabic literary aesthetics, 86, 87–88
Avadh, 15, 16, 30, 105. See also
Lucknow; Oudh
Avadh Akhbar: critiqued as Baniya
Akhbar, 80, 98–101; literary
debates and, 22–23, 25–27;
popularity of, 17; readers’ letters
and, 2, 60, 82, 83–84, 86, 89,
91, 93; rivalry with Avadh
167
Punch, 18, 64, 80, 85, 96,
98–103, 107; role in the
development of the novel, 39,
43, 50; zarafat, 18, 100–101.
See also Fasana-e Azad; Kishore,
Munshi Naval; Sarshar, Ratan
Nath; Sharar, Abdul Halim
Avadh Punch: critiques of colonial
power, 72–75, 76; critiques of
Fasana-e Azad, 101–105;
founding of, 16–18, 19; India
and, 65–69; influence on
journalism of, 62–64, 68;
literary modernity and, 64, 81;
“Mr. Azad’s New Dictionary,”
69–72; poetry and, 75, 77–81;
popularity of, 15, 18, 64; rivalry
with Avadh Akhbar, 18, 64, 80,
85, 96, 98–103, 107; short
pieces and, 75–76; Urdu
language and, 64, 85, 96–97,
98–101, 103–108; visual style
of, 64, 66–68, 67; zarafat, 39.
See also Allahabadi, Akbar;
Azad, Navab Sayyid Muham-
mad; festivals; festival vignettes;
Husain, Sajjad; Lucknow; satire;
satirical journalism; satirical
vignettes
Azad, Muhammad Husain, 23–25
168
Azad, Navab Sayyid Muhammad, 15,
17, 64, 69–72
Badaun, xvi, 8
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 12, 28, 122n11
Bangladesh, 6, 85. See also Dhaka
Baniya Akhbar, 80, 98, 99, 102, 105.
See also Avadh Akhbar
Bareilly, xvi, 8
Barq, Javala Prasad, 17
Bedi, Rajinder Singh, 111–113
Beg, Mirza Macchu (pseud. Sitam
Zarif), 17, 106–107
Bengal, 8, 65
Bengali (language), 18, 38, 41, 63, 65,
73, 78
Benjamin, Walter, 42
Bombay, vii, xvi, 2, 8, 21
book trade, 16. See also print
publishing
British India, xvi, 74–75, 76, 85, 108,
109. See also colonial govern-
ment; colonialism
Calcutta, xvi, 2, 8, 28, 41, 70
castes, 28, 132n32, 141n66; depic-
tions of, 46, 58, 73, 96–97, 98,
105; Urdu literary circle and, 9,
11, 16–17, 22
Chakbast, Braj Narayan, 15, 18, 21,
64
Chander, Krishan, 111
Chartier, Roger, 11
Chatterjee, Bankimchandra, 18, 38,
111; Kamalakanter Daptar, 41
Chatterjee, Partha, vii, 55
Cheah, Pheng, 7–8, 64
Chennai. See Madras
China, 37, 63, 121–122n7, 123n18,
132n29
Chughtai, Ismat, 111
cities: class and, 16–17; literary
depictions of, 29, 30–32;
Index
photography and, 30, 33,
129n59
class: bhatiyārī and, 50, 58, 59, 93,
94; Lucknow’s colonial middle
class, 133n39; domestic violence
and, 116–117; gender and, 48,
51, 55; social reform and, 55,
103; Urdu language and, vii,
124n21; Urdu literary culture
and, 16–17, 64, 66, 71, 80;
Urdu public sphere and, 85,
92–94
colonial government: censorship laws
and, 63; civil service exams and,
76; court system and, 58–59;
hardening of religious identities
and, 9; monitoring of religious
festivals, 28; obscenity laws and,
103, 107; paper industry and,
28–29; schools and, 43, 46;
survey of cities, 30, 33. See also
Hunter Education Commission
colonialism: challenges to, 7, 8, 28,
31–32, 39, 41, 50, 61, 62–63,
69–72, 78, 81; in Fasana-e
Azad, 48–49; language and, 97;
literary modernity and, 4, 50,
61, 121n7; reform of South
Asian literature and, 4, 23–26,
37, 39
communalism, viii, 2, 9, 109, 113
community: “communitas,” 28;
imagined, vii, 27, 63; religion
and, 11, 17, 19, 32, 124n21;
Urdu print culture and, 2–3,
7–11, 13, 27–28, 32, 34. See
also Urdu cosmopolis
cosmopolitanisms, 71; Arabic, 9;
definitions of, 2, 7–8, 64;
Muslim, 9, 10, 11; Persian,
9–10; Sanskrit, 9; virtual, 8, 63.
See also Urdu cosmopolis
 Index
Dabir, Mirza, 24, 26, 99
Dalmia, Vasudha, 20, 69, 77
Delhi, 107, 129n59; Asar us-Sanadid
(Sayyid Ahmad Khan), 30;
literary and cultural center, 8,
78, 104, 128n39; 132–133n34;
New Delhi, 117; sack of, 77
Desai, Anita: In Custody, 5–6
Dhaka, 18, 19
Dickens, Charles, 59, 65, 66, 137n18
dictionaries, 138n33; modernization
of, 70; satire and, 64, 69–72, 74,
81
Don Quixote, 18, 51–52, 134n51,
145–146n48
Egypt, 52, 67, 63
Faiz, Faiz Ahmad, 5
famine, 79, 80, 81, 140n58; Great
Famine of 1876–1878, 31–32
Fasana-e Azad (Sarshar), 40; Angli-
cized babu and, 47, 50, 133n45;
anticolonialism and, 48, 51;
Avadh Punch and attacks on,
18, 96–103; Hindi/Urdu divide
and, 9, 104–107; Khoji, 36,
51–54, 134n48; masculinity
and, 48–49; pardah and, 52–53;
plot of, 36; popularity of,
20–21, 37; procolonialism and,
54; readers and, 82–84, 86–89,
90–92, 93–96; serialization of,
20, 39, 44–45, 84; significance
of, 4, 15, 35–39, 41; transition
to book form of, 50–51,
137n16, 142n15; Turkey and,
36, 52, 53, 60, 82; women
characters in, 54–61, 106, 116;
writing of, 13, 36, 50, 146n62;
zarafat and, 39, 42
festival vignettes, 13; creation of an
Urdu cosmopolis and, 27–29,
169
32–33; critique of colonialism,
32; depiction of cities in, 30–32;
Muharram and, 29–32, 43
festivals, 29–33; Urdu print culture
and, 27–29, 34. See also festival
vignettes
film and television, 2, 109, 114–118,
148n19, 148n21
France: Le Charivari (French maga-
zine), 66; influence on Urdu
literary culture, 8, 123n18;
theater actresses, 11
Gandhi, 9, 113, 118
gender, 59, 111; colonial discourse/
colonialism and, 49, 139n40;
feminine respectability and,
54–61, 148n19, 116. See also
class; sexuality; women
genres, 37–38, 47, 68, 84, 87; dastan,
35, 36, 87, 101, 123n16,
134n48; historical novel, 15, 19,
21, 104; literary modernity and
the development of, 4, 13, 14,
82, 86; nuskhah, 75–76;
performative, 12, 126n2; qissah,
58, 142n12, 143n16; savānih-e
‘umrī (biography), 26. See also
Avadh Punch; dictionaries;
festival vignettes; Urdu poetry;
satirical vignettes; novels;
periodicals; political cartoons;
Punches (Urdu language);
zarafat
Gupta, Charu, 65, 103, 133n36
Habermas, Jürgen, 84–85
Hali, Altaf Husain, 23–24, 25–26,
128n39, 138n33
Harder, Hans, 63, 65, 69, 137n14
Harischandra, Bharatendu, 18, 20, 41
Hijr, Tribhuvan Nath Sapru, 17–18,
29
170
Hindi (language), 46, 63, 115;
language of administration and,
6, 10; television and, 117;
writers and, 18, 20. See also
Hindi/Urdu controversy; Urdu
(language)
Hindi/Urdu controversy: Avadh
Punch and, 85, 96–101, 104;
history of, 2, 5, 9; outcome of,
108, 109; resistance to, 113, 118
Hinduism: religious festivals and,
32–33; women’s roles and, 52,
55–57, 60, 111–112. See also
castes; Hindi/Urdu controversy;
Hindus; Hindustani
Hindus: identity of letter writers to
Avadh Akhbar and, 93; traders
and mercantile families, 80;
participation in Urdu cosmopo-
lis, 11
Hindustani, 6, 9, 113, 118; language
of administration and, 10, 97.
See also Urdu (language)
history of the book, 13–14
Hunter Education Commission, 7, 76
Husain, Intizar, 6
Husain, Munshi Sajjad, 18, 64; found-
ing of Avadh Punch, 15, 17, 19
Husainabad imambarah, 30, 32
Hyderabad, vii, xvi, 8, 17, 29;
Osmania University, 6; royal
patronage of authors, 21
Indian language policy, 9, 76
Indian National Congress, 21, 68,
113, 145n46
Indo-Persian: genres and, 26, 36, 38,
77, 87, 88, 123n16, 140n57;
mode of comportment and, 76;
shahr ashob and, 141n63
internet, 114–116, 118
Iran, 10, 89
Index
Islam, 10; holidays and, 29, 31;
pardah and, 52–53, 94–95;
reform and, 28, 76, 85, 142n8;
sharif culture and, 52; women’s
roles and, 55, 57, 60, 93, 106.
See also festivals; Muslims;
sharafat
Islamicate, 10, 94
Japan, 36, 37, 63
Jahan, Rashid, 110
journalism. See newspapers
Joshi, Sanjay, 16–17, 48, 55
kacheri, 58–59, 76
Kashmiri Brahmins, 17; Ratan Nath
Sarshar’s identity as, 85, 97–98,
104
Kaviraj, Sudipta, 3, 38
Khan, Fawad, 117–118
Khan, Sayyid Ahmad, 30, 76, 99, 103
Kheri, 18, 72–73, 74–75
Kingdom of Oudh. See Oudh
Kishore, Munshi Naval: personal
attacks on, 80, 96, 98, 105, 107;
publishing empire of, 16, 17, 18,
28–29. See also print publishing
Lahore, xvi, 8, 23, 24, 25, 128n39
Lakhimpur, 18, 72–73
Lakhnavi, R. N. See Sarshar, Ratan
Nath
Leary, Patrick, 18, 66
Lelyveld, David, 76, 94
literary modernity: continuation and
decline of, 108, 110, 119;
definition of, 3–5, 121–122n7;
forms and, viii, 64, 77; Fasana-e
Azad and, 50–54, 61; satirical
vignettes and, 14, 41; Urdu and,
5–7, 14, 34, 64, 120. See also
Avadh Punch; Urdu (language);
Urdu cosmopolis
 Index
lithography: vii, 1, 19, 22, 68, 127n6
Lucknow, xvi, 130n60, 146n52;
Canning College, 17; Husain-
abad imambarah, 30, 32;
Kashmiri Pandit community in,
19; literary circle, 15, 16–18,
132–133n34; literary and
cultural center, 8, 22, 26, 104,
105, 107, 128n39; Muharram
and, 30–32, 43; Normal School,
24; photography and, 129n59;
Shi‘a pilgrimage site, 30; Urdu
print culture in, 8, 14, 22, 24,
63; print publishing and, 16, 19,
29, 41, 66, 137n16; Progressive
Writers’ Conference and, 110;
setting for Fasana-e Azad, 36,
43, 48, 52, 54; women’s
respectability and, 55. See also
all-India Progressive Writers’
Association; Sarshar, Ratan
Nath
Ludhiana. See Punjab
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 4, 23,
24
Madras, xvi, 2, 8, 21; Madras Punch,
65. See also Chennai
Manto, Saadat Hasan, 22, 111
Mataa-e Jān Hai Tu, 115
Mir, Farina, 97, 147n68
Miraji, 5
Mitter, Partha, 8, 63, 64, 125n30
modernity: debates and critiques of,
viii, 7, 28, 61, 64, 76, 108,
119–120; experiments with
literary form and, 69–71, 76;
ghazals and, 123n20; newspa-
pers and, 7–8, 11; novels and,
50–54; postcolonialism and, vii;
technology and, 7, 33; shared
Indian and Iranian, 10; Urdu as
a language of, 5–7, 109–110;
171
women and, 57. See also
Islamicate; literary modernity;
Persianate; Urdu (language)
Mughal Empire: decline of, 78,
140n58; Hindu festivals and, 32;
Persian and, 10, 97; poetry and,
78; sharafat and, 94; tiger
hunting and, 72
Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental
College. See Khan, Sayyid
Ahmad
Mukherjee, Meenakshi, 38, 41, 42
Mumbai. See Bombay
mushairahs, 23, 24, 25, 26–27, 119
Muslims: courtly lifestyles of, 17;
food practices and, 105; Hunter
Education Commission and, 76;
migration from India, 6; pardah
and, 52; participation in Urdu
cosmopolis, 10–11, 86, 93;
shahr ashobs and, 78; Shi‘a, 29,
46; transregional Muslim
community (ummah) and, 32;
Urdu as language of, 2, 5, 9,
85, 97, 98, 104, 105–106, 108,
109, 124n21. See also festivals;
Islam
Mutiny of 1857, 11, 63, 126n41
nationalism, vii, 15, 18, 68, 71;
censorship and, 118; resistance
to, 5, 113; fracturing of Urdu
cosmopolis and, viii, 2, 9, 109,
114; women in constructions of,
52, 57, 112
natural poetry, 23–25
newspapers: development of the novel
and, 42; imagined community
and, vii; importance of poetry
in, 26–27; modernity and, 7–8,
11; popularity of Urdu newspa-
pers, 1–2, 19, 83, 119; readers’
letters and, 82, 84, 89, 90, 92;
172
role in literary debates of,
24–25, 98, 128n39. See also
Avadh Akhbar; Avadh Punch;
Baniya Akhbar; Fasana-e Azad;
zarafat
Northwestern Provinces: famine, 31;
languages and, 6, 10, 97. See
also Oudh
novels: historical, 15, 21, 104; humor
and, 35, 38, 122n11; Mirāt
ul-‘Arūs, 76; modernity and, vii,
7, 14, 50–54, 61; moral
instruction and, 35, 38, 54–61,
94; new genre of, 36, 37, 39, 86,
87–88, 123n18, 131n17; oral
style and, 29; periodicals and,
37–38, 41–50; realism and,
42–43, 60–61; satirical vignettes
as sources for, 36, 41–42,
47–50; serialization of, 19, 35,
39, 42, 51, 72, 86–87, 105;
telenovelas and, 114–115; Urdu
literary culture and, 96, 104;
vernacular, 35, 36. See also Alla-
habadi, Akbar; all-India Progres-
sive Writers’ Association;
Bakhtin, Mikhail; Chatterjee,
Bankimchandra; Don Quixote;
Fasana-e Azad; Husain, Intizar;
Husain, Munshi Sajjad; Prem-
chand; print publishing; Urdu
readers; Ruswa, Mirza Muham-
mad Hadi; Sarshar, Ratan Nath;
Sharar, Abdul Halim
Orsini, Francesca, 12, 54, 55, 96
Ottoman Empire, 11, 63. See also
Turkey
Oudh, xvi, 15, 97. See also North-
western Provinces
Pakistan: film and television and, 2,
114–118, 148n19; language
Index
policy and, 9; Urdu language
and, 2, 5, 6, 9, 85, 108, 109,
110, 111, 124n21, 149n26. See
also Lahore; Partition; Punjab;
Rawalpindi
pardah, 52–53, 94–95
Parsi theater, 43, 59
Partition, 2, 6, 108, 109, 111, 113,
114. See also nationalism
periodicals: as archival sources, 14;
gender roles and, 55–61; growth
of, 1, 15, 19; as literary space,
13, 22–27, 77; notions of
community and, 27–28; novels
and, 37–38, 41–50; role in form-
ing Urdu cosmopolis, 2, 9, 32;
Urdu print culture and, 14, 19,
20, 90, 98; Urdu print public
sphere, 84–85. See also Avadh
Akhbar; Avadh Punch; festival
vignettes; newspapers; Punch;
Punches; Urdu readers
Persian (culture), 6–7, 23, 25, 27, 38,
68, 106
Persian (language), 17, 19, 43, 61, 97,
127n19
Persian literary aesthetics, 86–89
Persianate, 10–11
photographs, 30, 33, 129n58, 129n59
political cartoons, 14, 63, 64–65, 68
Pratabgarh, 1, 29, 31, 92
Premchand, 110, 113
Press and Registration of Books Act
(Act XXV), 63
print entrepreneurs, 13, 15–22
print publishing: centers of, xvi, 8, 16;
growth of, 1, 127n6, 127n19;
Naval Kishore Press, 16, 18, 21,
27, 39, 64, 80. See also Kishore,
Munshi Naval; Lucknow;
newspapers; novels; periodicals;
print entrepreneurs; print
technology
 Index
print technology, vii, 1, 20, 28–29,
85, 142n8. See also lithography
Pritchett, Frances, 23, 24, 78, 128n34,
140n61, 149n30
progressive art movement. See
all-India Progressive Writers’
Association
Punch (London), 17, 18, 41, 63–64,
66, 69
Punches (Urdu language): Benares
Punch, 29, 31–32, 75; creation
of an Urdu cosmopolis and,
27–28, 29, 75; development of,
63–69, 137n16. See also Avadh
Akhbar; Avadh Punch; genres;
newspapers; periodicals; Punch
(London)
Punjab, 31, 111, 141n2
Punjabi, 107, 147n68, 149n26
Qasmi, Ahmad Nadim, 119
Qidwai, Ahmad ‘Ali Shauq. See
Shauq, A.
railways, vii, 8, 11, 31, 95, 109
Rashid, N. M., 5
Rawalpindi, xvi, 2, 8
realism, 42–43, 60–61, 132n24; social
realism, 110
religious identity, 28, 97, 105, 108,
142n8; lack of, viii, 2, 11, 13
Russia, 8, 36; Russian Revolution,
110. See also Russo-Turkish
War
Russo-Turkish War, 36, 51, 56–57,
102
Ruswa, Mirza Muhammad Hadi, 15,
21, 140n52
Sanskrit: cosmopolis, 9; epics, 41;
language, 10, 48, 69, 97
Sarshar, Ratan Nath: as editor of
Avadh Akhbar, 15, 18, 20, 72,
173
91, 103; as high-caste Hindu, 9,
97; as professional author, 13,
19, 20–21; as R. N. Lakhnavi,
72; attacks on by Avadh Punch,
103–107; dates of birth and
death, 122n14; festival vignette
and, 32–33; positions on
women’s respectability in
Fasana-e Azad, 52–53, 54–56,
60–61, 135n74; responses to
readers, 82–83, 89, 90–92,
142n12; serialization of
Fasana-e Azad and, 35, 43–50,
137n16; statements on novel,
36–39, 50–51, 86–87; time in
Hyderabad, 21; work at Avadh
Punch, 41–42, 72–75. See also
Fasana-e Azad; Kashmiri
Brahmins
satire, 7, 15, 47, 50, 68, 69, 140n57;
as voice of dissent, 63, 65, 81.
See also satirical journalism;
satirical vignettes
satirical journalism, 63–65, 72–75.
See also Avadh Punch
satirical vignettes, 14, 18; as source
for novels, 36, 41–42, 50. See
also Avadh Punch; Fasana-e
Azad; novels; Sarshar, Ratan
Nath; zarafat
sexuality, 58, 101–102, 111, 112,
140n61, 141n63
shahr ashob, 30, 33, 68, 77–78, 80,
81, 140n57, 140–141n61,
141n63. See also Urdu poetry
sha‘iri. See Urdu poetry
Shakespeare, William, 87–88
sharafat, 56–58, 60–61, 84–85,
93–94, 135n74, 135n81. See
also gender; women
Sharar, Abdul Halim, 15, 19–20, 21,
104
Shauq, A., 78, 141n62
174 Index
Shi‘as, 32
social reform: education and, 38, 46;
festivals and, 33; notion of “civi-
lization” and, 71; obscenity laws
and, 103; women and, 52–53,
55–61. See also Fasana-e Azad;
sharafat
Sunnis, 32
telegraphs, vii, 2, 8, 11, 68
telenovelas. See film and television
Thackeray, W. M., 66, 137n18,
138n23
Turkey: Fasana-e Azad and, 36, 52,
53, 60, 82; shahr ashob and,
140n61, 141n63. See also
Russo-Turkish War
Umrao Jan Ada (Ruswa), 15, 21
Urdu (language): Dakkani, 86;
diaspora, 109–110; educated
classes and, vii; history of, 118;
language of bureaucracy, 6–7;
language of modernity, 5–7,
109–110; language of Muslims,
2, 5, 9, 85, 97, 104, 105–106,
108; language of Pakistan, 2, 5,
85, 108, 124n21; transregional
and transnational language and,
vii, viii, 2, 118, 124n21. See also
Hindi/Urdu controversy;
Punches; Urdu cosmopolis
Urdu cosmopolis: differences from
other cosmopolitanisms, 9;
festival vignettes and creation of,
27–29, 32–33; Hindus’ partici-
pation in, 11; meanings of, vii–
viii, 2; geography of, 8; periodi-
cals and formation of, 2, 9, 32;
print and formation of, 2, 7–8,
10, 27–28, 109; Urdu Punches
and creation of, 27–28, 29, 75;
Urdu readers and creation of,
10–11, 108, 109, 110, 115;
resurgence of, 114–120
Urdu literary culture: Avadh Akhbar
and, 25–26; Avadh Punch and
68, 105, 107; periodicals and
development of, 23, 27, 77;
novels and, 96, 104; trope of
Kaliyuga, 73. See also literary
modernity; print technology;
Urdu poetry
Urdu poetry: classical, 5, 68, 77, 91,
103, 107, 141n63; ghazals,
25–27, 68, 77, 88, 103, 123n
20, 139n44, 141n63, 146n52;
masnavi, 25, 68, 77, 146n49;
natural poetry, 23–25; musad-
das, 77, 79–80; mushairahs, 23,
24, 25, 26–27, 119; qita‘s, 77;
reform of classical poetry,
23–26, 120; ruba‘is, 62, 68, 72,
77; tarji‘ bands, 77; zamanah
ashob, 77, 78–79
Urdu print culture: community and,
2–3, 7–11, 13, 27–28, 32, 34,
63; festivals and, 27–29, 34;
literary authority and, 22, 96;
Lucknow and, 8, 14, 22, 24, 63;
periodicals and, 14, 19, 20, 90,
98; readers and creation of, 1,
11–12, 82–84, 119. See also
history of the book
Urdu print public sphere: anonymity
and intimacy in, 90–92; as key
site for debating modernity, 120;
contested nature of, 92, 94–96;
importance of respectability and
status in, 92; literary concerns
and, 98; personal attacks and,
85; readers’ participation in, 83;
twenty-first-century digital age
and, 116. See also Avadh
Akhbar; Avadh Punch; Fasana-e
Azad; Urdu readers
 Index
Urdu readers: Avadh Akhbar and, 2,
60, 82, 83–84, 86, 89, 91, 93;
community and, vii, 7–8, 27–28,
63, 109; as critics and patrons,
13, 14, 35, 51, 60–61, 68,
83–92, 120, 143n21; experiences
of print, 1–2, 26, 33–34, 83, 104,
141n2; literacy rates and, 12,
126n2; letters of, 82–84, 86–89,
90–92, 93–96; print culture and,
1, 11–12, 82–84, 119; respect-
ability and, 92–93, 116; role in
Urdu cosmopolis, 10–11, 108,
109, 110, 115; role in Urdu print
culture, 1, 11–12, 82–84, 119;
sharafat and, 61, 84–85, 94;
women, 20, 37, 93–96
ustads, 23, 27, 77, 105, 107, 128n34,
146n58. See also Urdu poetry
Uttar Pradesh, 6, 90, 144n29. See also
Kheri
Victoria, Queen, 63, 71
Victorian literature, 37, 42, 107. See
also Punch (London)
175
women: abductions of, 111; depic-
tions as bhatiyārīs, 50, 58, 59,
93, 94; depictions in novels of,
54–61, 106, 112, 116; domestic
violence and, 116–117; “new
woman” and, 57; respectability
and, 52–53, 57–58, 61, 84–85,
94–95; social reform and,
52–53, 55–61. See also gender;
sexuality
women’s journals and magazines, 14,
20, 37, 57
writers, professionalization of, 13,
15–22, 34
Zaheer, Sajjad, 110, 113
zarafat: as “adornment” for ethics,
35; definition of, 38–39, 107;
section in Avadh Akhbar, 18,
20, 42; Urdu humor and, 50, 68;
novel and, 87; Avadh Punch
attacks on Avadh Akhbar and,
99–101
 About the Author

Jennifer Dubrow is assistant professor of Urdu in the Department of

Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington, Seattle.