C. Ryan Perkins

In 1905, the Urdu writer ‘Abdul Halim Sharar published a critical review of Brijnarayan Chak-bast’s new edition of Pandat Daya Shankar Kaul Nasīm’s (1811–43) maṡnavī (‘Narrative Poem’), Gulzār-e Nasīm (‘Rose Garden of Nasim’). This critical review met with a fl urry of responses in newspapers throughout north India and the Deccan. Described as the longest and bitterest of polemics in the history of Urdu literature, this debate reveals the printing press ’ new-found role as one of the main forums for public debate. This article seeks to turn our focus to the world of print outside the colonial gaze, which provided a space for the consolidation and expansion of social and cultural worlds now linked in a way previously unimaginable. Many of those involved in arenas of vernacular print at the turn of the century were creating a world, not dependent on colonial patronage, nor constrained by physical distance. This debate, in particular, between Sharar, Chakbast and their respective suppo...

When Abdul Halim Sharar (1860-1926) set sail for England to ensure the Eton College-bound son of Viqar-ul Omrah (Prime Minister of the Nizam of Hyderabad, 1894–1901) received an Indo-Islamic education, it was Sharar's first foray outside of India. Like many previous Indian travelers he found his experiences to be eye opening. Inspired by his sojourns in England, Italy, France, and Spain, he serially published his travelogues upon his return to India in 1896. Providing examples of the failures and successes of industrialization, such accounts were evocative in their detail. They provided middle class Indians with global and historical perspectives of the changes brought by colonialism, industrialization, and urbanization in European and Indian cities. Drawing from Sharar's and other travelers’ accounts of the period, this essay examines the use of literature to humanize Lucknow's urban landscape, not only to transform the city, but also the relationship between the city a...

In the second half of the nineteenth century an increasing number of Indians entered the world of volunteerism and public activism. One such individual was the prolific Urdu writer Abdul Halim Sharar (1860–1926), who served as the secretary for a short-lived voluntary association, the Anjuman-e Dar-us-Salam, during the late 1880s in Lucknow, India. Using readers’ letters as printed in Sharar's widely circulating monthly periodical,Dil Gudāz, this article seeks to understand the reasons behind the increasing role of volunteerism as part and parcel of a modernsharīfMuslim identity in the post-1857 period. Having adopted the role of a community activist, Sharar began using his periodical, soon after its inception, to mobilize and recruit his readers to participate in what he described as a passionate movement sweeping through the ‘Islami pablik’. Both rhetorical and descriptive, such an idea provided hope for a divided and struggling community to overcome the divisions that were ce...

In 1905, the Urdu writer ‘Abdul Halim Sharar published a critical review of Brijnarayan Chakbast’s new edition of Pandat Daya Shankar Kaul Nasīm’s (1811–43) maṡnavī (‘Narrative Poem’), Gulzār-e Nasīm (‘Rose Garden of Nasim’). This critical review met with a flurry of responses in newspapers throughout north India and the Deccan. Described as the longest and bitterest of polemics in the history of Urdu literature, this debate reveals the printing press’ new-found role as one of the main forums for public debate. This article seeks to turn our focus to the world of print outside the colonial gaze, which provided a space for the consolidation and expansion of social and cultural worlds now linked in a way previously unimaginable. Many of those involved in arenas of vernacular print at the turn of the century were creating a world, not dependent on colonial patronage, nor constrained by physical distance. This debate, in particular, between Sharar, Chakbast and their respective supporte...

Abstract This essay examines the challenges involving the creation of and access to digital content and those faced by smaller nineteenth-century publishers in South Asia. Rather than seeing the digital arena of online publishing as representing a break with preceding periods and technologies, this article argues that, as during the period of print’s expansion in colonial India towards the end of the nineteenth century, the digital arena is at its core an ongoing experiment in which legislation and regulations, readers, publishers, libraries, pirates and business interests continue to play off one another in a metaphorical dance through which the digital publishing landscape is created. For those in late colonial India who sought to enter the world of print and for contemporary efforts to make digitised materials available online alike, the quest for fiscal sustainability has been one of the greatest challenges. By combining an examination of the Urdu writer Abdul Ḥalīm Sharar’s (1860–1926) struggles in publishing the monthly periodical, Dil Gudāz, between 1887 and 1934 with the challenges faced by online archives today, this essay teases out parallels and differences. I argue that the ability of smaller presses to thrive in India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was dependent on a responsive public that accepted its newfound role as patrons, whereas in the present, private donations and grants are the crucial ingredients that can help ensure collaborations achieve their goals.