The creation of an Islami pablik in late colonial India, c. 1880--1920
D. Ali
University of Pennsylvania
2011
422
Ph.D.
University of Pennsylvania
2011
In this dissertation I look at the ways in which the printed word affected people's lives in late colonial India. I explore the vicissitudes and challenges faced by a Muslim intellectual and Urdu writer of the period hoping to make it in the world of print, 'Abdul Ha[dotbelow]lim Sharar (1860-1926). The annexation of Awadh in 1856, the Insurrection of 1857 and subsequent fall of the Mughal Empire, had given way to a rapidly changing world where qualifications that would have previously secured one a livelihood were rendered less and less relevant. In the world of print, many of those who were successful adapted through their ability to secure governmental printing projects. Sharar's publishing endeavors, on the other hand, show that there were other paths available for those who sought to earn a livelihood through writing and publishing. Through an examination of an almost forty-year run of Sharar's monthly journal, Dil Gudaz (1887-1934), readers letters, newspapers and other Urdu language periodicals of the period, I have underscored the ways in which individuals in late 19th and early 20th century India attempted to use print to not only secure a livelihood, but to foster the formation of publics, one of them being an Islami pablik (Islamic public). These efforts met with challenges, yet nevertheless resulted in a certain conceptual and rhetorical power that the public came to possess. The story of Sharar and his journal, Dil Gudaz provides us insight into the changing social climate of the period. The difficulties Sharar faced were in no way unique to him and represent the challenges faced by those who had been trained to survive in the old world of courtly patronage. He, like others, learned to adapt and in so doing contributed to the changes taking place in late colonial India. It is the interplay of people with print in late colonial north India that serves as the focus of this dissertation.