From: yogi sikand <ysikand@yahoo.com>
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Sent: Saturday, 9 May, 2009 5:53:50
Subject: [afro-asiareport] Robin Jeffrey on Urdu Media in India
URDU: Waiting for Citizen Kane?
By Robin Jeffrey
Spreading across India after the end of the "emergency" in 1977, technological change in the form of the personal computer and offset press revolutionized the newspaper industry. The circulation of daily newspapers in all languages tabled between 1976 and 1992 - from 9.3 million to 28.1 million and the dailies-per- thousand people ratio doubled - from 15 daily newspapers per 1,000 people to 32 per 1,000.
Regular reading of something called "news" both indicates and causes change. Expansion of competing newspapers clearly signals the vitality and growth of capitalism: newspapers have owners and owners must have advertisers. The changes of the past 20 years are obvious yet largely unstudied. The essays in this series on the press in the major Indian languages are part of a larger project to map, analyse and try to understand the transformation of the Indian-language newspaper industry.
TABLE 14.1: Population Change among Urdu-Speakers and Newspaper Change in Urdu, 1961-91
1961
1971
1981
1991
Urdu speakers (millions)
22.0
estimate
28.6
35.3
43.0
estimated
Urdu daily circulations ('000)
303
376
734
1,440
Urdu dailies per '000
14
11
21
33
Sources: Statistical Outline of India, 1989-90 (Bombay: Tata Services, 1989), p. 44 and SOI, 1984, p. 42. Press in India for relevant years.
Of all the Indian-language newspaper industries, Urdu poses the most intriguing questions, and, ultimately, best highlights the way in which capitalism, and its companion, the modern state, affect the way people speak, read and write. From one perspective, the place of Urdu in India can be seen as a distorted reflection of the place of English. Both are used all over India. Both are sometimes portrayed as the languages of conquerors or traitors. But where English is considered to be the language of the wealthy, Urdu is now regarded as primarily a language of the poor, particularly of poor Muslims.
As a foreigner, I wrestle with the questions of "What is Urdu?" and "What is Hindi?" What I know is that when fellow travellers on a train or bus in north India want to be kind to me, they will generously but falsely say: "You speak very good ______," and they will fill in the blank with the name of the language, they esteem - either "Hindi" or "Urdu." My halting remarks about the price of papayas or the punctuality of trains will have been scraped from the pigeonholes of my mind where they were deposited 30 years ago through study of a grammar book called Conversational Hindi-Urdu. Obviously I am speaking both languages. (Some might say I am torturing both). Mahatma Gandhi made the distinction in a way that I can understand: "Hindi, Hindustani and Urdu are different names for the same speech just as dialects of Cornwall, Lancashire and Middlesex are different names for the same language."[1] Speakers and writers of "High Urdu" and
"High Hindi" no doubt can make themselves as unintelligible to each other as a Scot from Glasgow to a Black American from Harlem; but they can, if they choose, also make themselves readily understood. As I understand it, "Hindi" and "Urdu" have the same grammar and a common basic vocabulary; differences in pronunciation of some sounds begin to mark one from the other ("j" and "z," for example); and for more sophisticated vocabulary, those who would speak "Hindi" reach into Sanskrit and those who would speak "Urdu," into Persian and Arabic. The most contentious difference - over script - has been made acute by the printing press and bureaucratic government. Akbar and Ranjit Singh were, we are told, illiterate. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a number of writing systems were available in which the language of north India could have been recorded, but by the early twentieth century only two were realistic candidates - Devanagari and
Perso-Arabic. [1]
The story of Urdu in India after independence illustrates the role of governments and capitalists in language evolution. National and state governments have been cruelly kind to the Perso-Arabic script. At one level, they have patronized it: Urdu newspapers readily get government recognition and the perks that go with it because this has seemed a painless way to please Muslim voters. But no government did what is crucial to make a script flourish under capitalism: use it as the chief script of schools and administration. At the same time, the association of Perso-Arabic with Muslims has led capitalist advertisers to associate it with people who are mostly poor. Thus commercial advertising for Urdu newspapers does not come easily. Part of the outcome is the intriguing paradox examined below: according to government figures, the circulation of Urdu dailies has risen steadily over the past 20 years;[1] according to commercial figures,
circulation of Urdu dailies has declined noticeably. Strangely, both may be correct.
Virtually everyone who writes about Urdu and Urdu newspapers contends that the language and the industry are failing fast. Yet according to the Government of India's figures, the circulation of Urdu dailies grew from about 400,000 copies a day in 1974 to 1.5 million a day in 1994, an increase of 275 per cent, higher than the total rise for Indian dailies in all languages.[1] In 1991, the ratio of Urdu dailies to Urdu speakers was about 30 daily newspapers to every thousand speakers (30:1000) - about the same as the national average and better than the ratio for, say, Bengali or Tamil (both roughly 20:1000 - see the Table in this essay and Parts 3 and 5 in this series).
However, the figures of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) - the figures of commerce - tell a different story. The total circulation of Urdu dailies affiliated to the ABC fell in the 1977-94 period - from 128,000 copies to 113,000.[1] The number of Urdu dailies belonging to the ABC also fell - from five in 1976 to four in 1994.[1] The accompanying graph illustrates the puzzle. The strong rising line depicting circulation of Urdu dailies registered by the government (the Registrar of Newspapers for India - RNI) contrasts strikingly with the flat, slightly falling line of the ABC's figures.
What was happening? Observers of the Urdu press have long proclaimed that it was going through "the process of a slow, painful death."[1] Equipment was ancient, journalists poorly paid, and owners unscrupulous. [1] Urdu newspapers, according to a Muslim critic, were "prone to reinforce a sectarian and emotional outlook among readers."[1] The main task of the tiny, threadbare staff of most Urdu newspapers was "to select ... stories from various newspapers and mould them ... so that they appear provocative and anti-Muslim. "[1] And the numbers of people who could read the Perso-Arabic script were said to be falling fast since it was neither a language of business nor a first language of education in any state.
Could the rising circulation trend reported by the Registrar of Newspapers therefore be genuine? Is the Urdu-reading public in India being renewed? The answer to both questions, I think, is yes. Even though Urdu in the Perso-Arabic script is not a first-language of instruction in government schools in Indian states, tens of thousands of Muslim children still learn the script in an elementary way in religious schools.[1] These students become the readers of Urdu dailies and weeklies - "the lowly educated and politically ill-informed poor Muslims," as a Muslim analyst characterizes them.[1] Such a socio-economic category may not make an advertising manager's heart beat faster, but it may well result in the sale of hundreds of thousands of small, cheaply produced newspapers.
To be sure, the RNI circulation figures probably exaggerate the number of Urdu dailies and their circulations, because people keenly seek such recognition - it brings rewards. Even in the 1990s, up to a third of Indian newsprint is imported, and since 1962 government has controlled its allotment through the Registrar of Newspapers for India.[1] A robust black market quickly grew up. A newspaper with more newsprint than it needed has often been able to sell the excess at a premium. If a newspaper is a virtual phantom, printing only a few hundred copies but drawing a newsprint quota for thousands, money can be made by selling newsprint. Similarly, a newspaper recognized by state or Union government draws regular government advertising. Circulation claims are rarely checked, particularly for small newspapers, and a proprietor need print only a few score copies to satisfy government authorities that the ad has appeared. A reliable income
results from this fraud. Journalists and proprietors also enjoy travel privileges, admission to buildings and events and sometimes the opportunity to acquire land or accommodation at bargain rates.[1] Finally, a small newspaper can be used for blackmail: officials or politicians or political parties may be told that unless particular actions are taken, certain stories will appear.[1]
These practices are found in newspapers in all languages,[1] but they are more significant for the Perso-Arabic script because Urdu is seen to be the language of Indian Muslims. Politicians of all parties have seen virtue in keeping 11% of the electorate quiescent and sympathetic. If newspaper proprietors, claiming to represent "the Muslim community," could be kept happy with advertisements and newsprint, this was a price many politicians would gladly pay. What was written could not be read by the vast majority of non-Muslim voters, and this was therefore a far less provocative way of "supporting" Urdu than using it widely for administration or in schools. Thus we may guess that the Registrar of Newspapers, and state governments generally, have been under steady pressure for many years to be lenient when examining the existence and circulation of Urdu newspapers. We should perhaps add to this a further ingredient. Because Perso-Arabic
has little commercial value in India today, there is an incentive for those who know it to cash in on it in one of the few ways they can: the advantages available to newspapers.
To analyse the Urdu press - and tease out wider hypotheses from the Urdu experience - let me look at four newspapers, each with particular characteristics. Two examples illustrate Urdu newspapers that will, I believe, eventually close or, if they survive, transform themselves radically; but the other two provide evidence of why Perso-Arabic is not in imminent danger of disappearing from India, in spite of its lack of commercial value or meaningful - as opposed to condescending - state support. Overall, the evidence suggests that Perso-Arabic newspapers - though perhaps not dailies - have a future and, indeed, that there is market waiting to be catered for.
The most widely circulated and financially successful Urdu daily in India is Hindu-owned and published in Punjab. Hind Samachar (ABC Jan.-June 1996: 44,348), founded in 1948, was the first newspaper in Lala Jagat Narain's empire. (See Parts 2 and 8 in this series). As late as the partition, Perso-Arabic was the script for educated, employable males in north India, which is why Jagat Narain's first newspaper was in Perso-Arabic - he knew who his readers were. It was also his only paper until 1965, and it still gives its name to the Hind Samachar Group. Today, the Group produces Punjab Kesari, the country's largest selling Hindi daily, and the Gurmukhi daily, Jag Bani. In 1996, the circulation of the Urdu daily Hind Samachar was 15 per cent lower than it had been twenty years earlier (ABC Jan.-June 1976: 51,000), and its advertising rate was a quarter that of Punjab Kesari's.[1] Lala Jagat Narain (1899-1981) started Hind Samachar to
cater to the Hindu and Sikh elite of old Punjab - men (seldom women) who had learned Urdu particularly because it was the language of government.[ 1] In the 1990s, that audience is fast disappearing: Hindu and Sikh children have generally not learned the Perso-Arabic script in north Indian schools for more than 40 years. Hind Samachar's circulation has been partly sustained by sales in Jammu and Kashmir where the script is taught in schools and used in offices. In 1992, 17% of circulation went to Jammu and Kashmir; the rest was dispersed over Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Chandigarh and western Uttar Pradesh.[1]
The Hind Samachar Group perhaps maintains its Urdu newspaper partly out of sentiment - in memory of the founder whose bust sits in the office of the present Editor-in-Chief. But it is also a commercial decision. Hind Samachar still makes money because it is cheap and easy to produce. The same newsroom in Jalandhar prepares all three newspapers - the Urdu, the Hindi and the Gurmukhi. In 1993, the news editor sat on a raised platform, the horseshoe-shaped desk of the Punjab Kesari (Hindi) staff immediately around him and with the sub-editors for Hind Samachar on his left and those for the Gurmukhi paper (Jag Bani) on his right. Stories were translated and passed back and forth among the three desks; one news-gathering system served all. Similarly, the technology, production and advertising staff that served one newspaper could with only a little more effort produce another, particularly if, as is the case of Urdu, the deadlines were less
tight and the business less competitive. [1]
Thus in the 1990s, India's largest-circulating Urdu daily considered Muslims to be a minor segment of its readers.[1] Yet its advertising rate was 50 per cent greater than that of the second largest Urdu daily in the ABC - Siasat of Hyderabad. It cost Rs. 55 to buy a column centimetre in Hind Samachar in 1995, and only Rs. 36 in Siasat.[1] The contrast highlighted the different styles of the two newspapers, and the way in which the Indian state and Indian capitalism profoundly affect - often unwittingly - the languages and scripts that people use. Hind Samachar survives as part of a burgeoning commercial enterprise, characterized by a market-consciousnes s that has led the Group to start new newspapers when state sponsorship of particular languages makes it profitable (i.e., when there is a substantial readership in those languages). Given the Group's close attention to commercial considerations; it seems likely that Hind Samachar will
be closed when its circulation and advertising revenues fall below an acceptable level. This appears inevitable as the older generation of Urdu-reading Sikhs and Hindus dies off.
While the Hind Samachar Group's headquarters in Jalandhar conveys a sense of brash bustle, Siasat in Hyderabad has an air of gentility. It also has a rising circulation. Where the circulation of Hind Samachar has fallen by 17% between 1976 and 1996 that of Siasat has risen by 330 per cent - from 10,000 to 44,000 copies a day. The difference lies in the fact that Hyderabad and Andhra Pradesh have a large Muslim population and a relatively large network of government-run Urdu primary schools. Large numbers of Muslim children are also taught the Perso-Arabic script in madrasas and maktabs.[1]
The contrast between the two newspapers is instructive. Both were founded immediately after independence in places that had experienced upheaval. Jagat Narain was a refugee of the partition. Hyderabad state, when Abid Ali Khan (1920-92) founded Siasat in 1949, had just been absorbed into India through the Indian army's "police action." Both newspapers were family companies, and both offered distinctive view of the world based on the experience and interests of their founders. Hind Samachar presented that of male, upper-caste, commercial and official, Sikhs and Hindus of Punjab. Abid Ali Khan, on the other hand, came from the Progressive Writers Association, of which he had been secretary from 1943-7. He belonged to a strand of Urdu writing and writers associated with leftist causes and Soviet sympathies. "After the advent of Siasat," a company brochure declared, "he kept himself aloof from active politics, but infused the progressive
spirit, secular thinking and nationalism through his paper ... He always looks on the profession of the Press as a mission."[1]
This sense of a civilizing mission lingered at Siasat in the 1990s. Advertising was not pursued with the relentless enthusiasm that it was elsewhere; rather than "run promotions" - campaigns aiming to do public good and boost circulation - Siasat supported demure literary trusts; and, unlike the Hind Samachar Group, the Siasat family company had not started newspapers in other, more profitable languages. "We are clapped," Zahid Ali Khan, the editor-owner said in 1993, "in only one shell. This is a self-sufficient, independent Urdu paper coming out from India. We don't have anybody to go out of our office to beg for the advertisements. "[1] A new reporter at Siasat in 1993, a young Hindu woman, hired to cover commercial and financial stories though unable to write Urdu (her copy was translated at the new desk), spoke of the friendly, family-like atmosphere of the Siasat newsroom.[1] This contrasted with the large size and Dickensian
discipline of the newsroom at the Hind Samachar Group in Jalandhar.
In one respect, Siasat represents something that is not uniquely Urdu: a disappearing type of Indian newspaper, which has not yet been swamped by commercial requirements. Siasat has been able to afford such gentility because of pains-taking management - "I've been trained [since 1964] for keeping [an] eye on the complete administration" [1] - and the singular position of Urdu in Hyderabad. The city still has the remnants of a cosmopolitan population able to read the Perso-Arabic script; and at the same time a large Muslim population means that writers of the script and speakers of the language are being renewed through government and religious schools. Because it is efficient, well-produced and has thorough news and picture services, Siasat has also acquired a wide reputation and points proudly to subscribers all over India and in more than 30 countries from Japan and Russia to the United States.[1]
Astute management and the special circumstances of Urdu in their regions help explain why Siasat and Hind Samachar are the two most successful commercial Urdu dailies in India. But what of the scores of small Urdu newspapers that rise, fall and scrape along? And what are the grounds for arguing that Urdu and the Perso-Arabic script have a vigorous long-term future?
Siasat Jadid (new politics) of Kanpur represented in 1993 an example of a newspaper in decline, suffering both from the absence of a supporting state, which affects all Urdu newspapers, and the inability to adjust to the commercial conditions imposed by the spread of capitalism. Founded in 1953 by K. G. Zaidi (1916-92), a strident advocate of Muslim concerns, Siasat Jadid was sufficiently commercial to join the Audit Bureau of Circulations between 1971 when it had a circulation of 9,000 and 1983. For a time too Zaidi ran a newspaper in Devanagari script in order to cater to the young Muslims who could not read Perso-Arabic; it lost money and he closed it in 1992. By the time of his death in October 1992, circulation of Siasat Jadid had fallen to 7,500, and the paper's office gave the appearance of a small cottage industry, but instead of pickles or pappadams, it produced a newspaper.
Zaidi's son, Irshad Ilmi, who became editor after his father's death, recognized that the paper was poorly distributed: "We are partly responsible ... for the falling readership, because we don't supply [people] with the newspaper." Where Siasat of Hyderabad and Hind Samachar had used computers to create Perso-Arabic script in camera-ready form since the late 1980s, Siasat Jadid still had only "three calligraphers, just three. And each writes two full pages." This had advantages because the "the calligrapher, who writes the paper, is an editor by himself; he knows what he has to give." In that sense, the slow-moving, hand-written Siasat Jadid maintained a link with an earlier time when the reporter may have - literally - written the story for the lithographic stone that would print the newspaper. The small staff had known what Zaidi wanted: passionate stories of pointed concern to Muslims. "The [Gulf] war [of 1991] was a big hit," with
readers, Ilmi recalled. Similarly, Zaidi's ardent campaign to preserve the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya had been good for circulation; but after the building was destroyed on 6 December 1992, the paper looked as if it had lacked foresight, and it was left bereft of purpose.[1]
In spite of rudimentary technology and apparent disorganization, Siasat Jadid in 1993 seemed to make a small profit on its selling price of Rs. 1.50 for a four-page broadsheet. Given the low salaries of the half dozen employees, and allowing for the cost of newsprint, ink and commission to hawkers, I calculate that there was a possible surplus of up to Rs. 10,000 a week. Such circumstances, however, left the paper vulnerable not only to the decline in the number of Urdu-reading people but also to the possibility of a more efficient and attractive publication supplanting it.
Such prospects exist; the New Delhi weekly Nai Duniya (new world) exemplifies a fourth category of publication, one which suggests the strengths of Urdu in India and the potential for developing Perso-Arabic publications. There is nothing unique to Urdu about two aspects of Nai Duniya. First, the family that produces it has made what appears to be a successful transition from one generation to the next. Second, in doing so, they have introduced new technology and experimented with different genres of publication. In short, unlike Siasat Jadid, they appear to be adapting to the peculiar circumstances of Urdu in India. The "lessons" of Nai Duniya help to clarify those circumstances.
The first Nai Duniya was founded as a daily in 1950 by Abdul Waheed Siddiqui (c. 1895-1881), a journalist and political activist whom his youngest son describes as "a nationalist Muslim who fought the Muslim League." Intended to promote Muslim interests, the paper often ran afoul of authorities in the 1950s. Though it closed in 1964, the family meanwhile had developed popular and profitable magazines or "digests" in Urdu. These were printed on an offset press - much faster than lithography - more than 20 years before offset became widely used in India. Shahid Siddiqui (b. 1951) started his first Urdu magazine in 1970 when he was a college student and a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The paper failed, largely, he believed, because of its treatment of the Bangladesh struggle of 1971:
I went to Bangladesh at that time... I wrote the truth which was not acceptable to Muslims, because for them the creation of Bangladesh was a turning point, because [it was] the destruction of the idea of Pakistan, the two-nation theory.[1]
Circulation fell and the paper closed in 1972. The perceived effect of the
Bangladesh war on circulation confirms the view of other Muslim editors that Muslim affairs internationally fascinate readers and rapidly affect circulations. In the following year, Siddiqui and family started Nai Duniya weekly, and it benefited from a similar chance: the Arab-Israeli war of 1973. Circulation reached 25-30,000 within a few months.
Over the next 20 years, circulation fluctuated widely: down during the "Emergency," up to 200,000 during the overthrow and trial of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan, down thereafter to 50-60,000 and up to 350,000 during the Gulf war of 1991. By 1993, it had settled at about 120,000 by 1993. (Nai Duniya is not a member of the ABC. In 1992, it claimed a circulation of 45,000).[1] Unlike most major newspapers in India, Urdu publications usually make a profit on their selling price. Priced in 1993 at Rs. 5 for 20 tabloid pages (the equivalent of 10 broadsheet pages), Nai Duniya garnered a considerable profit, even after salaries, commissions and other expenses were accounted for. During the Gulf war, Nai Duniya introduced full colour for its front and back pages, and "once we started we couldn't go back." Photocomposing came later in 1991, and calligraphers who had previously written the paper were retrained as computer operators. In 1992,
to attract Muslims who had studied Hindi in Devanagari at school and did not know the Perso-Arabic script, Shahid Siddiqui began Nai Zameen, a weekly that was heavily, though not exclusively, a Devanagari version of Nai Duniya. The ability to experiment helped to explain Nai Duniya's apparent vitality. And unlike Siasat Jadid's experiment with a Devanagari version, Nai Zameen was a weekly - able to circulate at a leisurely pace around the whole country.
Siddiqui contended that Urdu weeklies like Nai Duniya prospered because they were suited to the fact that Urdu speakers were dispersed throughout India. In that sense, Urdu, even more than Hindi, is a country-wide language because it elicits little opposition in the towns of the south where it is read and studied - provided it is an option not a compulsion.[ 1] These dispersed populations are rarely so concentrated as to sustain a daily newspaper, but they can be reached by a weekly. And a weekly can make a profit on its selling price alone: it does not have to depend on advertising, of which Urdu newspapers get little.
"We don't get ads. The reason is that in the ad agencies, the Muslims belonging to the upper strata ... are there. Or those who are there ... have got friends among the Muslims who belong to the upper strata. ... They tell me, Can your paper have any influence? Because I know so many Muslims and they tell me they don't read Urdu at all."
Even if advertisers believed that large numbers of Urdu readers existed, they would discount their purchasing power. "My paper," Siddiqui of Nai Duniya continues "is mainly popular among Ansaris, weavers, lock-makers, all kinds of artisans all over the country." These are not the people that most big-spending national advertisers are trying to reach.
The fate of Urdu in the Perso-Arabic script highlights important propositions about languages. Urdu readers in India are dispersed across the country, and Urdu is a language without a state apparatus to support it. Languages and scripts need state support - first-language status in administration and education - if they are to become embedded in a capitalist world. The sheer number of small Urdu dailies and weeklies - close to 250 recorded by the Registrar of Newspapers for 1994[1] - suggests that Urdu experiences a certain moth-eaten patronage: concessions to small newspapers encouraged by politicians with the goal of keeping Muslims happy for the next election. Such patronage helps to sustain haphazard publications; but it is not the kind of state support that embeds languages under capitalism.
Government inducement alone, however, is not enough to propagate a language successfully or undermine it completely. As David Laitin writes in a book about Africa, "the sum of incentives to develop individually rational language repertoires can override the best-laid plans of ideologues and planners."[1] Those "incentives" may well be religious. It may be "rational" to teach one's children a script and a language that brings them closer to god, not the secretariat (though proximity to both is desirable and may require learning another language).
The RNI's figures for Urdu circulations, though probably inflated, suggest that the pool of Urdu readers in India is being renewed. Such renewal assures the future of the script. In thousands of schools throughout India, students of all religions may study Urdu as an optional language. Because in north India it is sometimes seen as an easy option - one has only to learn the script, not the vocabulary or grammar - non-Muslim students choose to study it. They may not learn well; they may not become readers of Urdu publications; but some will have the ability to do so. And Muslim students in such schools study Urdu as a desirable choice. Moreover, there are thousands of madrasas all over India where a child is sent. In the villages a child goes to the government school in the daytime and in the evening he goes to madrasa for two hours. Everywhere you have this network of madrasas and in the madrasa they learn Urdu. But the children of the
middle classes and upper classes; they are not learning Urdu. If you talk to most of these people they will tell you, that nobody is learning Urdu.[1]
The students who come from the madrasa, or who have studied Urdu as a second language in government schools, are the audience for Urdu periodicals like Nai Duniya. Numbering in millions, such people provide the new generations of Urdu readers and exemplify the social support that secures the survival of the Perso-Arabic script.[1]
Popular desire - in the case of Urdu, of Muslims to have their children study a script associated with the Koran - can maintain a language even without much government support. Urdu in Perso-Arabic, however, has a predicament: the social factors that ensure its survival - primarily the madrasa education available to Muslim children - have so far limited its potential as a vehicle for capitalism. Depending heavily on madrasa education makes Urdu the language of Muslims, which means that publishers in Urdu produce magazines and newspapers geared overwhelmingly to Muslim interests. And since major advertisers regard Muslims as among India's poorest people, they decline to commit the large sums of advertising money that would encourage more widely focused, news-gathering publications capable of eliciting the interest of non-Muslims. [1]
The modern history of the Irish language - surviving under British imperialism yet far from flourishing under a free government dedicated to propagating it - highlights contrasts between government support and social support for a language. Contrast the experience of Irish with that of Hebrew in Israel or Punjabi in the Gurmukhi script, both of which have taken firm hold in popular, commercial, capitalist ways in the past two or three generations. They have had both social and government support, and that social support came initially from religious association. The Perso-Arabic script and Urdu in India since 1947 have had powerful social - but only token government - support. As in Punjab and Israel, the social support has stemmed primarily from a religious base. (Would the Irish language have gone deeper into modern Ireland if Catholic scripture had a tradition of being written in a distinctive Irish script?) The paradox, as I see
it, is that the combination of government and social backing that embeds a language may ultimately reduce the religious emphasis - may ultimately secularize the language - as it becomes a vehicle for capitalism.
Today, the structure of Urdu newspaper publishing - scores of small operations scattered all over India and surviving chiefly on their selling price - insulates it from such capitalism and accompanying non-religious tendencies. But as capitalists awaken to the fact that the Urdu-reading public is being renewed and that "Ansaris, weavers, lock-makers, [and] all kinds of artisans" now are part of a lower middle class keen on consumption, [1] Urdu in India is, I suspect, a language awaiting its Northcliffe, Murdoch or Citizen Kane.
NOTES
1. .Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 62, pp. 408-09, quoted in Peter Brock, The Mahatma and Mother India. Essays on Gandhi's Non-Violence and Nationalism (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1983), p. 200.
2.Christopher R. King, One Language, Two Scripts: the Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 8, 178.
3. Robin Jeffrey, "The Mystery of the Urdu Dailies," Vidura January-February 1988, pp. 38-40.
4.Press in India, 1995 [hereafter PII + year] (New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, n.d. [1996]), p. 42; PII, 1975, p. 35. Total circulation of dailies in all languages increased by only 240 per cent in this period - from 9.3 million to 31.6 million.
5.PII and Preliminary List of Circulations Certified for the Six-Monthly Audit Period ... (Bombay: ABC) for appropriate years. In the case of the ABC, of the two six-monthly figures available for each year, I have chosen the higher one on which to base the graph.
6.In 1976, the five were Hind Samachar, Jalandhar, Inquilab, Bombay, Siasat, Hyderabad, Siasat Jadid, Kanpur, and Milap, Delhi. Siasat Jadid and Milap left the ABC in 1983-4; Urdu Times, Bombay, joined in 1990. The number of dailies registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India also feel from 94 in 1976 to 82 in 1994, though circulation rose. PII, 1977, p. 11; PII, 1995, p. 48.
7. Vidura, February 1982, p. 41; October 1982, p. 284.
8.Yoginder Sikand, "Muslims and Mass Media," Economic and Political Weekly, 13 August 1994, pp. 2134-5.
9.Ather Farouqui, "The Emerging Dilemma of the Urdu Press in India: a Viewpoint," South Asia, vol. 18, no. 2 (December 1995), p. 91.
10.Ibid., pp. 102-03.
11.R. S. Newman, Grassroots Education in India (New Delhi: Sterling for the Asian Studies Association of Australia, 1989), pp. 74-108, has written feelingly of the maktabs of Uttar Pradesh and the support they commanded in the 1970s and 1980s.
12.Farouqui, "Emerging," p. 97.
13.PII, 1992, p. 330. From 1962-76, the Ministry of Commerce was also involved. Since 1976, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has been in charge of the allocation procedures.
14.See Press Trust of India, 5 February 1997, on the Press Council's intention to investigate such privileges, especially "land and houses at nominal prices." From India News Network Digest, 7 February 1997, INDIA-L@INDNET. org.
15.Farouqui, "Emerging," p. 92, discusses all these in relation to Urdu newspapers.
16.T. J. S. George, The Provincial Press in India (New Delhi: Press Institute of India, 1967), pp. 6-7. In Defence of Press Freedom (Calcutta: The Statesman, 1982), p. 59. Press Council of India Review, vol. 13, no. 3 (July 1992), pp. 122-4.
17.Press and Advertisers Year Book, 1994-5 [hereafter PAYB + year], pp. 104c-108c. Rs. 55 against Rs 275 a column centimetre.
18.Prakash Tandon, Punjabi Century (Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, n.d.; 1st pubd 1961), pp. 67-8.
19.A.B.C. Certificates. Audit Period: 1st January to 30th June 1992, Serial No. 87 (Bombay: Audit Bureau of Circulations, 1993), No. 87/510. Interview, Vijay Kumar Chopra, Chief Editor, Hind Samachar Group, Jalandhar, 20 May 1993.
20.Interviews and observation, Hind Samachar Group, Jalandhar, 20 May 1993.
21.Interview, Vijay Kumar Chopra, Chief Editor, Hind Samachar Group, Jalandhar, 20 May 1993.
22.PAYB, 1994-5, pp. 104c-105c, 128c-129c.
23.More than 1,100 such schools according to Muslim India, No. 113 (May 1992), p. 225, quoting the Ali Sardar Jafri Committee Report, October 1991, to the Government of India. Ather Farouqui, "Urdu Education in India: Four Representative States," Economic and Political Weekly, 2 April 1994, p. 784.
24.Four Decades of the "Siasat" Hyderabad, 1949-1991 (Hyderabad: Siasat, 1991), inside front cover.
25.Interview, Zahid Ali Khan, Editor, Siasat, Hyderabad, 3 March 1993.
26.Interview, Ratna Chotrani, reporter, Siasat, Hyderabad, 3 March 1993.
27.Interview, Zahid Ali Khan, 3 March 1993.
28.Four Decades of Siasat, p. 5 and outside back cover.
29.Interview, Irshad Ilmi, Editor and Owner-Partner, Siasat Jadid, Kanpur, 13 May 1993.
30.Interview, Shahid Siddiqui, Editor and Managing Director, Nai Duniya, New Delhi, 10 May 1993.
31.The Indian Newspaper Society Press Handbook, 1992 (New Delhi: INS, n.d. [1992]), p. 473.
32.The outbursts in Bangalore over an Urdu television news bulletin illustrate the way in which enforced, ill-considered government policy can provoke rapid opposition. Indian Express (New Delhi), 9 October 1994.
33.PII, 1995, p. 48.
34.David D. Laitin, Language Repertoires and State Construction in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 153. Laitin's book is puzzling in that he entirely overlooks the role of newspaper and advertising industries in the propagation of languages.
35.Interview, Shahid Siddiqui, 10 May 1993.
36.It must of course be pointed out that the new owners closed Urdu Blitz in 1996. Was that decision more ideological than commercial?
37.Farouqui, "Emerging," p. 103, reports that India Today considered starting an Urdu edition but dropped the idea because "Urdu editors" told them "that Muslims do not trust the national press and ... [are] `anti-establishment '."
38.S. L. Rao and I. Natarajan, Indian Market Demographics. The Consumer Class (New Delhi: Global Business Press, 1996), pp. 214-32.
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Dukhia Das Kabir Jagey Aur Roye
The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Das is awake and weeping
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