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Cosmopolitan Dreams: the Making of Modern Urdu Literary Culture in Colonial South Asia' H-Asia Zaidi on Dubrow, 'Cosmopolitan Dreams: The Making of Modern Urdu Literary Culture in Colonial South Asia' Review published on Tuesday, April 28, 2020 Jennifer Dubrow. Cosmopolitan Dreams: The Making of Modern Urdu Literary Culture in Colonial South Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018. xv + 175 pp. $62.00 (cloth),ISBN 978-0-8248-7270-0. Reviewed by S. Akbar Zaidi (Columbia University)Published on H-Asia (April, 2020) Commissioned by Sumit Guha (The University of Texas at Austin) Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=53945 This delightful slim monograph—no more than 120 pages of text—by Jennifer Dubrow underlines the resurgence of Urdu studies in the academy, as it does of new and recent scholarship, much of it still in the works awaiting publication, of Muslims under British colonialism in India in the nineteenth century. Building on pioneering work done four and five decades ago by historians, more recent scholarship on Muslims in the nineteenth century, especially this monograph, have focused far more on the languages of that era—particularly Urdu, but also Persian, Arabic, and some Hindi—giving us a much fuller and richer flavor of the ideas that were of importance to the British subjects in colonial India. Earlier histories in the academy, particularly in the West, used colonial records and colonial accounts far more than they did texts in Indian languages, and with scholars now turning to local languages, not just demonstrating how the field of history itself has undergone change, we are in a much better position to understand developments from a different perspective altogether. Using Urdu periodicals from colonial Lucknow as her source, Dubrow argues that “Urdu readers and writers created a distinct form of cosmopolitanism,” creating what she calls “the Urdu cosmopolis” (p. 2). There is a serious flaw in how she defines and envisages this “Urdu cosmopolis”—more on this below—but there is much of value in her focus on “the central role of periodicals in establishing print culture in South Asia during the nineteenth century” and periodicals’ development of “new communities in print” (pp. 14, 34). Her main sources are the periodicals Avadh Akhbar, Avadh Punch, and Ratan Nath Sarshar’s Fasana-e Azad, a novel of over three thousand pages which was first serialized in Avadh Akhbar between 1878 and 1883. Perhaps the most important intervention made by Dubrow in her study of the print medium in colonial India is her focus on readers and those who wrote to the periodicals she considers, as letter writers or participants of this Urdu cosmopolis. On the basis of the colonial record and on the scholarship of many historians over the last century or more, we have known about what was being printed in Urdu in colonial India, how many copies were published, at what price (they were often distributed free), how the British supported and fraternized with certain presses and authors, and other bits of information about the printed word. Despite some worthy attempts in recent years, what has been missing, particularly around Urdu, has been information and understanding about readers and readership. This is where Dubrow’s intervention is particularly important. Citation: H-Net Reviews. Zaidi on Dubrow, 'Cosmopolitan Dreams: The Making of Modern Urdu Literary Culture in Colonial South Asia'. H-Asia. 04-28-2020. https://networks.h-net.org/node/22055/reviews/6135622/zaidi-dubrow-cosmopolitan-dreams-making-modern-urdu-literary-culture Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Asia “Readers were central to print’s success in late nineteenth-century South Asia,” Dubrow writes. “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” (p. 82). There was an “interactive and participatory nature of South Asian print culture,” where periodicals “encouraged ... participation,” and “interaction between authors and readers often came in the form of readers’ letters” (p. 83). With readers forming a “critical public,” “hundreds of readers’ letters were received and published in the Urdu newspaperAvadh Akhbar” (p. 84). Dubrow cites examples where authors, in this case Sarshar, would address readers’ comments by either responding to them or even giving a tilt in his novel based on what a certain reader may have said. Dubrow tells us that Sarshar made changes to his serialized novel not only in response to readers but also to attacks on him by Avadh Akhbar’s competitor, Avadh Punch. She shows how “readers felt comfortable intervening in ongoing narratives ... [and] fostered personal relationships in print, creating intimacy through close exchanges” (p. 96). Her contribution looking at how readers and writers interacted is alone worth recommending this short book. The focus on readers is an important element of her book and her arguments, and Dubrow uses this theme effectively by developing ideas beyond the more obvious. For example, she discusses the idea of how “respectability was of paramount concern among readers.” She notes that “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,” which “inspired a flurry of activity inAvadh Akhbar” (p. 93). This letter is discussed at length, from the point of view of both the writer and speculation about where it came from, in particular, whether it was actually written by a woman. Not surprisingly, once the letter was published, there were other readers who responded to the letter, as well as to Sarshar who was reprimanded for “publishing, and therefore publicizing, a respectable woman’s letter” (p. 94). Although Sarshar felt that the letter was a “‘fake’ and could not have been written by a woman,” the fact that it caused such consternation is reflective of the power of print (p. 95). And, if indeed it was written by a woman, published on December 12, 1879, we need to rethink carefully the gendered nature of the print public sphere. However, it was men like Sarshar, and many others of that era, who “responded to debates on women’s education and reform,” and until late in the nineteenth century, it was men writing about and for women, even when men created “threateningly powerful character[s]” for women (pp. 55, 59). Even in the main four chapters of the book, which comprise a mere ninety-five pages, there are other numerous points that are worthy of consideration. Dubrow talks about Urdu as a language of modernity, of bureaucracy, of transaction, “tied to everyday matters of property, business, and government affairs.” She argues that print “collapsed geographical distances,” and that the “Urdu cosmopolis changed the geography of Urdu literature, democratizing it away from the precolonial literary and cultural centers of Delhi and Lucknow” (p. 8). The periodical emerges as a “literary space,” giving rise to the “beginning of the modern literary field in India, a field shaped by print capitalism as well by distinct structures of authorship and readership,” where the author emerges as a “print entrepreneur” (p. 22). In her second chapter, Dubrow talks about the “novel in installments,” and says that her analysis “highlights literature in South Asia as a zone of resistance” (p. 37). This theme, despite references to “satirical vignettes,” that “helped develop the self-critical and ironical tradition” which was meant to “ridicule the former elites and critique colonialism,” is not convincingly addressed (p. 41). Citation: H-Net Reviews. Zaidi on Dubrow, 'Cosmopolitan Dreams: The Making of Modern Urdu Literary Culture in Colonial South Asia'. H-Asia. 04-28-2020. https://networks.h-net.org/node/22055/reviews/6135622/zaidi-dubrow-cosmopolitan-dreams-making-modern-urdu-literary-culture Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-Asia Despite the quality of this short monograph and the discussions it initiates, it has some problems in its formulation and use of some notions and concepts. I will address two smaller issues first. Dubrow keeps using the term “South Asia” for a nomenclature that did not exist in the nineteenth century. South Asia is a very modern term, from the 1950s, when nation-states in this region emerged and when other terms, such as British India—which she uses sparingly—are preferable. Hence, such terms as “nineteenth-century South Asia” do not exist (p. 107). Also, there is some confusion when she writes: “In South Asia, deep links between the Indian subcontinent and ...” (p. 10). Isn’t the Indian subcontinent South Asia? A second problem with this book is that its last chapter, “Conclusion: New Spaces of the Urdu Cosmopolis,” which raises many questions, suffers from a form of presentism. She talks about the continuity of the Urdu cosmopolis after Partition. She argues that “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...; its centers have shifted and expanded to Pakistan, the Middle East, and the global Urdu-speaking diaspora” (p. 109). After citing the over- discussed Progressive Writers Association of pre-Partition India and the role the Urdu Association played in independence and Partition, Dubrow moves to “another moment of Urdu cosmopolitanism ... emerging in the digital present,” the “thriving television scene” in Pakistan. These “Pakistan television ‘dramas’ circulate well beyond Pakistan, and help viewers create a global Urdu imaginary” (p. 114). The “circulation of television dramas makes Urdu into a spoken language, which has also divorced it from the divisive issue of script” (p. 118). While she could perhaps be forgiven for not discussing and explaining how and why Urdu became the hegemonized language of Pakistan and how it has undermined local languages, the absence of mentioning another “cosmopolis” much related to her arguments needs explanation.
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