Profile

Yoginder Sikand profiles a heroic effort involved in publication of a serious magazine devoted to review of books in Urdu.


Muhammad Arif Iqbal, the amiable middle-aged editor of the Delhi-based Urdu Book Review, India’s only Urdu journal devoted solely to book reviews, is a man with a mission. ‘Urdu has been grossly neglected, by the state and by Urdu speakers Urdu Book Review represents a modest effort to revive and promote the language’, he says. The bi-monthly magazine was launched in 1995.


Iqbal served as production manager of a leading Indian Muslim publishing house, the Delhi-based Markazi Maktaba Islami, for ten years, and in the course of this had the opportunity to interact with many publishing houses. ‘That made me realize how much the Urdu publishing industry has to learn from others’, he says. ‘A week-long course in publishing organized by an institute really changed me’, he relates. ‘I was the only Muslim there, and, interacting with the course instructors and other students, I realized that Urdu publishers have much room for improvement. This experience inspired me with the idea of launching an Urdu book review magazine in order to help the Urdu language and the Urdu publishing industry’.


Modestly priced at Rs. 100 per annum, Urdu Book Review comes out as a 100-odd page magazine, the whole of which is available online as well free of cost. Separate sections are devoted to book reviews, announcements of new titles, summaries of writings in the Urdu press and biographical notes on important Urdu scholars. The magazine has a print-run of around 2,000 copies, of which some 300 are sent free of cost to scholars and institutions. It receives hardly any advertisements.


’Urdu publishers in India have particular problems of their own, besides the general problems that they share with other publishers’, Iqbal says. ‘Few of them have professionally qualified editorial teams. Technically, they are way behind Hindi and English Publishers. They don’t do book launches, and almost no Urdu newspaper has a book review column through which new titles can be introduced to the public’, he comments. ‘Since the number of Urdu readers in India is rapidly falling, Urdu publishers have now cut down the print order to around 500, and even that takes some years to sell. That is why some of them are now shifting to publishing in Hindi and English instead’, he says. ’However’, he adds, ‘few of these are original titles, most of them being low-quality translations’.


’Most Urdu publishers are guided solely by the profit motive’, Iqbal goes on. ‘So, they produce what will bring them profits. They don’t have any system to commission experts to write books on particular subjects. They generally publish whatever they get if they think it would be profitable, often without caring for the social relevance of their contents. They just want quick returns’.


Thus, for instance, Iqbal says, many Urdu publishers are associated with one particular Muslim sect or the other, and they churn out books that rant and rave against other Muslim sects. ‘Some of these publishers are actually paid to produce books in favour of or in opposition to certain governments and rival sects’, he reveals. Living as a minority, such sectarianism fanned by certain publishing houses has serious consequences for the Muslim community, he says. ‘The sort of sectarianism actively promoted by certain Urdu publishing houses has had a major role in keeping Muslim divided, so much so that religious scholars of the different sects often refuse to even sit with each other on a common platform’, he says.


This relates to the social background of a significant section of Urdu authors, the ulema, who are graduates of madrasas. The sort of education that they receive in traditional madrasas is reflected in the sorts of books that they write. ‘Generally, madrasa students are kept unaware of the world surrounding them, and so when they graduate and step outside, they are often unable to properly adjust or relate to the world’, Iqbal rues. For their part, ‘modern’ educated, middle-class Muslims increasingly prefer to write and read in English, thus narrowing down the class base which the Urdu publishing industry caters to. Further, Iqbal says that many middle-class Muslims seem to distance themselves from the Muslim masses, taking little interest in their problems and concerns.


In the current context of growing Islamophobia, Iqbal says, Muslim-owned publishing houses, including Urdu publishers, have a major role to play in countering anti-Muslim discourses. But in this they have not been very successful. ‘Rebuttal of anti-Muslim propaganda is generally done in Urdu, through books and magazines, which few non-Muslims can read. It is like preaching to the converted’, he rues. ‘Few Muslim publishing houses bring out literature aimed at non-Muslims and written in a mode that they can understand’.


Another area that the Urdu publishing industry is seriously lacking in, Iqbal relates, is in the matter of translations. ‘So many good books are coming out in the market in English, on Islam, on Muslims and also on other issues which Urdu-readers might be interested in.


Yet, translations of such books have been negligible’, he says. ‘Most Urdu publishers would be blissfully unaware of these new books’, he argues. ’We need an active association that could help Urdu publishers be more professionally and technically competent’, Iqbal insists. ‘It could help the industry produce more socially relevant literature. It could also promote interaction between Urdu publishers and others, so that they can learn from them’.


’Ultimately’, Iqbal tells me as we wind up our conversation, ‘It is up to lovers of Urdu to save, protect and promote the language’. And by publishing his magazine against heavy odds for over a decade now, Iqbal shows what a major difference a single individual can make in this regard.


Address: Urdu Book Review No. 1739/3 (Basement) New Kohinoor Hotel, Patandi House, Daryaganj, New Delhi - 110 002. Phone: 011-23266374.