A stray newspaper item talking of the decay of centuries old books in a library which were in urgent need of preservation and restoration took me to Pahari Imli in the walled city of Delhi. What I found was a small library , a veritable treasure trove of books mainly in Persian, Arabic and Urdu many of which were literally centuries old. These were zealously guarded by people who had lovingly collected the books but had neither the knowledge nor the means to preserve them. A large number of them came from the personal collection of Changezi Sahab, a sprightly hundred and four year old who is a lively raconteur of the turning pages of history. Then came to light the private collection of Abdul Sattar containing many rare books. Conversations revealed that collecting books and holding discussions on them was an integral part of the lives of the wealthy and powerful. This was the mode of transmission of knowledge to the unlettered libraries were attached to Masjids like the Jama Masjid and the Fatehpuri Masjid. But as Mughal rule weakened and then ended, the Hindu merchant class in the walled city became more prosperous than the Muslim nobility and wealthy class. They set up libraries like the almost hundred year old Marwari Library and the ninety year old Jain Library. The Hardayal Library (1862) earlier called the Hardinge Library seemed of a different genre. The last important library in the walled city was the Delhi Public Library established in the walled city at the behest of UNESCO.
Several questions come to mind. How was knowledge created and disseminated from the first half of nineteenth century or even from the 18th century onward when the colonial encounter increasingly took place. Who were the patrons of knowledge or of its creation and dissemination. How did they interact with each other and with the colonial rulers.
Researching my book on Hindu College, I had been walking round the narrow lanes and bye-lanes of the walled city of Delhi as the establishment and growth of Hindu College was in itself the result of a colonial encounter. Delhi College, the oldest college of Delhi that had been established in 1792 was closed by the British in 1825. It was merged with Government College Lahore in an attempt to make it a British institution. When there were protests, efforts were made to revive it in Delhi but these did not succeed. The College was finally closed on 1April, 1877. St. Stephens College was established in 1881. Thus, Delhi was deprived of its only indigenous higher education institution. St. Stephen’s the only institution of higher education left in Delhi, was viewed with suspicion because of its perceived prosetylizing agenda and its radical criticism of the existing tradition. It took another eighteen years for Hindu College to get established in the walled city of Delhi with the aim of providing affordable modern education to common people with roots firmly grounded in Indian culture so as to prepare students to take part in the polity of the nation. It was supposed to keep the interests of Indians in mind as opposed to those of the colonial masters.
Delhi has a long and romantic history of antiquity and continuity. Each time after its destruction, the city has risen phoenix like from its ashes. An important reason for this is perhaps its strong cultural and knowledge roots. If Nadir Shah’s invasion in 1793 is taken as a watershed, it was after this that a period of rapid internal decay set in although outwardly Delhi shone with brilliance. The walled city or Shahjahanabad was the seat of the Mughal emperor from 1648 to 1858. It was planned by Shahjahan to be a “Veritable heaven on earth”. The Emperor and the palace were at the centre of the social, economic and cultural life and their households controlled the economic production and distribution. The karkhanas employed artisans, craftsmen and workers who produced a variety of goods known for their excellence.
Shahjahanabad was primarily an administrative centre. However, the turbulent politics of the court together with the inroads by the Marathas and the Afghans weakened the position of the emperor. In spite of this, the emperor and his amirs continued to patronise the houses of urban culture where the poets, painters, musicians, calligraphers and dancers displayed their talents. While interest in architecture declined and painting became repetitive, music and literature reached their zenith.. Eighteenth century Shahjahanabad was defined by a highly refined cultural idiom and one of the lasting legacies of the city was the development of the vernacular rekhta or urdu. It was in the midst of growing anarchy that a consolidation of traditions took place leading to an urban, humanistic, broad based, culture largely free from sectarian bias. The growing British influence after 1803 saw the defeat of the Marathas brought a measure of peace and the city grew once more through the first half of the nineteenth century. The economy controlled by imperial and aristocratic families gave way to market-oriented firms, and the merchant class began to play a greater role. But the cultural life of the city continued to revolve around the imperial court in spite of its weakened position. The Mughal court remained to many, the centre of style. At the same time, the middle classes began to get more and more involved in artistic activity and rich merchants patronised painters, musicians and poets. Hindus, Muslims and Europeans worked together to foster the growth of new educational and cultural institutions of which the Delhi college was the most famous.
Delhi college represented the intellectual and cultural efflorescence of the mid-nineteenth century Delhi. It became an epicentre of “Delhi Renaissance” and according to C.F. Andrews, “suddenly illuminated the age”. It was one of the first institutions in India to initiate instruction in modern science through the local language. Quickened by the newly awakened scientific curiosity, the activities at Delhi College led to the confluence of East and West, and the synthesis of traditional and modern learning. It symbolised an encounter between British and Indo-muslim culture through the medium of urdu. Its icons were men like Master Ramchandra, the science and mathematics teacher and Munshi Zakaullah, the historian and mathematician as well as a prolific text book writer. They were committed to unravel new knowledge and thus reinvigorate their own culture and knowledge system.
Master Ramchandra was chiefly instrumental in the development of periodicals that were published from Delhi College in the 1840s and 1850s. He was a Kayastha from a relatively humble background who acquired huge fame as a mathematician and as a Urdu stylist credited for introducing realism and unpretentious prose writing. He brought out two journals from Delhi College called the Fara’idu’ n – Nazrin, a fortnightly devoted to science and Muhibb-e-Hind, a monthly dedicated to literature and culture. Through the pages of these periodicals Master Ramchandra brought modern European innovations and discoveries in science and technology to the people of Delhi in their own language. He translated and explained in simple Urdu all that was path breaking in Europe during this period. He also articulated the ideology of reform that involved openness to knowledge whatever may be its source. Besides several books and translations, he also wrote two interesting books called Takiratul Kamilin and Ajaibat-e-Rozgar. The former carried biographical sketches of outstanding people of the world while second dealt with curious places, animals and buildings.
Munshi Zakaullah was the favourite student of Master Ramchandra who became one of the most prolific writers and translators of scientific and other texts. He defined science as “acknowledge which has truth, an absolute truth, and nothing but the truth”. C.F. Andrews, his biographer called Zakaullah “ one of the pillars of the short lived ‘Delhi Renaissance”. He is also seen as the apostle of pluralist Delhi and as ‘one of God’s peace-makers who brought unity among the children of men by his goodness and love’.
Zakaullah translated many books on science and mathematics like Risala-e-lm-e – i-Hisab (on mathematics) and Tahrir-e-Uqlidis (on Euclid). Besides, he authored several books on science like Sahifa-e-Fitrat (A Treatise on Natural sciences) in 1894. He also wrote a series of booklets on the emergence of the sciences in the east and the west like Ulum-e-Tibiya Sharqi Ki Abjad (Beginnings of the sciences in the East) published in 1900. Both Ramchandra and Zakaullah were the iconic figures of the nineteenth century Delhi.
As Narayani Gupta points out, Delhi college, (and later those in Agra and Banaras) “achieved something which was qualitatively different from the contemporary Calcutta ‘Renaissance’. Delhi had a well-defined and broad-based school curriculum ad a native language. On this was grafted European philosophy and science. The students showed a decided predilection for a scientific rather than a literary education. It is remarkable that this should have been the preference of a people renowned for their love of literary urdu. It was not a question of making a choice. The students and the teachers found it possible to be enthusiastic about mathematics and astronomy and to compose urdu poetry at the same time. The joint efforts of Indian and Europeans led to urdu transforming itself from a language of poetry to one that transmitted Western knowledge…
This period also saw the rise of the newspaper. The “Delhi Urdu akhbar”, as Margrit Pernau points out, started publication in 1837 representing “a confluence of the traditional Mughal institutions and the newly introduced British models”. While the colonial administrators continued to use the traditional methods of gathering information on the different royal and princely courts through the daily reports of accredited news-writers until almost 1857, they were nevertheless convinced that the vernacular newspapers, which started to appear from the second decade of nineteenth century, owed themselves entirely to the Biritish initiative, model and patronage.
Since the time of emperor Akbar, a system of manuscript newsletter had evolved which permitted the exchange of information between the imperial and the regional courts through news-writers. For this purpose, letters from the imperial envoys at the nobles courts on the one hand, and the record of the emperor’s daily proceedings on the other hand were compiled into a daily account which was then publicly read out during the durbar. The envoys of the nobles in turn took notes of this information and sent it back to their patrons. In contrast to the gathering of information by spies – which went on side by side with it – these news-writers were the central institution of a system guaranteeing an open flow of information between the emperor and the nobles, and at times also among the peripheral courts.” Even though their office was defined with reference to the ruler, whom they were supposed to supply with the information he needed for taking the right decisions, the news-writers also contributed to the creation of a community of individuals linked together by reference to a common knowledge of events and which, perhaps, in spite of its obvious limitations in numbers and accessibility, can be seen as the nucleus of a public sphere.
It seems as if since the beginning of the century the newsletters tended to become accessible beyond the range of those persons who had originally commissioned them, possibly a device of the Akhbar-navisi to cope with the dwindling resources available for patronage. When, for instance, in 1807 Seton tried to trace the causes and events of a riot occasioned by a new religious procession through Delhi, he relied not only on his own first hand information of what had transpired in the palace, but compared them to “three different newspapers,” which might have been either commissioned by the rulers of the adjacent princely states or already produced for an anonymous public.
Far from dwindling in their importance, the number of these hand-written gazettes seemed to increase in the course of the next decades. Macaulay, in a report written in 1836, mentions:
The gazetted (akhbars) which are commonly read by the Natives are in manuscript. To prepare these gazettes, it is the business of a numerous class of people, who are constantly prowling for intelligence in the neighbourhood of every cutcherry and every durbar. Twenty or thirty news writers are constantly in attendance at the Palace of Delhi and at the Residency. Each of these news-writers has among the richer natives, several customers whom he daily supplies with all the scandal of the Court and the City. The number of manuscript gazettes daily dispatched from the single town of Delhi cannot of course be precisely known , but it is calculated by persons having good opportunities of information at hundred and twenty. Under these circumstances it is perfectly clear that the influence of the manuscripts gazettes on the native population must be very much more extensive than that of the printed papers (in the native languages whose circulation in India by dawk does not now exceed three hundred).
These newspapers were not only handed round, but at times even seemed to have been read out to a more general public by enterprising journalists themselves. Thus as Ulrike points out, newspapers played a pivotal role in expanding interest on the printed word prior to the emergence of the ‘cheap book’ trade.
Lithographic Printing Press in India:
Printing and publishing came to North India in about the 1830s. The first lithographic presses were set up in Kanpur and Lucknow. The moveable type press was not as popular as the lithographic style as there were plenty of calligraphers in the cities of North India seeking employment and for the patron it was a link with the past that ‘combined the cultural attribute of a manuscript with the technical advantages of mass production’. Lithographic book printing offered employment for those professionals who had earlier been engaged in the production of manuscripts. These included the booksellers, copyists, painters, writers, and scholars involved in editing classical works on various topics and commenting upon them, together with authors of schoolbooks. The advent of printing also brought lithographers, editors, and businessmen into this venture.
From the 19th century to the first decade of the 20th, India was at the hub of a great expansion in lithographic printing. The largest percentage of lithographs was printed in Lucknow, followed by Bombay (Mumbai), Cawnpore (Kanpur), Lahore, and Delhi, mainly on theological subjects, educational textbooks and literary works. The most successful were the lithographers of Lucknow and the Kanpur – Hajji Mohammad-Hosayn at the Mohammadi printing house, Mostafa Khan at the Mostafa’I printing house in Kanpur and Mir Hasan Razawl at the Hasani printing house in Lucknow. The latter was later adopted by the publishing house of Munshi Nawal Kishor. In 1858, the largest national publishing house in India, Oudh Akhbar of Munshi Nawal Kishor (d. 1895), was established in Lucknow. As well as its well-known Urdu newspaper of the same name, it printed books in many languages, mostly in Urdu, but also in Persian and Arabic. The publishing house had a branch office in Kanpur, another at Lahore from the late 19th century, and, as of the early 20th century, an office in Delhi as well. Delhi became a hub of printed books arriving from these various printing presses.
However, the revolt of 1857 ruptured this evolution and the period between 1857-1877 saw a collapse of life in Delhi. Zahir Dehlavi, a resident of Matia Mahal which, according to local tradition, was built by Shah Jahan for his own use when Red Fort was being built, wrote about a late evening scene in the area: “…it was completely quiet, and there was not a single bird to be heard or seen. Indeed there was a strange silence over the whole town, as if the city had turned suddenly into a wilderness. Shops we lying looted, the doors of all the houses and havelis were closed, and there was not a glimmer of light”. “Delhi’s Commissioner confirms this when he says, that Delhi was “deserted by all living being except a few stray dogs”. For three consecutive years, 1866-68, Delhi faced a great famine. Subsequent years saw an increase in taxes bringing greater misery to the already ‘impoverished’ citizens. Economic discontent and abject poverty made certain communities extremely vulnerable to the lure assured education and better living conditions held out by the missionaries. At the same time, Delhi was becoming a centre for Hindu resurgence leading to unease not only between Hindus and Muslims but also within various Hindu groups – orthodox Hindus, Arya Samajis, and Jains. Many organisations like Arya Samaj and the Theosophical Society strengthened but there was also a feeling that Hinduism needed to be defended and strengthened. A National Conference was held in 1900 in Delhi under the presidency of Maharaja of Darbhanga which led to the formation of Bharata Dharma Mahamandala in 1902.
The Hazrat Shah Walliullah Library
The Hazrat Shah Walliullah Public Library brings into focus the riches that lay in the labyrinth that is the Walled City of Shahjahanabad. It is said that during the reign of Shah Jahan, the city had several private collectors of books and manuscripts and that the love of literary pursuits was integral to its culture. However, the passing centuries that alternated between periods of efflorescence and violent upheavals left the City impoverished. Where once there were the ateliers of calligraphers, miniaturists, artists of book-making, today there shops selling cheap clothese, textbooks, shoes, down market printing presses, eating places and the ubiquitous butcher. Even the book shops of Urdu Bazaar are overwhelmed by food and butcher shops. The Court and its patrons have long since vanished into history, and, if there is patronage, it is from outside the City.
The remnants of the old world can be found tucked away, behind closed doors or embedded in lanes, as is the Hazrat Shah Waliullah Public Library, the small yet fine collection belonging to Abdul Sattar and Naseem Beg Changezi, or the book binder, Sikandar Mirza, who uses a room in his house to restore old books manually.
Located in Chooriwalan, in the Pahari Imli area of Shahjahanabad, the library was founded in 1994. The Library, purely the initiative of the local Delhi Youth Welfare Organisation, came into being when communal riots had engulfed the Old City and there was a curfew. The members of the Delhi Youth Welfare Organisation decided on books for the local community, where they could meet and read instead of getting involved in the fractious politics surrounding them. The collection which now has 15000 books, was acquired through gifts, donations, scouring old bookshops and bazaars. They named it after the great Islamic scholar and translator of the 18th century, Hazrat Shah Walliullah, also a resident of the City.
The Library is housed in a small room, the walls thickly packed with books and on the carpeted floor is a low table where readers can comfortably read.
Some of the highlights of the Collection are:
- A hundred-year old Quran with every page written in a different style, manuscripts embossed in gold.
- Diwan-i-Zafar ppoetry by the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, printed at the royal press inside the Red Fort in 1855 in Urdu, Arabic and Persian and Punjabi. The last few pages of the book have his Punjabi verses written in Arabic script.
- Century-old copy of Japuji Saheb and Sukhmani Saheb printed at Lahore, an out-of-print Bhajan Qawwali Gyan
- A copy of a 600 year old treatise on logic, manuscripts from Baghdad, Beirut and Saudi Arabia with rare calligraphy.
- Ghalib’s Diwan with his seal and signature
- Books from the personal collection of Nawab Amjad Ali Shah, father of the last ruler of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah
- The first illustrated Bengali translation of the Quran from Chitpur in Kolkata, published in the pre-independence years, especially for circulation in Burman, as well Quran in Bangla published from Deoband
- A dictionary by a Begum of Bhopal in six languages
- A copy of the Sair-ul-Auliya by Nizamuddin Auliya, dating back to the early 19th century
- A rich collection of dictionaries.
For the Delhi Youth Welfare Association, the Library and the services they offer ‘connects the four pillars of learning and spirituality; the mosque, the khanqah, madrassas and public libraries, a tradition that began with the days of Iltutmish”.
The Library opens at 10 a.m in the morning and closes at 1 pm for lunch in the afternoon it becomes a coaching centre and then re-opens as a Library from 9 pm to 11.30 pm for the local residents.
The Association also provides free study books to poor meritorious students from Classes 9 to 12 each year, paying their admission fees when required. They also collect old course books from students which can be passed on to the needy.
Who was Hazrat Shah Walliullah? Hazrat Shah Walliullah lived through the tumultuous reigns of several Emperors – Bahadur Shah I, Jahandar Shah, Farruksiyar, the Sayyid Brother , and Muhammed Shah in whose reign Nadir Shah of Persia invaded Delhi and laid waste the city of Shahjahanabad. He died during the reign of Shah Alam II.
The reign of Muhammed Shah was one of cultural efflorescence. Music under Sadarang and his brother reached great heights with the development of the khayal, dance and painting developed, so did astronomy under the patronage of Jai Singh. By the end of Muhammad Shah’s reign, Urdu language had also developed and grown into a literary language.
Shah Waliullah received his education from his father, a well known theologian, Sufi and Philosopher of Delhi. He taught at his father’s Madrasa-I Rahimia and then went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, studying under famous teachers in Medina and Mecca. In 1732, he returned to Delhi and then began his life’s work. Although he continued to teach, he broke from the traditional methods and instructed his pupils in different branches of Islamic knowledge. He also began to write and just before he died he had completed volumes of standard works in all branches of Islamic sciences. His most important contribution was the translation of the Quran and that opened the way to further translations. Aware of the deep sectarian controversies within Islam, Shah Waliullah worked out a system of thought based on the central themes of adl (justice) and ihsan (good deeds towards humanity). His ideas outlived him through the work of his sons, Shah Abdul Aziz and his grandsons, one of them was the great reformer Shah Ismail Shahid.
The technical aspects of calligraphy, painting and book-binding are important facets of the study of Islamic art. Workshops supported by rulers and members of their extended family produced copies of famous literary works, histories, and Qurans.
Many rulers were connoisseurs who collected books and paintings by famous artists. Books were also financial investments, donated toward the endowment of charitable foundations, and status symbols, presented as gifts between heads of state. These workshops produced copies of famous literary works, histories, and Qurans. Once a patron decided on a project, the director of the workshop saw it through to its conclusion. He laid out the pages, decided which parts of the text to illustrate, and chose scribes and artists based on the particular project.
The first step in creating a book was to make the paper. In the Islamic world, paper was made from rags of linen and hemp, not tree pulp. The rags were cut into strips and softened in lime water, then pounded into a pulp and soaked in a vat. To form a sheet of paper, a rectangular mould was placed into the vat and then left to dry. The water seeped out and the page hardened in the mould. Decorative touches were often added to the paper; some were tinted, some were sprinkled with gold, and others were marbled. After drying the paper was prepared to receive ink and paint with the application of a starchy solution that rendered the surface smooth and nonporous. A scribe then prepared his ink, made his pens, and pressed guidelines into the paper. He then copied the text, leaving spaces for illustrations where the director of the workshop had indicated.
After the text was completed, the pages passed to the painters. Most manuscripts were the work of a number of artists, each chosen to illustrate a particular scene. Some artists, for instance, were known for their portraits, others for their battle scenes. A single page might also represent a collaborative effort, as junior artists were called upon to fill in backgrounds and landscapes, pigments were derived from mineral sources; gold, silver, lapis lazuli, ground cinnabar, orpiment, and malachite. These materials were expensive and substitutes were often used such as indigo, verdigris, and lead or a combination of mercury and sulphur to create red. The Pigment had to be suspended in a medium that allowed it to be brushed on to the page. Originally this was albumen or glue, which gave a glossy sheen to the paintings; After the sixteenth century, gum Arabic, with a more matte finish, was used instead.After the paintings were complete, illuminators and gilders added flourishes to the text, such as chapter headings, coloured frames, and rulings. They also created frontispieces and end pages. Finally, each sheet was burnished with a hard stone or glass.
At this stage, the leaves of the book were ready to be sewn and bound. The covers were joined to a spine and a fore-edge flap that folded over the ends of the pages and tucked under the top cover. Bindings were decorated with simple tooled geometric or vegetal patterns. The Persian design with a central oval medallion, pendants, and corner pieces was created by the use of a mould. Half the binding was stamped and then the mould was reversed, forming a mirror image of the design in the other half. Surrounding the central medallion were arranged rich floral motifs, arabesques, and cloud bands. This style soon spread to India and Turkey. Through the sixteenth century, designs became more elaborate, with the addition of miniature figures and landscapes, and the interior covers also came to be decorated. Patterns for these were created in cut-out leather, colored papers, and gilding. In the nineteenth century, lacquered bindings with painted designs replaced these elaborate leather works.
Calligraphy
Calligraphy is the most sacred form of artistic expression in the Islamic world as the divine word revealed to the Prophet Mohammad was recorded in the Quran through written word. The Arabic script lends itself to a variety of ornamental forms and Islamic calligraphy has over the centuries developed a formal aesthetic code. From monumental stone to manuscripts, to decorative objects and textiles, words that include the religious and secular, have been used to transmit knowledge as well as the visual beauty of the form.
A calligrapher’s closest ally, his reed pen or qalam (Turkish; kalem), is most important to his craft and itself has to be crafted with the utmost care. A calligrapher must be familiar and proficient in creating his own pen, Reed (kamis) is the most common material for typical pens, while bamboo and wood are used for larger pens that produce oversize lettering not usually seen in manuscripts, Reed pens must first be cured (sometimes in manure) for upto four years before being cut; An improperly cut pen means imperfect calligraphy. The pen is cut with the help of a cutting slab (makta) whose main component is its bone or ivory grooved piece on which the calligrapher sets the end of the reed. The calligrapher then cuts a nib with one single stroke with his penknife and then adding a slit down the nib’s middle with a second stroke. This slit creates a repository for the ink. Then the nib is trimmed according to the specific script desired by the calligrapher.
Syed Muhammed Ameer Ali Rizvi alias Meer Panjakash
Meer Panjakash, an outstanding calligrapher was famous for his formative name because of his equal abilities and excellences in calligraphy and the trial of strength through Mughal Empire of Abu Zafar Srajuddin Bahadur Shah Zafar (PanjaKash).Interlocking of fingers, This was the period of the dying while PanjaKash was the utmost calligrapher of that age. These was no parallel to him. He was the ultimate authority on the art of calligraphy
Meer Panjakash was the son of Syed Saheb Meer. Besides his art of calligraphy he was courteous, polite, affable, cheerful, handsome, lovely and a favourite of friends.He had extraordinary qualities, that included sports like wrestling, playing baank banot (a game played with pieces of wood), painting, engraving, title designing, tabelating, journalism and stone cutting etc.
Maulana Ghulam Muhammad Hafs Qalam Dehlavi writes in Tazkirah Khusnavisyaan as follows:
“In the earlier period of General Brown, I met Panjakash when he was teaching the children of Armanian, named Ghulam Lone. I advised him to practise the specimen and style of Aga Abdur Rasheed who was the well-known calligrapher.
Panjakash was a very talented person and he started to copy and exercise the calligraphy of Aga Abdur Rasheed within a short of time. He became the master of comprehensive un-matched sterling qualities of calligraphy.
Whenever he was asked for help by some poor person, he used to write some words and give them to him, to sell and use the money.
In 1857, when Panjakash was about ninety years old, an unknown British Sepoy shot him dead. His son Meer Qutb Alam and his family lived in Delhi till 1914 AD. His grave is in a room in his haveli, at Pahari Imli. Nowadays, it is being used for Boys’Middle School.
So great was the cultural richness of Delhi at this time that Sir Sayed Ahmad Khan refused to move out of Delhi. The charm was that Delhi of this time was full of learned men (ahl-I ilm). Others recalled his early days when everyone – from the elite to the common man – had cultivated a taste for good poetry. Delhi’s poetry was, in comparison with Lucknow, less given to verbal excesses and conceits.
Delhi also produced quality prose literature. Sayed Ahmad turned letter writing (makatiba) into a dialogue (makalima), when he brought alive the description of an event. The Present-day Urdu prose (or the new style) conceded the Lucknow-born Abdul Halim Sharar, originated in Delhi and urdu will always remain indebted to it for that. He especially contrasts the simple style of writing of Mirza Ghalib, Sayed Ahmad, and Muhammad Husain Azad with Lucknow’s ‘flowery’ and ‘rhymed’ compositions. Some of his Sayd Ahmad’s close associates, notably Mohsinul Mulk, used Urdu prose with great effect to expound the changes that modern Islam must accept to keep abreast with the social and cultural transformation.
The intellectual vitality animating Delhi’s society led to a slow but steady proliferation of pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, as also to the publication of classical works. This feverish activity rekindled the enthusiasm of the now socially and intellectually emancipated middle class for their literature. A scholar stated in 1895 that books, which one could not see in dreams or conceive of in imagination, are now sold for cowries. This was because of the devastation of the 1857 uprising.
Karimuddin rented a place in Hauz Qazi to start a printing press, and launched a thirty two page magazine called Gul-i-Rana, in which he published translations of well known Arabic classics. By the 1840s, his was one of the seven printing presses. With the first litho press established around 1835, the Wahhabis’ printed tracts in Urdu on doctrinal and theological topics, but more so on day-to-day religious observances.
Private Collections
In keeping with the traditions of maintaining private collections, is that of Abdul Sattar. Two steep flights of stairs lead to Abdul Sattar’s house in Pahari Imli, an oasis amidst the noise and chaos of the streets below. A private collector, his library has 600 books, mainly in Urdu, although there are some Persian and Arabic texts too. The main focus of his collection is on Delhi as he is writing the history of the Ghaziuddin Madrassa in Ajmeri gate.
Some of the books include:
Muraqqa-I Chughtai
Paintings of M.A. Rahman Chughtai with about 50 plates with an introduction Dr,. James H. Cousins, with full text of Diwan-i-GhalibForeword by Dr. Sir Mohammed Iqbal (Lahore: Jahangir Book Club) and Masnavi of Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi: With calligraphy by Mirza Abdul Kalim and English translation printed in Munich 1933
Akhbar al Akhyar by Sheikh Abdul Haq Mohaddith Dehlawi (A book on the Sufis of India, written during the reign of Akbar). The book was printed in 1864 (150 years ago) at Mohammadi, Faiz Bazaar, Delhi. Owner of the Press: Mohammed Mirza Khan. Verses of Amir Meenai – compilation Pub., 1918; Lucknow; Munshi Nawal Kishore, Mawlud Sharif (prayers of the Prophet and Allah) Handwritten book, printed in 1261 A.H. (1840)
Fasana-i-Ajaib: Rajab Ali Beg Suroor: Towering 19th century fiction writer, Rajab Ali Beg Suroor was primarily a prose writer and also has some translations to his credit. He has composed ghazals as well. His most outstanding literary contribution is Fasana-i-Ajaib (1843) which occupies a pride of place in Urdu prose. Printed in 1864 at Mohammadi, Faiz Bazaar, Delhi.
Akhbar al Akhyar of Sheikh Abdul Haq Muhaddith Dehlawi or AI Muhaddith Shaykh Abdul Haq Dehlavi, a respected scholar of Islam
Another private collection was the one that belonged to Deputy Nazir Ahmad. The well-known writer. It is still not known whether his vast private collection has survived. A query at the Fatehpuri Masjid seemed to indicate that this collection is lost.
Asked about what use did the private collectors make of the books, Abdul Sattar replied that it was usually the wealthy and powerful who collected books but they also took it upon themselves to educate the common people. In the courtyard of havelis, people gathered – intellectuals, the educated genteel gentry, and the common populace. While the intellectuals debated and discoursed upon the subjects of books, questions acould be raised by the educated. The common people were to listen and absorb. No wonder then that while literacy might have been low in India, education and aesthetic sensibility was high.
Traditionally, libraries were also attached to masjids. One example of such a library is that of Fatehpuri Masjid. The Imam, Mufti Mukaram Ahmed, who has been the chief mufti and imam of the mosque for forty two years, is a learned scholar who knows five languages and has written several books. He is also the author in chief of a fifty volume encyclopaedia on Islam in English. It is said that the mosque was built by Fatehpuri Begum in the 17th C. She was one of the wives of Shah Jahan, who came from Fatehpur and hence Fatehpuri. The library in the mosque is said to have had about 10000 books as during the destruction of 1857 and 1947, the private collections of people poured in here. There are several hand written books with calligraphy but most are printed. The library is a picture of neglect as for the last twenty four to twenty five years, there is no librarian and no upkeep. Rare books are dumped in heaps laden with dust and are slowly getting destroyed taking with them our heritage of Persian, Arabic and Urdu.
Marwari Library
Libraries began to be established by the merchant class because there was a desire to spread modern education among the masses. Delhi was agog with trade and commerce. Marwaris formed an important segment in that. Although there is some evidence to indicate the Marwarismoved eastward towards Shahdara in the early 19th century, but largely they not only continued to inhabit the walled city but also inhabited Trevelyanpur a residential ara carved out by Charles Trevelyan out of his estate in 1840’s.
Marwaris a merchant community had grown to be an affluent community by the turn of the century. Their community participation in organised social activities reflected a concern for social welfare. The Revolt of 1857 was a watershed in the life of the city. It cut across divisions of Hindu & Muslim and caste divisions. This was worrisome to the British and nationalism took root at this time. India came under the British crown in 1858. Means of communication and trade increased but Indians remain impoverished. Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905 gave emotional direction to the nationalist movement and its political demands. Realisation that Japan succeeded because of its economic power and high degree of scientific and technical ability. Sent many student to study abroad especially in the field of technical & Vocational education. Beginnings of modernisation of Indian economy. Three ingredient became important for merchant class. Wealth based on land holding and commerce. Influence in local society as entrepreneur and public figure. Close ties with the British. Al l came together in urban rais. Industrial nationalism led to the formation of DCM in 1889. Charity turned to philanthropy. Establishment of educational institutions, religious institutions, libraries, printing press. Libraries were a new addition to philanthropy. The rais hedged their bets and continued the previous charity of wells etc. and added the new philanthropy. When Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement came, they contributed to that too in the same spirit. It was in 1915 that Marwari Library, the first library of any type founded through community awareness in Modern India, was set up by a Marwari Seth Kedar Nath Goenka in the Chandni Chowk area of Delhi. He was a wealthy cloth merchantof Chandni Chowk, a multifaceted personality who was distinguished for his old-world charm. A prominent public figure, freedom fighter, a social reformer and an advocate of the Hindi language, his lasting contribution was the founding of the Marwari Library in 1915 (presently known as Marwari Public Library).
The Marwari Public Library is one link in the chain of social reform movement symbolised by our freedom struggle. The library is a landmark reminding us of the freedom struggle.
Seth Kedar Nath Goenka was an advocate of Hindi language, and hence, he and his successors successfully built an important collection of books in Hindi. It is unique in many respects consisting of numerous rare books hard to find in other libraries. It has also many old collections of Hindi periodical publications including Chand, Saraswati and Madhuri, thus providing a panorama of intellectual development of the country through its contents.
The Marwari Public Library is not merely a public library, but it symbolises the various phases of freedom struggle. It is a part of India’s contemporary history. It was not only a centre of intellectual activity of old Delhi, but it was also a hub of activities for freedom fighters. The leaders of the Congress used to gather together for their meetings on the premises of the library. It was visited by almost all nationalist leaders of the time like Mahatma Gandhi, Pt. Malaviya and Tilak. The premises of the library were made use of for literary get-togethers. The Marwari Public Library thus brought together of political, social and literary activities of the time.
Kedar Nath Goenka and his associates were far-sighted. They envisaged the library as a democratic institution by assuring the largest participation of the citizens of Delhi. They arranged to provide access to its collections by organising 50 branches of the library spread all over the city besides several locations in the rural areas of Delhi. Eve4n as late as 1947 (Kedar Nath Goenka passed away in 1941), there were thirty branches of the Marwari Public Library. Sadly, the momentum built by the founder was not sustained in later years.
With more than 50,000 books, mostly in Hindi the library caters to its more than 300 members and research scholars who find mines of information in its several collections. The yearly allocation at present is rupees one lakh of which half is contributed by the Government and the rest is raised through donations from the prominent Marwaris. While there are some manuscripts in the library, the most prized possession perhaps is the Visitors’ Book which shows the wide range of nationalist leaders and literary figures that visited the Library. In 1994, the Library received the DDA Urban Heritage Award in 1994. It has celebrated its centenary this year. About two years ago, a revival of sorts took place when nearly six hundred of its rare books were digitized.
The Hardayal Municipal Public Library
The Hardayal Municipal Public Library of Delhi is one of the oldest public libraries in Delhi. Although initially it was not meant to be a public library, it gradually grew into one. Previously known as the Hardinge Library (Delhi), it was renamed as the Hardayal Municipal Library. It was set up in 1862 and housed in a portion of the Delhi Municipal Town Hall. With a small set of books and other reading material, the library later shifted to the Honorary Magistrate’s Court, where the present Pension Cell is situated, and it remained there till 1916. Initially it was known as the Institute. Now it has a building of its own.
High officials of the British Government used to come to India for about five years. During that time, since the Suez Canal was not in existence, ships from England to India used to traverse round the Cape of Good Hope. Hence it took seven to eight months to reach India. As a result, the British officers used to carry a large number of books for their voyages, which were later handed over to the Institute. This collection was eventually known as the Institute Library. It is evident from the Accession number on a book in its holdings that the Institute Library as such started functioning in 1862. The building of the Institute which now houses the Town Hall was constructed during 1861 to 1866. In 1902 the Library was named the Delhi Public Library and a librarian was appointed to look after its management.
An event in 1912 had its influence on the growth and development of this library. On December 23, 1912 Lord Hardinge, mounted on an elephant, was passing in a procession through the Chandni Chowk, when some members of the Ghadar Party threw a bomb at him. Although Lord Hardinge survived, his bodyguard died. It was then that some ‘elite citizens’ of Delhi raised funds to construct a building for the Delhi Public Library. The Library was, thus, shifted to its current building, which was named as the Hardinge Library Building in 1916.
In 1942 the Delhi Municipal Committee in an agreement with the Hardinge Library Management Committee agreed to provide hundred per cent grant with the condition that the word ‘Muniicipal’ be added to its name. It was after this that the library’s name was changed to Hardinge Municipal Public Library. In 1970 the library was rechristened as the Hardayal Municipal Public Library after the famous freedom fighter and intellectual Lala Hardayal.
Over a century of its history the Hardayal Municipal Public Library has grown to be one of the major public libraries of DelhiIt has about a hundred and fifty thousand books, out of which about ten thousand books have been categorised and are kept in the ‘Rare Books Section’. More than five thousand of the books in its collection are those which were published before 1850, and there are a large number of those that were published before 1900. The library also has about 400 manuscripts in its collection. According to an information collected from the Librarian, the yearly allocation of the library is about Rs.50 lakhs including the funds for the branch libraries in different municipal wards. However, today the books in the library are in a state of neglect mainly because of government apathy and mismanagement. After much ado by some concerned citizens, the conservation and restoration of the Arabic and urdu collection seems to have been started.
The Delhi Public Library
After the Second World War, international organisations especially the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), entered the field, propagating the idea of ‘fundamental education, which aims at stimulating and guiding the people in the under-developed regions of the world to economic progress, and then accompanying and sustaining that progress. Its aim is ‘to help people to help themselves’. This idea became popular in independent India, and the UNESCO is active in many areas of the literacy campaign.
In 1955, UNESCO began a project to aid in the production of reading materials for South Asia. The project area included Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Iran, Pakistan and India. Financed by the regular UNESCO budget as well as by the technical assistance funds, to help the improvement of book production and book distribution. While its primary aim was to stimulate the production of materials for the neo-literates, the idea was to give them enough reading skills so that the goal was not mere but literacy as a means to reach better ends.
The Delhi Public Library was, thus, established in 1951 by the Ministry of Education, Government of India as a pilot project, with financial and technical assistance from UNESCO. Started as a small unitary library in Old Delhi, it developed into a premier Public Library System in the metropolitan city of Delhi consisting of the Central Library, Zonal Libraries, the Branch Libraries and the Sub-Branch Libraries, Community Libraries, Resettlement Colonies Libraries for the weaker sections of the society, a Braille Department for the Blind, Sports Libraries, Depository Libraries, and a network of Mobile Library Services to link the remote urban and rural areas spread over the Union Territory of Delhi.
It has been providing free library service to the people children and adults, irrespective of any distinction of caste and creed. It is the only organisation in India which is actively concerned with the production of reading materials for the newly literate adults. In fact, one of the functions of the library is to provide service for the neo-literates living in Delhi proper and in the outlying areas of the Union Territory. In 1952, it started the production of prototype reading material and since then it has published about forty booklets written in simple language. Besides, it also aims at providing information on the problems of public library service for other parts of India and for Asia generally. In spite of its having started with a lot of enthusiasm, the fervour has gradually diminished and like other libraries in the city, it is in a state of decline.