Karmendu Shishir Shodhagar Press Release: The first international literary archive of Hindi little magazines

[Heike Moser]

-- Please send queries and suggestions directly to:
Divyaraj Amiya <divyaraj.amiya at uni-tuebingen.de> --




Karmendu Shishir Shodhagar Press Release: The first international literary
archive of Hindi little magazines
 


It is with great pleasure that we announce the release of the Karmendu
Shishir Shodhagar website specializing in the digitized cataloguing of Hindi
literary journals (Laghu Patrika) at the Department of Indology and
Comparative Religion, University of Tuebingen, Germany. This is the first
international website of its kind for Hindi little magazines.
 
Aim
The website is designed to provide access to a digitally catalogued literary
archive of more than 4500 issues of Laghu Patrikas for students and scholars
of Modern South Asian Studies and related areas. This collection includes
handwritten letters, photographs and audio-visual material on Hindi writers
and literary critics. It houses rare literary magazines of the 19th century
(for example Bharatendu and Anand Kadambini) including publications from
Munshi Naval Kishore Press of Lucknow in Urdu, Persian and Hindi as well as
the widely read Laghu Patrikas and literary journals of our times, like
Pehal, Hans, Shesh or Katha.
At Karmendu Shishir Shodhagar one can have a firsthand experience of the
historic journey of Hindi literary magazines in the last 120 years. This
unique archive is a window to the massive social and political upheavals and
changes that took place between the earliest issues of Anand Kadambini
(1883) edited by Badari Narayan Chaudhary until India¹s Independence (1947)
and those of Yuddharat Aam Aadmi (2005) edited by Ramanika Gupta as dalits
(untouchables), women, adivasis (indigenous peoples), linguistic and
religious minorities have started making contributions in recent times to
the Hindi literary canon in a big way.
 
The Team
This literary archive would have been unthinkable without the donation and
the immense ground work done by Karmendu Shishir, literary critic and
writer. His team of close friends and well-wishers in India and in Germany
provided us great support in bringing this archive to life. A part of this
collection consists of contributions made by Prof. Dr. Vasudha Dalmia,
University of California, Berkeley.
 
Future Plans
Beginning with the first installment of digitized archiving and providing
its internet web based access http://www.kss.uni-tuebingen.de to the
students and scholars of Modern South Asian Studies and Modern Hindi and
Urdu literature, Karmendu Shishir Shodhagar has plans to further include
literary magazines of the last 150 years of the Hindi-Urdu region. We are
already working with a team of literary experts in Delhi (India) and Karachi
(Pakistan) to survey and document the significant achievements of these two
literary spheres. The project of digitization and cataloguing will include
an audio-visual chapter so that the literary journey of the writers and
editors of little magazines can be recorded and curated for future
generations.
 
In coming months a quarterly audio-visual survey of Urdu and Hindi literary
magazines and events will be accessible at the KSS Homepage. This channel
shall present at regular interval a competent and sleek overview of literary
productions and activities in the third largest language of the world.
 
We appeal to the writers, critics and editors of literary magazines in India
and Pakistan to help us in archiving Hindi and Urdu literary magazines and
making them available for students and scholars.
 
A Hindi version of the website will be accessible online soon.
 
 
With best compliments,
 
 
 
Divyaraj Amiya, M.Phil.
Project Coordinator




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