Abstract
Punch, or the London Charivari was a popular nineteenth-century English satirical periodical not only in Britain but also outside its national territory. While much has been written about the history of the periodical in Britain, Punch’s transcultural lives as a literary format beyond Britain is yet to be documented. This chapter attempts to map its transcultural journey in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Hindi literary sphere. I will begin by delineating the characteristic features of Punch. At the risk of simplification it can be summarised as follows:
I am grateful to Benjamin Zachariah, Barbara Mittler, Hans Harder, and Gita Dharampal-Frick, for their helpful comments.
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- 1.
I use the plural form ‘lives’ because Punch inspired any number of periodicals in the nineteenth century, cutting across literary cultures in South Asia, China, Japan, Egypt, and Turkey, not to mention Europe. In South Asia its reverberations were felt not only in English-language periodicals owned by Europeans, as well as Indians, but in Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Urdu, Hindi, etc., as well. For an elementary survey in South Asia see Partha Mitter, “Cartoon and the Raj,” History Today, 47, no. 9 (1997). For a general survey see Bellary Shamanna Kesavan, History of Indian Journalism (Delhi: Publication Division, 1955).
- 2.
For the general understanding of Hindi literary sphere see Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere: Language and Literature in the Age of nationalism 1920–1940 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002) and also Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhāratendu Hariśchandra and Nineteenth-Century Banaras (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).
- 3.
Richard D. Altick, Punch: The Lively Youth of a British Institution 1841–1851 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1997).
- 4.
See Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (London: Zed Books, 1986).
- 5.
For a critique of this approach in the context of early novels in India see Meenakshi Mukherjee, “Epic and Novel in India,” in The Novel, vol. 1, History, Geography and Culture, ed. Franco Moretti (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006) 596–631.
- 6.
This has been the problem of nationalist literary historiography, as well as of left historiography informed by anti-imperialist position. See Vasudha Dalmia, Poetics, Plays, and Performance: The Politics of Modern Indian Theatre (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004) and also Chap. 5 of Dalmia, Nationalization of Hindu Traditions, 222–324. For a general overview of the politics of entanglement between nationalist ideology and literary historiography in South Asian literary cultures see Hans Harder, ed., Literature and Nationalist Ideology: Writing Histories of Modern Indian Languages (Delhi: Social Science Press, 2010). For a critique of residual nationalist frame in modern Indian historiography see the Introduction of Benjamin Zachariah, Nation Game (Delhi: Yoda Press, 2012).
- 7.
Borrowing from Michael McKeon’s idea of ‘generic instability’ from his work The Origins of the English Novel: 1600–1740 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1987), Francesca Orsini makes a very important point in the context of the analysis of early Hindi-Urdu novels. She argues that the idea of some pure or authentic model of a genre (such as the novel), which was available in Europe and then imported into the colony, is deeply flawed and redundant. A genre should be examined so as to explain the particular social and cultural functions it performs and the dialectical relationship it has with other genres at any given point in history. Francesca Orsini, Print and Pleasure: Popular Literature and Entertaining Fictions in Colonial North India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2009), 164.
- 8.
Ram Ratan Bhatnagar, The Rise and Growth of Hindi Journalism (Varanasi: Vishwavidyalay Prakashan, 2003); Kr˚sṇa Bihārī Miśra, Hindī patrakāritā. (Dillī: Bhārˡtīya Jñānˡpīṭh, 1985).
- 9.
This is discussed in the next section.
- 10.
Altick, Punch.
- 11.
Punch had individual subscribers in India. An Indian cartoonist, born in 1924, when recalling his young days, mentions that his father had a collection of old volumes of Punch. Rasipuram K.I. Laxman, The Tunnel of Time: An Autobiography (Delhi: Penguin India, 1998), 8–9. Ritu Khanduri has highlighted not only the availability and popularity of British Punch in India, but also noted that its commercial potential was clear to its owners as well, who were seriously considering bringing out overseas editions of the periodical, including an edition from India. See chapter Punch in India: Another History of Colonial Politics? in this volume, as well as Ritu Khanduri, “Vernacular Punches: Cartoon and Politics in Colonial India,” History and Anthropology, 20, no. 4 (2009): 459–486.
- 12.
For the best conceptualisation of the nature of colonial public sphere in India see Neeladri Bhattacharya, “Notes Towards a Conception of the Colonial Public,” in Civil society, Public Sphere, and Citizenship: Dialogues and Perceptions, ed. Rajeev Bhargava (Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005), 130–156.
- 13.
Bharatendu Harishchandra is popularly known as the ‘Father of Modern Hindi’. He wrote Muśāyˡrā in the early 1870s. All translations are mine. See Bābū Rāmˡdīn Siṃh, ed., Śrīhariścandrakalā athˡvā golokˡvāsī bhāratˡbhūṣaṇ bhārˡtendu hariścandra kā jīvan sarvasva, vol. 6, part 1 (Baṅkīpur: Khaḍgavilās Press, 1889), 62.
- 14.
In all probability, according to the compilers of Harishchandra’s work, this poem was published in the early years of the 1870s, which means before the beginning of Avadh Punch, an Urdu satirical periodical published from Lucknow, in January 1877. Even if this speculation is untrue, it nevertheless makes the point of the popularity of Punch, albeit via Awadh Punch.
- 15.
All translations unless otherwise cited are mine. I use the spelling Pañc rather than Punch when it is used in Hindi. Siṃh, Śrīhariścandrakalā, 62.
- 16.
Ibid.
- 17.
For a full quote of this review, see Swarali Paranjape, chapter Crossing Boundaries: Punch and the Marathi Weekly Hindu Pañca (1870–1909) in this volume.
- 18.
It was Harishchandra’s first journal.
- 19.
See the Facsimile edition Harischandra’s Magazine, ed. Satyaprakash Misra (Allahabad: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, 2002), 70–71.
- 20.
Brian Maidment’s chapter, The presence of Punch in the Nineteenth Century, on Punch in this volume deals with the periodical’s class character.
- 21.
Brian Harrison, “The British Prohibitionists 1853–1872: A Biographical Study,” International Review of Social History 15, no. 3 (1970): 375–467.
- 22.
The denomination Turk and Muslim is used interchangeably.
- 23.
Dalmia, Nationalization of Hindu Traditions, 222–324.
- 24.
Although the temperance movement in India is said to have begun in the late 1880s and acquired some prominence in the 1890s, its expression in Hindi literature preceded it by at least a decade. For a general overview of the temperance movement in colonial India and its British linkages see Lucy Carroll, “The Temperance Movement in India: Politics and Social Reform,” Modern Asian Studies 10, no. 3 (1976): 417–447, and Lucy Carroll, “Origins of the Kayastha Temperance Movement,” Indian Economic Social History Review 11 (1974): 432–447.
- 25.
Bhārˡtendu Hariścandra, “Pā̃cˡveṃ paigambar,” Harischandra’s Magazine, 15 December 1873. Facsimile Edition, ed. Satyaprakash Misra (Allahabad: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, 2002), 84–86. Examples can be multiplied. Kalirāj kī sabhā (assembly of the Lord of Fallen Times) was serialised between 15 October (one issue before the publication of Mussulman Platform) and February, 1874. Ibid., 38–39 and 138–142.
- 26.
In the farce and skits we also find negative depictions of characters, for instance, English-educated, westernised and zealous ‘anti-Hindu’ social reformers, often Bengalis, who are fond of alcohol. In some cases the corrupt king, an allegorical representation of the colonial ruling elite, and his collaborators, like debauched priests, are represented as eating meat and being intoxicated with alcohol. See, for example, “Vaidikī hiṃsā hiṃsā na bhavati” (Vedic violence is no violence), first published in Kavivacanˡsudhā, June 21, 1872. It was also published as an independent booklet from Medical Hall Press in 1873. Hemant Śarmā, ed. Bhārˡtendu samagra (Vārāṇasī: Hindī Pracārak Saṃsthān, 1989), 309–318.
- 27.
For instance, “Pā̃cˡveṃ paigambar”, mentioned above, can also be cited as one of the many examples. For greater detail see Sudhir Chandra, The Oppressive Present: Literature and Social Consciousness in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992).
- 28.
In some cases it could be gossip between characters with different names but still carried out in the same style. For instance, see “Do mitroṃ kā vārtālāp: kulˡpālak aur viśvabandhu kā samāgam” (Dialogue between two Friends: Rendezvous of a Noble Patron and a Universal Brother), Harischandra Magazine, October 1873. Facsimile Edition ed. Satyaprakash Misra (Allahabad: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, 2002), 19–22.
- 29.
According to the classical, textual Hindu social stratification system, these three classes of priests, warriors and merchants are twice-born, while the fourth class of Shudras, or labouring class, is not twice-born and hence impure. This is a very simplified explanation of a terribly complex concept of the Hindu social system.
- 30.
See the cover page of Dvija patrikā 1, no. 1, Phālgun (February–March) 1890.
- 31.
Sarasvatī would become the most influential literary periodical in Hindi.
- 32.
Dalmia, Nationalization of Hindu Traditions, 252–53.
- 33.
Parameśvar: the highest god.
- 34.
Besides the satirical columns containing the figure of Pañc and other homologous narrators, there are many satirical pieces like “Pā̃cˡveṃ paigambar” by Bharatendu, Yamˡlok kī yātrā by Radhacharan Gosvami, etc., where the satirical narrator is created by the author as a literary strategy. This fictional narrator and his narrative style are invested with the attributes of a quasi-divine, liminal outsider who could state the unstated, visualise the concealed and potentially break what Sudipta Kaviraj calls, the ‘grammar of reality’. Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 29. In the case of satirical journalism, this is quite clear also from at least two examples of the twentieth century. For instance, a column titled Śivˡśambhu ke ciṭṭhe (Letters from Lord Shiva) the narrator of which has the name and attributes of Lord Shiva, and also in the character of Matˡvālā who saw himself as god personified, or at least as an emissary and reporter of Lord Shiva on earth.
- 35.
Śyāmˡsundar Dās, Hindī śabdˡsāgar (Kāśī: Nāgarī Pracāriṇī Sabhā, 1929, 2729).
- 36.
Pratap Narayan Misra was one of the leading Hindi intellectuals of the late nineteenth century and a member of the Hindi literary circle named Bhāratendu maṇḍal. He was the editor of Brāhmaṇ (Kanpur) and coined the emblematic slogan ‘Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan’, which summarised the dominant political agenda of Hindi nationalism.
- 37.
It needs to be emphasised here that the pañc and/or Parameśvar are quintessentially male. This essay was first published in Brāhmaṇ vol. 6, no. 12, 15 July, 1888. The citation is from Candrikā Prasād Śarmā, ed., Pratāpˡnārāyaṇ miśra racˡnāvalī, vol. 2 (Dillī: Bhārˡtīya Prakāśan Saṃsthān, 2001), 114–116.
- 38.
Kavivacanˡsudhā, June 1873. Cited from Dalmia, Nationalization of Hindu Traditions, 254–255.
- 39.
For an interesting insight into cultural politics behind the shoe controversy see Kandiyur N. Panikkar, “The Great Shoe Question: Legitimacy and Power in Colonial India,” Studies in History 14, no. 1 (1998): 21–36.
- 40.
vilāyat (Urdu/Hindi): lit. ‘province’, ‘foreign country’; common appellation of England in colonial times.
- 41.
This incidence was first reported in the Pioneer. For a detailed report of this incident, see the appendix of Panikkar, “The Great Shoe Question”.
- 42.
Hindī pradīp, February–March 1892.
- 43.
Hindī pradīp, April 1906.
- 44.
Hindī pradīp, June–July 1899. Also see “Pañc kā ek prapañc,” Hindī pradīp, July–August 1903.
- 45.
Mysore N. Shrinivas, Social Change in Modern India (Berkely: University of California Press, 1966).
- 46.
Bernard Cohn, “The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia,” in The Bernard Cohn Omnibus (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 224–254.
- 47.
In this process of sanskritisation, the role of Arya Samaj, a Hindu reformist organisation which questioned the prevalent notion of birth based social status and advocated its determination on the basis of one’s present vocation and moral standing, was very crucial. M.S.A. Rao’s study of the Shri Narayan Dharmapala movement in Kerala and the Yadava movement in north India is a good early work of historical sociology on the social and political transformation with a focus on lower caste associations, See Madhugiri S.A. Rao, Social Movements and Social Transformation: A Study of two Backward Classes Movements in India (Delhi: MacMillan, 1979). For an overview of the role of caste associations amongst the Kayasthas of Bihar Bengal and the United Province and their claim to a higher social status, see Lucy Carroll, “Colonial Perceptions of Indian Society and the Emergence of Caste(s) Associations,” Journal of Asian Studies 37, no. 2 (1978): 233–250. For an overview of Indian nationalists taking on the question of caste, see also Susan Bayly, “Hindu Modernisers and the Public Arena: Indigenous Critiques of Caste in Colonial India,” in Swami Vivekananda and the Modernisation of Hinduism, ed. William Radice (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 93–137. For an overview of the role of lower caste associations in accumulating political power in Bihar and north India from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century see Prasanna Kumār Caudharī and Śrīkānt, Bihār meṃ sāmājik parivartan ke kuch āyam (Dillī: Vāṇī Prakāśan, 2001).
- 48.
Kavivacanˡsudhā, 17 August 1872. Cited from Dalmia, Nationalization of Hindu Traditions, 259–260.
- 49.
‘Sahib’ and ‘Memsahib’ were the Indian terms for ‘white master’ and his ‘wife’.
- 50.
This is a literal translation of a nineteenth century Hindi joke which has been made at the cost of the rules of English grammar in order to be faithful to the original. See Siṃh, Śrīhariścandrakalā, 34.
- 51.
Jokes about cuckoldry were already in circulation through oral and their printed versions. Pañcatantra, for instance, has many similar stories. See Franklin Edgerston, The Panchatantra Reconsidered, vol. 2, Introduction and Translation (New Heavens Connecticut: American Oriental Society, 1924), 289–91, 378–79. Lee Siegel also cites many jokes from the Pañcatantra, Kathāsaritsāgara, Śukasaptati and other folktales. Lee Siegel, Laughing Matters: Comic Tradition in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 62–63, 126–36, 197–98, 204, 206.
- 52.
The priest meant to say that both his son and daughter would come out of his child-bride’s womb. This joke is in Braj dialect and hence very difficult to render into English. I have provided an approximate rendition here. Kṣatriya patrikā, Jyeṣṭha-Āṣāṛh 1939/June–July 1882.
- 53.
A traditional clerical caste with administrative clout since pre-colonial times.
- 54.
Kṣatriya patrikā, Kārtik (October) 1890, Siṃh, Śrīhariścandrakalā, 38, Lallujilal, Latifa-e-Hind Or The New Encyclopedia Hindoostanica of Wit (Calcutta: Indian Gazette Press, 1810), 13.
- 55.
Carrol, “Colonial Perceptions of Indian Society”.
- 56.
Ibid.
- 57.
Anon., Manohar kahānī (Lakhˡnaū: Navalˡkiśor Press, 1880), 6. Horse riding is traditionally associated with military prowess.
- 58.
First published in Brāhmaṇ 4, no. 11, June 15, 1888. Cited from Candrikā Prasād Śarmā, ed., Pratāpˡnārāyaṇ Miśra racˡnāvalī (2001), 59–61. In South Asian languages, the English t sound is usually realised as a retroflex ṭ, and this rule underlies this whole passage.
- 59.
The terms in brackets are the Hindi equivalents of the respective English terms in Devanagari script.
- 60.
Ṭ is given as ṭakār, and the rhyming word to that is ḍakār from ḍakārˡnā, literally not ‘to digest’ but ‘to burp’.
- 61.
Altick, Punch cites such examples. A parody of Olivian Lore was serialised in the year 1843. Written by Percival Leigh and illustrated by H. G. Haine, it cast Hercules as Punch’s surrogate who deals with his numerous antagonists until 1843:
The Nemean Lion = war
The Hydra = the law (‘the offspring of necessity by wickedness’)
The Buck of the Brazen Countenance = swindlers typified by ‘Jew bill-discounters’
The Great Boer = quackery (in medicine)
The Augean Stables = parliament, bureaucracy, and courts to be cleaned by the force of public opinion
The Harpies = vultures ‘of a certain “persuasion”’ who batten on debtors
(Altick, Punch, 100).
- 62.
Cf. Chandra, Oppressive Present.
- 63.
It was first serialised in Brahman between 1884 and 1886. The citation is from Miśra, Pratāpˡnārāyaṇ Miśra racˡnāvalī, 27–31. Similar writings by Radhacharan Gosvami can be found in Hindī pradīp, July 1882.
- 64.
The Kali age is the last and worst temporal phase in the circular time of Hindu cosmology. See Romila Thapar, Time as a Metaphor of History, Krishna Bhardwaj Memorial Lecture, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996). For the cultural politics of the invocation of the Kali age in the colonial period, see Sumit Sarkar, “‘Kaliyuga’, ‘Chakri’ and ‘Bhakti’: Ramakrishna and His Times,” Economic and Political Weekly 27, no. 29 (1992): 1543–1566.
- 65.
Gosvami suggestively entitled his piece as ‘Mimicry of a new encyclopedia by Mr W’. Here Mr. W stands for none other than the orientalist scholar/administrator H. H. Wilson.
- 66.
See Rāmˡnirañjan Parimalendu, Mohanˡlāl mahˡto viyogī (Dillī: Sāhitya Akāḍemī, 2007), 21.
- 67.
Dvivedi was its editor between 1903 and 1920.
- 68.
It cannot be established whether Dvivedi himself drew these cartoons. What can be argued with conviction is that he conceptualised the themes of the cartoons, which were largely on literary polemics, and gave detailed instruction to draw accordingly.
- 69.
This cartoon is reprinted in Sivˡpūjan Sahāy, ed., Ayodhyā prasād khatrī smārak granth (Paṭˡnā: Bihār Rāṣṭrabhāṣā Pariṣad, 1960), 101.
- 70.
Khari Boli was a dialect spoken in the Delhi-Agra region, and language of communication in the north Indian cities. It was made the principal base of modern standard Hindi.
- 71.
Brajbhasa was also a dialect in the Mathura area and had been the language of poetry since early medieval times.
- 72.
Ayodhya Prasad Khatri was a Hindi nationalist who was of the opinion that if Khari Boli Hindi wished to be a language of literature its poetic œuvre should not be in Brajbhasa but in Khari Boli. See Alok Rai, Hindi Nationalism Tracts For the Times, 13 (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2001).
- 73.
Exercising the authority of the editor of the monthly, which was affiliated with the powerful cultural institution Nāgarī Pracāriṇī Sabhā (society for the propagation of Hindi), Dvivedi shaped a homogenous and standard style of literary prose and poetry in Khari Boli, borrowing heavily from Sanskrit register and simultaneously discouraging use of ‘dialects’ or rustic Hindi and words of Perso-Arabic roots.
- 74.
‘Pañcānan kī peśī’ (the court of Panchanan). Bhāratˡjīvan, 16 March 1903.
- 75.
The figure of a corrupt literary critic under satiric attack is an interesting case which points towards a broader development in the Hindi literary sphere. In 1900, what Alok Rai calls ‘The MacDonnell Moment’, the battle to establish Nagari/Hindi as the court language, was won (Rai, Hindi Nationalism, 17–49). With this, the process to reorganise, institutionalise, standardise and expand the literary world of Hindi was intensified further. Consequently, the question of moral and institutional authority as an arbiter in the literary field also becomes prominent.
- 76.
For the interface between oral and printed literature of entertainment in Hindi and Urdu, see Francesca Orsini, “Barahmasas in Hindi and Urdu,” in Before the Divide: Hindi and Urdu Literary Cultures, ed. Francesca Orsini (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2010), 142–177.
- 77.
Orsini makes a very important point about the publication of cheap tracts of entertainment literature in connection with the success of commercial printing in Hindi and Urdu. The success of the printer lay in tapping the proto-literate readership, which was trained to read already familiar modes of entertainment such as popular song and theatre. Drawing from the work on children’s literature by the Italian scholar Ermanno Detti, she argues that, though often frowned upon by educationists, a deeply pleasurable experience of, what Detti calls, ‘sensuous reading’ is necessary to develop a habit of reading, which is an essential pre-requisite for the development of a reading practice in general. These texts of pleasure, in which we can also include printed jokes, conundrums, skits, epigrammatic comments on politics and society, etc., can be seen as absolutely necessary in order to win people over to the printed page. Orsini, Print and Pleasure, 22–23.
- 78.
Rādhācaraṇ Gosvāmī, Nāpitˡstotra (Baṃkīpur: Khaḍgavilās Press, 1882). Also published in Kṣatriya patrikā, July 1881. It depicts the Brahmanic anxiety and consequent attacks on the rising social power and liberty of the nāpit or barber caste which, according to the text, is reflected in their ‘cunning’ and assertive activities, particularly in the cities in colonial times.
- 79.
See Chandra, Oppressive Present; K.N. Panikkar, Culture, Ideology, Hegemony: Intellectuals and Social Consciousness in Colonial India (Delhi: Tulika, 1998).
- 80.
Gyanendra Pandey, The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh 1926–1934: A Study in Imperfect Mobilization (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978).
- 81.
Its background had been set in the late nineteenth century. The programmatic political attempts of the pioneers of Hindi nationalism of the late nineteenth century and the consequent politics of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan have been largely successful in transforming the linguistic choice of north India, and consequently, in winning over a large number of Hindu readers from Urdu to Nagari/Hindi.
- 82.
Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere.
- 83.
Pradip Kumar Datta, Carving Blocs: Communal Ideology in the Early Twentieth Century Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999); William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and Language of Politics in Late Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
- 84.
Usually downplayed in the history of Bengal/Calcutta since the inception of the printing industry, it has been one of the major centres of Hindi printing. Apart from the first Hindi periodical Uddaṇḍ mārtaṇḍ, Calcutta always had more than one long lasting Hindi periodical, like Sārˡsudhānidhi, Bhāratˡmitra, Ucitˡvaktā, which had circulation figures between 500 and 1,500. See, for instance, ‘Report on Newspaper and Periodical in Bengal for the Week Ending 22 December 1882 in Indian Newspaper Reports, c1868–1942, from the British Library, London [microform], part 1: Bengal, 1874–1903 (Marlborough: Adam Matthew Publications Ltd., 2005). Besides a sizable Hindi readership in Bara Bazar area, entire Bihar, north of the river Ganges, was a potential sphere of circulation. Calcutta was better connected than Allahabad, Benaras or even Patna.
- 85.
Statement of Newspapers and Periodicals Published or Printed in Bengal—Revised Upto 31st December 1925 (Calcutta: Bengal Government Press, 1926).
- 86.
Śivˡpūjan Sahāy, Merā jīvan (Paṭˡnā: Parijāt Prakāśan, 1985), 101.
- 87.
To cite just one example here, see a cartoon on Matˡvālā in the monthly Bhārˡtendu (Allahabad), December 1928. While publishing each other’s appreciation and reviews was common in the fraternity of the periodical, Matˡvālā’s case was different. Matˡvālā attracted extra attention of the literary public as well as the government for its bold and provocative moral, political and literary stance. Finally, it succumbed to the dual pressure of the dominant, modernist, patriarchal moral orthodoxy of Hindi public sphere for promoting low-brow literature, and the colonial clampdown for writing inflammatory political articles within 6 years of its inauguration.
- 88.
Statement of Newspapers and Periodicals Published or Printed in Bengal—Revised Upto 31st December 1925.
- 89.
For general information on the story of the first year of Matˡvālā maṇḍal or Matˡvālā literary circle, there exist some (hagiographic) accounts. Sahāy, Merā jīvan; Karmendu Śiśir, “Matˡvālā maṇḍal: sāhityik patrakāritā kā ek anūṭhā adhyāy,” Pahal, Special Issue (1988). For a more critical account of its early period until the great Poet Nirala was associated with it, see Śarmā, Rāmˡbilās, Nirālā kī sāhitya sādhanā, vol. 1 (Dillī: Rājˡkamal Prakāśan, 1972).
- 90.
Śarmā, Rāmˡbilās, Mahāvīr prasād dvivedī aur hindī navˡjāgaran (Dillī: Rājˡkamal Prakāśan, 1989).
- 91.
Cf., e.g., the cover page of Matˡvālā 32, 1 Caitra śukla (March–April) 1925.
- 92.
Śarmā, Nirālā kī sāhitya sādhanā, vol. 1; David Rubin, “Nirala and the Renaissance of Hindi Poetry,” The Journal of Asian Studies 31, no. 1 (1971): 111–126; Heidi Pauwels, “Diptych in Verse: Gender Hybridity, Language Consciousness, and National Identity in Nirālā’s ‘Jāgo Phir Ek Bār’,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 121, no. 3 (2001): 449–481.
- 93.
Pandeya Bechan Sharma ‘Ugra’, Chocolate, and Other Writings on Male–Male Desire, trans., intr. Ruth Vanita (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006). Also, see Francesca Orsini, “Reading a Social Romance: ‘Chand hasino ke khatoot’,” in Narrative Strategies: Essays on South Asian Literature and Films, ed. Vasudha Dalmia and Theo Damsteegt (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998): 185–210.
- 94.
According to Shivpujan Sahay, Matˡvālā took its immediate inspiration from a Bengali satirical weekly, Abatār, which had been started just a couple of months before in 1923. Sahāy, Merā jīvan, 99. Abatār was a cheap, full-scape weekly. Its title page carried an illustration of an Indian youth simultaneously clad in a dhotī (a long piece of cotton clothing to be tied around the waist, worn by traditional Hindus) and trousers, with a hat on his head. It was edited by Amulyacharan Sen of Dakshineshvar. Its language was racy, rustic and contained a ruthlessly critical editorial. I am thankful to Chaiti Basu for this information on Abatār. This Abatār issue raises some significant questions. Can we map Punch’s influence on Matˡvālā? Given the evidence that the nineteenth century traditions of Bengali satirical journalism (Basantak, Pañcā-nanda, Harˡbolā bhā̃ṛ, etc.) were very much modelled on Punch, as the essays by Partha Mitter and especially Chaiti Basu in this volume suggest, Punch’s formative influence can be linked to Abatār and then to Matˡvālā. After all, in the literary cultures of South Asia, many Western literary forms travelled indirectly via another, neighbouring literary culture, in this case in Hindi via Bengali or Urdu. Early historical, social or detective novels were introduced via Bengali. Orsini mentions, for instance, the circulation and translation of detective novels from English to Bengali and then to Hindi. Francesca Orsini, “Detective Novels: A Commercial Genre in Nineteenth-century North India,” in India’s Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth Century, eds. Stuart Blackburn and Vasudha Dalmia (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), 435–482.
- 95.
It was written by Shivpujan Sahay after his discussion with other members of the team. Sahāy, Merā jīvan, 100.
- 96.
‘heḍˡkvārṭar’ in the Hindi original.
- 97.
Matˡvālā, August 26, 1923.
- 98.
For the case of Punch, see “Chap. 2: Mr Punch and His Men” in Altick, Punch, 41–66.
- 99.
A young litterateur born in the Unnav district of the present day Uttar Pradesh and brought up in Bengal Suryakant Tripathi, who wrote poems in a new style under the penname Nirala, was the main contributor to this column.
- 100.
This imagery of Matˡvālā puts him closer to the proverbial henchman of the death god, who is entrusted with dispensing justice in the hell of Hindu mythology. Cf. the cover of ‘Calˡtī cakkī’ (the unstoppable grinder). Matˡvālā, undated.
- 101.
See Śarmā, Nirālā kī sāhitya sādhanā, especially the chapter on Matˡvālā maṇḍal, which discusses the controversy over the originality of Nirala’s poetry and Nirala’s arrogant comments on the language of the periodical Sarasvatī and the consequent polemics.
- 102.
Matˡvālā, 15 March 1924.
- 103.
Altick, Punch, 71–72.
- 104.
I have shown the tradition of printing jokes and gossip in the periodicals. Reporting political rumour also has strong roots in the Hindi newspapers, at least during the anti-colonial mass movement in the twentieth century. See appendix of Shahid Amin, “Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921–1922,” in Subaltern Studies, vol. 3, ed. Ranajit Guha (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), 1–61.
- 105.
See Chap. 6 “Transmission” in Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), 220–277.
- 106.
Matˡvālā, 7 March 1925.
- 107.
Matˡvālā, 15 March 1924.
- 108.
Matˡvālā, 22 April 1923.
- 109.
Matˡvālā, 10 May 1924.
- 110.
Spectacular public events, such as communal riots in Calcutta in 1926, provided another occasion for publishing sensational articles and satirical comments with gory details of real or imagined violence. A government report said that: ‘The Hindi papers underwent marked deterioration during the year under review. They devoted much of their energies towards promoting communal antagonism […] Sanction was given in May 1926 to the prosecution of the editor, printer and publisher (Mahadeb Prasad Seth) of the ‘Matˡvālā’ newspaper for the publication of objectionable articles entitled (1) “Lalkar svikar”, (2) “Tumdar Darhom Patpat” and (3) “Upvas cikitsa” [lalˡkār svīkār, tum dār dār ham pāt pāt, upˡvās cikitsā] in its issues of the 27, 28 and 29 April 1926 respectively. The editor was convicted and sentenced to 4 months’ “simple imprisonment”.’ Annual Report on Indian Papers Printed or Published in the Bengal Presidency for the Year 1926 (Calcutta: Bengal Government Press, 1927). Interestingly, even when the editor of the paper underwent prosecution and the trial was going on in court, the publication of such articles continued. The judgment on the prosecution of Matˡvālā under section 153 A of the Indian Penal Code for publishing objectionable article inciting communal riots noted: ‘They are the most dangerous and poisonous description […] There was clearly a malicious intension on the part of the writer and he had no shred of an honest view to remove matters which were causing ill-feeling between the communities […] The learned Public Prosecutor draws my attention to the facts that the accused has continued to write in the similar strain.’ Interestingly, in the annual assessment of the press and its role during communal riots the government noted that the popularity and circulation of communal papers went up. File no. 236, Political Department (Political), West Bengal State Archive, Calcutta.
- 111.
Matˡvālā, 20 October 1923.
- 112.
Annual Report on Indian Papers, noted in its report on the Hindi press that the appearance of the few illustrated magazines (Matˡvālā and then Hindu Punch) with improved sales was noteworthy in this section of the Press. Annual Report on Indian Papers Printed or Published in the Bengal Presidency for the Year 1925 (Bengal Government Press: Calcutta, 1926).
- 113.
With a belief in the foundation myth of India as a Hindu civilisation at its core, Hindu nationalism could take the form of an exclusivist and supremacist to moderately assimilative stance. See Gould, Hindu Nationalism.
- 114.
See ‘Paśubal kā ullās’ (the joy of brute power). Matˡvālā, 29 September 1923.
- 115.
‘According to Mahātmājī [Gandhi], those widows should be remarried who hardly encountered their husband. But what to do with those child widows, who died two-four months after consummating with their husbands? It would be better if the Mahatma articulates the internal logic of widow remarriage!’ This epigrammatic comment is published after Gandhi subscribed to the patriarchal idea of limited social reform allowing only those widows to be remarried who did not have sexual intercourse with their husbands and hence had their virginity intact. The last sentence of the comment is directed at the absurdity of this patriarchal logic. For a general positive idea, see Madhu Kishwar, “Gandhi on Women,” Race and Class 28, no. 43 (1986).
- 116.
Cf. ‘Adbhut unnati’ (unprecedented progress). Matˡvālā, 5 January 1924.
- 117.
Cf. ‘Anveṣaṇ!’ (discovery). Matˡvālā, 16 January 1926.
- 118.
A tuft of never-cut hair kept on the back of the head by caste Hindus.
- 119.
The spectre of communal violence in the public arena of South Asia over the often repeated issues of music in front of the mosque, and the role of colonial state in this communal discourse, has been studied by Sandria Freitag and Gyan Pandey. Sandria Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992).
- 120.
Matˡvālā along with two other Hindi periodicals published from Calcutta, Hindū Pañc and Viśvāmitra were classified as fiercely communal by the colonial government. They drew from the Hindu nationalist discourse of the ‘dying Hindu race,’ which was widespread especially in Calcutta. See Datta, Carving Blocs.
- 121.
“Aurat ‘mard’ kā jhagˡṛā yā rāmˡnareś satyavādī saṃvād,” Matˡvālā, November 29, 1924. This was an excerpt from a polemic over the question of women’s rights between a patriarch, Pandit Ramnaresh Tripathi, and a rights-conscious woman, Satyavati Arya, published in Strī darpaṇ (women’s mirror) of Kanpur. Veer Bharat Talwar discusses the political-ideological significance of articles which started appearing in Hindi in the 1910s and 1920s in periodicals like Strī darpaṇ. Veer Bharat Talwar, “Feminist Consciousness in Hindi Journals,” in Recasting Women, eds. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (Delhi: Kali for Woman, 1990), 204–32.
- 122.
Cf. ‘Dharm-sā̃ṛ’ (the bull of religion). Matˡvālā, 20 February 1926.
- 123.
Cf. ‘Hā hindū!!!’ (o Hindu, shame on you). Matˡvālā, 29 November 1924.
- 124.
‘Tiraskār aur satkār’ (insult and respect). Matˡvālā, February 16, 1924.
- 125.
The following analysis draws heavily from Martin J. Medhurst and Michael A. DeSousa, “Political Cartoons as Rhetorical Form: A Taxonomy of Graphic Discourse,” Communication Monographs 48, no. 3 (1981): 197–236; 204.
- 126.
Interestingly, the linguistic and visual space of Punch were also gendered and remained almost misogynist. See Julie Codell, “Imperial Differences and Culture Clashes in Victorian Periodicals’ Visuals: The Case of Punch,” Victorian Periodical Review 39, no. 4 (2006): 410–428.
- 127.
Statement of Newspapers and Periodicals Published or Printed in Bengal—Revised up to 31st December 1927 (Bengal Government Press: Calcutta, 1928).
- 128.
It was an unapologetically militant Hindu nationalist/communalist paper with equal antagonism towards the Muslims and the British. Its selected articles and cartoons targeting Muslims, and special issues like Balidān aṅk (martyr special), were proscribed many times. ‘Martyr Special’ celebrated death for the cause of the nation and included short biographies of Indian heroes, ranging from early medieval Hindu icons to the then Ārya Samājī Hindus apparently killed by Muslims.
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Kumar, P. (2013). From Punch to Matˡvālā: Transcultural Lives of a Literary Format. In: Harder, H., Mittler, B. (eds) Asian Punches. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28607-0_5
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