Megan Eaton Robb’s book Print & the Urdu Public chronicles the history of Muslims, newspapers and urban life in colonial India
ONE of my friends, Afroz Alam Saahil, who works on such varied topics like Muhammad Ali Jauhar, Palestine, and Hamdard, recently rang me up from Turkey and asked me if I could recommend a book that would give him an understanding of the current work being done in relation to Urdu. His question put me in a dilemma: which book should I recommend? Eventually, I turned to Google and came across a remarkable book. After a cursory glance, I realised that it was truly a valuable book. It evoked a lot of interest in me and I started reading it thoroughly. I was so enchanted that I could not put it down until I had consumed all of it.
It is surprising that the book’s author did not come from any of the South Asian countries; Megan Eaton Robb was, in fact, raised in Europe and received her entire education in the United States. Urdu has not been her mother tongue, nor did she grow up in the streets and alleys of Bijnor, Lucknow, Delhi, Lahore or Karachi. Yet she took on a subject that our own historians, writers, and journalists had either overlooked or only addressed superficially. Megan, however, approached it with such depth, scholarly rigour, and logical precision that while reading her book, I repeatedly felt that this was not an external voice but one that spoke from within. Failing to acknowledge her work would certainly be an injustice. She deserves the gratitude of the entire Urdu-speaking world for this monumental work.
The book’s contents include: Preface; Introduction, “A Public Is a Place and Time: Dimensions of an Urdu Public Sphere”; Chapter 1: “Putting the Public House of Madīnah on the Muslim Map”; Chapter 2: “Back to the Future Qasbah: The Timescape of Bijnor”; Chapter 3: “Urdu Lithography as a Muslim Technology”; Chapter 4: “Viewing the Map of Europe through the Lens of Islam”; Chapter 5: “Provincialising Policies through the Urdu Public”; Conclusion: “The Public as a Timescape”; Transliteration and Citation Method; Appendix I: General Glossary; Appendix II: Proposal for Qualifications for Electors in Bijnor, 1913; Appendix III: Editors and Journalists of Madīnah, 1912–1948; Appendix IV: Spring Season; Bibliography; and Index.
All of this is based on a study of more than a thousand issues of Madīnah newspaper, local records from Bijnor, English reports, and a comparative analysis of other Urdu newspapers. In brief, if one were to sum up this book, it can be said that Megan Eaton Robb’s Print & The Urdu Public: Muslims, Newspapers, and Urban Life in Colonial India (Oxford University Press, 2021) is a milestone in the study of modern South Asian history, media studies, Muslim politics, and print culture.
This book does not merely recount the history of Bijnor’s famous newspaper Madīnah, but also demonstrates that the collective consciousness, political awareness, and global Islamic imagination that emerged among Indian Muslims in the early 20th century were rooted more deeply in the printing presses of small towns rather than in the major cities of Delhi, Lucknow, Aligarh, or Lahore. These towns included Bijnor, Mau, Azamgarh, Gaya, Patna, and others.
Challenging the Stereotype
The book challenges the assumption that modern Muslim political consciousness and public debate were shaped solely by large cities and the elite. Instead, it shows that the small-town elite, owing to their geographical isolation and historical continuity, created a narrative that was not only local but also global in scope, grounded in the past while looking towards the future.
The author’s central argument is that to understand the Urdu public, we must move beyond the conventional notion of geographical centrality and recognise that real power often lay at the margins. Why did a newspaper originating in a remote town gain such widespread popularity across North India and Punjab? In answering this question, Megan Robb presents not only an outstanding historical study but also a new theoretical framework, which she calls the “timescape”, the interrelation of time and space.
The book opens with an intriguing story. In 1912, Muhammad Majid Hasan, belonging to a middle-class family of Bijnor, sold his wife’s jewellery to establish the newspaper Madīnah. He was neither from a prominent family nor an alumnus of well-known institutions such as Aligarh or Deoband. Yet, within just a few years, his newspaper reached every corner of North India and Punjab. No one could have imagined that Madīnah would one day become the most widely read Urdu newspaper in North India, eagerly awaited even by readers in Lahore, Delhi, and Lucknow. The extraordinary success of Madīnah was a sign that, in colonial India, public understanding was no longer confined to major cities but had extended to towns and villages as well. Megan Robb takes this trend as her subject and demonstrates how small-town print media provincialised national and global politics while also bringing provincial issues to national and international attention.
Among the editors of Madīnah were some of the most renowned and distinguished personalities of the Indian subcontinent, including Maulvi Syed Nūr ul-Ḥasan Żahīn Karatpūrī, Syed Muḥammad Lā’iq Ḥussain Qavī “Zamurrud-raqam” Amrohavī, M. Āghā Rafīq Bulandshahrī, Maulānā Maz̤har ud-Dīn Sherkoṭī, Maulānā Amīn Aḥsan Iṣlāḥī, Maulānā Badrul Ḥasan “Jalālī”, Maulvi Nūr ul-Raḥmān (BA), Muḥammad Aḥsan Morādābādī, Maulānā Naṣrullah Khān “Āzīz”, Ḥamīd Ḥasan “Fak̲h̲r” Bijnorī, M. Shabbīr Beg, Maulānā Ḥāmidul Anṣārī “Ghāzī”, and Abū Sa‘īd “Bazmī”. Other prominent contributors included such towering figures as Maulānā Syed Abū al-A‘lā Maudūdī, Qāżī Muḥammad ‘Adīl “Abāṣī”, Maulānā Muḥammad Uṣmān Fāreqleet, Maulvi Shabīr ul-Raḥmān Chāndpūrī, “Māhir” ul-Qādrī, Qādūs Ṣāḥibā’ī, and Maulānā Shaukat ‘Alī. Upon closer examination, these names do not merely represent the leading writers and journalists of their time; rather, they played an extraordinarily prominent role in the overall intellectual and academic awakening of the 20th-century subcontinent, and their influence can still be felt today in the intellectual history of Muslims. This book also presents a brief introduction to each of them.
The first chapter of the book serves as its foundation, detailing the birth of Madīnah, the history of its owners and editors, and how Urdu became part of the public sphere within a small-town context. This chapter focuses on the book’s central theme: giving precedence to towns rather than cities. Here, the author presents Bijnor as a place that, rather than the urban elite, played a key role in the construction of Muslim identity.
The author’s most significant and original concept is that of time and space. She argues that it is not merely a place but also a period. Historically, the town of Bijnor was close to Mughal Delhi, and its elite families traced their lineage to the Mughal court. Yet, in the early 20th century, due to the lack of railways and modern roads, it had become relatively isolated and secluded. This duality, proximity to the past and distance in the present, granted Madīnah a degree of independence unavailable to the major institutions of Aligarh, Deoband, or Lucknow. Consequently, Madīnah was neither subject to governmental pressure nor entangled in sectarian politics, nor was it captive to the splendour of the nobility. It produced an independent voice that preserved elite traditions while directly engaging with modern political questions.
Treating the Time
The most important part of the book is the second chapter: here the author demonstrates that Bijnor was not a town confined by the past but rather a space that did not perceive time linearly; instead, it treated time as cyclical, flowing, and creatively intertwined, a dynamic perspective. The townspeople considered themselves heirs to the declining elite of Delhi, yet they were not afraid of modernity. As a result, their experience of time encompassed past, present, and future simultaneously. This concept challenges the theoretical frameworks of European thinkers such as Habermas, Anderson, and Warner, who view public spheres in a linear progression of time. In contrast, the Urdu public sphere demonstrates a fusion of time and space: a reader of Madīnah, sitting in Bijnor, would contemplate the fate of the caliphate in Istanbul, mourn the decline of Delhi, and perceive past battles as a continuous part of the present.
The clearest illustration of this worldview is that the Balkan War of 1912 was described as a “Crusade,” the British attack of 1915 was linked to “Karbala,” and the abolition of the caliphate in 1924 was interpreted as a repetition of the fall of Baghdad. It was as if the pen of Bijnor was engaging in a direct dialogue with Jerusalem 700 years earlier and centuries of Islamic history. This insight leads the author to conclude that the true Urdu public sphere was not formed in major cities but in seemingly insignificant yet historically conscious towns like Bijnor, where there were neither railways nor great institutions, but where history itself was the real source of power. It was this historical consciousness that gave the small town a voice, which eventually became the intellectual heartbeat of the 20th-century Muslim India.
The third chapter is perhaps the most unique and captivating part of the book, where the author designates “Urdu lithography” as a “Muslim technology.” Printing is generally considered a neutral technique, but Megan Robb demonstrates that for Urdu speakers, particularly Muslims, lithography was not merely a method of printing but a cultural and political act. Since lithography allowed the Nastaʿlīq script to be printed in all its beauty and fluidity, it was seen as a means of preserving Islamic calligraphy. Madīnah perfected this technique to such an extent that by the 1930s it was regarded as the most beautifully printed newspaper in North India. This beauty was not merely aesthetic but also an expression of identity; it reflected the recognition, culture, and temperament of the elite. Through the lens of material history, the author demonstrates that technology is never neutral but always carries with it an element of identity.
Global Community
The fourth chapter covers the journey from the Balkan Wars to the Khilafat Movement and demonstrates how a small-town newspaper brought Indian Muslims into the broader global Muslim community. During the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, Madīnah presented the defeat of Turkey as an Islamic tragedy, and even in a small town like Bijnor, millions of rupees were collected in support of the caliphate. This was not a mere coincidence; it was rooted in the newspaper’s sustained efforts to teach its readers to view the map of Europe from an Islamic perspective. It was during this period that Indian Muslims for the first time began to perceive themselves as part of a larger unity with Turkey, Iran, the Arab World, and Central Asia. Madīnah nurtured this consciousness so deeply at the small-town level that the Khilafat Movement ceased to be the preserve of urban elites and spread effectively to villages and towns.
The most striking revelation of the book concerns the period after 1937. As the Muslim League was rapidly emerging and the demand for Pakistan was gaining momentum, Madīnah strongly opposed the League. It not only rejected the Lahore Resolution of 1940 but also described the demand for Pakistan as an “elite conspiracy,” consistently supporting figures such as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Dr Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, Hussain Ahmed Madani, and Congress-aligned Muslims. This stance was completely at odds with the major newspapers of Aligarh, Lahore, and Delhi. Megan Robb demonstrates that in the 1940s, not all Muslims supported the idea of Pakistan; a significant number preferred to remain in a united India, representing the small-town elite. Madīnah was the most prominent voice of this alternative perspective.
Past, Present and Future
The author’s most significant theoretical contribution is the concept of the “timescape,” which she elaborates in detail in the final chapter of the book. According to her, to understand the Urdu public, one must view three layers of time together: the past, reflecting historical proximity to Mughal Delhi; the present, representing the geographical isolation of the colonial period; and the future, embodying the dreams of independence and the possibility of partition. Madīnah combined these three temporal dimensions to create a new Islamic, small-town perspective that was neither entirely colonial, nor nationalist, nor sectarian. It constituted an intellectual and cultural framework that preserved tradition while remaining in dialogue with the modern world, a form of identity connected to the veins of the past and in harmony with the horizon of the future, uniting the historical, social, and cultural dimensions of the Urdu public into a novel intellectual landscape.
Non-sectarian Elite Muslim Voice
One of the book’s greatest strengths is that the author meticulously studied nearly every issue of Madīnah and consulted rare material from the British Library, the National Archives of India, the Uttar Pradesh State Archives, the Rampur Raza Library, and private collections in Bijnor. Another remarkable feature is her detailed and outstanding discussion of lithography and the material history of print, which highlights the artistic, cultural, and historical dimensions of printing. The third strength lies in presenting the town not merely as a nostalgic centre of a declining elite but as an active site of political and intellectual engagement. The fourth and most significant strength is that, beyond the binary divide of the Muslim League and the Congress, the book foregrounds a third, small-town, non-sectarian elite Muslim voice, which not only illuminates historical realities but also captures the complex social and cultural dimensions of the Urdu public.
The book also throws up some critical questions. For example, very little attention is given to Madīnah’s relations with Deoband, Nadwatul Ulama, the Farangi Mahal, or the Ahmadiyya; was Madīnah truly as independent as the author claims? Furthermore, the role of women is almost entirely absent from the book; was the small-town public sphere really limited to men? Thirdly, only a few lines are devoted to Madīnah’s history after 1947, was this omission deliberate? And fourthly, at times, the concept of the “timescape” becomes so abstract that it is difficult for the general reader to fully grasp.
Nevertheless, these few critical questions do not diminish the book’s greatness or importance. It helps us to reconsider the political, intellectual, and cultural history of 20th-century Indian Muslims. The book demonstrates that to properly understand the Khilafat Movement, the formation of Muslim identity, opposition to Pakistan, and the aesthetics of Urdu print, one must turn attention to the towns, and newspapers like Madīnah clearly show that the margins often act as the centre.
Megan Eaton Robb deserves the gratitude of the Urdu-speaking world. This book should be read by every student, researcher, and reader who wishes to understand how modern Indian Muslims emerged, where their voices originated, and how they navigated the tension between tradition and modernity. A prompt Urdu translation is essential so that Urdu readers can directly benefit from this remarkable work.
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Mohammad Alamullah is an author and journalist, writing columns, poems, travelogues, and stories. He received his education from Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, and Swansea University, UK. He has to his credit several books including Muslim Majlis Mushawarat: Aik Mukhtasar Tareekh, Kaghaz Se Screen Tak, andIran Mein Kuch Din.
