Everyday Reading: Tracing the evolution of Hindi magazine culture

Everyday Reading: Hindi Middlebrow and the North Indian Middle class

Author: Aakriti Mandhwani

Publisher: Speaking Tiger 

Pages: 242

Price: Rs 599 

Aakriti Mandhwani, “a print historian of the popular”, provides a unique historiography of Hindi reading culture of the growing north Indian middle class in the 1950s and 1960s, with bourgeois aspirations seeking to separate itself from the realities of scarcity, poverty, and hunger. This culture originated with editors and publishers who travelled the world and were determined to amalgamate the literary with the consumerist. This effort, in turn, led to the creation of a “generalist” readership with readers, a major chunk being women, not only developing a curiosity about a variety of issues but also actively participating in the exercise through their suggestions and criticisms.

 

In Everyday Reading: Hindi Middlebrow and the North Indian Middle Class, Ms Mandhwani lucidly presents the shift in the content of Hindi magazines from “service to the nation” to service to the consumer (for publishers) and to service to self (for readers). She describes this transition as “a practice that accords equal space to male and female readers for creative expression, focuses on non-nationalist subject matter, instead generating interest in consumption, of the magazine as well as the objects and services discussed or advertised within the magazine.” Women weren’t the creative centres of such magazines but they were “creative actors within the magazine space”. In addition to the cohesive research, the author translates many excerpts of the stories from the magazines, making it a perfect time capsule for readers.

 

During the freedom struggle, magazines focused on building nationalist sentiment and also defined the role of women in terms of kinship such as mothers (to the nation). In post-Independence India, readers were disillusioned with such an approach and chose to engage with reading for pleasure, as is evident by the popularity of Sarita, which began in 1945. In Chapter One, Ms Mandhwani writes, Vishwa Nath, the editor of the magazine, “argued against a homogenised nationalist imagination”. Amidst the rousing discussions on Hindi as the national language, Nath democratised the Hindi language, to make it accessible to ordinary people, making Sarita “more valuable than literary magazines.” He prioritised readers’ participation through their letters, publishing them and allowing readers to respond to one another. Women were particularly noted in the quality of their engagement, unafraid of questioning the authenticity of stories and claiming intellectual assertion to its readership.

 

In Chapter Two, Ms Mandhwani focuses on Hind Pocket Books, (HPB) founded by Dina Nath Malhotra in 1957. HPB popularised Hindi paperbacks that cut across genres of books in Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, and English. He began the Gharelu Library Yojna so that books could reach readers, assuming readers, including women, weren’t able or willing to access the marketplace. Under this plan, six books at the price of five were sent to subscribers every month. These books featured Tagore, Gandhi, and Robert Louis Stevenson alongside contemporary figures such as Mohan Rakesh, Rajendra Yadav and Mannu Bhandari from the Nahi Kahani movement. Readers weren’t allowed to choose the books that were sent to them, yet HPB reached a whopping 600,000 subscribers at its peak. These numbers speak volumes for the emergence of readers who were interested in worlds beyond themselves and eager to quench their curiosity.

 

This desire is highlighted in the third chapter, which focuses on the changes in Dharmyug  when Dharmvir Bharti became its editor in 1959. Before Bharti, the magazine was known for its photos of gods, which readers often used to cut out and display in their homes or shops. When Bharti entered the scene, the religious content was phased out and the focus shifted to global literary and intellectual movements made accessible to the curious middle-class reader. Thus, an essay on Soren Kierkegaard’s philosophy could be followed by a history of make-up, allowing readers to invest deeply in new and everyday subjects of interest.

 

Detective fiction, horror, and thrillers take centrestage today in publishing and on OTT as the protagonists mediate through social and moral quandaries, providing consumers with action-packed, culturally rich stories to indulge in. With more inclusive characters and social issues than ever before, these stories are thriving. So it comes as a surprise when Ms Mandhwani notes that this sub-genre, along with the likes of horror, was considered as lacking substance and not good enough for the middlebrow publishers to publish.

 

She moves on to highlight some of the stories published in lowbrow magazines such as Maya, Rasili Kahaniyaan,  and Manohar Kahaniyaan, primarily from Allahabad. These short stories, which also featured Manto and Ashk (who made frequent appearances in middlebrow literature), were certainly romanchak,  showcasing content in which gender roles were fluid and their characters transgressed unapologetically. Interestingly, these stories were accompanied by ads focusing on women’s fertility issues and women’s desirability rather than the usual aspirational ads in middlebrow magazines.

 

Diving into Everyday Reading raises many questions. Did the consumer become a passive viewer with the rise of television as opposed to active participation in the magazines? Is social media, a space for both intellectual and lowbrow conversations, the new middlebrow platform? Is it also creating active consumers in comments as opposed to passive consumption through doom-scrolling? Ms Mandhwani’s engaging and accessible research creates scope for many more discussions waiting to be had. It is an informative, thought-provoking and entertaining read, quite like the magazines it covers.

 

The reviewer is an independent writer based in Sambalpur. She is @geekyliterati on Instagram and X