000			02170nam a22001937a 4500
003			OSt
005			20260710144439.0
008			260710b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9789354479519
040			_c0
082			_a070.5 MAN
100			_aMandhwani, Aakriti _920927
245			_aEveryday reading : hindi middlebrow and the north Indian middle class
260			_aNew Delhi _bSpeaking Tiger Books _c2024
300			_a223p.
520			_aDuring the two difficult decades immediately following Independence, a new, commercially successful print culture in Hindi emerged that articulated alternatives to dominant national narratives. Through what Aakriti Mandhwani defines as middlebrow magazines—like Delhi Press’s Sarita—and the first paperbacks in Hindi—Hind Pocket Books—North Indian middle classes cultivated new reading practices that allowed them to reimagine what it meant to be a citizen. Rather than focusing on individual sacrifices and contributions to national growth, this new print culture promoted personal pleasure and other narratives that enabled readers to carve roles outside of official prescriptions of nationalism, austerity and religion. But the story is as much about the publishers as the readerships. Sarita’s challenge to institutional Hindi could not have happened without the multilingual editor-publisher Vishwa Nath of the Delhi Press, ‘a veritable magazine activist’, as the author puts it. The ‘paperback revolution’ of Hind Pocket Books, with its unprecedented print runs, is a legacy of Dina Nath Malhotra. And the phenomenal reach of Dharmyug, leading even that of celebrated English-language publications of the Times Group, owed much to writer Dharmvir Bharti’s move from Allahabad to Bombay. Utilizing a wealth of previously unexamined publications, Everyday Reading pays careful attention not only to key aspects of production in commercial Hindi publishing but ordinary reading practices as well—particularly those of women. Insightful and entertaining, it is a significant addition to scholarship on print culture in independent India.
650			_aHistory _920928
942			_2ddc _cB
999			_c361655 _d361655