Learning How to Print in Colonial North India: The Nizami Press in Budaun and the First Urdu Manual on the Art of Lithography

Gianni Sievers

doi:10.1163/24519197-bja10038

Learning How to Print in Colonial North India: The Nizami Press in Budaun and the First Urdu Manual on the Art of Lithography

Gianni Sievers^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

This article centers on an Urdu-language manual on lithography, published in 1924 by the Nizami Press in Budaun (United Provinces), to explore how a Muslim printer-publisher in a North Indian qasbah tried to reform educational methods in his trade. It introduces the Nizami Press (est. 1905) and compares the manual with similar European and Indian instructional handbooks. How did Indian printers and publishers learn their craft? What were the tools and materials used for lithographic printing in colonial India? And given the popularity of lithography, why were such manuals rarely published in Indian languages? By examining the material and technical aspects of the lithographic printing process explained in the Urdu manual, this article engages with larger scholarly debates revolving around knowledge production, pedagogy, and technological developments in South Asia. Furthermore, it analyzes the manual's language to demonstrate how printers and publishers were engaged in discourses about nationalism, modernization, and social reform.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	73-109
Number of pages	37
Journal	Philological Encounters
Volume	8
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10038
Publication status	Published - Mar 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
I appreciate the comments and suggestions from the two anonymous Philological Encounters reviewers of this article. I am also grateful to Roy Bar Sadeh, Mustafa Menai, and Megan Eaton Robb for their feedback on an earlier version of this article, and I thank Priyanka Basu, Nur Sobers-Khan, and Layli Uddin for allowing me to present and discuss parts of it at the Islam and Print in South Asia Workshop held at the British Library in October 2018. My research was supported by the Social Science Research Council's International Dissertation Research Fellowship, with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Publisher Copyright:
© Gianni Sievers, 2023.

Keywords

Print culture
Urdu
colonial modernity
knowledge transmission
lithography
qasbah

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10.1163/24519197-bja10038

phen-article-p73_3Final published version, 3.67 MBLicence: Taverne

Cite this

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abstract = "This article centers on an Urdu-language manual on lithography, published in 1924 by the Nizami Press in Budaun (United Provinces), to explore how a Muslim printer-publisher in a North Indian qasbah tried to reform educational methods in his trade. It introduces the Nizami Press (est. 1905) and compares the manual with similar European and Indian instructional handbooks. How did Indian printers and publishers learn their craft? What were the tools and materials used for lithographic printing in colonial India? And given the popularity of lithography, why were such manuals rarely published in Indian languages? By examining the material and technical aspects of the lithographic printing process explained in the Urdu manual, this article engages with larger scholarly debates revolving around knowledge production, pedagogy, and technological developments in South Asia. Furthermore, it analyzes the manual's language to demonstrate how printers and publishers were engaged in discourses about nationalism, modernization, and social reform.",

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Learning How to Print in Colonial North India: The Nizami Press in Budaun and the First Urdu Manual on the Art of Lithography

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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