From Sarita to Dharmyug, ‘middlebrow’ Hindi magazines in India played a special role in the two decades following independence. They occupied a specific cultural space, and they reflected the hopes and dreams of the ‘middle class’ of the time.
Aakriti Mandhwani’s book, Everyday Reading: Hindi Middlebrow and the North Indian Middle Class, unpacks all this and more.
In this interview with Newslaundry’s Anand Vardhan, Aakriti talks about how these magazines appealed to the public imagination in two ways – by letting go of the idea of ‘service to the nation’, and by tapping into people’s consumerist urges. She explains that until then, the middle class had been asked to “go along with the Nehruvian dream” that dictated a “deferral of pleasure”.
“ What Sarita does very interestingly is that it says that you can let go of that service to the nation. You can let go of that service to the language. You have the right to read a language that you enjoy,” she says, adding that Hindi journals of the early 20th century embodied a more nationalistic outlook.
She also talks about how women engaged with magazines of the time, saying they were “encouraged to consume materials” and “encouraged to write”. Middlebrow magazines even redefined moral values of the time as “the idea of what a family is also being reconstituted” through them.
But magazines like Sarita and others, did not offer a free-flowing space and were often “exclusionary”, Aakriti says, ignoring Dalit lives, poor people, and minorities.
Watch.
We have a new Sena project to report on police excesses across at least eight states in India, and how these impact everyday Indians. Click here to contribute.
Newslaundry is a reader-supported, ad-free, independent news outlet based out of New Delhi. Support their journalism, here.
