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Papers by Aakriti Mandhwani
Routledge eBooks, Aug 10, 2023
South Asian Popular Culture, 2016
Book Review
The Indian Economic & Social History Review
Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India, Delhi: Harper Collins, 2015, 540 pp.
This volume maps the breadth and domain of genre literature in India across seven languages (Tami... more This volume maps the breadth and domain of genre literature in India across seven languages (Tamil, Urdu, Bangla, Hindi, Odia, Marathi and English) and nine genres for the first time. Over the last few decades, detective/crime fiction and especially science fiction/fantasy have slowly made their way into university curricula and consideration by literary critics in India and the West. However, there has been no substantial study of genre fiction in the Indian languages, least of all from a comparative perspective. This volume, with contributions from leading national and international scholars, addresses this lacuna in critical scholarship and provides an overview of diverse genre fictions. Using methods from literary analysis, book history and Indian aesthetic theories, the volume throws light on the variety of contexts in which genre literature is read, activated and used, from political debates surrounding national and regional identities to caste and class conflicts. It shows that Indian genre fiction (including pulp fiction, comics and graphic novels) transmutes across languages, time periods, in translation and through publication processes. While the book focuses on contemporary postcolonial genre literature production, it also draws connections to individual, centuries-long literary traditions of genre literature in the Indian subcontinent. Further, it traces contested hierarchies within these languages as well as current trends in genre fiction criticism. Lucid and comprehensive, this book will be of great interest to academics, students, practitioners, literary critics and historians in the fields of postcolonialism, genre studies, global genre fiction, media and popular culture, South Asian literature, Indian literature, detective fiction, science fiction, romance, crime fiction, horror, mythology, graphic novels, comparative literature and South Asian studies. It will also appeal to the informed general reader.
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2020
This article focuses on the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, founded under the aegis of the Nagari Prachar... more This article focuses on the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, founded under the aegis of the Nagari Pracharini Sabha in 1910 in Allahabad, and its active bid to establish what can be seen as the first archive of, and in, Hindi. While the Sammelan’s library functioned as a public-facing, community-serving space that housed and issued printed books, periodicals and newspapers in its reading room, the archive was imagined as an accumulation of all materials, print and manuscript, relating to Hindi, with access limited to critics and scholars. The article argues that infrastructure like the library and the archive critically contributed to the process of consolidation and legitimisation of the discourse on Hindi nationalism. It also traces the post-Independence assimilation of this library to the machinery of state bureaucracy, specifically to the institution of the Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sahitya Sammelan Act, 1956, and the central government’s Hindi Sahitya Sammelan Act, 1962, which declared the Sammelan ‘an institution of national importance’. How do these acts reflect tensions between the politicisation of Hindi as the national language and democratisation in post-colonial India? Here, the article shows that Hindi was not only being monetarily patronised in the 1950s and 1960s, but was also vigilantly monitored, drawing staunch resistance from the Sammelan, which saw itself as a moral alternative to the state. It traces the history of these legislative processes which ultimately resulted in a petition against the 1962 Act in the Supreme Court in 1973, which declared it invalid.
Modern Asian Studies
The article discusses Saritā, one of the best-selling Hindi magazines of the 1950s, and the part ... more The article discusses Saritā, one of the best-selling Hindi magazines of the 1950s, and the part it played in the establishment of the Hindi ‘middlebrow’ reader. While a rich and vibrant journal culture in Hindi had existed since the nineteenth century, what distinguishes the post-1947 Hindi popular magazine is the emergence of the middle class as a burgeoning consumer. Saritā defied prescriptions of Nehruvian state building, as well as the right-wing discourses of nationalism and national language prevalent in the post-Independence space. In addition, it reconfigured biases towards gendered reading and consumption processes, as well as encouraging increased reader participation. This article argues for Saritā’s role in the creation of a middlebrow reading space in the period immediately following Independence, since it not only packaged what was deemed wholesome and educational for the family as a unit, but also, most significantly, promoted readership in segments, with a focus on ...
Books by Aakriti Mandhwani
During the two difficult decades immediately following the 1947 Indian Independence, a new, comme... more During the two difficult decades immediately following the 1947 Indian Independence, a new, commercially successful print culture emerged that articulated alternatives to dominant national narratives. Through what Aakriti Mandhwani defines as middlebrow magazines—like Delhi Press’s Saritā—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.
Utilizing a wealth of previously unexamined print culture materials, as well as paying careful attention to the production of commercial publishing companies and the reception of ordinary reading practices—particularly those of women—Everyday Reading offers fresh perspectives into book history, South Asian literary studies, and South Asian gender studies.
Book Reviews by Aakriti Mandhwani
Routledge eBooks, Aug 10, 2023
South Asian Popular Culture, 2016
Book Review
The Indian Economic & Social History Review
Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India, Delhi: Harper Collins, 2015, 540 pp.
This volume maps the breadth and domain of genre literature in India across seven languages (Tami... more This volume maps the breadth and domain of genre literature in India across seven languages (Tamil, Urdu, Bangla, Hindi, Odia, Marathi and English) and nine genres for the first time. Over the last few decades, detective/crime fiction and especially science fiction/fantasy have slowly made their way into university curricula and consideration by literary critics in India and the West. However, there has been no substantial study of genre fiction in the Indian languages, least of all from a comparative perspective. This volume, with contributions from leading national and international scholars, addresses this lacuna in critical scholarship and provides an overview of diverse genre fictions. Using methods from literary analysis, book history and Indian aesthetic theories, the volume throws light on the variety of contexts in which genre literature is read, activated and used, from political debates surrounding national and regional identities to caste and class conflicts. It shows that Indian genre fiction (including pulp fiction, comics and graphic novels) transmutes across languages, time periods, in translation and through publication processes. While the book focuses on contemporary postcolonial genre literature production, it also draws connections to individual, centuries-long literary traditions of genre literature in the Indian subcontinent. Further, it traces contested hierarchies within these languages as well as current trends in genre fiction criticism. Lucid and comprehensive, this book will be of great interest to academics, students, practitioners, literary critics and historians in the fields of postcolonialism, genre studies, global genre fiction, media and popular culture, South Asian literature, Indian literature, detective fiction, science fiction, romance, crime fiction, horror, mythology, graphic novels, comparative literature and South Asian studies. It will also appeal to the informed general reader.
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2020
This article focuses on the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, founded under the aegis of the Nagari Prachar... more This article focuses on the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, founded under the aegis of the Nagari Pracharini Sabha in 1910 in Allahabad, and its active bid to establish what can be seen as the first archive of, and in, Hindi. While the Sammelan’s library functioned as a public-facing, community-serving space that housed and issued printed books, periodicals and newspapers in its reading room, the archive was imagined as an accumulation of all materials, print and manuscript, relating to Hindi, with access limited to critics and scholars. The article argues that infrastructure like the library and the archive critically contributed to the process of consolidation and legitimisation of the discourse on Hindi nationalism. It also traces the post-Independence assimilation of this library to the machinery of state bureaucracy, specifically to the institution of the Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sahitya Sammelan Act, 1956, and the central government’s Hindi Sahitya Sammelan Act, 1962, which declared the Sammelan ‘an institution of national importance’. How do these acts reflect tensions between the politicisation of Hindi as the national language and democratisation in post-colonial India? Here, the article shows that Hindi was not only being monetarily patronised in the 1950s and 1960s, but was also vigilantly monitored, drawing staunch resistance from the Sammelan, which saw itself as a moral alternative to the state. It traces the history of these legislative processes which ultimately resulted in a petition against the 1962 Act in the Supreme Court in 1973, which declared it invalid.
Modern Asian Studies
The article discusses Saritā, one of the best-selling Hindi magazines of the 1950s, and the part ... more The article discusses Saritā, one of the best-selling Hindi magazines of the 1950s, and the part it played in the establishment of the Hindi ‘middlebrow’ reader. While a rich and vibrant journal culture in Hindi had existed since the nineteenth century, what distinguishes the post-1947 Hindi popular magazine is the emergence of the middle class as a burgeoning consumer. Saritā defied prescriptions of Nehruvian state building, as well as the right-wing discourses of nationalism and national language prevalent in the post-Independence space. In addition, it reconfigured biases towards gendered reading and consumption processes, as well as encouraging increased reader participation. This article argues for Saritā’s role in the creation of a middlebrow reading space in the period immediately following Independence, since it not only packaged what was deemed wholesome and educational for the family as a unit, but also, most significantly, promoted readership in segments, with a focus on ...
During the two difficult decades immediately following the 1947 Indian Independence, a new, comme... more During the two difficult decades immediately following the 1947 Indian Independence, a new, commercially successful print culture emerged that articulated alternatives to dominant national narratives. Through what Aakriti Mandhwani defines as middlebrow magazines—like Delhi Press’s Saritā—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.
Utilizing a wealth of previously unexamined print culture materials, as well as paying careful attention to the production of commercial publishing companies and the reception of ordinary reading practices—particularly those of women—Everyday Reading offers fresh perspectives into book history, South Asian literary studies, and South Asian gender studies.