Politics, Public Issues and the Promotion of Urdu Literature: Avadh ...

76 • THE ANNUAL OF URDU STUDIESBah≥dur of Tonk, who had promised a yearly subscription of Rs. 100 insupport of the venture, the paper hoped that other members of the localaristocracy and affluent class of ra’µses would follow suit (AA of 25 May1877).That AA could continue as a regular daily even after the six-monthtrial period is inextricably linked to the specific historic context, notablythe urgent need for news that the Turko-Russian War (1877–78) and theSecond Anglo-Afghan War (1878–80) were creating among North Indians,particularly among Muslims. 25 The paper provided extensive coverageof the wars. In the process, it introduced new features such as a specialcolumn entitled “sar√ad/maid≥n-e jag kµ t≥zatarµn khabr®” (Latest NewsFrom the Frontier/Battlefield) and inserted maps and illustrations. It isinteresting to note that even though AA was never an illustrated newspaper,the visual element became increasingly important in its coverageespecially of foreign news. Readers were, among others, regaled with largedrawings of the Paris International Exhibition of 1878 (AA of 1 October1878), of scenes from a Kabul war camp (AA of 28 February 1879), and ofa Zulu warrior chief (AA of 31 May 1879).The publication of AA on a daily basis was also sustained by a second,altogether different factor. Following the assumption of the editorship byPan≈it Ratan N≥t^ “Sarsh≥r” in August 1878, installment publication of hisfamous Urdu novel Fas≥na-e ¥z≥d was started. This in fact was the firsttime that serialized fiction was successfully introduced in an Urdu newspaper.A landmark in the history of modern Urdu fiction, Fas≥na-e ¥z≥dmet with an unprecedented public interest which gave a great boost to thepaper. 26 The survival of AA as a daily then rested on a combination ofcontemporary politics and modern prose fiction. Information and entertainmentas the two sustaining factors can hardly be dissociated from oneanother for Sarsh≥r cleverly incorporated current political affairs into hisfictional narrative: Readers of Fas≥na-e ¥z≥d were made day-to-day witnessesof the hero ¥z≥d’s journey to Europe and his brave exploits infighting the Russians on the side of his Turkish fellow-Muslims.25 For a similar increase in sales of British daily newspapers provoked by theTurkish crisis, see Brown, p. 40.26 This was rather late as compared to Britain where serial fiction was by nomeans an invention of the Victorian era but dates back to the eighteenth century.For the history of serialized fiction and installment publication in Britain, seeLaw.