A Brief survey
By: A. J. Uttam

Karnataka University held a Seminar on ‘Magazines in Indian Languages’ on 6^th to 8^th February 1998. From Sindhi language, noted writer A. J. Uttam was invited to read his paper.

 Before speaking on the subject of 50 years of Sindhi Magazines in India, It is necessary to state the present position of Sindhi language and its speakers in India and Pakistan, as the lady speaker who on behalf the organisers of this national Seminar, introducing me and my language Sindhi and its people in India and Pakistan has given incorrect information specially about Sindhi population in both the countries.

She said that there is a total of 16 millions of Sindhi population in both the countries. Out of which 5 millions live in Pakistan who use Arabic Persian script for Sindhi language and there are about 11 millions of Sindhi speakers in India who mainly use Devnagiri script. This is absolutely wrong. How can be any language speakers distinguished as Devnagiri Sindhi speaker people? This wrong information has been bodily taken from the "Manorama year book of 1998" published every year by Malayalam Daily from Kerala. The correct present position about Sindhi population and the language is given in my paper.

 On the occasion of 50^th anniversary of Indian Independence, any body can easily see and understand the position of Sindhis – the worst sufferers of partition, who are the only persons sacrificing their homeland – Sindh, migrated to India, without getting land or rehabilitated in one place, but scattered all over India. We are now about 30 lakhs here, a very microscopic minority in 99 crores of Indians. When we came here we were about 10-12 lakhs, out of total population of 40 lakhs in Sindh at that time. Now, there the population of Sindhis is little more than one crore out of about 2 crores of people in Sindh province.

 Before partition, Sindhi being one of the most rich and ancient Indo-Aryan origin, was the language of education as well as administration in every walk of life. But when we came here, Sindhi was not recognised as one of the modern Indian language in the 8^th schedule of the Constitution, along with 13 others. Because of this we were discriminated here as being non-entity, by provincial as well as central governments and public bodies.

 This created a great dissent and dissatisfaction among the writers, intellectuals, educationists and artists, who rose as one man, demanding the recognition of Sindhi language in the 8^th schedule of the constitution (passed in 1950) along with other Indian languages. This peaceful agitation developed in an all-India movement that compelled even politicians like Congress leader, then Central minister Jairamdas Doulatram and others to follow their writers. The then Prime Minister late Jawaharlal Nehru did not concede the demand for inclusion of Sindhi in the constitution, but agreed to give all the facilities given to other languages and recognized in 1957, Sindhi for All India Radio programme and Sahitya Academy awards. From the past 40 years all the 30 books given Sahitya Academy Awards are written in Sindhi script only, which is not the same Arabic script in-as-much as there are 52 letters in Sindhi with 4 special pronunciations like Ba-Ga-Da-Ja. But our agitation continued till 1967 when Prime Minister late Indira Gandhi agreed to include Sindhi in the 8^th schedule (of the constitution) which inspired other castes like Manipuri, Konkani, Rajasthani etc. to raise the same demand.

In this whole agitation, Sindhi magazines played the most important and active role especially in Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Rajasthan, which contain about 75% of Sindhis in India. In fact this movement had began from Mumbai with 1^st monthly magazine Naeen Duniya (New World) started in 1948 and writers organization "Sindhi Sahit Mandal" formed in 1949, which inspired writers, intellectuals of other provinces also.

In those days the trend of progressive writing dominated, which started during 1941-42 in Sind. Naeen Duniya called itself progressive magazine.

It’s 1^st editor Behrilal Chhabria, who ran it for one year and gave it to Lachman Rajpal who after running it for one year gave it to a group of 3 progressive writers Babani, Punjabi and present writer in 1950. When it could not be run collectively by them, it was given to the present writer in 1957, who has run it as monthly till 1973 and quarterly publication thereafter for 40 years and is still continuing it.

The unique thing about this magazine Naeen Duniya is that it has not only produced good literature of 500 stories, 1000 poems, 200 essays and 50 plays, but has produced about 50 new writers, some of whom are still writing since 30-40 years. Thus it is the magazine not only of creative and critical literature and culture but of literary and cultural movement of recognition of Sindhi language by Government as well as opposition of changing the present Sindhi Arabic script into Devnagiri Hindi script as instigated by Jairamdas Doulatram who failed in his machinations. There is neither a single magazine in Devnagiri Sindhi script nor a regular Devnagiri Sindhi writer.

Naeen Duniya is the only one magazine, which has been giving remuneration to its writers since 1958. It has also given awards of Rs.10, 000/- every year to worthy writers for more than 5 years.

The only other magazine of such a long life is "Sind Upkarak", edited by Bhagwandas Talreja since 1952 from Ulhasnagar. He is now 87 years old. Although it is not a literary and cultural magazine like Naeen Duniya, but it is a unique magazine of Rationalism of Dev Samaj. It gives literary reviews, articles and poems sometimes.

The other literary magazines of fifty’s decade which are now closed were Bharat Jivan, Kamal, Kahani, Sargam, Nargis, Suhini, Beena, Nai Raha, Rani, Phuleli, Vidharthi, Roohrihan, Veena, Saina (Maharashtra), "Nai Zindagi" (Madhya Pradesh), "Sindhu" (U.P.) They were run by individual writers from their meagre hard labour earnings without any substantial help from Governments, but with reader’s cooperation. This was all for the love of their language, literature and culture "Sindhyat". There was only one such weekly magazine "Tasveer" which came out in mid-fifties by an individual for more than 10 years like some other monthlies, mentioned above.

The trend of all these was "Art for life sake", which not only accelerated the progress of literature culture in the very odd and scattered conditions of Sindhi refugees but laid the firm foundation of that trend in Sindhi Journalism here in India for the future generation like their predecessor and pioneer monthly magazine "Saraswati" started 1890 in Sindh under the editorship of famous Sindhi writer and social reformer Sadhu Hiranand, which was contemporary of other magazines of Indian languages like Kannada, Bengali, Marathi etc. That tradition of journalism was kept alive by other Sindhi monthlies in the beginning and middle of 20^th century in Sind till 1947, like Sindhi Sahit Society of Lalchand Jagtiani (1914), Sunder Sahitya by Melaram Mangatram (1924), Ratan Sahitya Mandal by Chuhermal Hinduja (1930), Sindhu (1932) and Bharat Jiwan (1934). These were monthlies, which ran till 1947. The Sindhu magazine was considered as the Modern Review of Sindhi.

A good crop of magazines appeared in Sixties namely Koonj, Priha Phuti, Heera (Maharashtra), Sahit-Dhara, Raabel, Akhani (Delhi), Gulistan (Children’s magazine), Marvi and Sangeeta (Gujarat). Since 1973, except Koonj and Sangeeta all are closed. Both these are quarterly magazines. The editor of Koonj has brought out some quarterly issues of 12 writers edited by others. He himself does not edit properly, so he has published a prose poem saying "Sindhi Sabhyata Mual Machi Aahe" (Sindhi civilization is a dead fish) and the top most lady writer and other all India dancers are prostitutes. When the lady writer asked him, how he published such useless, vulgar matter he replied that he did not see the original. He was rebuked. But other magazines of Sixties like Priha-Phuti, Sahit Dhara, Raabel, Akhani, were editors like Lal Pushp, Anand Khemani, Param Abhichandani and Harikant, although all these were non progressive and influenced by the modernist thread and Hindi writings and were critical in their outlook. Only Priha-Phuti continued for more than 10 years like "Kahani", "Nargis" and "Rani" magazines of the fifteenth decade. The Editor of Priha-Phuti Lal Pushp is a well known writer and Sahitya Academy Award winner.

In Seventies there was decline in magazines and only four new magazines came out like Sojhro (Ulhasnagar), Sindhu Veer, Sindhu Mitra (Ahmedabad) and Suhini (Rajasthan). Except Aryaveer all are closed. But it comes out every month regularly because it is running on behalf of Arya Samaj and publishes such matter of Indian culture and history, specially by our topmost old historian and linguist Gangaram Samrat. He has written two books recently which are "Nao Chachnamo" in 1991 and "Sind Sagar" in 1995. Both were serialized in this monthly magazine. The first book throws new light on the history of Sind of Raja Dahir’s days and exposes the false hood, contained in history book named "Chachnamo". The other book "Sindh Sagar" throws a new light on Sindhi folk literature and the poetry of our greatest poet Shah Latif, which appears controversial but worth debatable.

Within the Eighties decade, the number of quarterly magazines increased to four like "Rachna", "Stage", "Nazrano" and "Beejal". "Stage" is unique in the sense that it is devoted to only dramas and Dramatic Art. Its editor is Jetho Lalwani. Rachna is being financed by rich Sindhi donors all over the world and assisted by half a dozen literary and cultural workers employed by Sindhology.

In Eighties, there was a good crop of annual magazines of different Govt. Sindhi Sahitya Academies of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Delhi like "Rihaan", "Sindhi Adabi Chaman", "Sahitkar" and "Sindhu Jote" respectively. In addition, there are other annuals like "Sindhu" by Sindhu Youth Society (Ulhasnagar) and Alka, Jeejal, Punji by Sindhi Employees Association of different banks. These annuals contain lot of matter by a lot of old and new writers, thus encouraging them.

Surprisingly in the decade of Nineties when the progress of magazines in Hindi, Urdu, and other languages have declined very much, in Sindhi two new magazines have come out by individuals. One from Delhi named "Sindhyun jo Sansar" edited by Dr. Ghansham and the other is "Kirno" a quarterly by our very well known Sindhi short story writer of Ulhasnagar, Lachman Kukreja. The first magazine contains good matter of writers from Sindh also and the other magazine contains not only good matter but also good art paintings by the editor who is a well known painter. The other three are "Murk", bi-monthly by our leading progressive novelist

Gobind Malhi and "Sipoon" a quarterly of Ram Punjwani Trust, edited by Thakur Chawla who had failed to continue his monthly "Suhini" in the fifties and was forgotten, has come to life now after the death of Prof. Ram Punjwani. The third one is an annual magazine "Virso" edited by lady writer Rita Shahani.

Thus we see the progress of Sindhi magazines has declined like those of Hindi and Urdu. There are hardly half a dozen magazines in Hindi and Urdu, run by private persons and there are half a dozen more magazines run by governments and institutions like Hindustan Times, Times of India etc.

There are no such institutions in Sindhi language to bring out magazines regularly. It is because of writer’s hard labour and love for their literature and language that has produced so many magazines mentioned above. Now the main trend of existing magazines is to keep the torch of Sindhyat burning without commercial corruption of sex or communalism.

In the absence of our own province and good facilities for providing Sindhi education to new generation they have taken to English language. Therefore three new Sindhi magazines have come out in English namely "Sindhi International" edited by famous writer Lal Pushp. Its circulation is 7500 which is unique and shows its popularity. There is another magazine "Aseen Sindhi" edited by Jairam Rupani and third is "Sahyog Times" edited by Ram Jawahrani. The first two magazines publish matter in Sindhi Arabic script also for encouraging new generation to pick it up so that 150 years old Sindhi script, the symbol of our separate entity of community and unity with Sindhi brothers of Sindh.