Urdu Studies, Vol 5 Issue 1, 2025

Angarey and its Aftermath

Khalid Alvi
Tarika
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16535389

Abstract. This This paper is a comparative study of the two publications of the (Urdu) Angarey. A historical analysis of the contexts of the two publications (in 1932 and 1995) can shed light on how the public reception of scandalous literature and reactions to its censorship have either changed or remained unchanged through the course of the intervening sixty years. The paper focuses on the historical context and the book history of Angarey. The republication of Angarey in 1995, edited by Khalid Alvi through a microfilm preserved in the British Museum in London, is also symptomatic of how knowledge is produced, reproduced and archived in the imperial centres, even when it defies this same imperial centre. The editing choices made by Alvi are symptomatic of the print capitalist context of late 20th-century India, besieged as it was with censorship debates because of the critical, public and censorial response to works like Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. The paper uses the traditional theories of censorship using Bourdieu’s theories of fields of power, and through a socio-historical analysis of the public sphere at the time of the production of the two editions.
Keywords. Angarey, Sajjad Zaheer, Postcolonial Book History, Indian Public Sphere, Censorship, Progressive Writer’s Association.

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Works Cited
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Khalid Alvi is an Urdu writer, poet, critic and academician. He has authored 12 books and edited the English journal Furtherance and the Urdu monthly Shahkaar. His work has been translated in German, Persian and Uzbek. He has delivered lectures at universities like Peshawar University and the Oriental Institute, Tashkent. His noteworthy books include Ghazal Key Jadid Rujhanat, Angarey, Angarey Ka Tareekhi Pas Manzar, Qayam Chandpuri, Mathnaviat-e Qayam, Abdur Rahman Bijnori, Baazyaft, Ghazalnamah Arshia, Iqan-o Idrak in Urdu; Angarey and Manto Saheb (with Prof. Vibha Chauhan) in English, along with about 200 articles.  He has received the Best Critic Award (Urdu Academy, Delhi), the Majaz Award (Canada), the Faiz Award (Canada), the Krishna Chandra Award (Berlin), the Sahir Award (Delhi), and the Sir Sayed Award (Delhi).
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-0592-6333
Email: drkhalidalvi@gmail.com

Tarika Prabhakar has been working in Satyawati (E) college, University of Delhi, as an Assistant Professor in the English department since 2015. She was the Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant at UC Davis in 2012-13. She has been an active contributor to journals like Sahitya Akademi’s ‘Indian Literature’ and has been invited to speak at several platforms like Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), Jain (Deemed to be) University, Carmel College of Arts, Science and Commerce (Goa), among others. Her English translation of the award-winning Kashmiri essays, titled Meditations, was published by Sahitya Akademi in 2021.  Her second book of translation, published in January 2025 by Naamak Publications, is a collection of short stories originally written in Urdu by the renowned Urdu writer Mirza Hamid Baig. 
ORCID:  https://orcid.org/0009-0002-4307-4432
Email: route2utopia@gmail.com

Angarey and its Aftermath © 2025 by Khalid Alvi Tarika is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0