The City That Reads

Lucknow looks forward to a ten day book fair that opens on Friday. The city has a long tradition of enjoying different aspects of learning and teaching. It has always been the home of many libraries and numerous schools and colleges that attract students from all over the world to the city.

The Lucknow Book Fair hosts two events in a year bringing publishers, distributors and educational institutions under one roof to the delight of book lovers. Director, National Book Fair Aakarsh Chandel said that the focus this year is on literature celebrating freedom fighters inspired by the Kakori Conspiracy Case.

Remember August 1925? That year an armed robbery had taken place in a train that had reached its destination at Kakori about 16 km northwest of Lucknow. The train had carried all the revenue that the British had collected at various railway stations on the way and the wealth was to be deposited at the official treasury in Lucknow.

The robbery was planned by freedom fighter Ramprasad Bismil and 10 other revolutionaries who had stopped the train, overpowered the guards and fled with the cash found on the train.

The revolutionaries were all members of the newly found Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), dedicated to freeing India from British rule. To fund their activities, the HRA had carried out raids like the train robbery.

Dozens of HRA members were arrested for daring to defy the British, and 29 people had faced trial before a special magistrate in Lucknow. leader Chandrashekhar Azad had gone underground and was later killed at the age of 25 years in an encounter with the police in 1931.

Together with Bismil (30), Ashfaqulla Khan (27), Roshan Singh (35) were eventually hanged from trees in the space where the General Post Office building stands in Lucknow to this day. There was a nation-wide protest against the severity of the punishment but that did not affect the cruel judgement of the time.

There is a lot of interesting literature on the young freedom fighters and their fearless involvement in the Kakori conspiracy which writers and publishers would like to share with youngsters. The challenge today is to wean citizens away from browsing online for a while to enjoy the pleasure of holding a book in hand, and reading it.

And what better place to encourage the joy of reading than Lucknow, a city that is also the birthplace of the country’s largest privately owned printing press in Asia.

Prince Of Print

Munshi Newal Kishore had travelled from Lahore through Haryana to open a printing press in Lucknow in 1858. Kishore was only 22 years old when the British hired him to publish textbooks for schools and colleges in Lucknow.

He made a fortune printing books for the British, however literature and language was where his heart lay. Without thinking of profit or loss, he had invested in printing countless copies in Urdu, Arabic, Persian, and Hindi on a variety of subjects, including religion, ethics, literature, medicine, and history.

Kishore was a beloved citizen as he helped many people find employment at the press. He had come to work and live in Lucknow soon after the 1857 war between local people and the colonising British.

The monarchy was abolished and the British had taken over power. The nearly year-long war had reduced the city to rubble and joblessness was rampant.

Many men of letters, and artisans like calligraphists and illustrators had found employment at the press. Kishore’s love for knowledge and people was without parallel, and without prejudice.

He is responsible for having preserved many Islamic religious texts. He had saved handwritten texts and many orally recited information on different subjects like Unani medicine by sealing their longevity in print.

He had dug out works on Indo-Muslim historiography, and the traditional Persian and Urdu art of storytelling called qissagoi, and put them in print. There were translations of Sanskrit texts, and printed copies of the Puranas, the Hindu religious texts into Hindi and Urdu that had rolled out regularly from the press.

Kishore is responsible for having spread knowledge amongst the last man on the street like a sweetmeat. He is remembered for publishing a lithographed copy of the Koran and pricing it at the affordable price of rupee one and eight annas, flooding the home of even ordinary citizens with information and knowledge.

His respect for those employed by him is legendary. He had built a tank on the premises of the press for his Muslim employees to perform ablutions, before beginning work on binding the Koran.

Kishore published Avadh Akhbar. In 1877, Avadh Akhbar was the first daily Urdu-language newspaper in northern India that had enjoyed tremendous commercial success. For almost a century, the press published some 12,000 titles.

Approximately 5,000 of these were issued during Kishore’s lifetime. Over time the press fell into disuse and its sprawling premises of over one lakh square feet area turned into wilderness.

Kishore’s family is in the process of clearing up the old brick pathways and walls built of the famous lakhori bricks to convert the historic press into a multi-cultural space with a museum, food stalls and a line-up of merchandise of top international brands.

The idea is to resurrect the memory of the polymath whose life was a supreme example of how to remain a wealthy and worthy citizen of society without walking all over the life of fellow human beings.

Yesterday And Today

The presence of those in power today are an unfortunate contrast to the memory of Kishore who made his money, but shared his good life with all those who were fortunate to cross his path.

Instead of poetry, literature and science what is doled out to citizens by way of gyan today are lessons in how to hate the neighbour. How to unite in order to destroy the other. How to kill, rape and to lie endlessly…

Day in, and day out citizens are fed bad news about each other. A favourite slogan heard often in Lucknow these days is “‘batoge toh katoge’ (if you do not stand united you will be killed). The question is who is not united, who will kill whom?

Can book fairs, the printing press and publishers contain the paranoia obsessed politicians of the day, is also a question that citizens need to ponder over today!