Print, Publics, and Royal Beggars: The Case of the Anjuman-e Dar ul Islam in Colonial India

Several recent scholarly studies highlighted the rise of printing presses in India in the second half of the 19th century and their significance in relation to the emergence of a middle class. While helpful, these types of studies tend to imply that print had little impact outside of a privileged middle class. In this paper I complicate such assumptions by examining Urdu periodicals from the late 19th century and readers’ letters printed in them highlighting the ways in which individuals spread over a broad geographic space began utilizing and interacting with print media in novel ways leading to conceptions that they were not only part of a larger public but an Islamic public. From 1888 to 1889, in his monthly journal, Dil Gudāz, Abdul Halim Sharar described the efforts of the Anjuman-e Dār ul Islām to promote education for Muslims and called on his readers to offer support. After receiving a flood of letters where his readers described attempts to further the aims of Dar ul Islam in their own localities through the opening of affiliated branches and the collection of money, dishes, grain and candles, Sharar concluded that a movement had begun in the Islamic public. While many of these items appear insignificant I argue that it was precisely this “insignificance” that proved crucial to the transformations taking place in the public sphere as non-elite individuals were suddenly viewed as significant actors within a larger public. This conceptual and logistical shift away from traditional patterns of patronage to a reliance on individuals from varied classes, now conceived of as the Islamic public sheds light on the ways in which print, incorporated within traditional modes of public interaction and mobilization, not only fostered historical change, but created a space of possible action for previously marginalized individuals and groups.