Journalism as a Social and Literary Practice in Akhbar Anjuman-e Punjab

Scholarship has expressed a sustained interest in the Anjuman-e Punjab’s social, cultural, and political legacies in the nineteenth century; the society also exercised an influence on journalism as a social and literary practice. In this paper I will conduct discursive analysis of excerpts of the Akhbar Anjuman-i Punjab (which began to be published weekly in 1870), as translated in Indian Newspaper Reports between 1871 and 1880; copies of the Urdu-language Risalah (the printed minutes of the meetings of the society, published from the 1860s on) from 1869 to 1871; and copies of the Urdu-language Akhbar from the 1870s. The colonial-run Indian Newspaper Reports did not report on the Risalah, in contrast to the Akhbar, which it first reported on in June 1871, despite clear government interest in the society. This points to the fact that the Akhbar Anjuman-i Punjab had a greater public influence, and was considered to be an “authentic” source of news by colonial censors. At the same time, contemporary discussion of the newspaper reflects concerns that the paper was overly influenced by English sources. While scholars have acknowledged that the society was key in developing a focus on Urdu as a public language in Punjab (Afzal 2021, 12), there has been little additional scholarship considering the character and impact of the Anjuman’s newspaper over the 1870s. How was the paper received by its South Asian readership? Were the conceptions of news derived from English newspaper models, as its attitude to poetry might suggest? Were there traces of akhbār navīs or Persian newsletter models that still might remain in the newspaper? This paper looks to define the influence on the Anjuman in shaping what counted as meaningful news that was worthy of reading.