The Journal Panjabi Darbar (1928–35) and Its Editor Joshua Fazl-Ud-Din: Writing a Politics of the Literary

The first decades of the twentieth century were crucial ones for the development of Punjabi as a language of print, in both the Shahmukhi script (the term is used in Punjabi domains today to name the use of the modified Persian script also used for Urdu) and Gurmukhi, the script that is used in the Indian Punjab. Paṅjābī Darbār, founded in 1928 and edited by Christian lawyer and writer Joshua Fazl-ud-Din, represents an early example of the socio-literary magazine in Punjabi, written (as it describes itself on its cover) in the Urdu script. Fazl-ud-Din was active in the literary domain in diverse terms – he wrote short stories, a play, and a “psychological novel” entitled Prabhā, published in 1945 – and also intervened in political debates of his day in English, such as with his The Tragedy of the Untouchables (Civil & Military Gazette Ltd., 1934), and, later in Pakistan, his Separate electorates, the life-blood of Pakistan (Paṅjābī Darbār, 1956). This essay seeks to look across Fazl-ud-Din’s oevre to understand his positioning of the Panjabi-language literary in political terms, with particular attention to its articulation in the pages of Paṅjābī Darbār. What vision of community was articulated in the pages of the journal, and how was the Punjabi language configured in relation to this vision? How were religion and caste configured? This presentation will examine such questions, in the context of Fazl-ud-Din’s work as a whole, and in relation to the larger Punjabi print environment of the late colonial period.