Travelling to India
Spanning 1992-1993 Prof. Tavakoli’s groundbreaking research trip to South Asia to uncover India’s contribution towards the formation of Iranian modernity unearthed a buried trove of forgotten texts published by the largest Indian printing press of the 19th century, the Newal Kishore Press (NKP).
Arriving during a time of particularly violent tensions between Hindus and Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, Prof. Tavakoli’s determination and persistence led him to a decades-long forgotten book depot in Lucknow once belonging to the NKP. There hidden behind literal walls he rescued from out of the dustbin of history innumerous canonical Persian-language texts which he had only before seen mentioned in the footnotes of aged books.
Indeed, the richness of the centuries-old Indo-Persian cultural synthesis coupled with the transformative printing technology afforded to India during the British colonial era, resulted in the NKP having published more texts in Persian than the aggregate total of books published in Iran across the 19th century. Chief among the reasons that produced such an intercultural phenomena in publishing is the owner of the press, Munshi Newal Kishore.
A member of the elite zamindar class and the Indian National Congress, Newal Kishore helped to develop the formation of the Indian public sphere by establishing his printing press in the aftermath of the historic uprising of 1857. Belonging to the Hindu-majority, the Munshi began to publish newspapers and texts on a wide variety of subjects and texts in dozens of global and regional languages including Arabic, Bengali, English, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Pashto, Persian, Sanskrit, and Urdu with the hope of advancing Indian nationalism through Hindu-Muslim unity.
Today, the Munshi Newal Kishore’s publishing efforts have earned him the widespread and continuing recognition and admiration of the peoples of India, Iran, and Pakistan and Tavakoli’s discovery and rescue of these texts help breathe life into the Munshi’s legacy once more.
Untold Stories
Dawar
Saving a Treasure
Mozzafar Baghai
“In gymnastics, you have to consider originality, risk, virtuosity, and then just do it. As a teenager, in Iran, I often got into fights. And when I was studying history, I learned how to fight verbally and textually, becoming more adept at constructing and defending arguments. My gymnastics training prepared me for a disciplined academic mode of thinking. I didn’t want to write history the way everyone else was doing; I wanted to write it differently. Like competitive gymnastics, risk, originality, and virtuosity are vital components of my academic career.”
A Walk Through History...
1. Rediscovering Munshi Newal Kishore (1836-1895)
“Munshi Newal Kishore Press’s contribution to Persian literary and print cultures has long captivated me as a historian of nineteenth-century Iran. Having been educated in nationalist historiography, which views Persian as Iran’s exclusive language, I was surprised to discover that many of the most important texts in Iranian literature and culture were first published in Lucknow, India, rather than Tehran.”
– Mohammad Tavakoli Targhi
2. With a Trace: Documenting and Sharing the Experiences of the Iranian Diaspora
Iranian Diaspora Spotlight: Learning from the Movements of Gymnastics—Professor Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi on Becoming a Historian and Director of a Canadian Institute of Iranian Studies
3. An Empire of Books: The Naval Kishore Press and the Diffusion of the Printed Word in Colonial India
The history of the book and the commercialization of print in the nineteenth century remain largely uncharted areas in South Asia. This monumental work on the legendary Naval Kishore Press of Lucknow, which was established in 1858, analyses an Indian publisher’s engagement in the field of cultural production.
Describing early centres and pioneers of print in North India, the author traces the coming of the book in Hindi and Urdu, She analyses the production of scholarly and popular books against a backdrop of cultural social, and economic developments, identifying the contributions of writers and literary people associated with the press. The detail, rigour, and sweep of this work brings nineteenth-century publishing in India to life in a manner hitherto unknown.