 Hello, everyone. Welcome to the British Library South Asia Seminar series, which is part of our digitization project called Two Centuries of Indian Print. Today, we are very happy to have amongst us, Sara Rahman Niazi, who's going to speak on from other to film, Urdu film journals in India between 1930 and 1950. Sara is a doctoral researcher with the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media at the University of Westminster in London. Her work is focused on the intersections between language, literature and cinema. She received her M. Phil degree for cinema and the reinvention of the cells women performers in the Bombay film industry, 1925 to 47. From Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Her work has been published in journals, such as Wide Screen and Culture Unbound, and in books by Sage and Rutledge, among others. She works as an assistant editor of Moving Image Review and Art Journal. We are also very grateful to have Professor Iftikar Gadi as the chair for today's talk. Iftikar is an art historian, artist and an associate professor in Cornell University's Department of the History of Art and the director of the South Asia program. He's the author of Modernism and the Art of South Asia, published in 2010, and which received the book prize from the American Institute of Pakistan Studies. He has co-curated exhibitions such as Lines of Control and his collaborative works with Elizabeth Dadi have been presented in international exhibitions such as homelands art from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, Havana Biennale, Lahore Biennale and Dhaka Art Summit. About today's talk and the format of the session, Sara would be presenting her talk for about 30 to 45 minutes, after which we have a short discussion between the speaker and the chair, following which I'll open it up for audience question and answers. In the meantime, if you would like to put in your questions, please use the question and answer box or the chat box to do so. And I will take them in order in the Q&A round. So without much further ado, I hand it over to Sara to speak on from other two films, Urdu film journals in India from 1930 to 1950. Over to you, Sara. Thank you Priyanka. Thank you for the bread, and which library do this together. I also want to thank Professor Iftabar Dadi, who has so graciously agreed to chair the session and I'm really forward to his engagement with my work and course to all the people who are participating and assigned in to listen to this talk. I'm going to share my screen. So in today's talk, I map the entangled history of the Urdu press, the film journalism, and explore their role in the creation of a cinematic public sphere. The place of journalism in the matrix of cinema and its networks of distribution, circulation and consumption cannot be overstated. By the 1930s, film journals had become part and parcel of the complex of cinema consumption. The intersection between and the transformation of literary and cinematic cultures affected by commercial printing produced a series of complex negotiations. Through the specific case studies of Urdu film journals, I look at the structure of these journals and ask, how are these similar or different to contemporary film journals. Also, I ask, can we think of the Urdu film journal as an extension of the literary that is amalgamating other literature or discourses on etiquette with the mapping the profound influence of literary journals on other magazines. I attempt to gauge the ways in these in which these journals were responding to an expressing a continued engagement with notions of love, which is more in conduct, and Islam direction or reform, which was central to contemporary articulations on morality and reform. In the 1930s, why film culture was expanding and proliferating as evident from the range of film journals in diverse languages. And of course, there's also the time when in the 1930s sound comes to cinema. So there is a huge paradigmatic shift with you know new studios opening up some old studios collapsing as well but there's a kind of new energy that sound technology industry where however the status of cinema was far removed from that of literary circles, for example, film journals struggled for acceptance and inclusion within the Urdu public sphere. The film magazines were often printed by publishing houses that had other literary pursuits, or in some cases, the success of the journals helped editors establish their own publishing houses. These close connections with the Urdu press and their desire for legitimacy affected the style, format and content of the early film journals in India. And in today's talk my main focus is on the Delhi based journal Shama. However, I'll be using examples from a journal called Film Stage which was published out of Calcutta and a Lahore based journal called Star. And here are some of the images of the Urdu film magazines that I looked at. I also want to just sort of flag that this is part of my larger work and here I'm just defending a very small aspect of the Urdu film journals. These are three cover pages of very important journals from 1913 and 14th century. So Shama when it launched in 1939 entered a tough market. And by the 1940s film journalism had become legitimate publishing enterprise with possibilities for financial gain, recognition and its own kind of stardom for film journal editors. And by the mid 1940s, Shama had become a huge success. The editor of Shama was a man of letters and sound businessman. He was, you know, had ventured into real estate. He was also involved with leather goods, and then had interest in unani medicine and had established, you know, manufacturing unit under the brand called Barada Vahana, which was also based in Delhi. So he had like all these very, you know, diverse business interests. In 1947, he started a publishing house in Delhi, along with his three sons, Shama publications, and this particular publication house catered to the Urdu reading public in both India and Pakistan post partition. And he was, you know, part of the family as I was discussing before the stock with the part that he told me that the part of the family member went to Karachi and set up Shama, which is based out of Karachi. And also, of course, they also had a, you know, distribution office in London to which they reached out to readers of Urdu in and Hindi in Europe. In addition to Shama, the publishing house brought out two other monies in Urdu, which were called Bhanu, a journal for women and Khilona, which was a journal for children. Khilona was edited by one of the sons for his Ilyas, they'll be and his brother, it is there. Barna was targeted at middle class women. And it contained articles and essays, framed as advice for women on etiquette, domesticity, culture and taste. The articles were carefully curated by the editorial team with images of women cartoons illustrations patterns for cross stitch contemporary advertisements for trends in fashion makeup recipes, but also poetry and short stories that were sort of considered suitable for women. The journal was edited by Zina Cosser, they'll be and later her daughter, Sadia, they'll be the show of publishing house published various Urdu and Hindi books as well, both fiction and nonfiction, and had a subsidiary called Shama book depot and Khilona book depot, which published with children. I had a Hindi journal called Sushma and Sushma as well, it was a film journal and had quite a considerable amount of leadership in India. But the three Urdu magazine, Bhanu, Khilona and Shama formed a kind of powerful triad that most Urdu literate families in North India subscribe to. And this I have engaged from, you know, talking to a lot of, you know, people during my field work where a lot of people attested to the fact that you know they subscribe to, you know, the three journals and we were considered kind of essentials in every home in India. I'm going to now talk of the style form and content of the journal specifically Shama. Shama was one of the most popular Urdu film journal, as I said, and included literally columns that contain short stories and poems. The literary columns ensure that the ambit of its readership was varied and diverse. Other Urdu film journals like Star and Negar Khanna had their share of other be or literary content as well. So in 1946, the annual Shama, which was a special issue in the number contained a total of 45 stories, poems, buzzers, and the rest of the issue was then dedicated to film and critical pieces and they were advertisements of films and others and commodity. The size of this particular issue was large format, which was approximately 270 pages. And in the editorial, they will be elaborated on the process of selection of other be stories and poem by dividing the writers into two categories, and he talks about these two categories as established writers and new writers. Much like a literary magazine, the film journal was another avenue for young poets and writers to get their materials published. They have been claimed that Shama was the right platform for these new writers, and that they would gain success and privilege after publication in the magazine. In fact, in later issues in Shama would feature writers, progressive writers such as Isma Chutai, Rajendra Singh baby among others. So these mediated and structured transactions between literary and film journals provided endless possibility for struggling writers and lyricists in the film industry, thereby enabling the continued and persistent influence of an Urdu imaginary on film culture. Another example where film journals incorporated and mimicked literary journals was a column called Musahedda or Observations in the Journal Star which was edited by Amir Jalal Abadi, the lyricist and poet. And this particular column was written very much in the style of contemporary literary columns, which focused on poets and poetic isla of erection. In a particular issue that I looked at from 1940s, Jalal Abadi wrote about his meeting with the controversial poet Yadana Changesi in Nepal. And I'm not going to go too much into the details of this particular article, but this is an example to show you how very much similar to a similar article that appeared in the literary magazine called Zamanah from 1938, where the author Mulkram critically engaged with Yadana's poetry as well. So, one can see that Jalal Abadi in the film magazine was clearly engaging with an ongoing contemporary literary debate on poetry. And these overlaps between the literary and film culture draws our attention to the ways in which the Urdu public sphere informed film culture in print in this period. And allowing a lot of these editors to kind of experiment with formats. And also, you know, kind of is very exciting to see that, you know, what all can be included within something that is just considered a film magazine so there's a kind of huge experimentation that's going on in this period. Well, of course it is difficult to assess the average proportion of, you know, or the exact proportion of, you know, filmy versus literary material in Urdu so thankfully, because there is such a dearth of issues that are available or well archived from the early period. However, based on the few issues that I have looked at from the 30s and 40s, and then you know looking at particularly at Shama from 60s to the 80s. So, I can confidently say that the inclusion of stories poems and guzzles of varying lengths, formed an important part of the journal. And this made Shama quite distinct from many of its contemporary journals like film India, the columns that appeared in Shama changed over the years, but a few persisted up to the 90s. The first one film was called the filmy Makale or the film articles. This section contained the filmy tuxera or the film review, which regularly analyzed contemporary films and their techniques. In the writings of early reviewers, the analysis of film was mostly focused on processes of narrativization, plot construction and methods borrowed from literary criticism, focusing on semantic and stylistic aspects of dialogues and lyrics. However, as film criticism evolved a new language, the shifts in writing in the Urdu film journals become evident. In an article, Isha Chukthai writes about the role of filmmakers and directors in creating meaningful realistic cinema and reflects on the need to create parameters for judging films which were not very formal and technical but also theoretical. He stressed the need for a theory for film criticism and he writes and I quote, the most important issue for film today is to bring film criticism to the common view at the level of theory and to make such criticism, a tradition end quote. Texts such as these were bringing their knowledge of the literary traditions embedded within the Urdu public sphere, but intervening within an existing purpose of writing on cinema. The film review column in the journal Nigar Fana had an interesting rating system or, you know, a scorecard of sorts, where each film was judged on the basis of direction, story, music, dialogues and even acting. These mark sheets created new parameters for film criticism and review. For example, here acting or performance becomes a new category for analysis and criticism. I think there is a kind of link with the proliferating acting manuals and theories of acting in Urdu that are circulating in the Urdu public sphere and those influencing this particular kind of mode of film criticism. Another column that regularly appeared in Shama was a kind of studio news column called producer or director, what are the producers and directors doing. This was a similar column to, you know, other studio news columns in different magazines like film India and, you know, Star, Chitrapat, etc. But unlike, you know, the other journals, this particular column was not divided under different studio heading, but had these very sensational titles that involved salacious wordplay and, you know, with the titles. So here are some examples, for example, where, you know, the studio news was divided as Nargis Karumal on Nargis's handkerchief and the name of the film is Nargis Karumal or Munawar Sultana Pyaar Ki Manzilne, Munawar Sultana on the Road of Love and the name of the film is Pyaar Ki Manzilne and so on and so forth, such interesting titles and, you know, interesting way of segmenting particular columns. These plumped into the contemporary status forces by titillating readers and exciting their interest, but the promise for salacious gossip was very quickly quoted by mundane news about the progress of studios and production of particular films. A column which was a regular feature in Shamakh was, this film is Tanhe, of this is the film Bird by the author Hari Bhargawam. Hari Bhargawam is literally translated as heavyweight. These were authored by Yusuf Behlvi and his use of the pseudonym allowed for flexibility and validated claims of Bela Kapsara or unbiased analysis. This column is comparable to Film India's regular feature Bombay Calling, which in the word of the editor Baburao Patel was and I quote the monopoly of Judas and he writes what he likes and about things which he likes and so on and so forth. So the similarities between the two columns are obvious in the ways both lay emphasis on the use of pseudonym for the author, the gender as male, his physical weight as well as his unrestricted words. Often readers wrote to Shama to ask about the identity of the author and they would ask and I quote, Janaam yeh to batay yeh, yeh bhaari bharkam sahab kond hi. So who is this Mr. Bhaari Bharkam and quote, in a typically evasive and vitiramaak, Behlvi would write back, wohin jo bhaari bharkam hai, it is the one who is a heavyweight and quote. The column provided a hilarious take on celebrities, often putting them into imaginary or unreal scenarios. For example, in a particular section for on freelancing as a prelude to destruction. Bhaari Bharkam mocks Noor Jaha for working in multiple productions and studios at the same time. And there are a lot of, you know, interesting ways in which Bhaari Bharkam constantly digs at, you know, the stars and directors. When comparisons are drawn between the two issues of Shama and Film India from the same year, 1946, the difference in tone and content becomes ever more apparent. Bhaari Bharkam's content was predominantly salacious gossip and jides at film stars and directors through a very innovative use of the flourishes and poetic metaphors. For example, Bhaari Bharkam's tone was mockery and bitty tongues of satire. Judas' tone was authoritative and assertive, very much in line with Film India's style in this period. In his column, Judas would address the government's restriction on raw footage, campaigned against foreign films like Vandana, which was seen as slandering Indians. He would routinely take jides at actors and actors, so there there's a similarity. In Shama, the sort of these more serious topics related to film censorship and film production code and other aspects of film business were relegated to the editorial column, which aimed to, I guess, in a very direct way influence the policy around film, and also in some sense maintain use of the healthy, you know, authoritative voice. And so they made this kind of distinction between the two, you know, columns of the editorial as a certain kind of voice and Bhaari Bharkam a very different kind of tone. The mass head of Shama from the 1946 annual summarizes the essence and the public address of the German poetry. And I'm going to share this. Beloved of millions of youth, a unique quality monthly which persistently with wit and irony and good intentions brings interesting new articles on films, beautiful evergreen instructive stories, bewitching puzzles, tunes, unbiased reviews of films, unfilled film related questions and answers, a variety of pictures of film faces and other exhilarating treasures all published regularly. Some basic assumptions can be cleaned from observing the language and intent of the market, which points to the kind of wants process through which Shama differentiated itself from other contemporary film The mass head also provides a sense of the motley mix of genres, which drew readers to the world of Shama. There these use of poetic would be laden with Persian flourishes and the insistence on some of our most up some of the instructive story. Brings Shama closer to the journals of its time, like Nega, Nero Nihayal and among others. These attempts at mirroring the format of contemporary literary journals that try to present stories of Islam or reform place Shama within the literary public sphere, and gave a push to its claim for legitimacy, self worth and respectability. However, the film content was the other significant part of the attraction and this oscillation between filming titillation and Islam is what creates an important bridge between the two worlds that were often imagined as distinct but presented as a whole in Shama. In the next section, I'm going to be talking about a flap in Islam in the journal specifically Shama. And film stage. So, the discourse of improvement and reform for central impulses of the late 19th and early 20th century, the public sphere had a long standing engagement with discussions on a flap, ethical conduct and Islam reform. Muzaffar Alam has highlighted that a flap texts were chiefly concerned with providing a philosophical, non sectarian and humane solution to emergent problems encountered by Indian society. While a flap texts had their beginnings in a tradition of dissent, they were gradually integrated within the elite discourses on jurisprudence and practical philosophy as highlighted by our love. This is beyond the purview of the stock to map the historical transformation of the flap texts, but suffices to say that these texts were more than mere digest of norms individual good behavior and ethics. These texts were intended to articulate and transmit what ought to constitute correct conduct and action in varying socio political context. The a flap texts were in circulation in the early 20th century addressing the encounter with colonial modernity in new and novel ways. It is not surprising that the journals to be preoccupied in this discussion on a flap and is emerging from the public sphere in relation to the modernizing impulse of cinema. The paradoxical place of cinema continue to embody the tension between the commodification of culture and articulations of ethical and moral selfhood in the journals. Journalists felt that they had an important role to play encouraging the perception of cinema as a den of bad morals and base shameless profession. These are the key filmmakers to strengthen their commitment to reform as forming a service to the nation this kind of you know constantly referred to in many of the articles that I've gone through where, you know, the original makers to make films, which are seen as a service to the nation. This is an ethical film, the effect of film on ethical conduct by Khalil Rehman. Rehman argued that Sympheria was a modern impulse and film viewing had become part of the weekly activities of the young. The views resonated with contemporary writings on ethical conduct and film consumption. In light of the ubiquitous presence of cinema Rehman believed that the journalist had an important job of publishing useful articles which would lead to the moral correction and reform of the industry. He believed that some artists, directors and film owners promoted films that destroyed the modest and ethical conduct of the nation. The limitless desire or the shock as he referred to cinema necessitated the production of films that would lead to the transformation of the form. Rehman's article argued that cinema had radical potential for change and repeatedly urged filmmakers to avoid making films. Sarah, if you could unmute yourself. Yes, you did. Don't worry, I mean, you can start again. Should I just share my screen name? I know you have to prompt me as to where I got cut off because I was just on this speaking mode and I didn't notice being cut off. Did I start talking about, did we follow to the article? Did I manage to get in some points about Khalil Rehman's argument about Sympheria? Yes, you did. Just a couple of sentences if you could repeat them, that would be fine. So the limitless desire or we had shocked for cinema necessitated the production of films that would lead to the transformation of the form or the community of the nation. Rehman's article urged the cinema argued that cinema had radical potential for change and repeatedly urged filmmakers to avoid making films that would lead to the destruction of future generations. And very interestingly, two areas that, you know, according to him needed immediate attention of reformers and film producers were romance and comedy. Critical of contemporary trends in cinema and theater that focused on outdated versions of romance. Rehman declared that while romance was a great part of human life and was not necessarily bad, but romantic scenes and film, he's considered were infused, must be infused with the Hizib or culture and tries to be civilized purity. The genres such as the social devotional film and the historical were considered to nicely lend to this lucky enterprise that, you know, a lot of these writers are promoting and specifically Rehman is promoting. He specifically targets films like, you know, the Oriental fantasy genre, a film like Zarina by Esrami from 1932 and calls it, you know, baseless and useless and, you know, says that it's completely erasing the decorum in society and you know there's no social propriety in the film. And in contrast, he's all praise of Bengali devotional film like Chandidas by, you know, David Kumar post from 1932. So it's very interesting, you know, the films that become part of this, you know, a lucky enterprise almost. The discernment of luck and Islam cinema extended to the portrayal of bitter humor in film. Rehman wrote that comic scenes in contemporary cinema were inferior and off low grade. In comparing Indian films with foreign films and here specifically European and American films, he argued that most comic stars in the West infuse their acting with innovation, novelty and mischief. Meanwhile, Indian comedians considered Badakh Lafi or incivility as bitter humor. And it's very interesting how you know the reality of comedy barely fit into the framework of the Hizib or culture that you know the journalists are formulating within the tradition. So the need for reform of comedy from Badakh Lafi to good moral humor was particularly crucial in relation to consumption of films and the kind of harmful effects that were assumed to, you know, the film was supposed to have on women and children. And of course, this is the period when you know audiences are also getting very diverse and expanding. The anxieties about the effects of cinema on spectators were articulated in many contemporary film journals. So this is not specific to Google Journal reports. The homogenized perceptions about you know cinema going public as unhooded uncivilized masses were recurrently referenced as Germany class, or you know the for our class and things like that and you know they there's constant discussion about their you know need to impart a lucky teaching and you know reform them and all of that. So within the lucky framework, according to Rehman, and I quote, the role of cinema was to enable the progress of the nation. Their film viewing instilled notions of courage, bravery, conviction, firmness of mind, perseverance, affection, kindheartedness, sacrifice, selflessness, self respect, bravery, devotion, mercy, compassion, purity, chastity and modesty and such a long, you know, order of demands. These fetishized ideas of empowerment were thought to be attainable through the disciplinary efforts that valorized mental strength, considered crucial for the formation of the ethical individual. The Urdu film journalist believed that a lucky film, if there was, you know, such a genre would emancipate the people or the up bomb and propel the nation and the community to emerge out of its current state of despair on the pool. These new improved ethical viewers will then contribute to the progress of the nation and create possibilities for India to compete with other developed nations of the world. The Urdu film journals explored these ideas of nation-building and ethical citizenship, which were crucially tied together neatly through the wider discourse of Akhlaq and Islam in relationship to cinema. Apart from these, you know, very didactic and very straightforward, you know, articles that promote Akhlaq and Islam of cinema, a very creative and sort of tangential, almost, strategy through which the discourse of Akhlaq and Islam were promoted was in a column called Ishke Kutu or Letters of Love, which appeared in Shama quite regularly. And so there was a note that kind of, you know, preceded this column which said that, and I quote, mentioned below are letters collected from the letter box of film actresses. These letters are not merely published for fun. The grand motive is to reform the acts of those misled youths and fans of actresses through ties of their own actions. The published love letters of actresses were written in an old fashioned style that authors in Shama were otherwise very old and critiqued for the use of hackneyed and archaic, romantic jargon. They were amorously signed off by love struck fans with, you know, things like up the Romani preemie, your romantic lover, or to hire a husnita Saudai, crazy about your beauty. From addresses in Delhi, Kanpur, Lahore, Aligarh, these letters can be placed within the longer tradition of epistolary exchange between lovers in literary culture. Some of these letters meet the original journal spaces of excess and titillation and romantic digression. The balance had to be struck between two sort of, you know, putatively opposing modes of behavioral urges contemporary film journals created innovative content to address and feed into the excitement and curiosity generated by modern women. The actress was the site of desire and anxiety. Shama's attempts to present titillating material in the garb of Akhla texts as tools for Islam was a master stroke. The column was popular as can be gleaned from the letters to the editor in the different issues of Shama, where readers made inquiries as to how they had access to the letter of the actresses. They asked how these letters came to Shama or did they help you to cure them directly from the actresses, and to which, you know, very, very, you know, cleverly would give very vague replies, thereby, you know, leaving a lot to the readers digression, discretion and, you know, imagination. So despite the desire to instill good luck and to reform the way we do. The old film journal was full of images and image and imaginary scenarios of love and romance from the poetry to the letters to the artwork. The journals had a particular visual vocabulary, even though limited in the early period to hand on illustration then very few images, which are very amorous and erotic and of course, you know, the later issues. There are a lot more photographs and in the sort of, you know, 60s and 70s use of their being self isn't a lot of these photographs you know interacting with the stars there in photographs of you know star weddings and marriages and so it's a very interesting, you know, visual aesthetic and vocabulary in the later period but the early period is very much, you know, hand drawn and beautiful illustrations and then studio portraits and more sort of portraits of actresses and things like that. The cover page of the 1946 Shama annual was designed by Shafi Ahmed. The hand illustrated design depicts a couple entwined in a loving embrace presenting the proverbial moth to the flame already implied by the very title of the journal that is Shama, which is light. The woman's body in a translucent garment emerges out of the lamp, the artist's claim of passion, while the man with the kind of, you know, diphenous wings envelops the woman in an irresistible caress. This image was a reference and owed to the readers of Shama, who were lovingly called as per my name. And it is interesting but not surprising that the journal Shama was depicted as female and the fans of the readers as me. And I'm just going to conclude. So in conclusion, this encounter between the Urdu public still and cinema was significant in encouraging a readership of Urdu film journals that showed significant overlaps between the literary and the film, campaigning over the Islam of films and the audiences through a framework, allowed Urdu film journalists to define and refine their role as film critics with a literary conscience. Many of the Urdu journals, by incorporating literary genres expanded the reach of cinema and brought new entanglement of cinema with the literature. And also the Helvet Shama or Amar Jalalabadi's star or even film stage, the successful formats that incorporated literary genres, such as the short story, Sana, Ghazal, poetry, etc. Urdu drama as well with film reviews, film criticism, advertisements, thus in their style, format and address, they attempted to emulate literary journals but content related to cinema needed new strategies of engagement. The creative use of Urdu language and Shama or even in star for the presentation of the material added to these journals uniqueness. The wide spectrum of their address and varying tones produced inherent tensions between the project of Akhla and Islam and the titillations and salacious gossip with which it holds. And stop sharing my screen. Thank you so much Sarah for that fascinating presentation. And without wasting much time I would like to welcome Professor if the car daddy to have a discussion with Sarah, after which we'll open it up for questions. But if the audience would like to put in their questions. Please use the Q&A box in the chat box to do so. Thank you. Can you all hear me. Yeah, no. First of all, thanks so much. This is a great work exciting research and very informative and kind of talk which has actually got me thinking along a lot of, you know, questions. So one thing I mean at the number of points I wanted to just touch on one is of course the state of archives and, you know, the difficulty of kind of innocence finding this material and which you kind of which is not the main central point of your talk but I think it's still bear a word kind of stressing the that it's not easy to do research simply because a lot of the material is it's hard to find or unavailable and you know, there were there were, you know, even the number the titles of magazines and their issues and their copies are not easy to find and I mean in this respect, you know, as as we were speaking that Shama was also published, you know, in Karachi after after after the partition and and I just I don't know if I can share the screen just for a bit and show the cover of Shama is here. Yes. Yeah, so this is the this is the Shama from from from Karachi and it this is from 1958 and you know there's some inside pages that and in the beginning they cover basically they cover a film news which includes actually interestingly kind of notes on cinema both in Lahore as well and and Karachi as well as in Bombay right so you know so the news is all mixed, you know, together okay so so so one thing that I think that one can think about the Urdu your title was the Urdu kind of sphere what was that word used Urdu public sphere. Yeah the Urdu public sphere also spills across borders and you know moves across wherever the reading public is put including land and you know maybe parts of Africa where people were settled and we're reading Urdu so that's I think one point to note. The other is that I just wanted to show this. This is a report which was done in Pakistan in the early 60s on the state was a fact finding report on cinema. And these are all the titles that you know are. These are titles published from Karachi, Lahore, Lailpur, Peshawar, Kuwaita, Rawalpindi, Dhaka, you know and then you have the weeklies then you have the fort mightlies and also you have, you have the monthlies, okay, and, and I mean, like, you know, apart from one or apart from these titles, a lot of these are totally, you know, I mean, I have not been able to find any of them. Okay, so, so I think the question of, I think this is important to underscore because the question of the materials we I mean is from, you know, from Delhi was a very prominent film magazine but then there would have been lesser versions, you know, of magazines published from not just Delhi but from all sorts of places and, and so so a lot of the history that that we want to recover is, it faces this impasse. Okay, so so that would be one thing. Regarding your point, your main argument that has to do with the question of a clock text and reform, I think that's very compelling. And of course, most of our alum has worked on, you know, a clock personate kind of a clock text but then other people have also since carried that in, in terms of the reform movements that are, you know, from the 19th century onwards. In the case of cinema, one thing that one argument that that Ravi Vasudevan makes actually is on the, the so called Muslim social film. So, and I have some notes here I just wanted to read those. So, so he's, he's what he calls the Muslim social film genre which you know he had the period he's looking at is from 1935 to 1945 that decade. And this developed in both Lahore and Bombay, you know, and, and what he argues is that this rose as an response to increasing communalization in India. Right, and partly as a result of Muslim filmmakers countering the denigration of the Muslim community which was seen as socially backward. And before this period, the social film primarily evoked the world of Bush was Hindu Hindus and the dilemmas of reform in that universe, right, in other words that that that that reform social reform in cinema occurs earlier, so that it takes up Hindu subjects right Hindu families. Okay, and, and partly the critique that arises against Muslims, due to increasing communalization is that Muslims that I feed and corrupt etc etc right. So, so I wonder if that's an argument that makes, you know, is somehow ties into your, I mean you don't bring in the Muslim social. How, how, how much the category of Muslim social is important for your analysis of a clock. Okay, so that's a question that I'm asking. And so let me just read a little bit more so just my notes that Muslims had been depicted in commercial cinema is living in the, in the in the past in kind of historical stasis and preoccupied with dead, dead, dead, ancient and elite kind of Nawabi, you know, kind of pastimes right. And, or they were other genres, based on Arabian night's themes and Oriental fantasies and pistas and dastans and so on right and and partly then. The movie Vasudevan makes the observations that films deploying and I quote the Punjab and Urdu narrative and performance culture it generated was part of a larger territory that then beyond the subcontinent. So that would also, you know, if one wants to think about the circulation of cinema also as not just the film magazines but the film magazines would make sense in relation to somehow people who are viewers of the cinema then how do we think about those articulations. And. And so the so so when this Muslim social emerges and grapple centrally with questions of reform and modernity in kind of Muslim communities and, and you know he talks about films like Najma, which was 1943 Mahmoud Khan Ilan also 1948 which is Mahmoud Khan. 1941 by SF Hussein, Masoom by also SF Hussein 1942 right so. So in other words, you don't make the argument in terms of your argument about a clock as one of the, let's say modalities that the film journal articulates but I wonder if the two can be, you know, brought into conversation okay so that's that's a concern. Another concern is the relation between let's say the high and the low, okay, put it kind of crudely. And I mean the film I mean you know or do at you know during the from the 30s you know onwards would be. I mean they were very, you know, this is the age of journals right and and you know kind of elite literary journals that are catering to to well established authors right. And where is the film journal as you noted that in Shama there were some prominent authors like Rajinder Sidney baby and so on published but primarily this is not the platform for for established and well recognized writers. Right. And you also mentioned in your talk about the, the need to reform the what is it the dope as a valley or what was that. Okay, so so what's the what's the role of kind of let's say the question of class of genre. Okay, of the question of of high literary value that is associated with kind of let's say a way of looking at the world that would be more okay to put it that way vis-à-vis the film journal that is trying to in a sense straddle both, you know, right. And the fourth thing about the clock argument is that so if you wanted to, if you wanted to really read become a morally better person you would read in a clock text, right. I mean this is the kind of the a tongue in cheek counter argument I'm making right so the reason you go and read a film journalist because you don't care actually about being, you know, becoming reformed you want to have fun. Okay, so, so what to what degree do you want to hold on to in other words are both things possible in the film journal are the intention with each other, you know, so perhaps that's also something that perhaps if you could speak more. Yeah. Thank you so much for your comments. So, I'm going to begin with the archive question because you know that's something that you know I also grappled with a lot when I began the search, the research and, you know, initially when I started out, you know, my research, I was only looking for Shama and that was the sort of only popular journal that I had got off. And then, when I sort of, you know, came to England and I was at the British Library and I started, you know, getting at the catalog of, you know, publications from the 1930s. You know, again, the similar kind of list that you showed about, you know, publications from Pakistan and they were, you know, more than a dozen of, you know, titles of magazines in the 30s and 40s, which are completely lost to us right now. And that kind of, you know, the catalog kind of, you know, spurred this kind of, you know, search for the magazine, sort of, and I traveled to, you know, India, and, you know, I also went to the Library of Congress in Washington, different libraries in the UK, in search of, you know, the film magazine, and it's really amazing because, you know, a lot of the sort of archives, I mean the film archive, for example, doesn't have a single copy in Pune of the film magazine, you know, the film magazine. So that was kind of a really big setback. And then when I moved to, you know, traditional sort of, you know, official archives of Uddu material, you know, there was always, you know, this kind of, you know, accent that I kind of encountered and also like a surprise from a lot of the, you know, library and stuff and they always came up with this surprise that you're looking for an Uddu film magazine, why? Because, you know, the film magazine was always, you know, seen as, you know, tuffery or, you know, like diversion. You know, you read and just throw and, you know, just get rid of. So it wasn't really, it hasn't been archived. And that is a huge, you know, setback and a kind of, you know, dilemma almost for researchers when you're trying to map this kind of, you know, history of the, you know, film culture within the Uddu public sphere and what was going on in this time. Having said that, I also encountered a lot of, you know, people that had memories of reading, you know, Uddu film journals from this period and later, you know, later periods and that was very interesting because, you know, each came up with this very kind of, you know, very different kind of narrative about their own personal relationship to the Uddu film magazine, which was, you know, not just, and which was very different from this kind of, you know, Akhlaki, you know, morality that the film magazine is trying to project to its readers while the readers themselves have a very different memory and attachment to the film magazine as a material object and an object of, you know, a film. So then coming to, you know, the idea about, you know, the Muslim social and, you know, so a lot of this, you know, my engagement with, you know, the issues around Aflaq are, you know, coming from how, you know, a lot of the Uddu journalists in this particular publication, how the Uddu journalists are looking at these ideas of reform of cinema and, you know, incorporating Aflaq texts and ideas and the sources of Aflaq within, you know, in the ambit of film. And what is very interesting is that actually in a lot of the texts that I looked at the article, the columns, the Muslim social as a specific category was not discussed, it was always, you know, social as a genre, you know, which was seen as, you know, a kind of viable genre for Aflaq film. And, you know, genres such as the historical and, you know, devotional films, these were the genres that a lot of, you know, journalists would talk about and would see as, you know, films that were promoting good Aflaq. So there was not that kind of differentiation between, you know, the social, the, you know, and the Muslim social in that sense, at least in some of the journals and the articles that I read. But it would be very interesting to see, you know, how Aflaq I think may have been, you know, sort of mobilized within the sort of, you know, imaginary of the Muslim social, for example. And of course the Muslim social, I think, you know, it kind of really distills a lot of the, you know, cosmopolitanism of Urdu in general. So, I think it would be kind of very interesting to see because a lot of the journals in this period, you know, are also trying to, you know, present the, you know, the world of Urdu as, you know, something which is cosmopolitan. And, you know, which is not, there are also a lot of language debates in the Urdu from journals which I obviously didn't have time to present. But in the, you know, in the journals, they're constantly talking about, you know, communal harmony, and, you know, how, you know, Urdu is the language of cinema and so there's this kind of trust, which is trying to move away from the impulse of, you know, a very isolated Muslim social world. And to look at the, a lot more in broader terms as a kind of, you know, almost, you know, looking at both, you know, texts such as Chandidas, for example, you know, saying, so it's kind of quite varied the dynamics. In terms of, you know, the high and the low and the kind of authors that Shama particularly, you know, commission, I think that at least in the early period while it was still trying to establish itself there were kind of newer writers but over the period of, you know, 60s, 70s and 80s, I've seen like some of the, you know, really important so-called highbrow literary writers actually, you know, published in Shama. And there was this kind of consensus that if there was any film journal that you could, you know, see as, you know, as, you know, respectable was Shama. So there was this kind of, you know, Shama was almost at the, you know, edge of the, you know, low and high. So is that, do you see that as a trajectory? I mean, it was not always like that. It becomes more a platform for more serious writing in the later years. Is that what you're saying? Okay. And it's also like, you know, it's very interesting because when you see the 1946 issue, of course, I don't have, you know, early issues, like I don't have the first issue from 1948, unfortunately. But if you see the 1946 issue, you know, in the editorial, you see how the whole sort of, you know, like the way it is, you know, the bifurcation between established writers and, you know, emerging writers is presented by the healthy as a kind of, you know, that look here is this kind of, you know, literary flash film journal which is going to, you know, present certain kinds of, you know, writing in a film format. Good. And regarding like the question of fun versus like being reformed, right? So, I think there's, there's, there is that tension, you know, that is quite visible in the journal, you know, like the letters to, you know, editor but also in the love letters of the actresses, you know, there is that tension where they present film material, which is, you know, very, you know, there is all kind of, you know, romantic love being professed to actresses, however, there is, you know, there is this commentary which is supposed to, you know, tame your urges and, you know, your instincts. So there is that kind of, you know, tug and push and pull that's happening in terms of, you know, the different urges that a film magazine is supposed to, you know, to evoke in the reader. And that I think is an exciting part of the film magazine. Sara and Iftikar, we have a few questions. So should we start taking them? I think we have a, we have half an hour to, for Sara to answer the question. So I'll start taking them in order. The first one is from Marcus. How do you evaluate the persistence of moralism here? A clock as an excuse for indulging desires that don't fit in with bourgeois expectations of self improvement or the dominant interest or unreconciled urges? Yeah, I think it's something that, you know, quite interesting because there is this, you know, tug, as I said before, you know, between these two different urges where, you know, there's this emphasis constantly on, you know, being this moral and ethical subject. And the film viewer in need of, you know, reform and trying to tame the audiences. However, you know, as and when you see the journal and the way it is structured, there's so much, you know, salacious gossip. So I think there is this kind of, you know, expectation that is set out by these, you know, bourgeois elite writers, which then don't, you know, conform to the expectations of the readers and so there are these, you know, definitely unreconciled urges. Thanks, Sarah. The next question is from Trinankur Banerjee. He says, thank you for your talk. It was really illuminating. I was wondering if you came across anything on the Muslim comedians like Noor Mohammad Charlie, Gori et al. Who were a major part of pre-independence Bombay cinema and migrated to Pakistan after partition? So, I mean, there were, there are images, for example, of, you know, Gori, and there are also, you know, film stills and things like that, but there's not specifically any, you know, a lot of these aplaqui texts, you know, which are trying to talk of, you know, bitter humor. There's a very kind of generic way of, you know, talking of comedy. So there's not specific examples that they draw on. What I also found was that there is a kind of, you know, Euro-centricism and a kind of very heavy reliance on American cinema as, you know, seen as a kind of model cinema. And so there's a kind of comparison which is being made between Indian cinema through the American and the European comedy scene. So, you know, Charlie Chaplin is referenced a couple of times in these as, you know, and it's very interesting because Charlie Chaplin, you know, in the early part of his career was not seen as somebody who was, you know, respectable humor, and it was only later that he becomes like that. So it's kind of interesting how though, you know, in the old movie magazine and the period that actually Indian comedians are generically quite dismissed. So, yeah, I don't think there's any specific reference to them, but there were like, you know, some photographs and studio, sorry, film stills where they are. Thanks Sarah. Next, we have two questions from Afro's Taj. Do you want me to read out both of them together or? Okay, the first one is, did the social messages of Shama, etc. change after independence? And if so, how? That's the first question. Okay, so, I mean, social messages in what context? I mean, specifically what does, you know, a social message, I'm kind of unclear about what that means, but if you mean, you know, the way in which Aflaq, you know, ideas around Aflaq and Islam cinema were framed, I think that kind of persists even later on in the later issues where, you know, there is an emphasis on reform and, you know, constantly seeing that the role of the film journalist is to intervene within, you know, what is happening in the film business and film production and constantly strive for improvement. So that pretty much remains the same. Of course, the context changes post-partition. There's also this whole impulse to, you know, there are a lot of articles in the later issues that post-independence that are talking of, you know, harmony and talking of, you know, harmony between the two countries and promoting films that are, you know, more sort of secular in their past. And the next question from Afroz is, when did Shama begin to recognize that the Indian and Pakistani film industries were two separate entities? Because in the issue of Karachi, Shama, that if the Karstab showed, the two industries were still perceived as together in some sense. I think this is true of not just Shama, but quite a few other journals as well even filmic here. For all its, you know, Babura, but the trio against, you know, the emerging new country and, you know, so makers migrated to Pakistan. There's still a lot of, you know, studio news that is looking at both countries in up to the 50s, I think. But yeah, I mean, and then of course it all changes. I haven't really looked at for this specific, you know, so I can't really comment when it ends. But yeah, I've seen some, you know, in the 50s, there's still, you know, Shama as well as others in journals where, you know, Lahore. I mean, Lahore, I don't think was really, you know, in a shape to, you know, put these films at that time. But there is this kind of, you know, discussion about Muja Ha, for example, who is, you know, who's moved there. So there's that kind of talk of, you know, filmmaker being, you know, moving to different cities in Lahore and Karachi. Yeah, I mean the Bombay film industry was far bigger than, you know, and Lahore was kind of shattered because of, you know, because the studio owners were, you know, they left. And so there was this kind of, and so I mean in the sense that the, you know, the Pakistani magazines would, I mean, you know, the presence of Indian films in the Pakistani imagination was far bigger than vice versa. I would, I would, you know, surmise, but Salma Siddiqui has done work on the early exchanges between. I mean, even in Salma's work, you know, she talks about, you know, how, you know, the way in which, you know, Baba Rao Patel specifically in India, you know, discusses a lot of the, you know, this migration of, you know, filmmakers to, you know, Lahore and this is kind of really the triolic way in which Baba Rao Patel in India discussing this kind of migration. But there is also, I think a lot of, you know, kind of still there's a lot of nostalgia as well in some of these journals about this kind of loss of Lahore and yeah. Yes, we have quite a few questions actually so yeah they're coming in. The next question is from Soheb Niyazi. How does the Urdu film journal compare with journals in Hindi and other major regional language journals that had a regional film industry. How does the Indian literary authors and for that matter in most postcolonial contexts, cinema as a medium of entertainment and education is welcomed. While in the European context is treated with suspicion for being a popular mass cultural media that had the potential to vulgarize art and culture. The term boy in Bangla means both the book and a film. Film by Tagore was considered as Rupert Chalut Prabhup meaning movement of beauty's forms. How does one understand the role of the Urdu film journal in the light of these dichotomous tendencies. I think I mean I would say that even this is, I mean this is I mean European cinema is not one thing right that you have the authors and you have you know you have, you know kind of serious criticism written from very early on so. So I would not say that all European or Western cinema was seen as necessarily degrading. Okay, so I mean I think one would have to differentiate genres and so on. I mean there's a Frankfurt school culture industry argument, you know but that that you know one wouldn't, but that would have to do with certain genres and commercial cinema and so on one wouldn't, I think, want to characterize all European cinema in one in the same with the same set of values associated. So comparing the Urdu film journals with Hindi or even other journals. So, I mean because of my very limited language expertise, I've only looked at Hindi journals like Chitrapat and also drawing a lot from Ravi Khan's work on Chitrapat and other journals and Madhuri. And Ravi Khan also talks about you know how a lot of the Hindi journals are, you know, kind of presenting film material through literary strategies. So there is that kind of similarity there in that sense. But, you know, I haven't looked at the Bengali magazines, unfortunately, or even the Marathi magazines or the Tamil magazines and that would be very interesting to see you know whether there are these kind of, you know, overlaps between these different languages and how the regional industries were kind of, I mean we know sort of how they are kind of, you know, there are these circuits and there are these you know interactions and constant flows of personnel from one industry to another from Calcutta to Bombay and then from Lahore and from Lahore to Bombay. So it is quite a sort of, you know, mobile industrial formation. In terms of like, I agree with the fact that, you know, for European cinema is not always, I think, not always looked as this kind of, you know, with suspicion, I guess, but because at least in some of the articles that I have looked at there's a very interesting, you know, you know, valorization of, you know, American cinema and certain genres, you know, of American film that are seen as, you know, like certain, you know, you know, thrillers, for example, are seen as, you know, kind of path breaking and, you know, those are the ones that Indian filmmakers should try and make or even the historical, are seen as, you know, exemplary. And this is this kind of valorization of American or European cinema actually is more to do with the technique of film than with the, you know, with the, you know, the content of the film or the, you know, the ethics and the morality to the film. And so it is more about appreciation of the technique of filmmaking and the way in which, you know, the camera work here and so on and so forth. Thanks Sarah. The next question is from Salma Siddiqi. This was great Sarah, thanks to the magazines have any sense of the journalists proximity to the industry, especially Shama, which was published from Delhi. What's the sense of the access that Urdu journalists had had to filming and stars. Thanks to you here. So, I think in the sort of journals, the early period that I looked at, there's not that much sense. There are these hints at, you know, the fact that, you know, in the letters to the editor. There was always, you know, kind of trying to establish that he's very close to, you know, Nargis, for example, and you know, other filmmakers, and he's also there's a lot of, you know, you know, suggestion to the fact that he's traveling to Bombay to different studios to, you know, see the production of certain films and so there is that sense but there are no photographs which are the photographs come at a much later stage so in the 1670s and 80s when you look at the journal, it is full of, you know, the use of the healthy with, you know, you know, pohoting with like all of the stars from the period, you know, Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor and, you know, all the who's who of the film industry, he's, you know, shown photographs, and the journal publishes those. There's also like, you know, the Nikanama of Dilip Kumar that is published and there's this kind of, you know, show of the fact that he was present at the occasion and so he does present a lot of, you know, a lot of these photographs in the journal to establish that he's very close to the film stars and filmmakers. And I think there's also the suggestion that, you know, film stars come to Delhi and they, you know, stay over at, you know, his bungalow in Delhi and so but this is much later this is not in the 40s this happens a lot later. The next question is from Rita Rad. Did you find any ethical conduct related to money news? Not any references to money, but in general, I think there was, I think there was this kind of implicit, you know, suggestion that you don't talk about the salaries of, you know, active and active and that kind of was pretty much in the journal, which, yeah, but I don't think there was any kind of explicit reference or kind of suggestion for money. Yeah, I'm not sure about the question money. I mean, you know, there's also the, you know, the like the morality of many plots where the rich, you know, like the industrialist is corrupt, etc. Right. I mean, in a sense that, you know, there are kind of narrative devices that drive, you know, the plot that frequently are based on, you know, like differences in kind of class where the rich are in inevitably, okay, you know, morally depraved, etc. Right. So, so is that is that one? I mean, is that a but they're also in a sense celebrated. I mean, that's what I'm saying that one of the things that the argument about the clock I think I would urge you to temper it also with with the countercurrents that actually cinema itself and it's even it's it's writings in the journal are doing because at some level the cinema is profoundly amoral, right, in the sense that even if it eventually has a moral resolution in which you have the good guys when throughout the plot is actually a celebration of, you know, audacious and kind of amoral, you know, lifestyles. And so in the sense how convincing is the eventually the, you know, the bourgeois moral ending, right. So, so I would say that you have both things that that exists very profoundly and powerfully in cinema and does does that find a kind of an analog in the film journal. Okay, I mean, I guess that's the way I would pose that my question. It does, you know, in the way of the film journal itself is quite convicted in the way of, you know, for example, a lot of advertisements or images, you know, some stills are, you know, placed in the, you know, in the general. Or even, you know, there are all these advertisements in the film journal, which I didn't have time to talk about, but something that I look at in my larger pieces, you know, for all kinds of, you know, sexual health of, you know, men and women, there are all kinds of portions that are being advertised and so there is this kind of, you know, excess that the film journal becomes a space of. Thanks Sarah. There is one question from, so it's basically a set of four questions from Ravi. I think this will be our last one before we wrap up today. So the questions are, thank you for this interesting talk Sarah, a couple of queries. Number one, like Baburao Patel did use of deli also have any direct connection with the film industry. Of course, both of them are based in different cities use of being in Delhi, unlike Baburao who was there in the film city itself. They don't make any foray into filmmaking prior to entering film journalism. Can you dwell a bit upon how and what made use of deli enter film journalism. The second question is in the 40s, we know that but should I take them in one by one. So, I'm actually not entirely sure of how he ventures into, you know, film journalism but I know that they were these ancillary, you know, business interests that he had, like the Inani medicine and the letter words and real estate. I don't think that he had any connection to the industry for the, I mean, I'm totally up for standing, you know, to be connected at this point but in my own research I didn't come across that. However, he does establish connections, you know, through his work in the film general, and he also later on in the 50s, you know, produced, you know, one was from 1955 and I'm not wrong. And there's another film which I can't think of but, you know, he does he does try his hand at, you know, producing films and, you know, investing in certain studios and things like that so there's that kind of, you know, expansion of his role as a film editor for different ancillary film businesses so that does happen in the later. The next question is in the 40s we know that Baburao Patil, through film India, gradually turned rapidly anti Muslim with partition leading him to make a very decisive shift in his stance. What kind of shift is visible in use of delby Shamar stance. Did you find them in conversation or debate at any moment post partition. So, so there are very interesting, you know, you know, Hari Barkam, the column, you know, there's a lot of like digs at, you know, Barbara Patil, and you know there are lots of jives at his you know relationships and you know this. So, there is constant dialogue with the media and there are references to, you know, the magazine as well and the rival keys are quite obvious. But in terms of the kind of, I don't, I particularly didn't see any kind of, you know, similar shift in, you know, you know, a kind of, you know, anti Hindus stance in his writing. Like I said, you know, there is this kind of, there's, there's almost this, you know, desire for, you know, promoting communal harmony and things like that and talking about, you know, what a loss of the partition has been and things like that. So there's that kind of morning columnist in the editorial. And the next question, again from Ravi is, where did Shama figure in the economics of the film journal of the film journalism, especially in North India, in relation to Hindi film magazines. Okay, actually, it's very interesting but I don't have, you know, the figures with me right now but you know the circulation figures of Shama from the 60s and 60s that are available to us actually show that it was one of the most popular film magazine, like you know, 70 to 80 copies being sold in all of North India, in all of India at this time. And so, yeah, I think it was quite, quite popular, and was making a lot of money. Another way I think of gauging the economics or, you know, to think of what kind of money was making. There was this kind of, you know, the, there was a crossword that Shama regularly published at the last page. And, you know, the amount of money that was being, you know, the prize money was sometimes, you know, in blacks, if I'm not exaggerating, and it's amazing that, you know, the amount of people that would subscribe to Shama, you know, also for this, you know, particular aspect of the magazine and in one of my interviews you know, a reader of Shama who is now in his 80s and he specifically told me that, you know, a lot of, like in his college days, a lot of the Shama would be, you know, sold in this mutilated form. So the last page, which was the, you know, the crossword would be kind of, you know, you know, torn off by somebody and they would use it to send it to claim their prize. And these mutilated copies then would be sold at a cheaper price because they didn't have the, you know, crossword in them. So, you know, college students were always, you know, looking for these mutilated copies because, you know, they would be cheaper. So, yeah, so I think it was quite popular and they did fairly well in terms of their circulation. And Sarah, I don't think we have time for the last question from Ravi, but I'm happy to read it out to you if you would like. Sure, yeah. Yeah, so the last question from him is finally can you say something about the readership of Shama, do you think it would be appropriate to say that by the 40s Urdu public sphere had actually predominantly become Muslim public sphere. Maybe you could think about that question or if you, if you like want to answer very briefly. I actually kind of disagree with the fact that you know the public sphere had become Muslim public sphere, because I think there is there was a lot of contestation, you know, around the use of language and the kind of identity politics and this kind of representation of Muslim specifically, I mean, and so, you know, Shama itself, you know, and a lot of other film journals from this period, you know, are trying to, you know, fight back this kind of, you know, boxing of, you know, Muslim journals into this, you know, public sphere, and where they are talking of, you know, the magazine as a kind of, you know, for a wider readership, which is cosmopolitan and diverse and eclectic, and not just Muslim readers. And many of the refugees from the Punjab who would have come and settled in Delhi, you know, from Lahore and so on would have been fair. I mean, they would have known Urdu, so they would have been readers presumably, right? And then there are readers, you know, in Hyderabad, in Calcutta and, you know, other parts of India. So, yeah, I mean the circulation figures are there to see, you know, that it's doing so well, you know, it's been sold at such a, you know, huge market. The distribution is quite varied. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you, Iftikar, for that fascinating session. And thank you especially, Sarah, for joining in from India. I hope the situation there improves soon. Please stay safe and take care of yourself. Thank you to the audience for joining us tonight. Our next seminar will be on the 10th of May, where Dr Swati Moitro from University of Calcutta will be speaking on mobile women for anecdotes about book distribution. The session will be chaired by Professor Anindita Ghosh from the University of Manchester. Just note the change of time for this seminar. It will start at 445 instead of 530. So thank you everyone. Please take care of yourselves. Stay safe, stay well. And thank you again, Sarah and Iftikar. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.