The Hindi Library and the Making of an Archive: The Hindi Sahitya Sammelan from 1911 to 1973

Abstract

This article focuses on the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, founded under the aegis of the Nagari Pracharini Sabha in 1910 in Allahabad, and its active bid to establish what can be seen as the first archive of, and in, Hindi. While the Sammelan’s library functioned as a public-facing, community-serving space that housed and issued printed books, periodicals and newspapers in its reading room, the archive was imagined as an accumulation of all materials, print and manuscript, relating to Hindi, with access limited to critics and scholars. The article argues that infrastructure like the library and the archive critically contributed to the process of consolidation and legitimisation of the discourse on Hindi nationalism. It also traces the post-Independence assimilation of this library to the machinery of state bureaucracy, specifically to the institution of the Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sahitya Sammelan Act, 1956, and the central government’s Hindi Sahitya Sammelan Act, 1962, which declared the Sammelan ‘an institution of national importance’. How do these acts reflect tensions between the politicisation of Hindi as the national language and democratisation in post-colonial India? Here, the article shows that Hindi was not only being monetarily patronised in the 1950s and 1960s, but was also vigilantly monitored, drawing staunch resistance from the Sammelan, which saw itself as a moral alternative to the state. It traces the history of these legislative processes which ultimately resulted in a petition against the 1962 Act in the Supreme Court in 1973, which declared it invalid.

Keywords:

• Hindi archive
• Hindi library
• Hindi Sahitya Sammelan
• institution of national importance

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the editors of this special section and the two anonymous South Asia reviewers for their feedback and comments. Thanks to Ujjwal Utkarsh and Priyasha Mukhopadhyay for reading multiple drafts of this article, Javed Majeed, Francesca Orsini and Alok Rai for their advice and support for this project from its inception, and to my colleagues at SNU (particularly Atul Mishra and Jabin Jacob) and their feedback at the Idea of the Archive conference and the department seminar where this work was presented. Finally, thank you to the librarians at the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Allahabad.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Sammelan Patrikā (Margshirsh Saṃvat 1971/Nov.–Dec. 1914), p. 94, translated from Hindi. All translations are by the author.

2. Ibid., p. 93.

3. In turn, the Nagari Pracharini Sabha was formed from a debating club at Queen’s Collegiate School, Benares, in 1893. By 1894, it had already attracted members from a diverse range of intellectuals and writers such as Madan Mohan Malaviya, George Grierson, and even the prominent writer Devki Nandan Khatri who wrote the immensely successful Chandrakāntā Santati. See Christopher King, One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 144.

4. For a detailed profile of Tandon, see Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 347–51. For more on the relationship between Tandon, the Congress and Hindi, see William Gould, ‘Congress Radicals and Hindu Militancy: Sampurnanand and Purushottam Das Tandon in the Politics of the United Provinces, 1930–1947’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 36, no. 3 (July 2002), pp. 619–55. On the end of Gandhi’s relationship with the Sammelan, see Jyotirindra Das Gupta, Language Conflict and National Development: Group Politics and National Language Policy in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), pp. 120–1.

5. Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940, p. 137.

6. Bharatendu Harishchandra (1850–85) and Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi (1864–1938) occupy central positions in the fashioning of Hindi, evidenced by the fact that entire epochs of Hindi literary production are named after them. For an in-depth study of editors as active promulgators of Hindi in the public sphere, see Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhāratendu Hariśchandra and Nineteenth-Century Benaras (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997); Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940; Shobna Nijhawan, Women and Girls in the Hindi Public Sphere: Periodical Literature in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012); and Sujata Mody, The Making of Modern Hindi: Literary Authority in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018).

7. Ulrike Stark. ‘Associational Culture and Civic Engagement in Colonial Lucknow: The Jalsah-e Tahzib’, in Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 48, no. 1 (2011), pp. 1–33; Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940, p. 25; and Das Gupta, Language Conflict and National Development, p. 120. However, North Indian association culture in the early twentieth century was not informed only by one kind of activism. For more on the Hindustani Academy instituted in 1927, see David Lunn, ‘Across the Divide: Looking for the Common Ground of Hindustani’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 52, no. 6 (2018), pp. 2056–79, in which Lunn argues for ‘attempts by members of the cultural establishment to find, or create’ a ‘literary, cultural, and linguistic common ground that existed between Hindi and Urdu’ (p. 2059). Even though the Academy was instituted through an Act of the Legislative Assembly of the United Provinces, Lunn writes that it soon ‘outgrew this rather limited conceptualization’ (p. 2062).

8. For a detailed account of the Pracharini Sabha’s relationship with the colonial administration and patronage, see King, One Language, Two Scripts, pp. 148–55; and Sandria Freitag (ed.), Culture and Power in Banaras: Community, Performance, and Environment, 1800–1980 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

9. The Sammelan instituted the Mangla Prasad Paritoshik award from the moment of its institution. See Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940, pp. 80–5, for a detailed account of the kavi sammelan, or poet gatherings, as well as the examinations that the Sammelan regularly organised.

10. Christopher King, ‘The Nagari Pracharini Sabha (Society for the Promotion of the Nagari Script and Language) of Benares, 1893–1914: A Study in the Social and Political History of the Hindi Language’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA,1974, p. 328.

11. Ibid., pp. 296, 330. The United Provinces was constituted as Uttar Pradesh in 1950.

12. However, this search and its findings brought with it the contradictions inherent in the fixing of Hindi as Khari Boli: while the Sabha established a lineage of Khari Boli manuscripts emerging from ‘as early as the twelfth century’, a large chunk of the manuscripts were from later periods of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ibid., p. 331. King also writes that, often, the findings of this search did not result in Khari Boli texts but rather in texts written in Braj Bhasha and ‘other literary dialects’ such as Sur Sāgar and Satsai (p. 319).

13. While the exact date for the construction of the library could not be traced, the 1914 Sammelan Patrikā states that the library had been established on the premises of the kāryālaya.

14. The Sammelan Patrikā typically published three issues a year. From its beginning in 1914 till 1922, the Patrikā cost its readers Rs1 for an entire year’s subscription. An early advertisement for the Sammelan Patrikā reads: ‘Ek rupaye main itnā lābh! Lūṭ hai!! Lūṭ hai!! (So much benefit in one rupee! It’s a steal!! It’s a steal!!)’. Sammelan Patrikā (Kārtik Saṃvat 1972/Oct.–Nov. 1915).

15. In a section titled ‘Hindī Sabhāyein aur Hindī Pustakālaya’ (‘Hindi Societies and Hindi Libraries’), Pandit Ramswarup Sharma was praised for establishing several libraries ‘because of which the general public is being benefited’. Some of these libraries, such as the Gajraula Junction kā Pustakālaya and Biswan kā Ānand Pustakālaya, are listed as well as others like the Sohanlal Library and Chandrausi kī Sharma Prem Vardhini Library, indicating that Hindi readers were familiar with both (interchangeable and analogous) terms to refer to spaces of reading. Sammelan Patrikā (Phāgun Saṃvat 1972/1915), pp. 179–80.

16. Sammelan Patrikā (Aśvin Saṃvat 1972/Sept.–Oct. 1914), p. 87.

17. Sammelan Patrikā (Chaitra Saṃvat 1972/Mar.–April 1914), p. 195.

18. The memorandum, dated 3 October 1937, written entirely in English, and addressed to ‘Education Minister and Regional Minister’, was reproduced in the issue of the Patrikā: ‘Library and museum—Building costing Rs. 30,000 has been completed. Library contains 5020 books, 200 manuscripts and rare pictures’. Sammelan Patrikā (Bhadrapad-Aśvin Saṃvat 1994/Aug.–Oct. 1937), p. 59.

19. ‘Sangrahaṇ’, Monier Williams Online Dictionary [http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/monier/, accessed 25 Feb. 2019].

20. ‘Vrihat Sangrahālaya’, Sammelan Patrikā (Āṣāṛh-Shrāvaṇ Saṃvat 1980/June–Aug. 1923), n.p.g.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Mody, The Making of Modern Hindi, p. 91. Mody also writes: ‘Prior to 1900, terms such as kavya (literature; poetry), and bhasha bhandar (a vernacular/Hindi treasury) more frequented indicated “literature” than Sahitya’ (p. 91).

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid., pp. 91–2.

28. Other members at the inauguration included Jawaharlal Nehru, Kaka Kalelkar, Jamnalal Bajaj, Kailashnath Katju and Vijayalakshmi Pandit. Dwarka Prasad Shastri, ‘Sammelan Sangrahālaya’, in Sammelan Patrikā, Vol. 2 (1975), n.p.g.

29. Some sections were divided on the basis of the form of the literary materials they would house, for instance the Mudrit Granth Kaksh (Printed Texts Section) housed printed books. Some other sections were named after the people who made donations to the collections. For example, the Suraj Subhadra Kaksh (Suraj Subhadra Section) was named after Surajraj Dhariwal from Gwalior and his wife Subhadra and housed a donation of over two thousand handwritten manuscripts from their private collections. The Sammelan does not record how the sangrahālaya first processed these collections. As in the case of some single donor collections such as the Suraj Subhadra Kaksh, some collections, not modified from the form in which they were received, remain undisturbed and catalogued in this fashion to this day. In other cases, like the Ranvir Kaksh, a number of collections are housed in the same section. The Ranvir Kaksh consists largely of a single donation made by Ranvijay Singh, the then maharaja of Amethi, in memory of his father Ranvir Singh. However, the section also houses a few other ‘miscellaneous’ manuscript collections from other donors as well as handwritten scripts that the Sammelan itself collected. Ibid., p. 11.

30. Ibid.

31. A 1916 issue of the Sammelan Patrikā stated the reasons for an exhibition in Jabalpur in detail. It also asked readers to send their precious manuscripts according to a cataloguing system attached to the call. ‘Hindi Granthon kī Pradarshanī’, Sammelan Patrikā (Shrāvaṇ Saṃvat 1973/July–Aug. 1916), p. 288.

32. A section titled ‘Sammelan kī Pradarshanī’ (‘Sammelan Exhibition’) stated: ‘the exhibition was worth seeing and it had a sangraha of handwritten books as well as many good objects of art’. The Sammelan Patrikā also noted that it was reporting the event late: ‘It is regrettable that the last issue of the Patrikā did not carry pradarshanī-related news due to lack of space’. Sammelan Patrikā (Phālgun Saṃvat 1971/Feb.–Mar. 1914), p. 171.

33. See C. Sivaramamurti (ed.), Directory of Museums in India (New Delhi: Ministry of Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs, 1959), for a short entry on this. See B.N. Goswamy, ‘Another Past, Another Context: Exhibiting Indian Art Abroad’, in Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (eds), Exhibiting Cultures, the Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1991), for a profile of Rai Krishnadasa whom the museum website credits as a ‘renowned writer in Hindi and a pioneer among the Indian art historians’ (p. 73). Also see the official website for a timeline: ‘Milestones’, Bharat Kala Bhawan [http://www.bhu.ac.in/kala/Milestone_bkb.htm, accessed 29 May 2019].

34. Andrew Amstutz, ‘A Partitioned Library: Changing Collecting Priorities and Imagined Futures in a Divided Urdu Library, 1947–49’, in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies; Vol. 43, no. 3 (June 2020), DOI: 10.1080/00856401.2020.1747736; and Shaila Bhatti, Translating Museums: A Counter History of South Asian Museology (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2012), p. 22.

35. For a detailed discussion of these debates, see Das Gupta, Language Conflict and National Development. Also see Rai, Hindi Nationalism, for an account of the earliest debates in the Constituent Assembly between 1 August and 14 September 1949; and Benjamin Cohen, ‘Negotiating Differences: India’s Language Policy’, in Susan H. Williams (ed.), Social Difference and Constitutionalism in Pan-Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), for a decadal overview of the language debates in parliament in the 1950s.

36. The Official Languages Act, 1963 [http://www.rajbhasha.nic.in/en/official-languages-act-1963, accessed 14 May 2019].

37. Jyotirindra Das Gupta also records how Hindustani was being contested by ‘Hindi leaders’ from as early as 1947. Among the first leaders in the Constituent Assembly who supported the move were Tandon himself, Govind Das, Sampurnanand, Ravi Shankar Shukla and K.M. Munshi (p. 131). For more on the debates introduced by Tandon in the Constituent Assembly between 1946 and 1950, see Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘Hindu Nationalism and Democracy’, in Religion, Caste, and Politics in India (Delhi: Primus Books, 2010), pp. 208–9.

38. The Government of India Yearbook (Delhi: United Press, Old Secretariat, 1954), p. 3. In fact, the Yearbook, concerned with ‘Development of Hindi’, notes: ‘it may be remembered that 8 lakh rupees [Rs800,000] have already been earmarked for Hindi in the first Five Year Plan’ (p. 3), with Hindi being introduced in postal systems, and even taught on All India Radio (p. 121). The 1951 Yearbook notes that the Hindi Advisory Committee was set up ‘to bring about uniformity in the content and vocabulary of the Hindi used in broadcasting, films, publications and press releases’ (p. 235).

39. The Hindi Sahitya Sammelan Act No. 36 of 1956.

40. This ‘interim board’ consisted of nine regular members, a chairman and a secretary, all nominated by the UP state government. The Act also stated that the period could be twelve months ‘from the date of its establishment, [or within such further period as may be specified by the State Government, from time to time, in this behalf]’. Ibid.

41. The Act defines an institution of national importance as one ‘which serves as a pivotal player in developing highly skilled personnel within the specified region of the country/state’.

42. Damyanti Naranga, Hindi Sahitya Sammelan v. The Union of India and Others (1971) 1 SCC 678.

43. ‘Statement of Objects and Reasons’, The Hindi Sahitya Sammelan Act No. 36 of 1956.

44. Ibid.

45. The judgement also states: ‘We are unable to agree with the High Court that the new Sammelan, as constituted under the Act, is identical with the Society and that all the rights of forming an association, which were being exercised by members of the Society, have been kept in-tact under the Act’; and: ‘The right to form an association, in our opinion, necessarily, implies that the persons forming the Association have also the right to continue to be associated with only those whom they voluntarily admit in the Association’. Damyanti Naranga, Hindi Sahitya Sammelan v. The Union of India and Others (1971) 1 SCC 678.

46. See The Rampur Raza Library Act, 1975, and The Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library Act, 1969. These two libraries are managed by the Ministry of Culture. Also see Ministry of Culture (Sanskriti Mantralaya) under Government of India (Allocation of Business) Rules, 1961 (38–41) [https://cabsec.gov.in/writereaddata/allocationbusinessrule/completeaobrules/english/1_Upload_1187.pdf, accessed 17 May 2019].

47. The other ‘institutions of national importance’ are educational institutions with focus on medicine, technology, architecture and design, prominent among these being the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, School of Planning and Architecture, and National Institute of Design. For a complete list of the institutes that currently hold this distinction, see the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s website [https://mhrd.gov.in/institutions-national-importance, accessed 1 May 2019].

48. Orsini writes about these two camps: ‘In the Hindustani camp, apart from Congressmen like Rajendra Prasad, J. Nehru, Vinoba Bhave, Kaka Kalelkar, Rajagopalachari, Pandit Sundarlāl, and Jamnalal Bajaj, there were intellectuals of mixed Indo-Persian culture, followers of Gandhi and those who did not feel too strongly about the issue anyway, such as Premchand, Dr Tarachand, Jainendra Kumār, and Rāykṛṣṇadās. In the Hindi camp there were Hindi politicians and activists like Taṇḍon, Sampūrṇānand, V.N. Tivārī, Bālkṛṣṇa Śarmā ‘Navīn’, and those who believed that Hindi had the strength to be open and accommodating, like Śiva-prasād Gupta, Bābūrāo Viṣṇu Parāṛkar, Nirālā, and Rāmvilās Śarmā; there were those who subscribed to the notion of Hindi and Hindu history…and believed it was now time for Hindi to rule, and those who had devoted their lives to Hindi enterprises, like Lakṣmīdhar Vājpeyī, Śrīnārāyaṇ Chaturvedī, Ambikāprasād Vājpeyī, Viyogī Hari, Kiśoridās Vājpeyī, and Devīdatt Śukla’. See Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940, p. 363. Also see Gould, ‘Congress Radicals and Hindu Militancy’.

49. Sammelan Patrikā (Shrāvaṇ-Ashvin Saṃvat 2005/July–Oct. 1948), p. 331.

50. Ibid., p. 334.

51. Babu Sampuranand, ‘Hamārī Rāshṭrabhāshā’, in Sammelan Patrikā, Rāshṭrabhāshā Ank, 1947, p. 375.

52. For instance, when news reached the Sammelan that the education minister Abul Kalam Azad had decided that the state government should take up the work of doing Hindi ‘promotion’, the editorial read: ‘At Last Central Education Minister Maulana Azad Sāhab Has Come Back to His Senses’. Sammelan Patrikā (Ashvin-Shukla-Pratipadā Saṃvat 2010/Sept.–Oct. 1953), n.p.g.

53. Gangasagar Tiwari, ‘Shāsakīya Prabandhtantra ke Jad Yug mein Sammelan’, Hindī Sāhitya Sammelan kā Itihās, Vol. 2 (Allahabad: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, 2012), pp. 194–202.

54. This institution was the Bharati Bhawan, Delhi: the Sammelan contributed Rs350,000 towards its construction, but did not have any rights to its property. Ibid., pp. 197–8.

55. Ibid.

56. Ibid., p. 195.

57. For more on the Emergency and the events and formations in Indian political history leading up to it, see Gyan Prakash, Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy’s Turning Point (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019); and Bipan Chandra, In the Name of Democracy: JP Movement and the Emergency (Delhi: Penguin, 2003). See Emma Tarlo, Unsettling Memories: Narratives of the Emergency in Delhi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), for an anthropological account of how the Emergency and Indira Gandhi was narrativised, particularly in resettlement colonies in Delhi.

58. Shastri, ‘Dedication’ page, Sammelan Patrikā, 1975.

59. Ibid. However, the Five Year Plan referenced here, meant to run from 1974 until 1979, was rejected by the Janata Party appointed in 1977. For the period between 1977 and 1979, a modified Five Year Plan instead supported ‘The Central Institute of Indian Languages (Mysore), the Kendriya Hindi Sansthan (Agra), the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan (New Delhi) and the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (Hyderabad)’. See Fifth Five Year Plan 1974–79 (Delhi: Government of India, Planning Commission, 1979), p. 77.

60. At one point, the editor enthusiastically tied 1917, the year of birth of the Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachār Sabha, to Indira Gandhi’s birth year. Sammelan Patrikã, 1975, p. 5.

61. Naresh Mehta, Hindī Sāhitya Sammelan kā Itihās, Vol. 1 (Allahabad: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, 1977), p. 57.