This project digitised six series of Urdu periodicals and newspapers housed in three libraries in Pakistan, continuing the work started in the previous project EAP566. These thirty six titles encompass 3,832 issues. The periodicals preserved and made accessible under this project are predominantly from the period 1866-1923.
Urdu periodicals have enormous significance for the understanding of Urdu culture and the creation of new knowledge about colonial India. Since printing in India was cheap, anyone with an opinion might and often did publish a statement of their views. Often such publications were of limited editions, frequently, a few hundred copies, and were not collected by many libraries. Unfortunately, political disenfranchisement of Urdu culture in much of South Asia, and the high acid paper used to produce the periodicals, have made this literature highly vulnerable. It is rare to find complete runs of even the most important Urdu periodicals in South Asian libraries. Further, many of the periodicals are not in the British colonial archives. Some periodicals have already completely vanished. The periodicals are housed in three libraries in Pakistan: Mushfiq Khwaja Library and Research Centre and Sharfabad Bedil Library in Karachi, and Abdul Majeed Khokhar Yadgar Library in Gujranwala. These thirty six titles encompass 3,832 issues. The periodicals preserved and made accessible under this project are predominantly from the period 1866-1923.
