New Delhi: Asif Fehmi is an editor without a job. His monthly Urdu magazine, Din Dunia, ceased to publish during the pandemic due to financial difficulties. The magazine has a long history of surviving and documenting the crises that the nation went through. “It was the legacy that was lost,” he remarks one winter morning while sipping coffee and sitting at his makeshift office in one of the by-lanes of Old Delhi. “It started in the crisis and ended in the crisis,” he laments.
Din Dunia was a historical magazine that first came out in 1925, before India became independent. It was started by Khawaja Hassan Nizami, a poet and historian who was actively involved in politics and had a rivalry with Diwan Singh Maftoon, another famous Urdu journalist, over the princely states in the British Raj. It’s coming into being was political, as it was started to support the political stance of Khawaja Hassan Nizami. After the rivalry ended, Nizami handed over the magazine to Mufti Shoukat Ali Fehmi, Asif Fehmi’s father, who then became the editor and managed the magazine.
Before Mufti Shaukat Ali Fehmi took over as editor of the magazine, its content was filled with political articles. Against the odds, to have advertisements and business, Shaukat Ali Fehmi started the film section in the magazine that covered film controversies, gossip about the Hindi film industry and offered criticism on movies.
Asif Fehmi remembers his father telling him that then-famous Jaddanbai Hussain, singer, dancer, and actress of Indian cinema, and famous actress Saira Banu, visited the Din Dunia office. “There were various Hindi film personalities who visited the Din Dunia office,” Asif Fehmi says, and “there was a fear in the Hindi film industry of negative coverage by the magazine.”
From 1935 to 1947, films dominated the magazine. As the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947, the magazine shut down for the first time “because of the circumstances in the country”. Mufti Shaukat Ali Fehmi migrated to Lahore and opened a shop in Anarkali Bazaar. Right after migrating to the other side, he felt it was not the right country for him and decided to return to Delhi. “He chose Delhi over Lahore,” Asif says.
After 1947, as the subcontinent was partitioned and the socio-political scenario of the country changed, Din Dunia came out with a new version. The film section, for which the magazine was known previously, was skipped. Instead, Islamic history, Tafseer-e-Quran and historic incidents of the Islamic world found their way into the magazine. Now the magazine’s focus shifted to historical, political and mainly religious events in the country and the world. “It was the societal need of the time to include Islamic history and carry Tafseer-e-Quran in parts,” Asif Fehmi says.
Din Dunia’s famous ‘Raftar-e-Zamana’ column for the editorial largely focused on violence against minorities after 1947. Mufti Shaukat Ali Fehmi used his pen as a tool for speaking truth to power. His editorials were incisively political, busting myths that were used to target minorities and create an atmosphere of hostility. These editorials are preserved by his son Asif Fehmi in his book Mufti Shaukat Ali Fehmi, Hayaat va Khidmaat (Mufti Shaukat Ali Fehmi, Life and Contributions), which he dedicated to his father.
In 1959, in the January issue of the magazine, the editorial focused on Bombay’s Dhulia riots. Mufti Shaukat Ali Fehmi condemned “the violence” and wrote against the “government’s inability to stop the riots and not being able to create a peaceful environment for the minorities to exist”.
In another editorial, in the May issue of the magazine, he wrote that “riots are prevalent in the country every now and then after 1947. It has become our daily reality.” He even targeted newspapers like Pratap for propagating hate against Muslims. In the August editorial of the magazine, he went on to write that “communal disharmony is not the issue of Muslims but of unity, of democracy, of nationhood”. “Not a month passes without riots happening in India. Secularism has failed; it has been shredded to pieces,” the editorial concluded.
In the 1963 editorial of Din Dunia, Shaukat Fehmi accused Amrit Bazaar Patrika, Anand Bazaar Patrika and Pratap of “inciting communal disharmony and peddling hate against Muslims”. He went on to suggest that “if we need to fight against communalism, all minorities have to unite. Jan Sangh is the enemy of each minority in India. India will be destroyed by communalism. All parties need to unite to fight against Jan Sangh.”
Old covers of ‘Din Dunia’.
In one of his editorials, Shaukat Fehmi also accused the Jan Sangh of “creating an atmosphere of fear in the country for minorities” and prophesied that in the near future they will work for the “creation of Hindu Rashtra and will rename the historical buildings ascribed to Muslims, an example being Taj Mahal”. He also slammed the Congress for not providing “Muslims and other minorities the space for equity in the social, political, and economic spectrum, which thus helps the RSS in further propagating their mission of Hindu India”.
It is said that with the partition of the subcontinent, the Urdu language was also partitioned. The decline in the readership of Urdu has always been a focus for Din Dunia. Shaukat Fehmi, in one of his editorials that focused on the Urdu language, called it “Cinderella” because “it awaits the magic touch that can free it from its minority status”.
He condemned the 1986 Education Policy, in which “no attention was paid to Urdu”. He writes in one of his editorials that “Urdu was born here; it grew up here. More than the Muslims, the Hindus also grew up reading and writing in this language.”
Din Dunia’s ‘Raftar-e-Zamana’ was a much-awaited column that attracted a lot of attention from readers. “People used to wait for it,” Asif Fehmi says. It dealt with the most sensitive and critical issues of the time.
As the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir is currently under governor’s rule, Shaukat Fehmi long ago criticised governor’s rule in one of his editorials written in February 1990, when the state of J&K was under the rule of Governor Jagmohan. He mentioned in the editorial that “it’s the only unlucky state of India that sinks into Governor Raj every now and then”. While praising the “communal harmony” of the erstwhile state of J&K, he also wrote that “paradise on earth has been turned into hell” and “nobody is serious enough to solve this issue”. He also termed it the “main cause of conflict between India and Pakistan”.
In the year 1992, when the Babri Masjid was demolished in the city of Ayodhya, Din Dunia took a strong stance. It’s editorial condemned the “RSS, VHP, and Rath Yatra” and predicted that it would lead to a “worse situation”. “Whatever is happening in Ayodhya is not sudden. It is well-planned…[and the] mandate is given to them by people,” the editorial read.
For Asif Fehmi, journalism happened abruptly. Mufti Shaukat Ali Fehmi, who had managed and edited the magazine, died in 1993 after being ill for two years. “There was no one to look after the magazine. It was our legacy. We were associated with the magazine. We are still known as ‘Din Dunia-wale’,” Asif Fehmi says, as he remembers the time when he took over as editor of the magazine. “When my father died, I was already running the magazine.”
Managing the magazine was a tough job for young Asif Fehmi. His education was English-based, and he had only read Urdu as a subsidiary subject in college. Before that, Asif was involved in clerical work for the magazine while his father was alive and was given a stipend for it. That is how Asif entered the legacy that his father had left.
“Publishing a magazine is a job where you require teamwork. But here it was done single-handedly by me. I managed the whole thing: proofreading, content gathering and publishing,” Asif Fehmi says.
Only two people were working under him – one managing the clerical work and the other helping with the editorial work. The magazine was supported by the publication of books alongside it. Financial viability was one of the major reasons that hindered the publication of the magazine and later shut it down.
Still, Asif Fehmi pursued the struggle of keeping the “legacy” of the family alive, which was a “service to society,” up until the pandemic hit the country in 2020. During the pandemic, the offices of Din Dunia were seized by the Municipal Corporation. “They don’t permit any industrial work in the walled city, not even printing presses,” he says.
Also, over the years, the readership of Urdu has declined massively. Digitisation has affected the readership of Urdu magazines and newspapers. “Times have changed. Urdu lovers don’t prefer to read Urdu newspapers. There was a time when people’s only source of information was newspapers and magazines. Nowadays, it is the internet and social media,” Asif Fehmi explains.
Now, four years later, Asif Fehmi has only memories of his lost legacy. He has an archive that has the print issues of the magazine collected in a large file. He misses being in the office. His days are spent only with the aim of reviving the magazine. Asif Fehmi aims to bring the magazine back in digital form and in print quarterly.
“I am not very sure about the digitisation of the magazine, but I am positive about it. Will I be able to do it? I don’t know. There is uncertainty. And I lack experience in the digital field,” he says, “but it will always have a place in my memory.”
Mir Umar is an independent journalist based in New Delhi.