The Periodicals
Starting in the early nineteenth century, ambitious Indians began flocking to newly-founded schools and colleges offering instruction in modern languages and sciences. Among the habits they acquired was reverence for contemporary British periodicals such as Athenaeum, The Quarterly Review, The Saturday Review, The Contemporary Review, The Fortnightly Review, The National Review, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and Nineteenth Century. Not unreasonably, they came to view these periodicals as exemplars of public debate and deliberation.
As the century progressed, these increasingly urbane Indians ached to discuss subjects closer to home. They answered this need by founding local counterparts to these British periodicals. A vibrant public sphere now took shape as legions of newly-minted graduates contributed and subscribed to these English-language periodicals. The most notable of these periodicals included Bengal Magazine, Haris Chandra’s Magazine, Mookerjee’s Magazine, The Indian Magazine, Allahabad Review, The Madras Review, The Dawn, and The Quarterly Journal of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha. At the end of the century came that magnificent trio—The Hindustan Review, The Indian Review, and The Modern Review—that dominated public life for half a century. In their wake followed dozens of periodicals such as East and West, Triveni, and Welfare, whose influence far outstripped their circulation.
It is impossible to overestimate the importance of these periodicals. Transported around the country by rail, they attracted and cultivated a wide readership. By compelling writers and readers to think more broadly, they midwived modern India. This was not all. As these periodicals were typically published on a monthly basis, they devoted themselves not to reporting news, which would be stale by the time the periodical reached the subscriber, but to essays on the leading questions of the day. In so doing, they compelled statesmen and representatives to contend with ideas and arguments. Finally, by allowing diverse viewpoints to be developed and debated, they not only reflected but also stimulated India’s distinctive pluralism. No one who reads these periodicals can fail to see that there have always been multiple, often conflicting, ideas of India.
After 1947, these periodicals underwent mass extinction. Readers, having become citizens, now hungered for the news of the day. This demand was better met by radio and newspapers whose proprietors had the financial and technological means to reach vast audiences daily. That these periodicals passed away should not be regretted, for they were fitted to a particular age. What is lamentable, however, is that they have been all but forgotten. Ramachandra Guha and Pratap Bhanu Mehta aside, practically no public intellectual references them today. The otherwise sophisticated Indian reader does not even know of their existence, much less their contents, which continue to be valuable and relevant.
Browse the gallery below to learn more about these periodicals. To search their indexes, proceed to the following section or click here.
Journals Indexed
Articles Indexed
Hours Spent
Libraries Used
Researchers
Dollars Spent
The Database
Very few of the periodicals described above can still be found in India today. Thankfully, libraries outside India have preserved their copies of these periodicals. But these collections are fragmentary and widely dispersed. This greatly complicates access: since researchers cannot tell whether a particular issue survives or contains relevant materials, it becomes difficult for them to even know whether and where to search.
To circumvent this obstacle to research, I have created a searchable index of the contents of these periodicals. Now, having ascertained that a particular periodical contains relevant materials, researchers can utilize Worldcat to pinpoint where it is located in the world. Better still, they can greatly reduce the cost and time involved by requesting specific documents via an Interlibrary Loan. Should a visionary benefactor appear, the full contents of these periodicals could be made available online.
The searchable index is below. Given the size of the index, it may take a few seconds to load the search results. The search results can be printed or exported. Because there may be minor typographical errors, to enable cross-checking I have also supplied the original Tables of Contents (ToCs) of the periodicals. These ToCs are organized in a Google Drive folder located below the index.
| First Name | Last Name | Article Title | Journal | Vol | No | Month | Year | AuthorTitle | Note | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R. | Vaidyanathaswamy | Editorial Notes | Advent | 1 | 1 | February | 1944 | 1 | ||
| R. | Vaidyanathaswamy | Sri Aurobindo | Advent | 1 | 1 | February | 1944 | 8 | ||
| R. | Vaidyanathaswamy | A Dialogue - Faith and Reason | Advent | 1 | 1 | February | 1944 | 12 | ||
| Nirodbaran | Bonne Annee...1944 | Advent | 1 | 1 | February | 1944 | 13 | |||
| Dilip | Roy | The New Advent | Advent | 1 | 1 | February | 1944 | 14 | ||
| Punjalal | Thy Will Be Done | Advent | 1 | 1 | February | 1944 | 15 | |||
| Anilbaran | Roy | The Creative Vision of Sri Aurobindo | Advent | 1 | 1 | February | 1944 | 16 | ||
| K. R. | Iyengar | "Sri Aurobindo's ""Thought the Paraclete""" | Advent | 1 | 1 | February | 1944 | 27 | ||
| Haridas | Chaudhuri | The Divine Mother | Advent | 1 | 1 | February | 1944 | 38 | ||
| Aurobindo | Questions and Answers | Advent | 1 | 1 | February | 1944 | 41 | |||
| Sisir Kumar | Mitra | India is One | Advent | 1 | 1 | February | 1944 | 46 | ||
| Shuddhananda | Bharati | The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo | Advent | 1 | 1 | February | 1944 | 52 | ||
| K. C. V. | Reviews | Advent | 1 | 1 | February | 1944 | 54 | |||
| R. | Vaidyanathaswamy | The Phoenix | Advent | 1 | 1 | February | 1944 | 59 | ||
| R. | Vaidyanathaswamy | Mater Dolorosa | Advent | 1 | 2 | April | 1944 | 61 | ||
| R. | Vaidyanathaswamy | Federated Humanity | Advent | 1 | 2 | April | 1944 | 63 | ||
| R. | Vaidyanathaswamy | Vansittartism | Advent | 1 | 2 | April | 1944 | 66 | ||
| Aurobindo | A Letter to a Disciple | Advent | 1 | 2 | April | 1944 | 69 | |||
| Punjalal | Quatrains Dedicated to the Mother | Advent | 1 | 2 | April | 1944 | 73 | |||
| R. | Vaidyanathaswamy | The New Year Initiation | Advent | 1 | 2 | April | 1944 | 75 | ||
| S. K. | Maitra | The Status of Man | Advent | 1 | 2 | April | 1944 | 79 | ||
| Indra | Sen | What is Philosophy and Who is a Philosopher? | Advent | 1 | 2 | April | 1944 | 85 | ||
| A. B. | Purani | On Humility | Advent | 1 | 2 | April | 1944 | 89 | ||
| Sisir Kumar | Mitra | India is One | Advent | 1 | 2 | April | 1944 | 90 | ||
| K. C. | Varadachari | Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy and a Justification of Mayavada | Advent | 1 | 2 | April | 1944 | 97 | ||
| First Name | Last Name | Article Title | Journal | Vol | No | Month | Year | AuthorTitle | Note | Page |
About
This website is designed and maintained by Rahul Sagar.
Acknowledgements
This website is a gurudakshina to Richard Tuck, who showed me the beauty and importance of intellectual history, to Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who embodies the glorious ideal of the guru, and to Devesh Kapur, whose mentorship laid the foundation for my work on India. I will always be inspired by their examples.
For their invaluable support and encouragement I am indebted to Hervé Crès, Kishore Mahbubani, Kanti Bajpai, Tan Tai Yong, Rohan Mukherjee, Srinath Raghavan, and C. Raja Mohan. A very large number of research assistants helped me assemble the database. I am especially grateful for the assistance provided by Shirley Wu, Ledina Gocaj, Kyle Gardner, Jakob Urda, Gopika Jadeja, Gordon Yen, Marco Cadena, Clin Lai, Tiffany Ip, Jordan Lian, Arina Cocoru, Sai Ying Ng, Tom Noble, James Elsey, Subhas Nair, Sanchi Rai, Jonah Elsey, and Khushi Singh Rathore. I am particularly indebted to my project managers: Meghna Basu, Christian Fastenrath, and Nidhi Shukla for their careful management and hard work. They have been invaluable companions and colleagues on a very long and exhausting journey.
The research required to construct this website was supported by New York University Abu Dhabi, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, Yale-NUS College, and the Department of Politics at Princeton University.
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