Historical archives of Inquilab go online

LAHORE : Punjab University College of Information Technology (PUCIT) has launched digital archives of ‘Inquilab,’ a famous Lahore-based Urdu newspaper started in 1922.

The archives are available at inquilab.pucit.edu.pk. The college launched the digital archives of ‘Zamindar’ earlier this year as part of a larger effort to make a digital library of historical documents and make it available to the public at large free of cost.

PUCIT Principal Dr Syed Mansoor Sarwar said the college Digital Archives Project started in 2011. “Currently, the digital editions of ‘Inquilab’ are available from January 1928 to September 1941 with the exception of those that were missing in the university archives,” he said. Inquilab remains an important source of pre-Partition and post-Partition information for researchers in the field of political science, journalism and social sciences.

Dr Sarwar said that PUCIT would continue to add to these archives other newspapers and documents of historical importance. “PUCIT intends to add to this project the missing editions of Zamindar and Inqalab, as well as add digital versions of Paisa Akhbar and Civil and Military Gazette, the famous UK-based English daily.

The college is negotiating with Punjab Public Library and Dayal Singh Library in this regard,” Sarwar stated. “We consider such public service a part of PUCIT’s Corporate Social Responsibility,” he added.

Dr Sarwar thanked the team which helped develop the digital library of Zamindar and Inquilab, including Muhammad Hamid Ch. (GIS Center Coordinator), Asim Siddique, Sohaib Anwar, Fiza Khalid and GIS Centre graduates Saba Nawaz, Mehwish Arif, Nudrat Babar and Bushra Bhatti.

Gene D. Overstreet and Marshall Windmiller write in their book, Communism in India, that Ghulam Hussain, the first communist leader in Lahore, started Inquilab in mid 1922 with Rs 22,000 that he had received from M. N. Roy and/or the Soviet embassy in Afghanistan during and after Hussain’s visit to Kabul in March 1922. Roy, a contemporary of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was the founder of the communist movement in the sub-continent during the second decade of the twentieth century.

Ghulam Rasool Mehr (B.A.) and Abdul Majeed Salik (B.A.) remained its editors for many years. Among other things, Inquilab and Abdul Majeed Salik became famous for creating a controversy regarding the date of birth of Sir Allama Muhammad Iqbal. In two issues of Inquilab in 1938 and 1955, Abdul Majeed Salik argued that Allama Iqbal was born on February 22, 1873 and not December 1976 as reported in Inquilab on May 7, 1938, or November 9, 1877, as commonly accepted.