Literary notes: Daya Narain Nigam and literary environment in today's India.

Byline: Rauf Parekh

TODAY'S writers and poets of Urdu often lament that they are rarely paid any royalties, if at all, and everyone in book trade and publishing business gets paid except those without whom the entire publishing industry would come to a grinding halt: the very persons who create the material to be published.

Proofreaders and printing machine workers, too, are paid, writers of Urdu grumble, and the labourer who loads and unloads books is also paid, albeit meagrely, but writers and poets of Urdu are not paid even meagrely. One has to agree with them as except for a few writers of Urdu who are really popular and whose books are published by some prestigious publishers, writers are left high and dry. Many writers have to implore publishers to get their works published. Some new writers have to foot the bill for all printing expenses while the so-called publishers think they are doing a favour to these new writers by publishing their book and 'charging only the amount that covers the cost'.

Similarly, few Urdu magazines pay any remuneration to the contributors even today, but there was an editor and publisher who paid writers for their contributions some 100 years ago and he was among the first few ones to do so. His name was Munshi Daya Narain Nigam. Nigam was an essay writer and journalist of Urdu. What Nigam is known for and still remembered today is his Urdu literary magazine monthly Zamana, which is considered one of the most prestigious magazines in the history of Urdu's literary journalism.

Among the contributors of Zamana were some of the most renowned writers and poets of Urdu, including Premchand and Allama Iqbal, to name but a few. Some of Premchand's earliest writings, considered among one of the earliest of Urdu short stories, were published in Zamana. Iqbal's poem 'Hamara des', which begins with the famous line 'Saare jahan se achcha Hindustan hamara' was first published in Zamana and was later included, with certain changes, in Baange Dara under the title 'Tarana-i-Hindi'.

Monthly Zamana was launched by Munshi Shiv Brat Lal Vermen in February 1903 from Bareilly and later on it was moved to Kanpur. In November 1903, Vermen offered Nigam to take over as editor, an offer he gladly accepted and edited the journal for the rest of his life. When Nigam died in 1942, he had been editor of Zamana for 39 years. After his death, the magazine was edited by his son Siri Narain Nigam, but it was closed down in 1949. Nigam had...