Editorial Note, Mar-Apr, 2014

It has been one of our consistent efforts to encourage fresh researchers, which is also behind the idea of having this special ‘History’ issue of Social Scientist. The articles chosen demonstrate the vibrancy and diversities related to the discipline of history, even as they focus on a wide range of themes that have been studied and crafted on a variety of fascinating sources.

The lead article by Saifuddin Ahmad, ‘Bas ke samjhe hain isko sare ‘awam: The Emergence of Urdu Literary Culture in North India’, explores the Urdu literary culture in eighteenth-century north India. As Ahmad argues, ‘Mughal literary culture . . . has too often been approached from the point of privileging Persian over all other literary cultures including Urdu/ Hindavi’. This has meant the projection of an ‘unbalanced picture of the Mughal literary landscape’. Emphasising the importance of studying the life of the common people, the author engages with some of the literary productions and genres to tell us about ‘the Urdu literary scene of north India’.