000			02406nam a22002177a 4500
005			20260619115418.0
008			260619b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9789354479519
028			_a: Savera Book Distributors _b: 4754, Akarshan Bhawan, 23, Ansari Road, Darya Ganj, New Delhi _c: INV/26-27/0267 _d: 16/06/2026
082			_a811.52 MAN
100			_aMandhwani, Aakriti.
245			_aEveryday Reading _b: Hindi Middlebrow and The North Indian Middle Class. _c/Aakriti Mandhwani.
260			_a, New Delhi _b: Speaking Tiger _c, 2024.
300			_axv, 224p. _c: 24cm.
365			_b419
520			_aDuring the two difficult decades immediately following Independence, a new, commercially successful print culture in Hindi emerged that articulated alternatives to dominant national narratives. Through what Aakriti Mandhwani defines as middlebrow magazines—like Delhi Press’s Sarita—and the first paperbacks in Hindi—Hind Pocket Books—North Indian middle classes cultivated new reading practices that allowed them to reimagine what it meant to be a citizen. Rather than focusing on individual sacrifices and contributions to national growth, this new print culture promoted personal pleasure and other narratives that enabled readers to carve roles outside of official prescriptions of nationalism, austerity and religion. But the story is as much about the publishers as the readerships. Sarita’s challenge to institutional Hindi could not have happened without the multilingual editor-publisher Vishwa Nath of the Delhi Press, ‘a veritable magazine activist’, as the author puts it. The ‘paperback revolution’ of Hind Pocket Books, with its unprecedented print runs, is a legacy of Dina Nath Malhotra. And the phenomenal reach of Dharmyug, leading even that of celebrated English-language publications of the Times Group, owed much to writer Dharmvir Bharti’s move from Allahabad to Bombay. Utilizing a wealth of previously unexamined publications, Everyday Reading pays careful attention not only to key aspects of production in commercial Hindi publishing but ordinary reading practices as well—particularly those of women. Insightful and entertaining, it is a significant addition to scholarship on print culture in independent India.
650			_aMiddle Class
650			_aThe North Indian Middle Class
700			_aAakriti Mandhwani
942			_cBOOK
999			_c69402 _d69402