Author: Uday Mahurkar
Publication: India Today
Dated: August 17, 2007
Introduction: A century-old Gujarati literary
magazine, Visamisadi, has been digitised and given a new lease of life
There was an unmistakable excitement as leading
Gujarati litterateurs gathered for a grand event in Ahmedabad last week. There
were tears of joy as Ratan Marshal, the state's longest living writer, 96,
launched the Arabian Sea digitised version of Visamisadi, a literary Gujarati
magazine that was published by legendary Gujarati journalist Haji Mohammed
Allarakha Shivji of Kutch, in Mumbai from 1916 to 1920. In its digitized avatar
it is available at www.gujarativisamisadi.com. It is perhaps, for the
first time that a century-old literary magazine has been revived after
long obscurity. And the credit for reviving the essence of Visamisadi goes
to a group of literature lovers industrialist Navnit Shah of Ashapura
Industries, writer Rajnikumar Pandya, journalist Dhimant Purohit and multimedia
professional Biren Padhya.
The website contains all the issues of the
monthly magazine, which Purohit, Shah, and Pandya have dug out and collected
from old families. The worn out pages have been painstakingly digitised by
Padhya with great skill.
Shivji, son of a rich Khoja businessman, was
determined to start a magazine that would set a new trail in Gujarati literature.
Chasing this dream, he ended up selling three family mansions and investing
around Rs 1. 5 crore in its making. He died in an accident in Mumbai at the
age of 43, broken-hearted, as he was never able to recover the money he had
invested in the magazine.
In its hey day Visamisadi had created waves and found readers in prominent
leaders of the day, including Mahatma Gandhi, while giants like Bharatiya
Vidya Bhavan founder K.M. Munshi wrote for it. In fact, the article by Sarojini
Naidu in which she called Mohammed Ali Jinnah a harbinger of Hindu-Muslim
unity and, which was quoted out of context by L.K. Advani two years ago in
Pakistan, first appeared in this magazine. It was in one of its issues that
the rare pictures of Jinnah's beautiful wife, Ruti, were revealed to the public
for the first time.
At the launch, an emotional Marshal observed, "this marks the rebirth
of Haji Allarakha Shivji, who invested his entire life's fortune in the magazine,
but never got the recognition he deserved." The presence of many Gujarati
litterateurs including Raghuvir Chaudhary, Dhirubhai Thakar, Kumarpal Desai,
Tarak Mehta and Vinod Bhatt, provided a sense of approval for the event.
Indian literature lovers should learn from
this experiment and help to restore such historical manuscripts.