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Chronicles Regenerated

Chronicles Regenerated

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.


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