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The next impetus in the evolution of the novel in India came from a cataclysmic event in history – the Revolt of 1857. But these were usually collections of short stories and available only to a limited number of readers. Several books were thus commissioned and printed, and went on to become popular classics such as Mir Amman’s Bagh-o-Bahar (1801) based on a popular Persian tale, Dastan-e-Hoshruba. Its first principal, John Gilchrist, assembled a number of scholars to produce works of prose that could be used as textbooks in Urdu as well as other Indian languages. The ‘modern Indian novel’ has its roots in Calcutta, when around 1800, the British East India Company established Fort William College to train British officers in Indian languages, customs and laws. This changed only with the advent of British rule in the subcontinent, in the late 18th and early 19th century. Traditional literature in Indian languages included epics, dramas, plays, ballads and many other forms of storytelling but it did not include ‘novels’ or ‘novellas’ as a genre.Įven in the Urdu language, fictional writing was confined to traditional forms of storytelling like qissa or dastaan, their narrative being a sequence of endless fairytales similar to The Arabian Nights. Umrao Jaan Ada, first published by Gulab Munshi & Sons Press, Lucknow in 1899, was written in a unique and evocative style – it is the first-person account of Umrao Jaan, a courtesan who uses verse to share her life story with the author during a mushaira or poetry gathering in Lucknow.Įven though Ruswa wrote Umrao Jaan Ada as recently as the turn of the 20th century, it was a trendsetter in Indian literature. While the Hindi film has further immortalised the story, few know that the tale penned by Ruswa was one of the first modern novels ever published in India.