'I found sources in unlikely places'

On the commercially successful print culture that emerged in Hindi in the two decades after India won Independence

- Syed Saad Ahmed

You write that scholars have not examined the middlebrow and lowbrow publications featured in your book in either English or Hindi. Why is that?

I want to emphasise the period I work on — the 1950s and '60s. While there is a rich body of work on popular print culture and periodicals in the 20th century, in both Hindi and English, the 1950s often get lost as a moment of analysis. It's dismissed as a time when the nation was in the making, during which it deserved pause. The 1950s are also thought of in terms of the Nehruvian mould and nation-building, which rests on the deferral of pleasure. This idea of the 1950s needs to be punctured; my research shows other aspects of it.