Reading the Fine Print
Added by Indo American News on December 31, 2018.Arts & Culture Baytown , Clear Lake , Cypress , Desi news , Greater Houston , Houston , Houston Desi news , India , Indian American community , Indian News , Indians in America , Indo-American News , Katy , NRI , pearland , south asia , South India , Sugar Land , Texas , The Museum of Peace , USA , Washington
The display at The Museum of Peace
The Museum of Peace, which is located within the Sarhad restaurant complex, less than two kms from the Attari-Wagah border in Amritsar, is arguably India’s first open-air, walk-through, storytelling museum, with no entry fee. It has 48 large panels mounted on high pedestals that depict pre-Partition Punjab in three sections, beginning with the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the British colonial period, and the bloodshed in Punjab in the months preceding the Partition.
The Museum, this week, unveiled a new gallery of rare images of old vernacular newspapers published in pre-Partition Punjab. Titled “Pre-Partition Punjab — Vernacular Press”, the gallery displays issues of some of the oldest Urdu dailies, including The Paisa Akhbar, The Zamindar, The Daily Inquilab and The Akali — all from archival sources in Lahore. First launched in 1885, at a price of one paisa per copy, Paisa Akhbar blazed a new trail in journalism and by 1898 commanded a high circulation of 5,000 copies. Zamindar, which started in Lahore in 1903 with a mission to project issues of farmers and landowners, eventually turned stridently nationalistic, projecting the Muslim point of view, which boosted its circulation to over 30,000 copies. The first issue of The Akali was published in Punjabi from Lahore on May 21, 1920. In October 1922, it merged with Pradesi Khalsa, a daily run by Tara Singh. Its printing was later done in Amritsar, where it was published in Urdu-Persian script, with Singh as the editor.
