This is the first step in VMFT’s project to digitize the works of Vakkom Moulavi in order to make them more broadly available to the general public and researchers in India and abroad. The newspaper, ‘Svadesabhimani’ (commonly transliterated into English as ‘Swadeshabhimani’) was his first and most famous publication and occupies a key role in the political history and development of the print media in Kerala. The newspaper was banned in 1910 by a Royal Proclamation due to its exposure of the crimes and corruption of the royal court and administration; its editor, Ramakrishna Pillai, was exiled and the press was confiscated.
The VMFT is releasing in digital format the first set of editorials of the celebrated newspaper, Svadesabhimani, founded in 1905 by Vakkom Muhammad Abdul Khader Moulavi (1873-1932).( https://svadesabhimani.com/ )The VMFT aims to digitize all the editorials and principal articles that are available in its collection of the newspaper. In the first phase, the articles will be reproduced in Malayalam with brief annotations in English. We hope to translate the articles into English to reach a wider audience.
The newspaper, which published between 1905-1910, was an instrument of social and political reform in a crucial period of the development of Kerala and India’s history. Today, it offers a unique window into that period, the political and social issues that were being debated in the public space in Kerala, the growth of the anti-colonial movement in India and in the broader Islamic world and the ideas that helped to shape modern Kerala. Unique for its time, Svadesabhimani took up issues such as the accountability of government officials, the provision of public education, the reform of traditional social codes, Muslim education reform as well as national and international developments. (more…)
