Yuvatha books:Trend Setting in muslim publishing

Trend-Setting in Muslim Publishing: Calicut's YuvathaBook HouseBy Yoginder SikandWith a literacy rate of over 85 per cent, Kerala hasthe distinction of being the most educationallyadvanced state in India. Around a fourth of thestate’s population is Muslim, and the Kerala Muslimsare among the most literate Muslim communities inIndia. Kerala’s Muslims have a rich literarytradition dating back several centuries, and todaythey boast of a flourishing publishing industry,bringing out several newspapers, magazines andjournals. Almost all of these are in Malayalam, thestate’s official language. Few Kerala Muslims writein Urdu, Hindi or English or any other language,because of which their writings are not generallyknown outside the state.Established in 1986, the Calicut-based Yuvatha BookHouse (YBH) is one of Kerala’s leading Muslimpublishing houses. It is run under the auspices of theItehadul Shuban il Mujahidin (ISM), the youth wing ofthe Kerala Nadwath ul-Mujahidin (KNM), an influentialIslamist reformist movement. This movement has itsroots in the Islahi or Islamic reformist tradition inKerala which emerged at the turn of the last century.The pioneers of the KNM sought to struggle againstilliteracy, poverty, and superstitions that beset theKerala Muslim community, hence the movement’s claimto be engaged in a constructive social â€کjihad’.â€کAt one time’, says the YBH’s manager, 34-yearold Mujeebur Rahman Kokur, who holds a degree inHistory and a diploma in Fine Arts, â€کsometraditional ulema opposed Islamic writings inMalayalam. They claimed that this language was spokenin hell!

But things have changed completely today andnow there are literally hundreds of Islamic publishinghouses, newspapers and journals brought out inMalayalam’. â€ک The YBH’, he adds, â€کis today thesecond largest Islamic publishing house in Kerala,following close behind the Islamic Publishing House,which is also based in Calicut’.Till date, the YBH has published more than 250 titles,and almost all of these are in Malayalam. Besidesbooks on Islamic law and theology, it has brought outa number of titles on such issues as economics, childdevelopment and psychology, the environment,imperialism and the anti-imperialist struggle,inter-community relations, communal harmony and genderrelations, all from an Islamic perspective. â€کTheyseek to provide relevant Islamic responses toquestions of contemporary concern. We want to engagewith current issues, to show what role Islam andMuslims can play in this regard, and this is reflectedin the sort of books we publish’, explains Kokur.Every year, he says, the KNM’s Academy of Studiesand Research organises a conference, bringing togethersocial activists and scholars, Muslims as well asothers, to discuss current issues, and the YBHpublishes the papers presented therein as books.The YBH has an impressive translation programme,rendering into Malayalam key texts in other languages.

These include books by the Mumbai-based reformistscholar, Asghar Ali Engineer, the Delhi-based MaulanaWahiduddin Khan, the noted biographer of the Prophet,Shafi ur-Rahman Mubarakpuri, and other well-knownnorth Indian Muslim scholars such as Sayyed SulaimanNadvi and Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi. It has also translatedworks by foreign authors, such as Roger Garaudy, Yusufal-Qaradawi, Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, MustafaSibai, Muhammad al-Ghazali, Muhammad Asad, Harun Yahyaand Bilal Philips. Currently, work is on, to renderKaren Armstrong’s acclaimed book on Prophet Muhammadand the Indian Marxist historian K.M.Pannikar’s bookon culture, secularism and the struggle againstcommunalism into Malayalam. The YBH has also publisheda number of Islamic novels, several of these by womenwriters, as well as some science-related books. It hasto its credit several collections of short storieswritten by non-Muslim Malayalam writers. Plans areafoot to translate into Malayalam an Islamicchildren’s instructional book series published byDelhi’s Goodword Books.â€کA major achievement of ours’, says Kokur, withjustified pride, â€کis a five volume IslamicEncyclopaedia’ titled â€کIslam Anju Vadiyangalil’or â€کIslam in Five Volumes’, which runs into around5500 pages.

Edited by a board headed by the notedIslamic scholar Cheriyamundam Abdul Hamid, knownparticularly for his translation of the Quran intoMalayalam, the project took some ten years tocomplete, and involved some fifty scholars, includingexperts in Islamic Studies, Psychology, Sociology,History, Economics, Comparative Religions andPolitical Science. Illustrating the KNM and ISM’scommitment to inter-community dialogue and solidarity,the first volume of the encyclopaedia was released bythe well-known leftist scholar of Hinduism, SukumarAzhikode, and the last volume by the noted Delhi-basedacademic, Ashis Nandy.Another major accomplishment of the YBH is thepublication of the first versified Malayalamtranslation of the Quran, under the title â€کDivyaDeepti’. Interestingly, this work was written by aHindu scholar, the late Konniyor Raghavan Nair. Nairwas a close friend of the late C.N.Moulavi, one of thepioneers of the Islahi movement in Kerala, and thefirst translator of the Quran into Malayalam. Therecitation of the Quran, which Nair used to regularlyhear on the radio every Friday, captivated him, andthat led him to spend ten years translating the Quraninto Malayalam in verse form. â€کSome Muslims wereangry with Nair for what he had done and so they burntdown his press at Pathanamthitta and destroyed most ofthe copies of his translation of the Quran’, saysMujeeb ur-Rahman Kinalur, president of the ISM, underwhose auspices the YBH functions. â€کSome twenty-fiveyears later, a copy of the book was found and the YBHdecided to publish it again. It is a remarkableinstance of the long tradition of sharing betweencommunities that Kerala has historically enjoyed’,Kinalur adds.â€کWe try to reach out beyond the Muslim community, tonon-Muslim readers as well’, Kinalur tells me. Thisthe YBH does through regular participation in bookfairs all over Kerala, arranging for reviews of itsnew publications in non-Muslim-owned newspapers andthrough exchange schemes with non-Muslim publishinghouses. Another way of reaching out to others is theset of books the YBH has brought out that seek toprovide the general non-Muslim reader with a basicintroduction to Islam. In addition, it has publishedtwo books on Dalit liberation, both by Dalit authors,and also distributes a volume consisting of acollection of essays on Islam and Dalit Liberationwritten by a group of well-known Malayali Dalitactivists.Kinalur tells me of some more plans that the YBH hasfor the near future. These include a five-volumesubject-wise compendium of Hadith or sayings about orattributed to Prophet Muhammad and an Encyclopaediaof Family Life, which would include entries by Islamicscholars as well as Muslim and non-Muslimpsychologists and sociologists.The YBH’s audio and video unit has prepared some 300VCDs, on a vast range of subjects.

Among these aretaped Friday sermons of KNM leaders, not all of whomare full-time, professional religious specialists orulema. These include doctors, engineers, writers andsocial activists. â€کThese sermons seek to relateIslam to issues of the day, so as to make religionmore meaningful in people’s lives’, explainsKinalur. â€کSo’, he adds, â€کif there is a debategoing on in the media about terrorism or women’srights or communal violence, our preachers speak aboutthese in their sermons and relate this to the actualIslamic perspective on the matter, and these areconverted into videos for wider circulation’. Inaddition to taped Friday sermons, the YBH’s VCDseries also consists of lectures by well-known socialactivists and writers, including some non-Muslims.Units affiliated to the ISM have also begunexperimenting with video documentaries to propagatethe movement’s message, and these are distributedthrough the YBH. These films are produced byprofessional teams, and the actors include Hindus andChristians, in addition to Muslims. The MujahidStudents Movement, the students’ wing of the ISM,Kinalur tells me, recently produced a tele-filmdealing with issues that many students face inuniversity campuses, seeking to provide them properguidance. A documentary by an ISM sub-centre inMallapuram deals with the problem of suicide, an issueof particular concern, given that Kerala has thehighest suicide rate in India. Another new tele-filmdistributed by the YBH seeks to dispel the myth aboutinvisible jinns possessing human beings.â€کRecently’, Kinalur informs me, â€کthe ISMorganized a state-level campaign against Hindu andMuslim communalism.

We now want to produce a tele-filmon how communalism is dividing our society and what wemust do to preserve and promote communal harmony’.The YBH also sells CDs containing Islamic devotionalsongs in Malayalam. â€کOur ulema have argued that suchmusic is permissible because the aim is to call peopleto Islam’, Kinalur explains. â€کSo, for instance’,he says, â€کon Eid we organized a cultural function,with singers, Muslims and others, singing songs aboutfaith in God and about communal harmony’. â€کLastFebruary’, he goes, on, â€کour students’ wing heldits annual conference at the Calicut town hall, and wehad a cultural show, with songs with social andreligious messages and the traditional stick-dance’,Kinalur adds. â€کWe see no harm in using these meansto communicate with people, provided they are inconformity with basic Islamic cultural norms’, hesays.The music CDs sold by the YBH are produced byactivists and sympathizers of the ISM, and, Kinalursays that the ISM is now planning to form a music andcultural team of its own. Interestingly, some of theYBH’s music CDs consist of songs about Islam sung bynon-Muslim singers, who are commissioned to do this ona paid basis.In contrast to many Islamic publishing houses in northIndia, which are often family businesses, the YBH isprofessionally managed by a qualified board. Theboard’s Chairman is Dr. P.P. Abdul Haq, who servedfor many years as the principal of a government-runarts college.

Other members of the board include Dr.A.K.Ahmad Kutty, former head of the Department ofArabic in Calicut University, Professor Mankada AbdulAziz, former principal of the Muslim EducationSociety, K.P. Zakariya, lecturer in an Arabic College,and Mujibur Rahman Kinalur, president of the ISM.The board meets regularly to decide on newpublications and reprints. â€کWe publish at leastthree new books or reprints of old books everymonth’, explains Kinalur. Prospective authors,experts in their respective fields, are contacted andoffered contracts to prepare manuscripts on particularissues. This is in marked contrast to the practice ofmany north Indian Muslim publishing houses, saysKinalur, who do not work in such a planned manner. Thecost of publication is often met throughpre-publication orders through advertisements in theISM’s weekly â€کShabab’, which has a readership ofmore than 50,000, and is made available through its600 or more units all over Kerala and in the Gulf,where large numbers of Malayali Muslims live. â€کThisis how we try to keep our costs down, with a paidstaff of just four people, and the prices of the booksmodest’, Kinalur says.â€کKerala Muslim scholarship is rich and thriving’,Kinalur explains. â€کIt’s not just professionalulema whose writings we publish, but also books bysocial activists and intellectuals, who seek topromote a more socially-engaged understanding of Islamthat can address itself to such burning issues ascommunal conflict, class and gender oppression,Western imperialism and consumerism and so on’.â€کUnfortunately’, he adds, â€کfew of our scholarswrite in English, Hindi or Urdu, and that’s why theyare not known outside Kerala’.

I suggest to Kinalur that the YBH could considerarranging for some of its major works to be translatedin other languages. â€کCertainly’, heenthusiastically replies. â€کThere’s a lot thatMuslims elsewhere in India can learn from the MalayaliMuslims, in matters of organization,institution-building, education, women’s issues andinter-community relations’, Kinalur tells me, â€کandbringing out our literature in other languages canplay a major role in promoting awareness of the KeralaMuslim model’.