South Asian Studies: Newspapers

The Afghan Serials Collection: Partisan Publications from the Wahdat Library is an essential collection of partisan serials from the Wahdat Library, the most comprehensive private collection of rare newspapers and journals from Afghanistan. The Afghan Serials Collection includes over 45 newspapers and journals published in Persian, Pushto, Arabic, Urdu, and English from the early 1970s to the late 1990s—a critical period for the history of Afghanistan. Documenting the breadth of Afghanistan’s political epochs, the Afghan Serials Collection: Partisan Publications from the Wahdat Library covers the use of the press by many groups that sought to shape Afghanistan’s social and intellectual landscape during this turbulent time. Various ideologies are represented in these publications, published by opposing factions from the Taliban to anti-Taliban groups, to anti- Soviet jihadi and mujaheddin groups to the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan.

The Civil & Military Gazette stood as an unrivalled media institution, offering extraordinarily broad perspectives on South Asia during the late 19th and 20th centuries. This database offers access to holdings from 1876-1963 and covers British rule in India at its height, partition and the early years of the independent countries of India and Pakistan. As well as political events, the paper also cultivated and published literary talent, including Rudyard Kipling, some of whose earliest works first appeared in the Gazette.

Online access to a select group of South Asian newspapers from the 19th and early 20th centuries, including such titles as Amrita Bazar Patrika (Calcutta), Bankura Darpana (Bankura, India), Madras Mail (Madras), Kayasare Hinda (Bombay), Pioneer (Allahabad, India), Tribune (Lahore, Pakistan) and the Ceylon Observer (Sri Lanka).

The Times of India, founded in 1838 as the Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce, is one of the major English-language newspapers of South Asia. This resource provides searchable full-text access to the title from 1838, including digital reproductions of pages.