Still Standing: Awami Idara, Urdu Literature and Public Amnesia
Saranya Subramanian
On an unusually hot day in January, I enter a construction site in Mumbai, not expecting to discover one of the city’s lesser known and most significant historical centers for literature, politics and community. I’m hosting a Kaifi Azmi-Sahir Ludhianvi poetry crawl with my friend Drew, and we’ve titled it ‘Romance and Rebellion in Bombay’. An appropriate title, given the context of the Progressive Writers’ poems. As part of The Bombay Poetry Crawl, I host poetry crawls in English, Marathi and Urdu, through which we follow the works of the Bombay Poets, while walking through the parts of the city they occupied. Doing so today has led us to Madanpura, a working class neighbourhood in old Bombay, where Urdu is as ubiquitous as the redevelopment at every corner.
The particular building we walk into is the iconic Awami Idara library. It’s about to be torn down, just like the chawls that once stood around it, and we have the rare chance to visit one last time before it’s obliterated forever. All that we are allowed to see, however, is a hollowed out room filled with plastic chairs and empty cupboards. The current librarians, who are extremely hospitable and chat with us about the good old days over chai and snacks, tell us that all the books have been moved to a makeshift storage room. They will take us there later. For now, we have some time to talk about all that once was — the iconic Urdu library, its hosting of Communist Party leaders and Urdu Progressive Writers, the myriad books it holds, and all of its many histories.
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The Awami Idara is a community Urdu library that has been a literary Mecca in Mumbai’s Madanpura since 1952.The original building is a shell of what it once was. Its custodians—Comrades Ibrahim, Farookh and Nafeesa—take us to its temporary home. A makeshift library in a parallel lane to the original, it is so well-maintained that I feel embarrassed to have called it a “storage room” earlier. But I should have expected this level of professionalism from the folks who run Awami Idara.
This miniature library is clean, welcoming, and filled with the same inspiring energy as before. Comrade Ibrahim, who runs the library and is also on the local mosque’s committee, is a busy man who made time to meet me and show me the archive of over ten thousand books the library houses. Once an active space sprawling across two floors, home to Communist Party of India meetings, children’s reading nooks and women’s sewing classes, Awami Idara has been a pillar of the working class neighbourhood’s cultural zeitgeist. I spend an entire evening here, sipping chai, and speaking with its custodians, while each of them patiently answers my abundant questions.
Awami Idara is also a centre for social workers that was founded by Siddique Hubbar, Siddique Momin, Comrade Maqsood — leaders of the Communist Party of India (CPI)—in 1952. Madanpura has historically been a working class neighbourhood; “chaaro taraf mille thi,” says Ibrahim saab, “jaise Khatau Mills, Hindustan Mills, aur bohot saare labourers yahan pe rehte the. Aur rehte hai.” Mumbai’s textile mills were colonial-era industries that served as a large income source for most workers and immigrants of the city. The great textile mills strikes of 1982 led to more than 60 of these mills closing down, and 75,000 workers unemployed, essentially cementing the permanence of capital urban growth and the powerlessness of workers’ movements in comparison.
The space was originally set up in order for workers to have a space to exist freely; the library’s timings allowed it to be open until late in the night, giving the labourers a space to interrogate reality through literature after their grueling shift was done. On uncovering more of the Idara’s history, I learn that it was no coincidence that its formation happened in Madanpura; the library housed secular and historical books in Urdu that were given by the Progressive Writers Association — many of whom were Communist Party of India workers from nearby areas.
The Progressive Writers Association, or the Anjuman Taraqqi Pasand Musannafin-e-Hind, was formed in 1935 with anti-imperialist and left-oriented ideologies and the intention to spread scientific and logic-based literary solutions to Britain’s oppression over the subcontinent. With a litany of incredible writers and leaders like Mulk Raj Anand, Ismat Chugtai, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ali Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, Sahir Ludhianvi and Munshi Premchand—to name a few—this was the first organised sociopolitical literary movement to emerge from India’s battle for freedom.
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Having witnessed the trauma of partition, the Progressive Writers began interrogating current affairs through poetry and prose. Their disillusionment with India and Pakistan as nation states, which was much different from the idea of independent India they had in mind, became apparent in their work, leading them to question what they’d fought for in the first place.
In 1943, the Progressive Writers Association had their first meeting in Bombay, held at the Marwari Vidyalaya in Charni Road. This meeting was crucial because the writers modified their manifesto to become more socially responsible writers by “stepping out of their ivory towers” (as Rakshanda Jalil puts it), and writing about the country’s food shortage issues, imperialist policies, and economic troubles. Gradually, as Mumbai became pivotal to the Urdu Progressive Writers after 1947, the likes of Kaifi Azmi, Sahir Ludhianvi, Manto and Krishan Chandar became popular in the film industry, while others like Sajjad Zaheer held regular readings at his Walkeshwar home for younger shayars. Mushairas and poetry performances were frequent in the areas of Nagpada, Byculla and Mominpura. And once the Awami Idara opened, its doors welcomed poets of all languages, castes and creeds, and shayari sessions went on until wee hours of the morning.
Legend has it that Kaifi Azmi was the one who christened it, an apropos indictment to the very Progressive Writers movement itself. “Awami” is of the people and “Idara” refers to an institution. Founded as a space for local “mazdoors” and mill workers, the entire neighbourhood became a hotbed for radical thinking and ideologies such as fighting for equal pay, better conditions for female workers, secular community sentiments and focusing on disenfranchised caste issues. Which makes it unsurprising when Zubair Azmi, founder of Madanpura’s Urdu Markaz literary association, tells me stories of how textile mill activist and writer Narayan Surve was closely linked with Kaifi Azmi. Hearing that the two of them were comrades who would exchange thoughts only helped me better imagine what the Madanpura of forty or fifty years ago must have been. A busy neighbourhood filled with chawls and migrant workers, mill sirens filling the air during the day and mushairas softening their sounds at night.
It also meant that the worlds of Urdu and Marathi literature were closer than we imagine in Mumbai, an important counterpoint to the narratives of right-wing groups in Maharashtra that treat Urdu as a solely Islamic, “other” language. Apart from attacks on Muslim people in the state following the film Chaava’s release in early 2025, a former councillor recently opposed using Urdu along with Marathi in the town of Patur in Akola district. The court dismissed the petition, but this was an indictment of how the gap between both languages is turning into a continental divide.
Communal divisions were exacerbated by changes in Bombay’s economic and labour ecosystem. During the great textile mills’ strike of 1982, union leaders like Datta Samant, George Fernandes, Narayan Surve, who were also associated with the CITU (Centre of Indian Trade Unions) organisation, were local to Awami Idara’s neighbourhood. When ghastly communal riots raged through the city, following Babri Masjid’s demolition, in 1992 and 1993, Byculla, Mominpur, Bhendi Bazaar and Madanpura’s syncretic ecosystems were threatened. But locals came together to help their neighbours. Zubair Azmi talks about how he helped his Hindu counterparts, and vice versa, during those terrifying times. People would seek refuge in the neighbourhood’s libraries, mosques, temples, schools and cultural centres, all of which were inclusive spaces to all. And through the darkest of nights, Awami Idara was open to visitors at any time, with food, chai, and plenty of inspiring literature to read.
When the Awami Idara was first constructed, there was just the ground floor where workers would congregate, the CPI would hold meetings, and the Progressive Writers met to exchange ideas. In 1972, the upper floor was built, and the house-like institution began to host sewing classes for girls, reading lessons for children, as well as library sessions for neighbourhood locals. Labour Day on May 1 was a big annual event at the Idara; Ibrahim saab remembers putting posters all around town and inside trains for the day. Awami Idara would offer its members train tickets, sure, but everything from the tea to the books were the result of community contributions. In fact, many of the library’s invaluable books were lent by the Taraqqi Pasand poets themselves. Kaifi Azmi, Saadat Hasan Manto, Sajjad Zaheer: these literary icons were regulars at the Idara. “Kaifi Azmi loved the paya and kheema from Sarvi’s, which he would relish here with chai and books,” says Farookh saab. Azmi lived in the Madanpura area, and his poetry reflected its zeitgeist: working class issues, industry woes, and uneven development.
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Following the textile mills’ closure in South Mumbai, the city’s financial ecosystem was further exacerbated by the economy opening up in 1991, the ghastly communal riots of 1992-93 (a domino effect of the Babri Masjid demolition), and renaming Bombay to Mumbai in 1995—a nativist act that symbolised modern cosmopolitanism occurring alongside a shift towards conservative political attitudes. According to recent statistics, the land-starved island city is currently witnessing about 30-40% of its residential projects undergoing redevelopment. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) reportedly has 3,000 to 6,000 redevelopment projects in progress at different stages at present. Just about every other building in every other lane is barricaded with scaffolds and green construction blankets, each one advertising “luxury suites” and “modern-day expansive penthouses” made for “elite living”.
With fragile, debilitating buildings that go back to the 19th century, Nagpada’s neighbourhoods are also victim to this widespread redevelopment project. Chawls, MHADA buildings, sex workers’ homes and slum rehabilitation residences in Nagpada now stand on profit landmines; builders and construction companies have already bid on the land there and the neighbourhood is currently undergoing massive and fundamental changes.
As we sit in the makeshift, miniature library that Awami Idara is temporarily housed in, Ibrahim saab tells us about their personal experiences with the development lobby. “It started in 2020. During the pandemic, we had to sell our sewing machines and many of our classes stopped. We reopened in 2022, only to find out that our building, and the four residential chawl buildings around us, were given a redevelopment notice,” he says. What came as a shock to him was that while the residential buildings consented to redevelopment, the Idara didn’t. It became a victim to this occupational hazard when the BMC said that their VLT zone title was nonexistent. A Vacant Land Tenancy, these plots of land are owned by the BMC but leased out to individuals or organisations in order to prevent unauthorised occupation and allow for future redevelopment or implementation of municipal projects. This would allow the municipal corporation to easily hand over any property to builders, without consent required.
Except the land on which Awami Idara existed was a legal VLT zone, proof of which is found in the official papers and lease receipts since that the librarians have maintained 1962. Still, that did not stop the builder goons from threatening the librarians to either vacate or be razed down regardless. Residents of the chawl voted for redevelopment as it promised better living conditions for them, but many of them refused to side with the Idara due to religious, communal and political differences. An irony, since Awami Idara has been working for people’s basic human rights, disregarding their demographic, since its inception. Ibrahim believes that politics has much to do with how people are influenced; many have written off the library as a Muslim space that doesn’t impact their religious life, and so haven’t defended their protest. Another irony, considering Awami Idara has abundant secular and non-religious books as well as no religious agenda.
However, redevelopment was to impact the entire neighbourhood. Around the Idara were four residential buildings, of which only the third and fourth were given consent to redeveloping by homeowners. The builder at the time, Salim Khurria, focused on only those two since the first and second didn’t get a majority vote for construction by its residents. In order to sidestep this issue, the BMC cleverly announced that the buildings were in a C1 zone. In Mumbai, a C1 designation implies that a structure is extremely dangerous and unfit for habitation; it is supposedly dilapidated and beyond repair, requiring immediate demolition and reconstruction. These games are unfortunately common and unfairly played by both municipal corporations and builder lobbies. Since Khurria’s joining and abandoning of the project, builders have come and gone, but “the builder lobby remains,” says Ibrahim. Currently, the project has been taken over by Nexsa A Realtors and Developers Limited (formerly DK Realtors And Developers).
This very lobby began harassing the Awami Idara folks, pressuring them to give into the redevelopment project. After much hassle, Nexsa agreed to offer the library one floor in its new building, while the original Idara was two storeys, citing that the second floor stood illegally. Apart from the lies and false information battle that Awami Idara was facing, they began receiving threats and visits from goons. Fear-mongering is a common tactic in Mumbai’s real estate industry, with crores of disposable income leading builders to often silence people with a hefty cheque or paid violence. But fear doesn’t work in a social space that was built to fight class oppression through art and poetics; librarians at the Idara got together with CPI leaders to figure out a solution, which came through Advocate Gayatri Singh of the Bombay High Court.
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When Advocate Singh took on Awami Idara’s battle, she fought it in such a clean manner that their case was approved and closed within four months. Having filed in a double bench at the high court, Advocate Singh argued that if the Awami Idara was supposedly illegally standing on an expired VLT zone, then there was no reason for the BMC to collect rent from them since 1962. Ibrahim saab shows me laminated copies of rent receipts from the Idara to the BMC; every one of which has been chronologically recorded, sealed, and protected in files. And amongst the thick collection of papers, not even one notice from local authorities is there that claims Awami Idara needs to be investigated. Leave it to a library run by meticulous librarians to maintain every piece of paper as evidence, archived, signed, sealed and dated— beyond reproach!
It’s been a long fight, but Awami Idara finally has been given what it deserves: two floors in the yet-to-be-constructed building. A primary concern about this is whether a shiny glass and concrete structure would limit access to local people. After all, the original library was built especially for working class people to have a gathering space; with a red sickle embellished into its gate and all-night hours, labourers could unwind after a day of hard work in the company of books of all kinds. Women were regular visitors, children took classes there. If the new Idara is encased within yet another intimidating skyscraper, then I am wary of just how many visitors will enter, or be allowed to enter the space, and exchange thoughts and ideas the way they used to.
Ibrahim saab remains optimistic. He says that since the residential building’s ground floor has been reserved for commercial spaces, Awami Idara 2.0 will be as accessible as ever. I look around where we currently sit—in the makeshift storage room-turned-library, eight of us discussing poetry and history and politics with cups of tea in the midst of neatly stacked books. Outside, the green Sunni masjid towers over a neighbourhood that is filled with flour mills, pav shops, metal workshops, and street markets of all kinds. Farookh saab is working towards Urdu’s longevity by digitising literary works and educating children in poetry and fiction. Parvez bhai maintains the Idara’s photo archives that comprise USSR events, Progressive Poets in the library, comrades in meeting, mushairas in session, and various other prized possessions. I suppose as long as these folks are in charge of keeping Awami Idara alive in its reincarnated form, Urdu literature and sociopolitical progress will sustain in Mumbai, at least in some small form.
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As we sit in the makeshift library, a slow fan whirs above our heads. Around us lie books, between us lie pictures from the CPI days, and right outside are the busy streets of Madanpura. I have so many questions. What will happen to all of these books if they continue to lie here in this temporary space? What will happen to local people if communal tensions exacerbate? What will happen to Urdu if top powers want to clamp down and erase its historical significance? Redevelopment has always been framed in Mumbai as inevitable urban progress, but how it affects arts and community centres is rarely reflected in the conversation. And lastly, do they not fear the powerful outfits that want to erase the Awami Idara’s history, such as right-wing groups, builder goons, and industrialists out to profit from the enviable plot of land that they occupy?
Nafeesa ma’am, an active librarian of the Awami Idara, answers my last question first: “Hum darte nahin, daraane waale hai,” she says smiling. Inside the makeshift library, I sit with her, the Idara’s head Ibrahim saab, writer and editor Farookh saab, and a couple of other loyal members. They all nod along. It’s true, since the Idara’s inception in 1952, the library has held talks of revolution, of communism, of egalitarianism, of feminism, but none of fear. The original Awami Idara building flashes in my mind. An unassuming two-storeyed, blue structure rife with red sickles and busts of Lenin, its true power lay within: rows of neatly catalogued books wrapped in yellow and labelled in number, newspapers in English, Urdu, Hindi and Marathi, and librarians who always offered refreshments and conversations.
This memory only reminds me of how incredible it is to have a space in Mumbai—a city whose buildings are now barricaded with QR codes and art centres fenced with payment gateways—inside which anyone can just walk. Freely, openly, with no agenda but to sit under a moving fan, read a book, discuss issues.
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Madanpura has been bustling since the 1950s. Its gullies house mills, workers, mosques, temples, a synagogue, markets, chawls and liberal library spaces. Its main road unfolds into the iconic Nagpada junction. The central circle leans outwards into heritage on all sides; on the left lies an age-old garden that used to comprise a Jewish cemetery, the CPI office, and currently hosts a police station as well. Opposite that is the iconic Sarvi’s restaurant, a hundred-year old cafe that has had the likes of Raj Babbar, Manto, Kaifi Azmi and Sahir Ludhianvi as former regulars. One strain unfurls into Mirza Ghalib Road, originally Clare Road, where Saadat Hasan Manto once lived, and the Bellasis Road vein leads to Mumbai’s infamous Kamathipura red-light district. That was also where iconic Marathi poet and activist Namdeo Dhasal lived and led grassroots social movements—Dalit Panthers included.
In the 20th century, live mushairas and shayari performances were nightly rituals at this Nagpada junction, and today poetry is honoured with a ten foot high and forty two foot long relief mural of Mirza Ghalib. Right opposite this is the Maulana Abdul Kalam Memorial Park—a makeshift, circular pedestrian park nestled in the heart of this chaotic junction. Nagpada, thus, is a nebula of heritage and culture, with each of its brilliant rays streaming outward into neighbourhoods that have housed progressive poets, Dalit activists, sex workers, communist leaders, migrant labourers, and cultural revolutionaries.
In all of these decades and through all of these cataclysmic changes, Awami Idara has stood unfazed. A silent spectator that, just as the city’s seabreeze that Adil Jussawalla describes in his poem “Seabreeze, Bombay,” “investigates nothing,/ Ruffles no tempers, uncovers no root,/ And settles no one adrift off the mainland’s histories.” It’s been 73 years since the library was first built, and having witnessed the best and the worst of development and independent India, the fact that it still stands is a marvel. Since 1952, Mumbai has undergone independence and partition, a boom in the film industry coupled with Nehruvian ideals of India socialism, iconic art and literary groups emerging in various languages and pockets, censorship during the Emergency, a rise in right-wing nationalism, technological progress, the stock exchange setting up shop in Mumbai, extreme inflation, terrorism, women’s movements, and, a most ubiquitous phenomenon at present, redevelopment. Of all the woes that the Awami Idara has endured, the only one to which it has not been immune has been the plague of redevelopment.
As I leave the space and the company of the Idara’s custodians, I hail a taxi from the main Nagpada junction. Its tentacles lean out from the central circle, one of which leads to the Awami Idara’s lane. Getting into the taxi, I hear the evening azaan playing from the green Sunni masjid. In the lane before me, Kamathipura’s famous Sri Pochamma Devi Temple stands, while behind me lies the Magen Hassidim Synagogue. Whiffs of sizzling keema spread from Sarvi’s while verses of Ghalib are sprawled on the streets. Everything in this area looks ancient and crumbling; the people and the buildings alike are fossils from a past Bombay. Historical data is still present here, albeit intangibly, in echoes of mushairas and blaring mill sirens; how can I trust numbers and economics to tell me the story of such a culturally rich neighbourhood? I wonder what newness would look like here, whether glass and concrete would fit in with this neighbourhood of art deco ornamentation and timbre-rich, domestic vernacular architecture. Amidst the noise and the music and the loud traffic honking, I tune out to a verse by Kaifi Azmi, long-term resident of Madanpura and frequent visitor of the Awami Idara.
About the Author
Saranya Subramanian is a poet, writer, TEDx speaker, and theatre practitioner based in Bombay. An MFA graduate from the University of San Francisco, she has been featured in The New York Times, and her writing has been published in Frontline, Lithub, The Caravan, Madras Courier, Aainanagar, Outlook, Vayavya, Kitaab, the Museum of Art and Photography, Scroll, The Bombay Literary Magazine––to name a few. Her essay, “The Cockroach and I”, was published as an ebook by Penguin Random House after winning runner up to the Financial Times/Bodley Head Essay Prize, 2020. She runs The Bombay Poetry Crawl, an archival and research space dedicated to the 20th century Bombay Poets. And she writes because, well, it’s all that she can really do.
Translation source: https://www.azmikaifi.com/collections/makaan/
All photos courtesy of the author
Image 1: The original Awami Idara building, now in the midst of a construction site.
Image 2: Inside the original Awami Idara building, before it was entirely vacated.
Image 3: For seven decades now, visitors from local and global places have written about the unique experience of being in the people’s free library and community centre. | Members of the Communist Party of India and the Taraqqi Pasand Progressive Writers Association at | Top: Members from the USSR visiting Awami Idara, Bottom: a children’s event .