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Ratan Nath Dhar Sarshar

Indian writer and newspaper editor (1846/47–1903) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ratan Nath Dhar Sarshar
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Ratan Nath Dhar Sarshar (Urdu: رتن ناتھ در سرشارؔ; 1846 or 1847 – 21 January 1903) was an Indian Urdu novelist, columnist and editor from British India. Born into a Kashmiri Brahmin family which settled in Lucknow, he received his education at Canning College and later took up employment as a schoolteacher. In August 1878, he was appointed editor of the Lucknow-based newspaper Avadh Akhbar, in which his most famous work Fasana-e-Azad was published serially.

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Biography

Sarshar's date of birth is uncertain.[1] Most probably he was born in 1846 or 1847. He was born in a Kashmiri Brahmin (a group well known for their proficiency in Persian and Urdu) family. His father, Pandit Bej Nath Dhar, a trader who immigrated from Kashmir to Lucknow, died when Sarshar was four years old; thereafter Sarshar was brought up by his mother. Sarshar was initially schooled in the traditional way by learning Arabic and Persian at a local maktab (primary school).[2]

Sarshar joined, for his schooling, the Canning College (which later migrated into University of Lucknow), but left without taking a degree. In 1878, he joined Avadh Akhbar as its editor.[3]

In 1895, Sarshar moved to Hyderabad where he was engaged by Maharaja Sir Kishen Pershad to correct and improve upon his prose writings and poetic composition. Sarshar also edited a journal, Dabdaba-e-Asifi.[3]

He died on 21 January 1903 at Hyderabad due to heavy drinking.[1]

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Works

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The historian Ram Babu Saksena called Sarshar 'a most remarkable figure' in the last decade of nineteenth century.[4]

His serialized novel Fasana-e-Azad (The Tale of Azad), which appeared between 1878 and 1883 as a regular supplement in his paper,[5] was influenced by novels like The Pickwick Papers and Don Quixote, as well as the epic romances (dastan) of Persian and Urdu.[citation needed] Spanning over three thousand pages, the novel narrates the adventures of the protagonist, Azad, through the streets of Lucknow to the battlefields of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878).[5] It was first published in 1881 by Munshi Nawal Kishore Press. Sarshar gave copyrights for Fasana-e-Azad to Munshi Nawal Kishore of Lucknow who also published Talism Hoshruba. Fasana-e-Azad was translated into Hindi as Azad Katha by Premchand, who also translated Sarshar's Sair-i-Kohsar as Parvat Yatra.[6] A Hindi TV serial Wah Janaab by satirist Sharad Joshi, based on Fasana-e-Azad, ran successfully on the state-run television channel Doordarshan in the 1980s.[7]

His other novels are Sair-i-Kohsar and Jam-i-Sarshar. His novel Gor-i-Ghariban remained unpublished due to his accidental death.[8] His novel Khuda-e-Foujdar is an Urdu translation of Don Quixote.[4]

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References

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