Historic feminist magazine in Hindi 'Stree Darpan' to be launched again

The historic feminist magazine 'Stree Darpan' will be relaunched on July 1. Initially, it will be inaugurated online and on July 15, its formal offline edition will be launched. It is one of those magazines which ran successfully for twenty years from 1909 to 1929 in the pre Independence era, at the time when it was difficult to exercise the right to freedom of speech and expression under British rule. It was the time when our society too was going through a phase of renaissance and women were increasingly becoming aware of their rights.

This magazine contributed to the freedom struggle as much as Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi's 'Pratap' and Premchand's 'Hans' did. But somehow, the significance of 'Stree Darpan' was not talked about much. When the scholars of Indian renaissance and women empowerment drew attention towards the contribution of this magazine, more information was gathered regarding it.

Stree Darpan was edited by Rameshwari Nehru who was the daughter-in-law of Brijlal Nehru, Motilal Nehru's cousin. The most remarkable thing about this magazine was that most of the work involved in taking out the magazine was done by women themselves.

Two years ago, on the death anniversary of iconic Hindi poet Mahadevi Verma, a Facebook page was created with the name Stree Darpan. It was a platform where discussion on women writers, scholars and women issues took place. A lot of the issues which were hitherto not really discussed in Hindi literature were also highlighted. When the Facebook page became popular, a website with the same name was launched which has the work of almost 125 Hindi women writers and has plenty of videos. Stree Darpan now boasts of a YouTube channel also.The website highlights the Hindi translation of poetry written by popular women poets from across the world.

The work on the magazine started as soon as the Booker Prize was awarded to Hindi novelist Geetaanjali Shree. The consultants for this magazines are all reputed writers of Hindi. Veteran authors Mridula Garg, Sudha Arora, Rohini Agarwal, Dr Sudha Singh and poet Savita Singh have all contributed to reviving this historic feminist magazine. Senior poet, journalist Vimal Kumar is also the key writer leading the revival of the magazine.