Adil Najam
Even when print publications were not under the type of pressures that they are today (because of internet based publishing), academic journals have always been a rather difficult enterprise to sustain. They survive mostly to the extent that libraries are willing and able to pay the high library subscriptions. Therefore an academic journal, produced in the United States, on a subject as esoteric (for the U.S. academic market) as Urdu, published only once a year, and serving really a relatively tiny market, could never have been an easy proposition. Yet, for 24 years now – this being its 25th anniversary issue year – The Annual of Urdu Studies has survived and been the flag-bearer of academic Urdu studies in the West.
But that may not be so for very long. It is now struggling – literally, for its survival. It is not at all clear whether it will. But it will be a sorry shame if it does not.
