In 1962, when the late Usman Asad started the Nasheman Urdu Weekly, his intention was to bring nothing less than a revolution through his paper. A prominent name in Urdu journalism, he started his career as a journalist, at the daily Pasban newspaper and later moved on to become its manager. However, the dwindling socio-political situation in the country, and a lack of collective will and directio
n to alter the rampant inequality, ignited an urge to start a paper on his own, which lead to the creation of the weekly. Nasheman, an Urdu word for ‘nest’, garnered a legendary status among our readers from the very onset. With the late Ameerulla Nizami, who would himself go on to become a celebrated name due to his immensely popular weekly column – Thapdakhen (slaps or smacks) as one of our writers, the paper depicted the prevalent social and political conditions of the times in the most starkest terms. Such was Nasheman’s popularity, that in the heydays of Urdu in the post independence India, as one journalist put it, “it was bought by one, sold to another for double the price, and then sold again to triple the price”. The paper is circulated not only in India but also abroad, copies of it are shipped to UAE, Saudi Arabia and many other countries. For more than five decades of our existence, we have remained true to our essence. We still are the staunchest critique of socio-political inequities, we still are the largest selling Urdu weekly in the country. With Nasheman English we continue our long soulful journey, albeit on a different platform, and in a different language. Under the current editorship of our founder’s son, Rizwan Asad, the daily online English edition will explore news and analysis from an independent, alternative perspective. We will look beyond the nauseating politics, cultural propaganda and monopolizing news bulletins, and will try to bring out fresh outlook about people and issues through a combination of original reporting and aggregated content gleaned by the site’s editor and staff.
