From Sarita to Dharmyug, ‘middlebrow’ Hindi magazines in India played a special role in the two decades following independence. They occupied a specific cultural space, and they reflected the hopes and dreams of the ‘middle class’ of the time. 

Aakriti Mandhwani’s book, Everyday Reading: Hindi Middlebrow and the North Indian Middle Class, unpacks all this and more. 

In this interview with Newslaundry’s Anand Vardhan, Aakriti talks about how these magazines appealed to the public imagination in two ways – by letting go of the idea of ‘service to the nation’, and by tapping into people’s consumerist urges. She explains that until then, the middle class had been asked to “go along with the Nehruvian dream” that dictated a “deferral of pleasure”.