CM Naim

C.M. Naim was until his passing in July 2025 Professor Emeritus, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. One of his last books was Urdu Crime Fiction (2023). Before that there was A Most Noble Life (Orient Blackswan, 2021) about two remarkable Muslim women of the 19th century.

India’s Urdu Press: A Bitter-Sweet Bicentenary

In the past 75 years a community of Urdu magazines that used to be read by the entire family has disappeared unmourned, so too their journalists and readers. There is also now no major Urdu newspaper…

▶01-Feb-2023

CM Naim

A Child’s Prayer

The outcry in Bareilly last month over students singing an Iqbal poem reminds us that we live in a hyper-nationalist time, where leaders glorify territorial nationalism beyond measure and…

▶04-Jan-2023

CM Naim

Our Brother’s Keepers

The protesters at Shaheen Bagh have built a solidarity that has not been derived from some legal or religious text but is drawn from their own direct experience. They say in their own plain fashion:…

▶26-Feb-2020

CM Naim