National Archives gets Suroor rare Urdu collection

SHRIKANT BHATIA
TIA
NEW DELHI: The rare collections of great Urdu scholar Professor Ale Ahmad Suroor have become asset of National Archives of India. The daughter of the renowned writer Ms. Mehjabeen has gifted about 20,000 books, mostly in Urdu, newspapers, magazines and journals to the National Archives of India.

There are, in addition, a large number of letters exchanged between Urdu writers and poets.

A prized possession is Al-Hilal, a newspaper edited by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. A large number of photographs have also been gifted. They include photographs of Jawaharlal Nehru’s visit to the Aligarh Muslim University.

Mehjabeen  described the National Archives of India as ‘a centre of excellence’. ‘I wish, the National Archives of India will receive many more such collections’, she said