Steered by social media, Arabic calligraphy is witnessing a resurgence as an art form in south India

There was a time when India’s popular culture and artistic sensibilities were shaped by multilingual calligraphy, for instance, in Urdu, which adapted from the Arabic script. Indian film posters (Alam Ara, 1931, Mughal-e-Azam, 1960; Pakeezah, 1972, among others), wedding cards, shop hoardings and even legal documents were handwritten/hand-painted in Urdu, as were a number of magazines (like Shama and Din Dunia) and newspapers (like The Musalman, handwritten in Urdu and printed from Chennai), that set the foundation of a booming publishing industry.
The once-ubiquitous calligraphy became outmoded with the advent of digitalisation and desktop publishing in the early 1990s in India. Recent years, however, have seen a renewed interest as artists are being drawn by Arabic calligraphy’s retro appeal, besides it being assimilated in regional-language scripts, such as Arabi-Malayalam and Arwi Tamil. Its cultural resurgence in south India, where Arabic calligraphy is being engaged with as an art form, beyond faith and religious scriptures, is being steered by a small group of artist-revivalists. And women are steering this revival.