ABSTRACT
While mushairas or Urdu poetry symposia are an age-old and popular tradition attracting thousands of attendees in rural and small-town India irrespective of religious affiliation, the Internet and social media have lately provided a new platform for this tradition to flourish. All over Urdu-knowing India, especially in the qasbas of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Maharashtra, Telangana, Karnataka, etc., real mushairas are video-recorded and uploaded to social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, where they are watched and shared by millions of fans of young and local poets such as Nikhat Moradabadi, Danish Ghazal, Qamar Ejaz, Shabana Shabnam, Saba Balrampuri, Shabina Adeeb, and Lata Haya. Are YouTube fan clubs of mushairas giving a new dimension to Urdu poetics?
