ABSTRACT
The expression “struggle for existence” represents one of the most famous examples in which a metaphor, having its origins in everyday language, was first moved into the realm of natural science, where Darwin assigned it a specific meaning in the context of his theory. In India an Indo-Muslim Japanology in Urdu had developed already in the late nineteenth century. Early twentieth century discussions on eugenics in Urdu can be found in al-Hilal. In al-Hilal, articles on eugenics became slightly more frequent only in the late 1920s, and even beyond this newspaper, concrete references to eugenics before that stage were rare. Unlike Urdu periodicals, Hindi journals featured articles on eugenics already from the first decade of the twentieth century. While in the periodical press references to eugenics were quite frequent, monographs specifically dedicated to the topic, such as Shivnandan Singh’s, were rather uncommon both in Hindi and in Urdu.
