Still glowing, after seven decades
Before the city wakes, as the dawn azaan fades and the first cup of chai is poured, Angaray is already at the door. Few readers pause to ask how this journey began. It began with Moin Farooqui, the founder of Angaray. More than seven decades later, the embers he lit are still glowing.
A tribute to our founder
A voice for his city
He held a simple belief, and a rare one. The people of Hyderabad, he felt, deserved the truth in their own language, the language of their homes, their poets and their prayers. Urdu was not merely the language he wrote in. It was the language he lived in, and he gave it a voice that would greet its readers every morning.
Starting a newspaper asked for courage, conviction and endless hard work. He gave all three, and he began. Every word you read here today traces back to that beginning.
Why “Angaray”
He named his paper Angaray, embers. Not a blaze that dazzles for a moment and dies, but a steady glow that survives the longest night and can always kindle a new fire.
No name could have suited his work better. A newspaper is never finished. It must be made anew each day, against deadlines and through late nights, in hard seasons and joyful ones, with a quiet patience the reader rarely sees.
On the Press Council of India
His standing reached far beyond Hyderabad. In 1979, when the Press Council of India was set up again after the Emergency, Moin Farooqui was named one of its members. The Council is the national body that guards the freedom of the press and the standards of Indian newspapers, and he sat on it on behalf of the country’s newspaper owners.
He was named again in 1988. Twice he sat at that table for Angaray, an Urdu daily from Hyderabad, alongside the heads of papers such as The Statesman and Dainik Jagran. Through him, Hyderabad’s Urdu press had a seat where the standards of Indian journalism were set.
- Member, Press Council of India, 28 February 1979 to 27 February 1982
- Member, Press Council of India, 28 September 1988 to 27 September 1991
The joy of a morning paper
Picture the mornings Angaray has shared with its readers, with a father reading the headlines aloud over chai, a grandmother searching for news of her neighbourhood, a student carefully cutting out an article for school. And now, a family far away in the Gulf, opening the e-paper to feel a little closer to home.
Each of these small moments is part of his success. He did not simply build a newspaper. He gave a whole community a companion for its mornings.
A legacy measured in generations
A newspaper’s success is not measured in a day. It is measured in decades of trust, and by that measure Angaray’s story deserves to be celebrated.
Angaray is registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India under number 3234/1957, the number still printed on every issue.
Children who once watched their parents unfold Angaray now share it with children of their own. Many readers never met Moin Farooqui, yet they have known him all their lives, through every page he made possible.
What he left us
- Truth, told plainly and without fear.
- A free press, worth standing up for.
- Readers first, always.
- A love for Urdu, and a pride in Hyderabad.
- The patience to show up, morning after morning.
- Character before commerce, and courage before convenience.
These remain the values we work by. They are his gift to everyone who has ever worked at Angaray, and to every reader who has ever placed their trust in it.
The embers still glow
Those who build institutions seldom live to see how far their work will travel. We like to think that if he could see Angaray today, he would smile. His paper still reaches readers every morning in print, and now, through the e-paper and this website, it travels across the world in Urdu and in English.
Rooted in the culture of the Deccan and devoted to the Urdu language, Angaray steps into the digital age with the purpose he gave it, which is to tell the truth and to be its readers’ window on the world.
We remember him with love and with gratitude. Every headline we write, every page we print and every story we tell is, in its own small way, a celebration of the man who believed in the power of a single ember.
Still glowing, after seven decades.
May Allah grant him mercy and the highest place in Paradise.
Leading Angaray today
Today Angaray is led by Qadeer Farooqui, the founder’s nephew and the paper’s Editor-in-Chief, Printer, Publisher and Owner. He carries forward the trust his uncle placed in this paper.
He took charge at a time when many newspapers, and Urdu papers above all, were fighting to survive. Costs were rising, readers were turning to screens, and many respected titles fell silent. Under his leadership Angaray has kept its appointment with its readers. It still comes off the press, and it still arrives at their door, morning after morning.
He has never seen the paper as something simply to be kept going, but as something to be made better. He has paid close attention to how Angaray looks in its readers’ hands, with sharper printing, clearer photographs and cleaner, better-ordered pages, so that a paper with seven decades behind it reads like a paper of today.
He was quick to see where readers were going, too. He brought Angaray online as an e-paper, so that a reader far from home can turn the same pages, on the same morning, as a reader in the Old City.
This website is the next step. It brings Angaray to a new generation in Urdu and in English, with news from Hyderabad, Telangana, India and the world through the day, while the printed paper remains at its heart.
Through all this change, he has kept what matters most unchanged. Angaray still speaks plainly, still stands by the truth, and still serves the Urdu readers of Hyderabad and Telangana first. He leads its team with the same patience and hard work the paper was built on, and with respect for every hand that makes it, from the newsroom to the press.
Moin Farooqui lit the ember. Qadeer Farooqui has kept it glowing, and carried its light to readers who, in his uncle’s day, were far beyond its reach.