Rekhta is an Urdu literary web portal started by Rekhta Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the Urdu literature.^[4] The Rekhta Library Project, its books preservation initiative, has successfully digitized approximately 200,000 books over a span of ten years.^[5] These books primarily consist of Urdu, Hindi and Persian literature and encompass a wide range of genres, including biographies of poets, Urdu poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.^[6] The collection originates from public and research libraries in the Indian subcontinent. It serves content in multiple scripts such as Devanagari, Roman and, primarily, Nastaliq.^[7] It hosts books from centuries earlier and is recognized as the largest website in the world for the preservation of Urdu literature.^[8][9]

The site has digitalized more than 200,000 e-books with thirty-two million pages, which are categorically classified into different sections such as diaries, children's literature, poetries, banned books, and translations, involving Urdu poetry.^[10] It is also credited for preserving 7000 biographies of poets (worldwide), 70,000 ghazals, 28,000 couplets, 12,000 nazms, 6,836 literary videos, 2,127 audio files, 140,000 e-books^[11] manuscripts and pop magazines.

Rekhta was launched on 11 January 2013 in New Delhi, India.^[12] The portal came into existence after the idea of "Urdu virtual library" was introduced by Sanjiv Saraf to professors of Urdu from across leading universities. The literary works, including Urdu poetry were collected from the different private and public libraries across the major cities of India such as Lucknow, Bhopal, Hyderabad, Aligarh, including India's capital Delhi.^[13]

The organization made changes in the Jashn-e-Rekhta event by replacing Urdu with the Hindustani language, although the organization was established for the promotion of Urdu literature through its portal. On 13 December 2019, it made official announcement during its sixth edition of the mehfil held at Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium. The posters, which were received by the event speakers mentioned "Jashn-e-Rekhta: The Biggest Celebration of Hindustani Language and Culture" (not mentioning "Urdu" word). Later, the Urdu speakers criticised the changes citing "It seems Jashn-e-Rekhta has surrendered to the powers that be". An Indian writer and journalist Ziya Us Salam called the changes unfavorable and linked it to the Delhi High Court's decision after it ordered the police "to cut down on “difficult” words in Urdu". An Indian poet Gauhar Raza subsequently called the changes "unfortunate" and "problematic".^[29]