NEWSPAPER PRINTING IN INDIA

Do you know the old name of Kolkata City? It is Calcutta. Did you know that Calcutta was once the capital city of India? From 1774 to 1922 Calcutta was the Capital of India. Calcutta has also many other firsts in the history of India. The first Railway Company was started here.The first Metro Rail was also in this City. The first Post and Telegraph office and the first western style bank were also opened in Calcutta. Our Supreme Court also began functioning from that city.

All of you must have heard about Nobel Prizes. Calcutta city gave the country five Nobel Laureates, Rabindranath Tagore, Sir C. V Raman, Mother Theresa, Ronald Rose and Amartya Sen.

You will find it interesting to note that Calcutta has one more first . It was from Calcutta that the first newspaper was published from India. It was a Britisher who started the first newspaper in our country. On January 29, 1780 James Augustus Hickey launched the “Bengal Gazette”. It has another title “Calcutta Advertiser”. It was popularly known as “Hickey’s Gazette”. The first issue of the paper had two pages and later it was increased to four pages. It’s size was 35 cms x 24 cms. The British East India Company did not consider freedom of the press as good for society. They tried to suppress publication of newspapers. Hickey was a very bold editor. He continued his criticism of British authorities .He published reports attacking the East India Company officials. The British authorities arrested Hickey many times. Finally, they confiscated his paper and press in 1782 and stopped its publication. Hickey was asked to leave the country. He was sent back to England. Copies of the Bengal Gazette are still kept in the National Library in Kolkata and the British Museum in London.

Confiscation of a newspaper is a rare action taken by the authorities if that paper publishes some news report or article that they think is highly objectionable. Through confiscation, the government transfers the press and other materials of the publication to the treasury. Thereby, the office of the paper is sealed and the publication stopped.

We have thus seen that Kolkata has a unique place in the history of Indian newspaper publishing. But it is all the more interesting to note that the second, third and fourth newspapers in the country were also launched from this city.

Following in Hickey’s footsteps in 1780, the second newspaper was launched from Calcutta “The Indian Gazette”. The “Calcutta Gazette” which started publication in 1784 and the “Bengal Journal” which was launched in 1785 were the third and fourth newspapers to come out from Calcutta.

All these four earlier papers were published in the English language. Slowly newspapers started coming out from other parts of the country also. The “Madras Courier ” (1785) and “ Madras Gazette” (1795) were started from Madras. From Mumbai, the “Mumbai Herald” was launched in 1789. The press regulations and censorship imposed by the British stood in the way of starting more newspapers in India. In 1818, Lord Hastings removed the strict censorship measures for a milder set of policies. This led to the emergence of many new newspapers, including many in Indian languages. Raja Ram Mohan

Fig 5.7

Roy who is known to have fought for the freedom of the press edited a Persian weekly called ‘Mirat-ul-Akhbar’. The first language newspaper in India was started in Kannada language, the

“Kannada Samachar”. But the publishers of this paper were not Indians, but foreign missionaries. The first Indian language newspaper published by an Indian was also launched from Calcutta , “The Bengali Gazette” by Gangadhar Bhattacharjee in 1816. The Gujarati daily “Mumbai Samachar” published from Mumbai is the oldest existing newspaper not only in India but also in Asia. It was established in 1822.