What did the spread of print culture in nineteenth century mean to.... a) women.... b) the poor.... c) reformers
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
Women: As a result of the spread of print culture in the 19 century India, books became cheaper. Many hawkers started selling books from door to door. This created easy availability of books for majority of women. Women’s reading increased enormously in middle classes homes. Liberal husbands and fathers began educating their women folk at home, and sent them to schools when women’s schools were getting up in the cities and towns after mid 19th century. But conservatives Hindus and Muslims were not in favour of educating women. Sometimes rebel women defied them. The story of a Muslim girl is worth-mentioning here. Her family wanted her to read only the Arabic Quran which she did not understand. So she insisted on learning to read and write in Urdu, a language that was her own.
These are some examples of women writers from 19th century:
Rashsundari Devi: A young married girl in a very orthodox household learnt to read in the secrecy of her kitchen. She wrote her autobiography Amar Jiban which was published in 1876, became the first full –length autobiography published in the Bengali language.
Kailashbhashini Devi: In 1860s, she wrote books high lighting the experiences of women about how women were imprisoned at home, kept in ignorance and forced to dohard domestic labour.
Tarabaishinde and Pandita Ramabai: wrote about the miserable lives of upper – caste Hindu women, especially widows.
Begum Rokeya Sakhawathossein: In 1926, an educationist and literacy figure Begum Rokeya Sakhawathossein, strongly condemned men for withholdings education from women.
Women, who were earlier cocooned inside their homes, could now know about the outside world thanks to the print technology. This created a spurt of many women writers in India. It can be said that print culture not only created readers among women but also writers among them.
The poor: With the spread of print – culture very cheap small books, were brought to markets in the nineteenth century and sold at crossroads, allowing poor people traveling to markets to buy them. Public libraries were set up to expand the access of books. From the late 19th century, issues of caste discrimination began to be written about in many printed tracts and essays. Jyotibaphule wrote about the injustices of the caste system in his famous book Gulamgiri in 1871. This helped in bringing these issues to the forefront of public consciousness.
Workers in factories lacked education to write much about their experiences. But some workers took initiative to write stories about their conditions. Like:
Kashibaba, a Kanpur mill worker wrote and published Chhote aur bade ka sawal in 1938 to show the links between class and caste exploitation.
The poems of another Kanpur millworker under the name of sudarshanchakr between 1935 and 1955, were brought together and published in a collection called Sacchi kavitayan. So worker’s problems also came to the fore.
The Reformers: From the early nineteenth century there were intense debates around religious issues. Different groups confronted the changes happening within colonial society in different ways, and offered a variety of new interpretations of the beliefs of different religions. Some criticized existing practices and campaigned for reform, while others countered the arguments of reformers. These debates were carried out in public and in print. Wider public can participate in public discussion and express their views. New ideas emerged through clashes of opinions. Debates over religious reform took place, which were opposed by the Hindu and Muslim orthodoxy. They always discouraged people from reading printed materials.
Ram Mohan Roy started publishing a weekly news paper Sambad Kaumudi in 1821, Hindu orthodoxy commissioned and the Samachar chandrika opposed his opinions.
The deoband Seminary, founded in 1867, published thousands of fatwas telling muslims readers how to conduct themselves in their everyday lives, and explaining the meaning of Islamic doctrines .
this may be helpful to you:-)