Question

Why british did not ban indian newspapers?

Answer 1

In , 1684 ,British had established a printind press in Bonbay .However, even before that we have traces of Press in India. In 1550, the Portuguese had brought a Press Machine with them and the Jesuit of Goa published the first book in 1557. Since 1684, no newspaper was published in India in the company’s territories for; it could awake either its subjects or their bosses sitting in England. Not all officers and servants of a company like East India Company were happy. There were some disgruntled servants who wished to “publish” and “expose” the malpractices in the company and its territories like “wikileaks” and Edward Snowden have been in recent times. A fruitless attempt was made by one of those discontents named William Bolts in 1776, who after censured by the company’s court of Directors for “private trade” expressed intentions to “publish” a newspaper. It was in 1780, when James Augustus Hickey published the first newspaper in India titled “Bengal Gazette” or “Calcutta General Advertiser” in 1780. But he was too outspoken and the result was that his press was seized in 1782. Later, some more newspapers were published which were: The Calcutta Gazette 1784 The Bengal Journal 1785 The Oriental Magazine of Calcutta 1785 The Calcutta Chronicle 1786 The Madras Courier 1788 The Bombay Herald 1789 But almost all of them did not choose the “blasphemy” of the company and thus avoided clash like James Augustus Hickey did. But, in 1799, Lord Wellesley brought the Censorship of Press Act, 1799. The idea was to stop the French from publishing anything which could harm British in any way. This act brought all the newspapers under the Government scrutiny before their publication. This act was later extended in 1807 and covered all kinds of Press Publications newspapers, magazine, books and Pamphlets. The rules were relaxed when Lord Hastings came into power. The Bombay Samachar, founded in 1822 and printed in Gujarati is the oldest newspaper in Asia still in print. The Times of India was founded in 1838 as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce by Bennett, Coleman and Company, a colonial enterprise now mainly owned by Indu Jain and her family. In the 1950s 214 daily newspapers were published in the country. Out of these, 44 were English language dailies while the rest were published in various regional and national languages. This number rose to 2,856 dailies in 1990 with 209 English dailies. The total number of newspapers published in the country reached 35,595 newspapers by 1993 (3,805 dailies). The main regional newspapers of India include the Malayalam language Malayala Manorama, Hindi-language Dainik Jagran and Anandabazar Patrika. The Times of India Group, the Indian Express Group, the Hindustan Times Group, the Hindu Group and the Anandabazar Patrika Group are the main print media houses of the country. The Anandabazar Patrika group runs the oldest surviving Hindi newspaper in India. By 2007, 62 of the world’s best selling newspaper dailies were published in China, Japan, and India. India consumed 99 million newspaper copies as of 2007—making it the second largest market in the world for newspapers.

Answer 2

During the reign of the British empire there were several Acts passed as stringent curbs over the Indian Press. Prior to the rumblings of the 1857 mutiny, the Press was fiercely involved in rallying the masses, and inevitably, the British government was increasingly becoming apprehensive about the Press’ freedom. Through the newspapers, a nationalistic rebellion was slowly being pieced together through words and symbols. In view of this, the “Gagging Act” was passed by Lord Lytton, which was driven to curtail and control the Indian publications’ content. The Act compelled all Indian publications to apply for a license from the government, while also ensuring that nothing was written against the British government, nor was the government challenged in any measure.

Unfortunately for the government, the Press was impervious to the “Gagging Act”, working its way around disseminating news. It pushed the government to design far more stringent measures. For instance, in the 1870s, it panned its focus onto the regional vernacular publications that were individually inspiring the masses to partake in the fight against the British empire, by informing them about the dire situation of the Indian people. One such publication was the Bengali weekly, Amrita Bazar Patrika(established in 1868 in Jessore district, now in present-day Bangladesh). Amrita Bazar Patrika caught the authorities’ attention when it reported on the exploited indigo farmers.

Sir Ashley Eden, a British official, approached the editor of Amrita Bazar Patrika, Sisir Kumar Ghose, and asked him to hand over the final approval of editorial content to Eden. Ghose bluntly refused. As did several other Indian editors of regional papers across the country. In the light of this, the Vernacular Press Act was passed on March 14, 1878, where the British government claimed stronger control over the vernacular newspapers in the interest to curb “seditious writing” in “publications in oriental languages”. This Act was not imposed on English-language publications. Amrita Bazar Patrika, a bilingual, adapted to the circumstances and became solely an English weekly, going on to play an important role in the development of investigative Indian journalism, rooting its politics in the freedom struggle. It was fierce, politically vocal and unputdownable. The weekly once even described the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, as “Young and a little foppish, and without previous training but invested with unlimited powers.