Class 10th - History

Print Culture and the Modern World

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Introduction

Can you imagine the life without print?

Theme Print itself has a history which had shaped the contemporary world.

● What is this history?

● When did printed literature begin to circulate?
● How has it helped create the modern world?

Expansion of print from East Asia to its expansion in Europe and in India.
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What we are going to study?

➔ The first printed books

➔ Print comes to Europe

➔ The print revolution and its impact

➔ The reading mania

➔ The nineteenth century

➔ India and the world of print

➔ Religious reform and public debates

➔ New forms of publication

➔ Print and censorship

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The first printed books

The earliest kind of print technology

Hand printing
China, Japan and Korea

From AD 594 onwards, books in China

were printed by rubbing paper against Limitation
the inked surface of woodblocks.

As both sides of the thin, porous sheet could not be printed.

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Print and China

➔ The traditional Chinese ‘accordion book’

● Folded and stitched at the side.

● Superbly skilled craftsmen could duplicate, with
remarkable accuracy, the beauty of calligraphy.

➔ Chinese bureaucracy and its role in print

● China possessed a huge bureaucratic system which recruited
its personnel through civil service examinations.
● Textbooks for this examination were printed in vast numbers
under the sponsorship of the imperial state.
● From the sixteenth century, the number of examination
candidates went up and that increased the volume of print.
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As urban culture bloomed in China. Uses of print diversified.

Print was no longer used just by

They collected trade information.
scholar-officials. Merchants used print.

Reading became a leisure activity.

● The new readership preferred fictional narratives, poetry, autobiographies, anthologies

of literary masterpieces, and romantic plays.
● Rich women began to read, and many women began publishing their poetry and plays.
● Wives of scholar-officials published their works, and courtesans wrote about their lives.
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Role of technology in spreading reading culture.

● Western printing techniques and mechanical presses

were imported in the late nineteenth century as Western
powers established their outposts in China.
● Shanghai became the hub of the new print culture,
catering to the Western-style schools.
● Shift from hand printing to mechanical printing.
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Print in Japan

Buddhist missionaries from China introduced

hand-printing technology into Japan around AD 768-770.
Containing six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations.

Oldest Japanese book prints was Buddhist diamond sutra[A.D 868]

➔ Printing of pictures on textiles, playing cards and paper money

Printing to visual material

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Upcoming of visual material in printing.

● led to interesting publishing practices.

● In the late eighteenth century, in the flourishing urban circles at
Edo illustrated collections of paintings depicted an elegant urban
culture, involving artists, courtesans, and teahouse gatherings.
● Libraries and bookstores were packed with hand-printed material.
● Shift from hand printing to mechanical printing.
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Kitagawa Utamaro and ukiyo

Kitagawa Utamaro, born in Edo in 1753, was widely known for his contributions to an art form called ukiyo.
Pictures of the floating world' or depiction of ordinary human experiences, especially urban ones.
These prints travelled to contemporary US and Europe and influenced artists like Manet, Monet and Van Gogh.

A morning scene, ukiyo print by Shunman Kubo, late eighteenth century.

An ukiyo print by A man looks out of the window at the snowfall while women prepare tea
kitagawa utamaro and perform other domestic duties.
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Print comes to Europe

Silk route and its significance

● Silk and spices from China flowed into

Europe
● In the eleventh century, Chinese paper
reached Europe via the same route.
● Paper made possible the production of
manuscripts, carefully written by scribes.
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Marco Polo and his contribution.

● Then, in 1295, Marco Polo, a great

explorer, returned to Italy after
many years of exploration in China.
● China already had the technology of
woodblock printing.
Marco Polo brought this knowledge back with him.

Impact

● Italians began producing books with woodblocks.

● Soon the technology spread to other parts of Europe.
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Connect with the chapter age of industrialisation

Aristocrats and rich Class status and refinement

● Luxury editions were still handwritten on very expensive vellum.

● Aristocratic circles and rich monastic libraries scoffed at printed
books as cheap vulgarities

● Merchants and students in the university towns bought the

cheaper printed copies.

Impact
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Demand for books Bookseller Book fairs

How the increasing demand was met?

● Production of handwritten manuscripts was also organised in new ways

to meet the expanded demand.
● Scribes or skilled hand writers were no longer solely employed by
wealthy or influential patrons but increasingly by booksellers as well.
● More than 50 scribes often worked for one bookseller.

Limitations
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The production of handwritten manuscripts could not satisfy

the ever-increasing demand for books.

● Copying was an expensive, laborious and

time-consuming business.
● Manuscripts were fragile, awkward to Solution
handle, and could not be carried around
or read easily.

Woodblock Printing

With the growing demand for books, woodblock printing gradually became more and more popular.
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Further need of quicker and cheaper reproduction of texts.

Invention of a new print technology

● At Strasbourg, Germany, Johann Gutenberg developed the

first-known printing press in the 1430s.
● Gutenberg was the son of a merchant and grew up on a large
agricultural estate.
● From his childhood he had seen wine and olive presses.
● Subsequently, he learnt the art of polishing stones, became a
master goldsmith, and also acquired the expertise to create lead
moulds used for making trinkets.

He used all this knowledge to his invention.

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Gutenberg's Printing Press

● Gutenberg adapted existing technology to design his

innovation.
● The olive press provided the model for the printing
press.
● Moulds were used for casting the metal types for
the letters of the alphabet.
● By 1448, Gutenberg perfected the system.
● The first book he printed was the Bible.
● About 180 copies were printed and it took three
years to produce them.
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Gutenberg’s printing press explained

● Notice the long handle attached to the screw. This

handle was used to turn the screw and press down
the platen over the printing block that was placed
on top of a sheet of damp paper.
● Gutenberg developed metal types for each of the 26
characters of the Roman alphabet and devised a
way of moving them around so as to compose
different words of the text.
● This came to be known as the moveable type
printing machine, and it remained the basic print
technology over the next 300 years.
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A Printer's workshop, sixteenth century.

● This picture depicts what a printer's shop looked like in the sixteenth century, All
the activities are going on under one roof.
● In the foreground on the right, compositors are at work, while on the left galleys
are being prepared and ink is being applied on the metal types; in the background,
the printers are turning the screws of the press, and near them proofreaders are
at work.
● Right in front is the final product the double-page printed sheets, stacked in neat
piles, waiting to be bound.
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The new technology did not entirely displace the existing art of producing books by hand.

Explain

➔ Printed books at first closely resembled the written manuscripts in appearance and layout.

● The metal letters imitated the ornamental handwritten styles.

● Borders were illuminated by hand with foliage and other
patterns.
● Illustrations were painted.
● In the books printed for the rich, space for decoration was kept
blank on the printed page.
● Each purchaser could choose the design and decide on the
painting school that would do the illustrations.
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Between 1450 - 1550 Printing production expanded

● Printing presses were set up in most countries of Europe.

● Printers from Germany travelled to other countries, seeking work and helping
start new presses.
● The second half of the fifteenth century saw 20 million copies of Printed books
flooding the markets in Europe.
● The number went up in the sixteenth century to about 200 million copies.

This shift from hand printing to mechanical printing led to the print revolution.
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The Print Revolution and its Impact

Why Print revolution?

● It transformed the lives of people

● Changing their relationship to information and knowledge.
● It influenced popular perceptions
● Opened up new ways of looking at things.
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A new reading public

Printing press New reading public Impact

● Printing reduced the cost of books.

● The time and labour required to produce each book came down.
● Multiple copies could be produced with greater ease.
● Books flooded the market.
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Book Reading Public Created a new culture of Reading

● Earlier, reading was restricted to the elites. Common

people lived in a world of oral culture.
● Before the age of print, books were not only expensive
but they could not be produced in sufficient numbers.

Print revolution

Now books could reach out to wider sections of people.

Hearing public Reading public

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The transition from hearing public to reading public was not so simple. Problems

Books could be read only by the literate, and the rates of

literacy in most European countries were very low

How the publishers persuade people towards prints?

● Printers began publishing popular ballads and folk tales, and

such books would be profusely illustrated with pictures.
● These were then sung and recited at gatherings in villages and in
taverns in towns.
● Print was transmitted orally and the hearing public and reading
public became intermingled.
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Religious Debates and the Fear of Print

● Print created the possibility of wide circulation of ideas,

and introduced a new world of debate and discussion.

● Even those who disagreed with established authorities

could now print and circulate their ideas.

Not everyone welcomed the printed book,

and those who did also had fears about it.

Explain
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Fears associated with the spread of print?

Religious authorities, monarchs as well as many writers and artists

were apprehensive of the effects of the easy availability of printed.

● It was feared that if there was no control over what was printed
and read then rebellious and irreligious thoughts might spread.
● The authority of 'valuable' literature would be destroyed.
● This anxiety was the basis of widespread criticism of the new
printed literature that had begun to circulate.
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Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation

● In 1517, the religious reformer Martin Luther wrote

Ninety Five Theses criticising many of the practices
and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church.
● It challenged the Church to debate his ideas.
● Luther's writings were immediately reproduced in
vast numbers and read widely.
● This lead to a division within the Church and to the
beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
● Deeply grateful to print, Luther said, 'Printing is the
ultimate gift of God and the greatest one.

Analyse the situation without print?

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Print and Dissent

Stimulated many distinctive individual interpretations

Print and popular religion literature
of faith even among little-educated working people.

Example: Menocchio, A miller in Italy, reinterpreted the message of the Bible and
formulated a view of God and Creation that enraged the Roman Catholic Church.

He was inquisitioned for expressing heretical ideas and executed

ஃ The Roman Church, imposed severe controls over publishers and booksellers
and began to maintain an Index of Prohibited Books from 1558.
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The reading Mania

Literacy rates( 17th and 18th century ) How

● Churches of different denominations set up schools in villages.

● Carrying literacy to peasants and artisans.
● As literacy and schools spread in European countries, there was
a virtual reading mania.
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New forms of popular literature appeared in print, targeting new audiences.

● Booksellers employed pedlars who roamed around villages, carrying little books for sale. There
were almanacs or ritual calendars, along with ballads and folktales.
● In England, penny chapbooks were carried by petty pedlars known as chapmen, and sold for a
penny, so that even the poor could buy them.
● In France, were the "Biliotheque Bleue", which were low-priced small books printed on poor
quality paper, and bound in cheap blue covers.
● Periodical press and newspapers carried the information about current affairs with
entertainment, wars and trade.
● The ideas of scientists and philosophers now became more accessible to the common people
Scientists like Isaac Newton began to publish their discoveries the writings of thinkers such as
Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau were also widely printed and read.
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Tremble, therefore tyrants of the world

Understand the heading

By the mid-eighteenth century, there was a common conviction that
books were a means of spreading progress and enlightenment. How

● Books could change the world, liberate society from despotism and
tyranny, and herald a time when reason and intellect would rule.
● Louise - Sebastien Mercier a novelist declared “The printing press is the
most powerful engine of progress and public opinion is the force that will
sweep despotism Away”.
● Mercier proclaimed: Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world! Tremble
before the virtual writer.

Mercier, his novels and the role of print

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Print culture and French revolution

Many historians have argued that print culture created the

conditions within which French Revolution occurred. How

Three types of arguments have been usually put forward.

First Print popularised the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers.

● Their writings provided a critical commentary on tradition, superstition and despotism.

● Demanded that everything be judged through the application of reason and rationality.
● They attacked the sacred authority of the Church and the despotic power of the state,
thus eroding the legitimacy of a social order based on tradition.
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Second Print created a new culture of dialogue and debate.

● All values, norms and institutions were re-evaluated and discussed by a public that had
become aware of the power of reason.
● The need to question existing ideas and beliefs.

Third By the 1780s there was an outpouring of literature that mocked

the royalty and criticised their morality.

● Questions about the existing social order. (3 Estate)

● Cartoons and caricatures about the situation where the monarchy remained absorbed only in
sensual pleasures while the common people suffered immense hardships circulated.
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Condusion Did print culture led to the French Revolution

Print Spread of idea.

● But we must remember that people did not read just one kind of literature.
● If they read the ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau, they were also exposed to monarchical and
Church propaganda.
● They accepted some ideas and rejected others.
Print did not directly shape their minds, but it did open up the possibility of thinking differently.
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The nineteenth century

The nineteenth century saw vast leaps in mass literacy in Europe.

Impact

Increase in the large number of readers

Children Women Worker

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Children, women and worker

Children

As primary education became compulsory = Children became an important category of readers.

● Production of school textbooks became critical for the publishing industry.

● A children's press, devoted to literature for children alone, was set up in France in 1857.
● The Grimm Brothers in Germany spent years compiling traditional folk tales gathered
from peasants.
● Anything that was considered unsuitable for children or would appear vulgar to the
elites, was not included in the published version.
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Women

● Women became important as readers as well as writers.

● Penny magazines were especially meant for women, as were
manuals teaching proper behaviour and housekeeping.
● Some of the best-known novelists were women: Jane Austen, the
Bronte sisters, George Eliot.
● Their writings became important in defining a new type of woman:
a person with will, strength of personality, determination and the
power to think.
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Workers

● Lending libraries had been in existence from the

seventeenth century onwards.
● In the nineteenth century, lending libraries in England.
became instruments for educating white-collar
workers, artisans and lower-middle-class people.
● Sometimes, self-educated working, class people wrote
for themselves.
● After the working day was gradually shortened from
the mid-nineteenth century, workers had some time
for self-improvement and self-expression.
● They wrote political tracts and autobiographies in
large numbers.
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Further Innovations

Series of development occurred in printing technology

● By the mid-nineteenth century Richard M. Hoe of New York had perfected the
power-driven cylindrical press.
● In the late nineteenth century, the offset press was developed which could print up to
six colours at a time
● Electrically operated presses accelerated printing operations.
● A series of other developments followed.
➔ Methods of feeding paper improved, the quality of plates became better, automatic
paper reels and photoelectric controls of the colour register were introduced.

Impact
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Electrically Offset press Power-driven cylindrical press. Richard M.

operated Hoe
presses
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Printers and publishers continuously developed new strategies to sell their product.

● Nineteenth-century periodicals serialised important novels, which gave birth

to a particular way of writing novels.
● In the 1920s in England, popular works were sold in cheap series, called the
Shilling Series.
● The dust cover or the book jacket is also a twentieth-century innovation.
● Publishers feared a decline in book purchases. To sustain
Great depression
buying, they brought out cheap paperback editions.
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India and the world of print

Print and India

Before After

Manuscripts before the age of print Print comes to India

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Manuscripts Before the Age of Print

India Rich and old tradition of handwritten manuscripts

● Manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper.

● Pages were sometimes beautifully illustrated.
● They would be either pressed between wooden covers or sewn
together to ensure preservation.
● Continued till the introduction of print.

Problems
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Problems associated with manuscripts

● Highly expensive and fragile. They had to be handled carefully.

● They could not be read easily as the script was written in different styles.
● Manuscripts were not widely used in everyday life.

Pre Colonial Bengal An extensive network of village primary school was developed

● Students very often did not read texts.

● They only learnt to write.
● Teachers dictated portions of texts from memory and students wrote them down.

Many thus became literate without ever actually reading any kinds of texts.
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Print comes to India

The printing press first came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century.

● Jesuit priests learnt Konkani and printed several tracts.

● By 1674, about 50 books had been printed in the Konkani and in Kanara languages.

● Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book in 1579 at Cochin.

● In 1713 the first Malayalam book was printed by them.

● By 1710, Dutch Protestant missionaries had printed 32 Tamil texts, many of them
translations of older works.
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Print comes to India The English language press

● The English language press did not grow in India till quite late.
● English East India Company began to import presses from the late seventeenth century.

From 1780, James Augustus Hickey began to edit the Bengal Gazette

● “A commercial paper open to all, but influenced by none”.

● Hickey published a lot of advertisements, including those
that related to the import and sale of slaves.
● He also published a lot of gossip about the Company's
senior officials in India.

Impact
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James Augustus Hickey Wrote against British

Enraged by this, Governor-General Warren Hastings persecuted Hickey.

Encouraged the publication of officially sanctioned

newspapers that could counter the flow of information that
damaged the image of the colonial government.

There were Indians, too, who began to publish Indian newspapers. Brought out by Gangadhar
Bhattacharya, who was close to Rammohun Roy.

Bengal Gazette
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Religious reform and public debates

From the early nineteenth century, there were intense debates around religious issues

Various interpretations

Some criticised existing While others countered

practices and campaigned the arguments of
for reform. reformers.

These debates were carried out in public and with print a wider public
could now participate in these public discussions and express their views.
New ideas emerged through these clashes of opinions.
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Time of intense controversies between social and religious reformers and the Hindu orthodoxy

Over matters like widow immolation, monotheism,

Brahmanical priesthood and idolatry.

Impact

● Tracts and newspapers proliferated; circulating a variety of arguments.

● The ideas were printed in the everyday, spoken language of ordinary people.
● Rammohun Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi from 1821 and the Hindu orthodoxy
commissioned the Samachar Chandrika to oppose his opinions.
● From 1822, two Persian newspapers were published, Jam-i-Jahan Nama and Shamsul Akhbar
● In the same year, a Gujarati newspaper, the Bombay Samachar, made its appearance.
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Rammohun Roy Bombay Samachar

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Religious reform and public debates Among Muslims

● Ulama were deeply anxious about the collapse of

Muslim dynasties.
● They feared that colonial rulers would encourage
conversion, change the Muslim personal laws.

To counter this, they used cheap lithographic presses,

published Persian and Urdu translations of holy
scriptures, and printed religious newspapers and tracts.

● The Deoband Seminary, founded in 1867,

published thousands upon thousands of fatwas
telling Muslim readers how to conduct themselves
in their everyday lives, and explaining the
meanings of Islamic doctrines.
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Religious reform and public debates Among Hindus

Among Hindus, too, print encouraged the reading of

religious texts. especially in the vernacular languages.

● The first printed edition of the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, a

sixteenth-century text, came out from Calcutta in 1810.

● From the 1880s, the Naval Kishore Press at Lucknow and the
Shri Venkateshwar Press in Bombay published numerous
religious texts in vernaculars.

● Printed material was read by and read out to faithful.

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Conclusion

Religious texts, therefore, reached a very wide circle of people, encouraging

discussions, debates and controversies within and among different religions.

● It also connected communities and people in different parts of India.

● Newspapers conveyed news from one place to another, creating
pan-Indian identities.
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New forms of Publication

People wanted to see their own lives, experiences,

Print emotions and relationships reflected in what they read.

● New forms of publications emerged.

● For readers, it opened up new worlds of experience,
and gave a vivid sense of the diversity of human lives.

● New literary forms also entered the world of reading lyrics, short
stories, essays about social, political matters and Novels.
● They reinforced the new emphasis on human lives and intimate
feelings, about the political and social rules that shaped such things.
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Visual culture was taking shape

● With the help of printing presses, visual images and

printed material could be reproduced in multiple copies.

● Painters like Raja Ravi Varma produced images for mass

circulation.

● Poor wood engravers who made woodblocks set up shop

near the letterpresses, and were employed by print shops.

● Cheap prints and calendars, easily available in the bazaar,

could best even by the poor to decorate the walls of their
homes or places of work.

● Print began shaping popular ideas about modernity and

tradition, religion and politics, and society and culture.
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By the 1870s, caricatures and cartoons were being published in

journals and newspapers, commenting on social and political issues.

Content?

● Some caricatures ridiculed the educated Indians'

fascination with Western tastes and clothes.
● Others expressed the fear of social change.
The cover page of Indian Charivari. The Indian Charivari
● There were imperial caricatures lampooning nationalists. was one of the many journals of caricature and satire
published in the late nineteenth century. Notice that the
imperial British figure is positioned right at the centre.
● Nationalist cartoons criticising imperial rule. He is authoritative and imperial; telling the natives what
is to be done. The natives sit on either side of him, servile
and submissive. The Indians are being shown a copy of
Punch, the British journal of cartoons and satire. You can
almost hear the British master say - 'This is the model,
produce Indian versions of it.
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Women and Print

Women came in the center of print

● Women's reading, therefore, increased enormously in middle-class homes.

● Liberal husbands and fathers began educating their womenfolk at home,

and sent them to schools.

● Women's schools were set up in the cities and towns.

● Material was printed.

Problem
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Women and print Not all families were liberal.

● Conservative Hindus believed that a literate girl would be widowed

● Muslims feared that educated women would be corrupted by reading
Urdu romances.

Rebel women defied such prohibition.

Explain
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Sultana’s Dream

● Story of a girl in a conservative Muslim family of north

India who secretly learnt to read and write in Urdu.

Rashsundari Debi

● A young married girl in a very orthodox household, learnt

to read in the secrecy of her kitchen. Later, she wrote her
autobiography Amar Jiban which was published in 1876.
● It was the first full-length autobiography published in the
Bengali language.
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Print Possibility/Interest in highlighting what women

would have to say about their own lives.

● From the 1860s, a few Bengali women like Kailashbashini Debi wrote books
highlighting the experiences of women - about how women were
imprisoned at home, kept in ignorance, forced to do hard domestic labour Tarabai Shinde
and treated unjustly by the very people they served.
● In the 1880s, in present-day Maharashtra, Tarabai Shinde and Pandita
Ramabai wrote with passionate anger about the miserable lives of
upper-caste Hindu women, especially widows.
● A woman in a Tamil novel expressed what reading meant to women who
were so greatly confined by social regulations: For various reasons, my
world is small ... More than half my life's happiness has com from books.

Pandita Ramabai
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While Urdu, Tamil, Bengali and Marathi print culture had developed
early, Hindi printing began seriously only from the 1870’s

● Large segment of it was devoted to the education of women.

● Journals, written for and sometimes edited by women, became
extremely popular.
● They discussed issues like women's education, widowhood, widow
remarriage and the national movement.
● Some of them offered household and fashion lessons to women and
brought entertainment through short stories and serialised novels.

Vernacular?
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Women and print at vernacular level

In Punjab In Bengal

● Ram Chaddha published the fast-selling ● An entire area in central Calcutta - the Battala
Istri Dharm Vichar to teach women how to - was devoted to the printing of popular
be obedient wives. books.
● The Khalsa Tract Society published cheap ● Here you could buy cheap editions of religious
booklets with a similar message. tracts and scriptures, as well as literature that
was considered obscene and scandalous.
● Many of these were in the form of
dialogues about the qualities of a good ● Pedlars took the Battala publications to
woman. homes, enabling women to read them in their
leisure time.
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Ghor Kali The End of the World, coloured An Indian couple, black and white woodcut. The
woodcut, late nineteenth century. The artist's image shows the artist's fear that the cultural
vision of the destruction of proper family impact of the West has turned the family upside
relations. Here the husband is totally down. Notice that the man is playing the veena
dominated by his wife who is perched on his while the woman is smoking a hookah. The move
shoulder. He is cruel towards his mother, towards women's education in the late
dragging her like an animal, by the noose. nineteenth century created anxiety about the
breakdown of traditional family roles.
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Print and the poor

● Cheap small books were sold so that poor people can afford them.
● Public libraries were set up from the early Twentieth century, expanding
the access to books.
● For rich local patrons, setting up a library was a way of acquiring prestige.

Print and the poor What was the content written and read?
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Issues of caste discrimination began to be written about in many

printed tracts and essays

● Jyotiba Phule, the Maratha pioneer of low caste

protest movements, wrote about the injustices of
the caste system in his Gulamgiri (1871).
● B.R. Ambedkar in Maharashtra and E. V.
Ramaswamy Naicker in Madras, better known as
Periyar, wrote powerfully on caste and their
writings were read by people all over India. B.R. Ambedkar Jyotiba Phule

● Local protest movements and sects also created a

lot of popular journals and tracts criticising ancient
scriptures and envisioning a new and just future.

Ramaswamy Naicker
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Workers in factories were too overworked and lacked the education

to write much about their experiences

● Kashibaba, a Kanpur mill worker, wrote and published Chhote Aur Bade Ka
Sawal in 1938 to show the links between caste and class exploitation.
● The poems of another Kanpur mill worker, who wrote under the name of
Sudarshan Chakr between 1935 and 1955, were brought together and published
in a collection called Sacchi Kavitayan.
● By the 1930s, Bangalore cotton mill workers set up libraries to educate
themselves, following the example of Bombay workers.
● These were sponsored by social reformers who tried to restrict excessive
drinking among them, to bring literacy and, sometimes, to propagate the
message of nationalism.
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Print and censorship

Understand the heading

Censorship

Against Englishmen in India Against vernacular and nationalist press

Explain
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Print and censorship Against Englishmen in India

● Before 1798, the colonial state under the East India Company was not too concerned with
censorship.
● Its early measures to control printed matter were directed against Englishmen in India who
were critical of Company misrule and hated the actions of particular Company officers.
● The Company was worried that such criticisms might be used by its critics in England to
attack its trade monopoly in India.
● By the 1820s, the Calcutta Supreme Court passed certain regulations to control press
freedom and the Company began encouraging publication of newspapers that would
celebrate Britsh rule.

Demand for moderation was there Explain

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● In 1835, faced with urgent petitions by editors

of English and vernacular newspapers.
Why?
● Governor - General Bentinck agreed to revise
press laws.

Thomas Macaulay, a liberal colonial official, formulated Governor - General

Bentinck
new rules that restored the earlier freedoms.

Thomas Macaulay
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Print and censorship Against vernacular and nationalist press

Revolt of 1857 The attitude to freedom of the press changed.

Enraged Englishmen demanded a clamp down on the 'native' press.

In 1878, the Vernacular Press Act was passed.

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The vernacular press act

● Passed in 1878 was modelled on the Irish Press Laws.

● It provided the government with extensive rights to censor
reports and editorials in the vernacular press.
● From now on the government kept regular track of the
vernacular newspapers published in different provinces.
● When a report was judged as seditious, the newspaper was
warned, and if the warning was ignored, the press was liable to
be seized and the printing machinery confiscated.

Impact
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Despite repressive measures, nationalist newspapers grew in

numbers in all parts of India.

● They reported on colonial misrule and

encouraged nationalist activities.
● Attempts to throttle nationalist criticism
provoked militant protest.
● This in turn led to a renewed cycle of
persecution and protests.
● When Punjab revolutionaries were deported
in 1907, Balgangadhar Tilak wrote with great
sympathy about them in his Kesari. This led
to his imprisonment in 1908, Provoking in
turn widespread protests all over India.