HISTORY

CHAPTER-5
PRINT CULTURE AND THE MODERN WORLD

WHAT WILL WE LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER?

● In this chapter we will look at the development of print, from its beginnings in
East Asia to its expansion in Europe and in India.
● We will understand the impact of the spread of technology and consider how
social lives and cultures changed with the coming of print.
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THE FIRST PRINTED BOOKS

● The earliest kind of print technology was The earliest kind of print technology
was developed in China, Japan and Korea.
● This was a system of hand printing.
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PRINT IN CHINA

● From AD 594 onwards, books in China were printed by rubbing paper – also
invented there – against the inked surface of woodblocks.
● As both sides of the thin, porous sheet could not be printed, the traditional
Chinese ‘accordion book’ was folded and stitched at the side.
● Superbly skilled craftsmen could duplicate, with remarkable accuracy, the
beauty of calligraphy.

1. The imperial state system in China was, for a very long time, a major producer
of printed material.
2. China possessed a huge bureaucratic Which recruited its personnel through civil
service examinations.
3. Textbooks for this examination were printed in vast numbers under the
sponsorship of the imperial state.
4. From the 16th century, the number of examination candidates went up and
that increased the volume of print.

➔ Diversified Uses of Print

● By the 17th century, as urban culture bloomed in China, the uses of print
diversified.
● Print was no longer used just by scholar officials. Merchants used print in
their everyday life, as they collected trade information.
 ● Preference of new readers: 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.

➔ The New Reading Culture

● Accompanied by a new technology.
● Western printing techniques and mechanical presses were imported in
the late 19th century as Western powers established their outposts in
China.
● Shanghai became the hub of the new print culture, catering to the
Western-style schools.
● From hand printing there was now a gradual shift to mechanical printing.
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PRINT IN JAPAN

● Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printing technology into

Japan around AD 768-770.
● The oldest Japanese book, printed in AD 868, is the Buddhist Diamond Sutra,
containing six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations.
● Pictures were printed on textiles, playing cards and paper money.
● In medieval Japan, poets and prose writers were regularly published, and books
were cheap and abundant.

1. Printing of visual material led to interesting publishing practices.

2. In the late 18th century, in flourishing urban circles at Edo (Tokyo),illustrated
collections of paintings depicted an elegant urban culture, involving artists,
courtesans, and teahouse gatherings.
3. Libraries and bookstores were packed with hand-printed material of various
types – books on women, musical instruments, calculations, tea ceremony, etc.
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PRINT COMES TO EUROPE

● For centuries, silk and spices from China flowed into Europe through the silk
route.
● In the 11th century, Chinese paper reached Europe via the same route.
● Paper made possible the production of manuscripts, carefully written by
scribes.

● In 1295, Marco Polo, a great explorer, returned to Italy after many years of
exploration in China.
● Marco Polo brought the knowledge of woodblock painting from China back with
him.
● Now Italians began producing books with woodblocks, and soon the technology
spread to other parts of Europe.
● Luxury editions were still handwritten on very expensive vellum, meant for
aristocratic circles and rich monastic libraries which scoffed at printed books as
cheap vulgarities.
● Merchants and students in the university towns bought the cheaper printed
copies.
 ● As the demand for books increased, booksellers all over Europe began exporting
books to many different countries.
● Book fairs were held at different places.
★ Production of handwritten manuscripts was also organized in new ways
to meet the expanded demand.
★ Scribes or skilled handwriters 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

➔ Why does production of handwritten manuscripts failed?

1. Copying was an expensive, laborious and time-consuming business.
2. Manuscripts were fragile, awkward to handle, and could not be carried around
or read easily. Their circulation therefore remained limited.
3. With the growing demand for books, woodblocks printing gradually became
more and more popular.
4. By the early 15th century, woodblocks were being widely used in Europe to
print textiles, playing cards, and religious pictures with simple, brief texts.

● There was clearly a great need for even quicker and cheaper reproduction of
texts.
● This could only be with the invention of a new print technology.
● The breakthrough occurred at Strasbourg, Germany, where Johann Gutenberg
developed the first-known printing press in the 1430s.
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GUTENBURG AND THE PRINTING PRESS

● 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.
● Drawing on this knowledge, Gutenberg adapted existing technology to design
his innovation.
● The olive press provided the model for the printing press, and moulds were
used for casting the metal types for the letters of the alphabet.
● By 1448, Gutenberg perfected the system
1. The first book he printed was the Bible.
2. About 180 copies were printed and it took 3 years to produce them. By the
standards of the time this was fast production.
● The new technology did not entirely displace the existing art of producing
books by hand.
● In fact, 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, and
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.

● In the hundred years between 1450 and 1550, printing presses were set up in
most countries of Europe.
● Printers from Germany travelled to other countries, seeking work and helping
start new presses.
● As the number of printing presses grew, book production boomed.
● The second half of the 15th century saw 20 million copies of printed books
flooding the markets in Europe.
● The number went up in the 16th 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

➔ What was the print revolution?

● It was not just a development, a new way of producing books; it transformed
the lives of people, changing their relationship to information and knowledge,
and with institutions and authorities.
● It influenced popular perceptions and opened up new ways of looking at things.

➔ A New Reading Public

● Printing press led to a new reading public.
● Printing reduced the cost of books.
● The time and labour required to produce each book came down, and multiple
copies could be produced with greater ease.
● Markets were flooded with books reaching out to an ever-growing readership.

➔ Situation before Age of Print (access to books).

● Reading was restricted to the elites. Common people lived in a world of oral
culture.
● They heard sacred texts read out, ballads recited, and folk tales narrated.
Knowledge was transferred orally.
● Before the age of print, books were not only expensive but they could not be
produced in sufficient numbers.
● Now books could reach out to wider sections of people.
● Now a reading public came into being.
● But the transition was not so simple.
● Books could be read only by the literate.
● The rates of literacy in most European countries were very low till the
twentieth century.

➔ How, then, could publishers persuade the common people to welcome the
printed book?
● Wider reach of the printed work: even those who did not read could certainly
enjoy listening to books being read out.
● So 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.
● Oral culture thus entered print and printed material was orally transmitted.
● The line that separated the oral and reading cultures became blurred.
● And the hearing public and reading public became intermingled.

➔ 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.
● Through the printed message, they could persuade people to think differently,
and move them to action.
● This had significance in different spheres of life.
● Not everyone welcomed the printed book, and those who did also had fears
about it.
● Many were apprehensive of the effects that the easier access to the printed
word and the wider circulation of books, could have on people’s minds.
● It was feared that if there was no control over what was printed and read then
rebellious and irreligious thoughts might spread.
● If that happened the authority of ‘valuable’ literature would be destroyed.
● Expressed by religious authorities and monarchs, as well as many writers and
artists, this anxiety was the basis of widespread criticism of the new printed
literature that had begun to circulate.

➔ Implication of Print Culture in Religious sphere of life in early modern

Europe
● In 1517, the religious reformer Martin Luther wrote Ninety Five Theses
criticizing many of the practices and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church.
● A printed copy of this was posted on a church door in Wittenberg.
● 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.
● Luther’s translation of the New Testament sold 5,000 copies within a few weeks
and a second edition appeared within three months. Deeply grateful to print,
Luther said, ‘Printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one.’
● Several scholars, in fact, think that print brought about a new intellectual
atmosphere and helped spread the new ideas that led to the Reformation.

➔ Protestant Reformation
● A 16th century movement to reform the Catholic Church dominated by Rome.
Martin Luther was one of the main Protestant reformers. Several traditions of
anti-Catholic Christianity developed out of the movement.

➔ Print and Dissent

● Print and popular religious literature stimulated many distinctive individual
interpretations of faith even among little-educated working people.
● In the 16th century, Menocchio, a miller in Italy, began to read books that were
available in his locality.
● He reinterpreted the message of the Bible and formulated a view of God and
Creation that enraged the Roman Catholic Church.
● When the Roman Church began its inquisition to repress heretical ideas,
Menocchio was hauled up twice and ultimately executed.
● Troubled by such effects of popular readings & questionings of faith The Roman
Church imposed severe controls over Publishers and booksellers and maintained
an Index of Prohibited Books from 1558.
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THE READING MANIA

➔ Situation during 17th & 18th Century

● Literacy rates went up in most parts of Europe. Churches of different
denominations (sub groups within a religion) set up schools in villages, carrying
literacy to peasants and artisans.
● By the end of the 18th century, in some parts of Europe literacy rates were as
high as 60 to 80%.
● As literacy and schools spread in European countries, there was a virtual
reading mania.
● People wanted books to read and printers produced books in ever increasing
numbers.
1. New forms of popular literature , targeting new audiences.
2. Booksellers employed pedlars
3. There were almanacs or rituals in the everyday life of calendars, along people.
4. largely for entertainment.

● 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.
● Then there were the romances, printed on four to six pages, and the more
substantial ‘histories’ which were stories about the past.
● Books were of various sizes, serving many different purposes and interests.
● The periodical press developed from the early 18th century, combining
information about current affairs with entertainment.
● Newspapers and journals carried information about wars and trade, as well as
news of developments in other places
● Ideas about science, reason and rationality found their way into popular
literature.
● The ideas of scientists and philosophers now became more accessible to the
common people.
● Ancient and medieval scientific texts were compiled and published, and maps
and scientific diagrams were widely printed.
● When scientists like Isaac Newton began to publish their discoveries, they could
influence a much wider circle of scientifically minded readers.
● The writings of thinkers such as Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Jean Jacques
Rousseau were also widely printed and read.

➔ ‘Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world!’

● By the mid-18th century, there was a common conviction that books were a
means of spreading progress and enlightenment.
● Many believed that 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 in 18th-century France, declared: ‘The
printing press is the most powerful engine of progress and public opinion is the
force that will sweep despotism away.’
● In many of Mercier’s novels, the heroes are transformed by acts of reading.
● Convinced of the power of print in bringing enlightenment and destroying the
basis of
● despotism, Mercier proclaimed: ‘Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world!
Tremble before the virtual writer!’

➔ Print Culture and the French Revolution

● Many historians have argued that print culture created the conditions within
which the French Revolution occurred.
● Three types of arguments have been usually put forward.

1. Print popularised the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers.

● Collectively, their writings provided a critical commentary on tradition,
superstition and despotism.
● They argued for the rule of reason rather than custom, and 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.
● The writings of Voltaire and Rousseau were read widely; and those who read
these books saw the world through new eyes, eyes that were questioning,
critical and rational.

2. 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, and recognised the need to
question existing ideas and beliefs.
● Within this public culture, new ideas of social revolution came into being.

3. By the 1780s there was an outpouring of literature that mocked the royalty
and criticized their morality.
● In the process, it raised questions about the existing social order. Cartoons and
caricatures typically suggested that the monarchy remained absorbed only in
sensual pleasures while the common people suffered immense hardships.
● This literature circulated underground and led to the growth of hostile
sentiments against the monarchy.

● There can be no doubt that print helps the spread of ideas.

● 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 were not influenced directly by everything they read or saw. They
accepted some ideas and rejected others.
 ● They interpreted things their own way. 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 19th century saw vast leaps in mass literacy in Europe, bringing in large
numbers of new readers among children, women and workers.

➔ Children, Women and Workers

Children- Important Category of Readers

1. Production of school textbooks became critical for the publishing industry.
2. A children’s press, devoted to literature for children alone, was set up in
France in 1857.
3. This press published new works as well as old fairy tales and folk tales.
4. The Grimm Brothers in Germany spent years compiling traditional folk tales
gathered from peasants.

➔ Censorship of Reading Materials

● What Grimm Brothers collected was edited before the stories were published in
a collection in 1812.
● Anything that was considered unsuitable for children or would appear vulgar to
the elites, was not included in the published version.
● Rural folk tales thus acquired a new form. In this way, print recorded old tales
but also changed them.

➔ WOMEN READERS AND WRITERS

● Penny magazines were especially meant for women, as were manuals teaching
proper behaviour and housekeeping.
● When novels began to be written in the 19th century, women were seen as
important readers.
● Their writings became important in defining a new type of woman:
★ a person with will,
★ strength of personality,
★ determination and
★ the power to think
● Some of the best known novelists were women
★ Jane Austen
★ George Eliot
★ The Bronte sisters
➔ Workers, Artisans and Lower-Middle Class Readers
1. In the 19th century lending libraries in England became instruments for
educating white-collar workers, artisans and lower-middle-class people.
2. Sometimes, self-educated working class people wrote for themselves.
3. After the working day was gradually shortened from the mid-nineteenth
century, workers had some time for self-improvement and self-expression
4. They wrote political tracts and autobiographies in large numbers.

➔ Further Innovations
● By the late eighteenth century, the press came to be made out of metal.
● Through the 19th century, there were a series of further innovations in printing
technology.

1. Innovations during mid-19th Century

a) Richard M. Hoe of New York had perfected the power-driven cylindrical
press, which was particularly useful for printing newspaper.
b) This was capable of printing 8,000 sheets per hour.

2. Innovations during late-19th Century

a) The offset press was developed which could print up to six colours at a time.

● From the turn of the 20th century, 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.
● The accumulation of several individual mechanical improvements transformed
the appearance of printed texts.

● Printers and publishers continuously developed new strategies to sell their

product.
● 19th 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 20th century
innovation.
● With the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s, publishers feared a
decline in book purchases.
● To sustain buying, they brought out cheap paperback editions.
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INDIA AND THE WORLD OF PRINT

Let us see when printing began in India and how ideas and information were written
before the age of print.

➔ Manuscripts Before the Age of Print

● India had a very rich and old tradition of handwritten manuscripts – in Sanskrit,
Arabic, Persian, as well as in various vernacular languages.
 ● 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.
● Manuscripts continued to be produced till well after the introduction of print,
down to the late 19th century.

Features of Manuscripts
★ Highly expensive
★ Fragile
★ Handled carefully
★ Difficult to read
The script was written in different styles. So manuscripts were not widely used in
everyday life.

● Even though pre-colonial Bengal had developed an extensive network of village

primary schools, 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.

➔ Print Comes to India

● The printing press first came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries in the
mid-16th 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, and 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.
● The English language press did not grow in India till quite late even though the
English East India Company began to import presses from the late 17th century.

➔ THE BENGAL GAZETTE

● From 1780, James Augustus Hickey began to edit this weekly magazine.
★ It was private English enterprise, proud of its independence from
colonial influence, that began English printing in India.
 ★ Hickey published a lot of advertisements, including those that related to
the import and sale of slaves.
● Magazine was described as ‘a commercial paper open to all, but influenced by
none.’
● Since, Hickey also published a lot of gossip about the Company’s senior officials
in India, this enraged the Governor-General Warren Hastings, who later
persecuted him, and encouraged the publication of officially sanctioned
newspapers that could counter the flow of information that damaged the image
of the colonial government.

1. By the close of the 18 century, a number of newspapers and journals appeared

in print.
2. There were Indians, too, who began to publish Indian newspapers.
3. The first to appear was the weekly Bengal Gazette, brought out by Gangadhar
Bhattacharya, who was close to Rammohun Roy.
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RELIGIOUS REFORMS AND PUBLIC DEBATES

● From the early 19th 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 criticised existing practices and campaigned for reform, while others
countered the arguments of reformers.
● These debates were carried out in public and in print.

1. Printed tracts and newspapers not only spread the new ideas, but they shaped
the nature of the debate.
2. A wider public could now participate in these public discussions and express
their views.
3. New ideas emerged through these clashes of opinions.

● Period of intense controversies between social and religious reformers & the
Hindu orthodoxy over matters
● Example: widow immolation, monotheism, Brahmanical priesthood and
idolatry.
● In Bengal, as the debate developed, tracts and newspapers proliferated,
circulating a variety of arguments.
 ● To reach a wider audience, 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 &
Shamsul Akhbar.
● In the same year, a Gujarati newspaper, the Bombay Samachar, made its
appearance.
● In north India, the ulama (legal scholars of Islam and the sharia) 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.

● All through the 19th century, a number of Muslim sects and seminaries
appeared, each with a different interpretation of faith, each keen on enlarging
its following and countering the influence of its opponents.
● Urdu print helped them conduct these battles in public.

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 16th century
text, came out from Calcutta in 1810.
● By the mid-19th century, cheap lithographic editions flooded north Indian
markets From the 1880s,the Naval Kishore Press at Lucknow and the Shri
Venkateshwar Press in Bombay published numerous religious texts in
vernaculars.
● In their printed and portable form, these could be read easily by the faithful at
any place and time.
● They could also be read out to large groups of illiterate men and women.
● Religious texts, therefore, reached a very wide circle of people, encouraging
discussions, debates and controversies within and among different religions.
 ● Print did not only stimulate the publication of conflicting opinions amongst
communities, but 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

➔ Demand for new kinds of writing

● As more and more people could now read, they wanted to see their own lives,
experiences, emotions and relationships reflected in what they read.
● In Europe, the novel, a literary firm, was developed to cater to the needs of
people who acquired Indian forms and styles.
● It soon acquired distinctively Indian forms and styles.
● For readers, it opened up new worlds of experience, and gave a vivid sense of
the diversity of human lives.

➢ Emergence of Other new literary forms

★ Lyrics
★ Short stories
★ Essays (Social and Political matters)
● In different ways, they reinforced the new emphasis on human lives and
intimate feelings, about the political and social rules that shaped such things.

➢ New visual culture took shape by the end of the 19th century.
● With the setting up of an increasing number of printing presses, visual images
could be easily reproduced in multiple copies.
● Poor wood engravers who made woodblocks set up shop near the letterpresses,
and were employed by print shops.
● Painters like Raja Ravi Varma produced images for mass circulation.

● Cheap prints and calendars, easily available in the bazaar, could be bought
even by the poor to decorate the walls of their homes or places of work.
● These prints began shaping popular ideas about modernity and tradition,
religion and politics, and society and culture.
● By the 1870s, caricatures and cartoons were being published in journals and
newspapers, commenting on social and political issues.
● Some caricatures ridiculed the educated Indians’ fascination with Western
tastes and clothes, while others expressed the fear of social change.
 ● There were imperial caricatures lampooning nationalists, as well as nationalist
cartoons criticising imperial rule.

➔ Women and Print

● Lives and feelings of women began to be written in particularly vivid and
intense ways.
● 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 when women’s schools were set up in the cities and towns
after the mid-19th century.
● Many journals began carrying writings by women, and explained why women
should be educated.
● They also carried a syllabus and attached suitable reading matter which could
be used for home-based schooling.
● Not All Families were Liberals
● Conservative Hindus believed that a literate girl would be widowed.
● Muslims feared that educated women would be corrupted by reading Urdu
romances.
● Sometimes, rebel women defied such prohibition.

STORY

1. A girl in a conservative Muslim family of north India who secretly learnt to read
and write in Urdu. Her family wanted her to read only the Arabic Quran which
she did not understand. So she insisted on learning to read a language that was
her own.

2. In East Bengal, in the early nineteenth century, 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.

Since social reforms and novels had already created a great interest in women’s lives
and emotions, there was also an interest in 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 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 come from books …’
● While Urdu, Tamil, Bengali and Marathi print culture had developed early, Hindi
printing began seriously only from the 1870s.
● Soon a large segment of it was devoted to the education of women.
● In the early 20th century, 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.

➢ In Punjab
● A similar folk literature was widely printed from the early 20th century.
● Ram Chaddha published the fast-selling Istri Dharm Vichar to teach women how
to be obedient wives.
● The Khalsa Tract Society published cheap booklets with a similar message.
● Many of these were in the form of dialogues about the qualities of a good
woman.

➢ In Bengal
● An entire area in central Calcutta – the Battala – was devoted to the printing of
popular books.
● Here you could buy cheap editions of religious tracts and scriptures, as well as
literature that was considered obscene and scandalous.
● By the late 19th century, a lot of these books were being profusely illustrated
with woodcuts and coloured lithographs.
● Pedlars took the Battala publications to homes, enabling women to read them
in their leisure time.
 ➔ Print and the Poor People
1. Very cheap small books were brought to markets in 19th-century Madras towns
and sold at crossroads, allowing poor people travelling to markets to buy them.
2. Public libraries were set up from the early 20th century, expanding the access
to books.
3. These libraries were located mostly in cities and towns, and at times in
prosperous villages.
4. For rich local patrons, setting up a library was a way of acquiring prestige.

In the late 19th century, caste discrimination started coming up in many printed tracts
and essays.
 ➢ In the 20th Century
● 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.
● Local protest movements and sects also created a lot of popular journals and
tracts criticising ancient scriptures and envisioning a new and just future.

● Workers in factories were too overworked and lacked the education to write
much about their experiences.
● Kashibaba, a Kanpur millworker, wrote and published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal
in 1938 to show the links between caste and class exploitation.
● The poems of another Kanpur millworker, who wrote under the name of
Sudarshan Chakra between 1935 and 1955, were brought together and
published in a collection called Sacchi Kavitayan.
● By the 1930s, Bangalore cotton millworkers 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

● 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 British rule.
● In 1835, faced with urgent petitions by editors of English and vernacular
newspapers, Governor-General Bentinck agreed to revise press laws.
● Thomas Macaulay, a liberal colonial official, formulated new rules that restored
the earlier freedoms.

➢ After Revolt of 1857

● The attitude to freedom of the press changed.
● Enraged Englishmen demanded a clamp down on the ‘native’ press.
● As vernacular newspapers became assertively nationalist, the colonial
government began debating measures of stringent control.

➢ The Vernacular Press Act- 1878

● 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
● 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, Bal Gangadhar 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
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NEW WORDS
★ Platen
In letterpress printing, platen is a board which is pressed onto the back of the
paper to get the impression from the type. At one time it used to be a wooden
board; later it was made of steel.
★ Compositor
The person who composes the text for printing.
 ★ Galley
Metal frame in which types are laid and the text composed.
★ Ballad
A historical account or folk tale in verse, usually sung or recited.
★ Taverns
Places where people gathered to drink alcohol, to be served food, and to meet
friends and exchange news.
★ Inquisition
A former Roman Catholic court for identifying and punishing heretics.
★ Heretical
Beliefs which do not follow the accepted teachings of the Church. In medieval
times, heresy was seen as a threat to the right of the Church to decide on what
should be believed and what should not. Heretical beliefs were severely
punished.
★ Almanac
An annual publication giving astronomical data, information of the sun and
moon, timing of full tides and eclipses, and much else that was of importance
in the everyday life of people.
★ Chapbook
A term used to describe pocket sized books that are sold by travelling peddlers
called chapmen. These became popular from the time of the 16th century print
revolution.
★ Fatwa
A legal pronouncement on Islamic law usually given by a mufti (legal scholar) to
clarify issues on which the law is uncertain.
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