A young Bengali wife learned to read secretly in her own kitchen. She went on to publish Bengali’s first full-length autobiography.
This article covers print’s arrival in India, its role in religious debate, women’s writing, and colonial press censorship.
🏛️ Must Know
Print Comes to India
- Goa First The printing press first arrived in Goa with Portuguese missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century.
- Early Regional Printing Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book in 1579 and the first Malayalam book in 1713.
- Hickey’s Bengal Gazette James Augustus Hickey started the Bengal Gazette in 1780, England’s first Indian English newspaper, independent of Company influence.
- Hastings’s Backlash Hickey’s gossip about Company officials angered Governor-General Warren Hastings, who then backed officially sanctioned newspapers instead.
- A Real Price Paid Hickey accused Hastings and his wife of corruption in print. He was jailed for a year, fined Rs 2,000, and in 1782 the court seized his printing press for good.
📘 Good to Know
Religious Reform and Public Debate
- Rammohun Roy’s Paper Ram Mohun Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi from 1821, while orthodox Hindus countered with the Samachar Chandrika.
- A Multilingual Debate Persian papers Jam-i-Jahan Nama and Shamsul Akhbar, and the Gujarati Bombay Samachar, all launched around 1822.
- The Deoband Seminary Founded in 1867, the Deoband Seminary published thousands of fatwas guiding Muslim readers’ everyday conduct using cheap lithographic presses.
- Vernacular Religious Texts The first printed Ramcharitmanas appeared from Calcutta in 1810, and cheap lithographs later flooded north Indian markets.
✅ Test Yourself
🌟 Great to Know
Women and Print
- A Secret Kitchen Education Rashsundari Debi, an East Bengal wife, secretly learned to read and later wrote Amar Jiban, published in 1876.
- How She Actually Learned Married young into an orthodox household, she memorised letters by listening outside her son’s lessons, then practised alone in the kitchen using a hidden torn page.
- Rokeya’s School Educationist Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, who condemned withholding education from women, founded a girls’ school in Bhagalpur in 1909, moving it to Calcutta by 1911.
- A Landmark Autobiography Amar Jiban was the first full-length autobiography published in the Bengali language.
- Women Writing About Women In the 1880s, Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai wrote with anger about the miserable lives of upper-caste Hindu widows.
- Divided Opinion Some conservative Hindu and Muslim families opposed female literacy, fearing it would lead to widowhood or moral corruption.
Print and the Poor
- Cheap Books at Crossroads Nineteenth-century Madras towns sold very cheap small books at crossroads, reaching poor travellers heading to market.
- Caste and Print Jyotiba Phule wrote about caste injustice in Gulamgiri (1871), while Ambedkar and Periyar’s writings later reached readers across India.
- Millworker Writers Kanpur millworker Kashibaba published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal in 1938, linking caste and class exploitation.
Exam Point of View
A New Visual and Literary Culture
- Ravi Varma’s Prints Painter Raja Ravi Varma produced mythological images for mass circulation through his own dedicated press.
- Political Cartoons By the 1870s, caricatures in journals mocked both Westernised Indians and imperial rule, cutting in every political direction.
Print and Colonial Censorship
- Early Targets Were British Before 1798, censorship efforts mainly targeted English critics of Company misrule, not Indian publishers.
- The Vernacular Press Act, 1878 Passed after 1857, this Act let the government censor vernacular newspapers and seize presses for seditious reports.
- Tilak’s Imprisonment Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s sympathetic writing about deported Punjab revolutionaries in Kesari led to his 1908 imprisonment.
- Wartime Suppression In August 1942, during the Quit India movement, about 90 newspapers were suppressed under wartime censorship rules.
CDS 2019: The Vernacular Press Act
- Question CDS II 2019 GK Q21 asked test-takers to arrange the Cornwallis Code, the first Indian Factory Act, the Vernacular Press Act, and the Morley-Minto Reforms in chronological order.
Why The correct sequence was Cornwallis Code, Vernacular Press Act, first Factory Act, then Morley-Minto Reforms — 1878’s Act sits earlier than many students assume.
Link See the full question, CDS II 2019 GK, Q21.
The Trap Examiners Set on Indian Print History
- Why Students often assume colonial censorship began right after 1857. Early efforts, before 1798, actually targeted critical Englishmen, not Indian publishers.
- Instead The Vernacular Press Act (1878) is sometimes confused with the Rowlatt-era Sedition Committee Report (1919). They are nearly forty years apart.
- Takeaway Rashsundari Debi’s Amar Jiban is often mixed up with later reformist writings by Ramabai or Tarabai Shinde. Hers came decades earlier, in 1876.
Beyond the answer
Browse all world-history topics →
📚 Keep reading
ModHist0354 — Lord Lytton: The Vernacular Press Act, Arms Act and the Delhi DurbarWorldHist0077 — Print Culture in East Asia and Europe: The Print RevolutionPolity0159 — Journalism in IndiaLord Ripon: Local Self-Government and the Ilbert BillGK0038 — Women's Sports in India❓ Practice this topic
D4220 — What led to Bal Gangadhar Tilak's imprisonment in 1908?D4219 — What did the Vernacular Press Act of 1878 allow the colonial government to do?D4218 — Rashsundari Debi's Amar Jiban, published in 1876, holds what distinction?D4217 — What newspaper did Raja Ram Mohun Roy publish from 1821 to support religious reform?🎲 Take a World History Quiz
Leave a Reply