A History of the Calcutta Press- The Beginnings

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

A Bolt fell from the blue on September 12, 1768. And a thunderbolt on Janmry 29, 1780! Hicky brings out a Gazette from the Calcutta Jail! What happened to this wild Irish man? Did Gladwin follow Hicky's footsteps on March 4, 1784 7 Why was Duane, the first American in Calcutta, deported? How many journals were published in Calcutta from 1780 to 1800? Twenty eight in 20 years!

Calcutta is the birth-place of journalism in India. Calcutta still publishes South-East Asia's oldest journal. Mr. P. T. Nair in his A History of the Calcutta Press: the Beginnings focusses attention on the Calcutta prints of 1780-1800 and tnc men behind them. He reluctantly terminates his study with the imposition ot the censorship on the press, for the first time, on May 13, 1799; yet another bolt!

Mr. P. Thankappaa Nair, "Calcutta's bare foot historian" (Telegraph, cover story, December 21, 1986), after wandering through the entire length and breadth of Calcutta's lanes and bye-lanes, this time, makes an excursion into the history of the Calcutta Press (1780-1800) in order to rescue Hicky, Gladwin, Bolts, Duane and others who perished for publishing.

Mr. Nair's commitment to Calcutta has found expression in his 8 books. He is engaged in writing a Tercentenary History of Calcutta in several volumes and his present study is third in the series. He has presented only the beginnings of the Calcutta Press in this volume in order to take up yet another fascinating period of Calcutta's history.

The Indian Press, which today claims no less than 700 dailies and an infinite number of periodicals, is a little older than two centuries, for South-East Asia's first newspaper saw the light of the day only on January 29, 1780. There were manuscript newspapers in Mogul India, but they were not produced for mass circulation. The Press in India is the product of British administration and ascription of an Indian origin to everything in this country is nothing but chauvinism.

The Press is the mirror of public opinion and a chronicle of social, political and cultural events. Hicky's Bengal Gazette was the first newspaper in India judged by any modern standard.

Calcutta, the birth-place of Journalism in India, still brings out punctually the 3rd oldest newspaper in India. India's largest circulated single edition language daily comes out from Calcutta. India's oldest family-owned daily also comes out from Calcutta. The traditions of another daily goes back to 1818. In the be- ginning, Dutch, English, Irish, Scottish and American blood ran through the veins of the Press in Calcutta, and today it has been substituted by those of various communities of India. No metro- polis can claim to produce English, Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi and Urdu daily newspapers as does Calcutta today. Calcutta's press had a unique origin. So does it function today.

No less than 28 newspapers were brought out from Calcutta between 1780 and 1800. The Editor of the Calcutta Chronicle on January 1, 1793 had to express his doubts about the success of the growing number of journals in the metropolis thus: "Lotteries crowd on Lotteries, and Newspapers on Newspapers, but the projectors do not seem to consider where the money to support them is to come from". The mortality among the Calcutta Press was very high. Bombay and Madras, which could not muster 7 or 8 newspapers between 1780 and 1800, were far behind Calcutta in journalistic activities. Moreover, only Calcutta could produce journalists of the calibre of James Hicky, Francis Gladwin, and Sir William Jones, who would have been ornaments to any profession in the world.