Indian Journalism in the 18th and 19th Centuries

Indian journalism between 1780 and 1880 can be divided into three phases: AngloIndian, Indo
Anglian, and Indian Language journalism. We do not use Vernacular for the third phase because
the term has an etymological connection with vern

Indian journalism between 1780 and 1880 can be divided into three phases: AngloIndian, Indo
Anglian, and Indian Language journalism. We do not use Vernacular for the third phase because
the term has an etymological connection with verna, which also means a native slave.

AngloIndian Journalism
By this term, we mean newspapers started by Englishmen in India mainly for the communication
needs of people from the British Isles settled in the British provinces in India for commercial,
administrative, military, and trade purposes.
The early English newspapers did not spring from any indigenous need; they emerged from petty
social and political dissatisfactions of the Britishers settled in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and other
British provinces. They were English newspapers started by English settlers for fellow-English
citizens. Starting from Hickys Gazette, there is a fairly long list of social and commercial English
newspaper editors and businessmen. Prominent among them were commercial journalists such as
James Silk Buckingham and Sir William Hunter, and intellectuals such as William Carey, Joshua
Marshman, and William Ward, who were also missionaries, journalists, writers, and teachers, in the
18th century; and Robert Knight, T. J. Bennett, and F. M. Coleman in the 19th century. Robert
Knight was the founder-editor of the Times of India (Bombay) first, and then of the Statesman
(Calcutta). There were Rudyard Kipling, Charles Lawson, Pat Lovett, and many other bright
Englishmen as editors and journalists working in different English newspapers in various parts of
India.

IndoAnglian Journalism
By Indo-Anglian, we mean English newspapers started or edited by Indians. Gangadhar
Bhattacharya was among the earliest, if not the earliest, Indian to start a newspaper in English.
Under the influence of the philosopher, Brahmo Samaj leader, writer, and public speaker Raja Ram
Mohan Roy, Bhattacharya started the Bengal Gazette, which lasted for four years from 1816. The
paper inaugurated the trend among educated Indians with sound knowledge of English to start
newspapers. The trend has lasted for nearly two centuries, and it is likely to last as long as the use of
English as a medium of communication and education lasts in India.
In fact, all the famous English newspapers of India that were started in subsequent decades of the
19th centuryincluding the Hindu, the Indian Express, and the Hindustan Timeswere following
the tradition started by Bhattacharya. Although English is claimed as the mother-tongue only by an
infinitely small number of Indians compared to the total population, it exercises considerable
influence on the administrators and the educated sections of different linguistic areas of India, even
in the 21st century.
The leaders of the Indian Independence movement, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Motilal Nehru,
Jawaharlal Nehru, and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, had their English newspapers to spread their
nationalist ideas that helped in the freedom struggle. The services of Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, G.
Subramonia Iyer, and others in the Madras Presidency, where the Hindu was started in 1878, and
those of the Ghosh brothers who started the Amrit Bazaar Patrika (first in Bengali and then in
English in 1868) will always be remembered in Indian journalism history.

Indian Language Journalism

In June 1818, the Serampore (Srirampur, near Calcutta) missionaries started the first Indian
language newspaper of India, namely, Digdarsan (World vision). It was soon followed in October
1818 by another Bengali newspaper, the Samachar Darpan (The Mirror of News) by the same
Serampore trio.
The Bengali nationalists and patriots started newspapers, an example of which was Raja Ram
Mohan Roys Samwaad Kowmudi. Roy, who led the Bengal Renaissance, set an example for other
intellectuals in various provinces, and by the middle of the 19th century, there were newspapers in
Indian languages all over the country. Although their circulation was small, these newspapers
played a significant role in spreading nationalism and patriotism, at least among the literate and
educatedIndians.
The mid-19th century also saw the establishment of printing presses in different linguistic areas.
Printed primers and proverb collections as well as secular, religious, and literary magazines became
common. Many of these led to standard prose, grammatical rules and norms, dictionaries,
vocabulary lists, and collections of pithy and poetic sayings. Above all, secular newspapers dealt
with economic and political issues of interest to a large number of educated Indians, particularly in
regions where Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Punjabi,
Assamese. Oriya, or Urdu were spoken.