News started with the newsletter as an early institution which kept the ruler regularly informed of

developments in various parts of the country and among different classes of the people. Ministers
too were expected to keep themselves well informed by correspondence.

In the Moghul period, news writers were appointed to various administrative units in their territory,
and were charged with the function of sending reports to the headquarters of the administration.
These manuscript reports were submitted exclusively for official use.

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The Indian national Press was the backbone of the freedom struggle from the end of the eighteenth
century. Its historical importance is linked to the awareness and building of public opinion against
foreign rule which touched the patriotic nerve in the country.

Newspapers in their modern sense began to be first published in India during the British period of
Indian history. The first attempt to start a newspaper in Kolkata was made by William Bolts. The first
newspaper was published in January, 1780 by James Augustus Hickey, called the Bengal gazette or
Hickey’s Gazette. This paper devoted enough space to the exposure of private lives of servants of the
company including the governor general Warren Hastings himself. A personal attack on Mrs Hastings
soon land trouble he was sentenced to imprisonment and a fine.

Next, India saw the publication of the India gazette by Messrs. Consent of the governor general was
obtained and printers were appointed to the company at Calcutta. 4 years later followed the
Calcutta gazette published under direct patronage of Government and in the following year became
the Bengal journal.

Meanwhile, the first newspaper in Madras, the Madras Courier, came into existence (1785) as an
officially recognised newspaper founded by Richard Johnson, purveyor of official information in the
Presidency.

Bombay’s first newspaper - the Bombay Herald came into existence in 1789. The Courier which was
published a year later carried advertisements in Gujarati. The Bombay Gazette was published in 1791
and the Bombay Herald was merged into it the following year.

In 1795 R. Williams started the Madras Gazette. Censorship was first introduced in Madras in 1795
when the Madras Gazette was required to submit all general orders of the Government for scrutiny
by the Military Secretary before publication. The Censorship Act came into existence in 1799.

The pioneers of Indian language journalism were the Serampore Missionaries with SamacharDarpan
and other Bengali periodicals, and Raja Ram Mohan Roy with his Persian newspaper Mirad Ul
Akhbar. The object of Ram Mohan Roy , the social reformer, in starting the paper was indicate to the
rulers a knowledge of the real situation of their subjects , and make the subjects acquainted with the
established laws and customs of their rules .Roy ceased publishing his paper later in protest against
the Government’s Press Regulations. The Bombay Samachar , a Gujarati newspaper, appeared in
1822.

The year of ‘the Sepoy Mutiny’, however, brought back the Press restriction in the form of the
Gagging Act, 1857 to regulate the establishment of printing presses and to restrain the mad of
printed matter.
The first Hindi newspaper, the Samachar Sudha Varshan began in 1854. Since then, the prominent
Indian languages in which newspapers have grown over the years are Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi,
Tamil, Urdu, Telugu, Bengali and many other vernaculars.

After 1857, the pioneering efforts in newspapers shifted from Bengal to Mumbai. 

Right from the early nineteenth century, defence of civil liberties, including the freedom of the press,
had been high on nationalist agenda. As early as 1824, Raja Rammohan Roy had protested against a
resolution restricting the freedom of the press.

The early phase of nationalist movement from around 1870 to 1918 focussed more on political
propaganda and education, formation and propagation of nationalist ideology and arousing, training,
mobilisation and consolidation of public opinion, than on mass agitation or active mobilisation of
masses through open meetings.

For this purpose the press proved a crucial tool in the hands of the nationalists. The Indian National
Congress in its early days relied solely on the press to propagate its resolutions and proceedings.

Many newspapers emerged during these years. The newspapers were not established as profit-
making business ventures but were seen as rendering national and public service. In fact, these
newspapers had a wide reach and they stimulated a library movement.

These newspapers reached the remote villages, where each news item and editorial would be read
and discussed thoroughly in the ‘local libraries’ which would gather around a single newspaper. In
this way, these libraries served the purpose of not only political education but also of political
participation. In these newspapers, government acts and policies were put to critical scrutiny. They
acted as an institution of opposition to the Government.

The Indian newspapers played a very powerful role in educating, convincing and mobilizing people in
terms of spreading the nationalist and patriotic ideas. It not only created opposition and hatred
against the British rule but also a strong determination to liberate India from the foreign rule.

Extremely popular and powerful newspapers arose after the 1860s which served as public forum for
propagating the nationalist political agenda. The Times of India was established in 1861, The Pioneer
in 1867, The 52 Statesman in 1875, The Hindu in 1878. While The Statesman voiced the English
ruler’s voice, The Hindu became the beacon of patriotism in south India.

They played a great role in welding India into a single nation and gave the Indians a sense of oneness
and a new national identity, which was non-existent before.

The national movement, from its very beginning, stood for the freedom of press. The Indian
newspapers became highly critical of Lord Lytton’s administration especially regarding its inhuman
treatment to victims of the famine of 1876-77. The influence of Indian language newspapers had
grown so much by 1870 that they were perceived as a threat by the colonial administration, which
led to the Vernacular Press Act of 1878, aimed at silencing any attempts by the Indian language Press
to criticise the government. The Vernacular Press Act (VPA) was designed to ‘better control’ the
vernacular press and effectively punish and repress seditious writing.

As the freedom movement gained momentum, the Press in India grew and expanded to keep pace
with it. Particularly during the period from 1907 to 1914 during which the Government
experimented with the dual policy of introducing political reforms and repressive measures, there
was increasing consciousness in the country which helped create a more conducive climate for
starting new newspapers with national bias.
As nationalism evolved so did the idea that the freedom of the Press was a basic right to be
cherished and fought for. Indian industrialists started their own newspapers with a clear anti-
colonial stance. Most nationalist leaders were involved in activist, campaigning journalism, none
more than Mahatma Gandhi, who used Gujarati as well as English, to spread the message of
freedom.

From the early part of the 20th century till independence in 1947, Mahatma Gandhi influenced
developments in the country including the evolution of the Press. His two weeklies, Young India and
Harijan became the powerful vehicle of the freedom movement.

Then came the Quit India Movement, and World War II, and the Press in India played a
commendable role in reporting the struggle for freedom fairly. It opposed communal riots and the
partition of the Country, and when partition did take place in the glorious year of independence,
lamented it.

Indeed, it could be said that that the Press played no small part in India’s victory to freedom from
the British and freedom of speech and expression.