Press

In 1780 an Englishman in Calcutta started a gossipy little newspaper to complain about local officials — and the colonial government spent the next hundred and thirty years trying to control what came after it. The Indian press was born as a nuisance to the government that allowed it, and it grew into one of the sharpest weapons of the freedom struggle. This topic is the story of that fight, told through the laws that tried to gag the press and the newspapers that refused to stay gagged.

In two minutes

From Hickey's Bengal Gazette in 1780 through the Vernacular Press Act of 1878 to Kesari and Young India, the history of the Indian press is a running contest between government censorship and a press that became the voice of social reform and the national movement.

The rest of this chapter

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