Road To Freedom

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• For God and Country
• The Empire Builders
• Tribal Uprisings
• Sepoys on the Move
• British Authority Collapses
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Roll of Honour
• The Trial of the Last Emperor
• English Education
• The Blue Mutiny
• Perishing in Peace
• ‘Rani Ka Hookum’
• Barbarous Britannia
• Return to Swadeshi
• The Delhi Durbar
• Hunger Deaths
• The One-Man Army
• Mamool Raj
• The British Raj in Black and White
• Europeans Take To The Street!
• Pressing On !
• The Battle For A Free Press
• The Battle Lines are Drawn
• Women : Crossing the Threshold
• An Old Man's Dream
• Father of Indian Unrest
• The Monk Who Shook The Nation
• The Battle is Taken to the Legislature!
• Partition of Bengal
• The Great Divide
• The New Spirit of India
• Swadeshi Enterprise
• From Swadeshi to Swaraj
• Gandhi in South Africa
• Heroes and Martyrs
• Revolutionaries Outside India
• Carrot and Stick
• Gandhi in Champaran
• The Gentle Satyagrahi
• Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh
• Jallianwala — The Aftermath
• A People Reject Their Rulers
• The Himalayan Blunder
• Gandhiji Withdraws from Political Activities
• Bardoli
• Saga of Indian Revolutionaries
• A Pinch of Salt!
• Gandhi and Ambedkar
• Leave India to God… or to Anarchy
• Quit India
• The Last War of Independence
• Apostle of Peace
• India Wins Freedom
• The Light Has Gone Out
• Under One Flag

The Battle For A Free Press

The Battle For A Free Press

James Augustus Hicky described his paper, Bengal Gazette or Calcutta General Advertiser (1780) as "a Weekly Political and Commercial Paper Open to all Parties but influenced by None". When the government tried to curb the paper by instructing post offices not to accept the Gazette for delivery, Hicky hit back: "Mr. Hicky considers the liberty of the Press to be essential to the existence of an Englishman and a free g-t (government). The Subject should have full liberty to declare his principles and opinions, and every act which tends to coerce that liberty is tyrannical and injurious to the community". In 1798 the Asiatic Mirror writing about the number of Europeans in India remarked that the handful of Englishmen in the country could easily be exterminated if each Indian merely threw a brickbat at them. Irritated by this remark Lord Wellesley who was at that time engaged in wars with Tipu Sultan, vowed to lay down "rules for the conduct of the whole tribes of editors". The following year he came out with Regulations for the Press which required newspapers to submit to pre-censorship. The penalty for violating the Regulations was the deportation of the editor to Europe. With the arrival of English newspapers edited by India born editors and later, the language press, Wellesley's censorship laws became redundant as the offenders could not be deported. In 1818 Lord Hastings abolished pre-censorship and replaced it with guidelines for editors. Lord Hastings considered "…freedom of publication as a natural right of my fellow subjects". Lord Hastings' successor Adam who officiated as Governor-General for a brief period issued a rigorous Press Ordinance in 1823 making it mandatory for newspapers to obtain a licence to publish, from the government. Raja Ram Mohan Roy appealed against the ordinance first to the Supreme Court of Calcutta, and later to the King in Council. The petition signed by Roy and five other leading citizens of Calcutta insisted on the people's right to 'free access to knowledge and opinion without the intervention of any authority to say what was good for them, what not'. This, according to R.C. Dutt, marked the beginning of constitutional agitation for political rights in the country. When the petition was turned down, Roy, by way of protest, stopped the publication of his paper Mirat-ul-Akhbar.

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In 1835 Sir Charles Metcalfe restored the freedom of the Press with the passing of the Press Law. "Freedom of "Public discussion," said Metcalfe, "which is nothing more than the freedom of speaking aloud, is a right belonging to the people which no government has a right to withhold."
Earlier Sir Thomas Munro had expressed misgivings about a free press in India. "A free press and the dominion of strangers", Munro had said, "…cannot long exist together, for what is the first duty of a free press? It is to deliver the country from a foreign yoke." When this line of argument was cited to oppose liberalisation, Metcalfe retorted: "If India could only be preserved as a part of the British empire by keeping its inhabitants in a state of ignorance, our domination would be a curse to the country, and ought to cease".
What Metcalfe granted, Lord Canning took away in the wake of the Great Revolt by passing Act XV of 1857 which required licenses for keeping printing presses and gave the government the power to prohibit the publication or circulation of books or papers it considered objectionable. One of the biggest casualties of the Act was the Urdu Press. Many Urdu papers ceased publication. In other languages,
including English, editors received warnings, and some were edged out.
Fortunately restrictions on the Press were withdrawn when the situation returned to normalcy. The vernacular Press grew bolder and bolder in its criticism of the government. In 1878 Lord Lytton, in order to put a check on the non-English papers which were becoming increasingly hostile to the government came out with the Vernacular Press Act. Under the Act the government could prevent publication of anything likely to give rise to feelings of disaffection against the government.
The vernacular Press protested against the Act. Somprakasha ceased publication and Amrita Bazar Patrika, until then a bilingual, overnight changed into an English paper to escape from the purview of the Vernacular Press Act.
In 1882 Lord Ripon won public acclaim by repealing the Acts of 1857 and 1878.
The Indian Press was now very clear about what its role was : to oppose the government. The Indian press became an instrument in educating public opinion and inculcating patriotic and national views among the public. However, the English Press owned by Europeans took an alarmist view of the rising tide of patriotic fervour in the country and reacted strongly prompting Lord George Hamilton, the Secretary of State to write to Lord Curzon in 1900 :
"We, from time to time, abuse the Native Press, and believe it to be a danger to our rule in India. I am not at all sure that the Anglo-Indian Press is not quite as mischievous, and by its intolerance, does not greatly aggravate all racial difficulties and differences."