Amrita Bazar Patrika
Topic: Print Culture and the Modern World · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Amrita Bazar Patrika was a newspaper started in Bengal in 1868 by the brothers Sisir Kumar Ghosh and Motilal Ghosh. It began in Bengali and soon became sharply critical of British rule. It is famous for how it escaped colonial censorship (control of what may be printed).
Example
The Vernacular Press Act of 1878 allowed the government to censor papers in Indian languages, but not English papers. The Patrika is said to have turned from a Bengali paper into an English one almost overnight to escape the Act.
Don't confuse with
- Bengal Gazette: there were two papers of this name. One was Hickey's English weekly of 1780, the first newspaper in India. The other was Gangadhar Bhattacharya's, the first newspaper published by an Indian. Neither is the Ghosh brothers' paper.
Related concepts
- Censorship of Press Act 1799
- Licensing Regulations 1823
- Press Act of 1835
- Licensing Act 1857
- Hindu Patriot
- Som Prakash
- Press and Registration of Books Act 1867
- Vernacular Press Act
- The Hindu
- Swadesamitran