Yugantar

History glossary

Also called: Jugantar · Topic: Print Culture and the Modern World · NCERT: Beyond NCERT

Meaning

Yugantar (also spelt Jugantar, meaning "new era") was a Bengali revolutionary weekly started in Calcutta in 1906. Its founders were Barindra Kumar Ghose, Bhupendranath Datta and their fellow revolutionaries. It openly called for the violent overthrow of British rule. It was not just a voice of moderate protest. Around the paper grew a secret revolutionary group that took its name, the Jugantar group, which was linked to the Anushilan Samiti, a secret society for physical training and revolution. The paper matters because it shows the "cycle of persecution and protest": the more the colonial state punished nationalist papers, the more popular they became.

Example

In 1907 the British government put its editor, Bhupendranath Datta, on trial for sedition (writing that stirs people to revolt against the government) and sent him to prison. The paper's sales went up after this. Yugantar was prosecuted again and again, and it was shut down in 1908. That was the same year Tilak was jailed for his writings in Kesari.

Don't confuse with

  • Ghadar and the "Yugantar Ashram": Ghadar was a separate revolutionary paper. It was run by Indians living abroad, from the Ghadar Party's office in San Francisco, which was called the Yugantar Ashram. Yugantar was a Bengali weekly printed in Calcutta.
  • Kesari: Kesari was Tilak's paper from Maharashtra. It was a militant nationalist paper, but it worked openly. Yugantar was linked to a secret group that planned armed revolution.

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