Religious reform and public debates in print

Detail

Why print changed the shape of religious debate

• From the early nineteenth century, big reform fights were no longer settled inside a family, a caste panchayat or a temple courtyard. They moved into print.
• The four hot issues fought out in tracts and newspapers:
• widow immolation (sati — a widow burning herself on her husband's pyre)
• monotheism (belief in one God only)
• Brahmanical priesthood (the power of priests to decide what is right)

• idolatry (worship of images)

• Print did two things at once:

• Spread ideas far beyond the city where they were written.

• Changed the nature of the debate itself. Because tracts were printed in the everyday spoken language, not only in classical Sanskrit, Persian or Arabic, ordinary people could read the arguments and answer back. Debate became public, not scholarly.

• A reformer's claim could now be attacked in print within weeks, and the attack answered again. This back-and-forth in newspapers created a reading public that expected to take sides.

Rammohun Roy and the Bengali press war

• Rammohun Roy published Sambad Kaumudi from 1821, in Bengali.
• The first issue came out on 4 December 1821; the name means "The Moon of Intelligence" [2].
• He wrote it for ordinary Bengali readers — its columns carried petitions to the colonial government, arguments for social reform, and complaints about daily life under British rule [2].

• He used it to run a decade-long campaign against sati, keeping public opposition alive until the practice was banned by law in 1829 [2].

• Roy went on to found the Brahmo Samaj in 1828 — a gathering of people who believed in a universal religion based on one Supreme God [3]. His newspaper was the channel that carried these ideas to Bengali readers [2][3].

• The Hindu orthodoxy (the defenders of old custom) did not stay silent. They commissioned Samachar Chandrika to argue the opposite side.

• This is the key exam point: both sides used the same new tool. Print was not only a reformer's weapon.

• Roy's larger effect: he helped turn the Indian press from something that mainly served the colonisers into something that served the colonised [2].

The early newspapers — a table to memorise

Publication	Year	Language / association
Bengal Gazette (James Augustus Hickey)	1780	English weekly — first newspaper in India [5]
Bengal Gazette (Gangadhar Bhattacharya)	—	first newspaper published by an Indian
Sambad Kaumudi	1821	Bengali — Rammohun Roy
Samachar Chandrika	—	commissioned by the Hindu orthodoxy against Roy
Jam-i-Jahan Nama, Shamsul Akhbar	1822	Persian
Bombay Samachar	1822	Gujarati

• Note the spread of languages: English, Bengali, Persian, Gujarati — within about forty years of 1780, print was working in several Indian languages at once.

Muslim north India — the ulama answer back in Urdu

• The ulama (learned Muslim scholars of law and scripture) had two fears:
• Colonial conversion drives — Christian missionaries trying to win converts.

• Changes to Muslim personal law — British courts altering rules on marriage, divorce and inheritance.

• Their answer was cheap lithographic presses (printing from a flat stone — cheap, and able to reproduce flowing Persian and Urdu script that metal type handled badly).

• They printed translations of scripture into Persian and Urdu so ordinary believers could read holy texts themselves.

• They printed religious tracts in large numbers at low cost.

• The Deoband Seminary, founded in 1867, issued thousands of fatwas — rulings telling ordinary Muslims how to behave in daily life and how to understand Islamic teaching.

• Britannica records Deoband as the leading Muslim madrasah (theological college) of India, founded in 1867 by Muhammad Abid Husayn in Saharanpur district, present-day Uttar Pradesh [4].
• Its thinking was shaped by the eighteenth-century reformer Shah Wali Allah, giving it a strict, orthodox outlook [4].

• Its course of study stressed fiqh (law), tafsir (explaining the Quran), Hadith (traditions of the Prophet), kalam (theology) and falsafah (philosophy) [4].

• Rival sects fought in the open. Disputes between Muslim groups were no longer settled in private among scholars — each side printed its case in Urdu and asked the reading public to judge.

Hindu vernacular publishing — old texts, new form

• The first printed edition of the Ramcharitmanas — Tulsidas's sixteenth-century devotional retelling of the Ramayana — came out from Calcutta in 1810.

• Note the gap: a text roughly 250 years old reached print only now.

• By the middle of the nineteenth century, cheap lithographic editions flooded north India.

• From the 1880s, two presses dominated vernacular religious printing:
• Naval Kishore Press, Lucknow

• Shri Venkateshwar Press, Bombay

• Why these cheap editions mattered:

• Portable — small and light, so a person could carry a holy book and read it anywhere, not only in a temple or at a teacher's feet.
• Readable at will — no need to wait for a priest to recite.
• Read aloud to the illiterate — one reader could serve a whole group, so print reached people who could not read at all.

Print divides — and also joins

• Print stirred controversy: inside a religion (reformers against orthodoxy), and between religions.
• But the same print connected communities across regions.
• Newspapers carried news from one place to another.
• Readers in Bombay learnt what was being argued in Calcutta.
• Out of this shared reading came pan-Indian identities — a sense of belonging to something larger than one's own town, caste or sect. This is the seed of later nationalism.

Prelims Hooks

• Bengal Gazette (1780), started by James Augustus Hickey, was the first newspaper in India — an English weekly [5].
• The first newspaper published by an Indian was also called Bengal Gazette, brought out by Gangadhar Bhattacharya.
• Sambad Kaumudi (1821) was Rammohun Roy's Bengali weekly; first issue 4 December 1821; name means "The Moon of Intelligence" [2].
• Samachar Chandrika was commissioned by the Hindu orthodoxy to oppose Rammohun Roy in print.
• Jam-i-Jahan Nama and Shamsul Akhbar (both 1822) were Persian newspapers; Bombay Samachar (1822) was Gujarati.
• Sati was abolished by law in 1829, after Roy's long press campaign [2]; Roy founded the Brahmo Samaj in 1828 on the principle of one Supreme God [3].
• The Deoband Seminary was founded in 1867 in Saharanpur district, Uttar Pradesh, by Muhammad Abid Husayn, and issued thousands of fatwas [4].
• Deoband's outlook was shaped by the eighteenth-century reformer Shah Wali Allah [4].
• The first printed Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas appeared from Calcutta in 1810.
• Naval Kishore Press (Lucknow) and Shri Venkateshwar Press (Bombay) printed vernacular religious texts from the 1880s.
• The ulama used cheap lithographic presses for Persian and Urdu scripture translations, fearing conversion drives and changes to Muslim personal law.

Mains Points

• Print did not just carry the reform debate — it remade it. Because tracts appeared in the everyday spoken language, the audience widened from a scholarly elite to a general reading public. Arguments now had to be simple, quick and persuasive, and every claim invited a printed reply. Evidence: Roy's Sambad Kaumudi (1821) answered by the orthodoxy's Samachar Chandrika; Roy's sati campaign sustained in print until the 1829 ban [2].
• Print was a neutral tool, used equally by reformers and by conservatives. Hindu orthodoxy funded its own paper; the ulama turned cheap lithography into a defensive shield against missionaries and colonial changes to personal law; Deoband (1867) used print to reach ordinary believers with fatwas on daily conduct [4]. Any answer that treats print as only a modernising, liberalising force is incomplete.
• Cheap print democratised access to religious texts and weakened priestly monopoly. The printed Ramcharitmanas (Calcutta, 1810) and later lithographic editions made a sacred text portable, affordable and readable at home — and readable aloud to the illiterate. Religious authority shifted from the person who recited the text to the person who owned and read it.
• Regional print produced a national sense of self. Newspapers moved news between distant provinces, so readers began to see themselves as part of one Indian public. The same press that split communities over doctrine also supplied the shared vocabulary and shared grievances on which nationalism was later built.