Print, the poor and caste-class critique

Detail

Cheap print reaches the poor

• Very cheap small books were sold at crossroads in nineteenth-century Madras towns. Crossroads were busy spots. Poor people passing by could buy a book for a few paise.
• Why this mattered:
• Books stopped being only for rich homes and temples.
• A person with little money and little schooling could now own printed matter.

• Sellers did not need a shop. A mat on the roadside was enough.

• The wider base for this was the print revolution in India, which began when Jesuit missionaries brought the first press to Goa in September 1556 [6].

• Indian-language type made cheap local printing possible. The first press with Bengali type was run by Andrews of Hooghly, and in 1778 it printed Nathaniel Brassey Halhed's A Grammar of the Bengal Language, using Bengali type cut by the engraver Panchanan Karmakar [6].
• By the 1860s, Indian-language newspapers such as Somprakash, Grambarta Prakashika and Amrita Bazar Patrika were writing about how colonial policy hit ordinary farmers and workers — not only about religious reform [6].

Public libraries

• Public libraries spread from the early twentieth century.
• They came up mainly in cities and towns, and in some prosperous villages.
• Two different motives ran side by side:
• For poor readers — a free place to read books they could never buy.
• For rich patrons — setting up a library brought prestige. Your name on the building made you look generous and modern.

Caste critique in print — Phule

• Jyotiba Phule was the Maratha pioneer of 'low caste' protest.
• He wrote Gulamgiri (1871), attacking the injustices of the caste system.
• Phule was a social reformer, writer and campaigner for equality — for poor labourers and for women — and a sharp critic of the Hindu caste order [2].
• He argued against the idea that Brahmans were naturally superior, and against the belief that dividing society into castes was god-given [2].
• In Gulamgiri he compared the condition of low-caste people in India to the slavery of Black people in the United States [2].
• He spoke for those at the bottom: the Shudras (artisans and labourers) and the groups now called Scheduled Castes or Dalits [2].

Note: Britannica dates Gulamgiri to 1873, not 1871 [2]. Keep the NCERT date (1871) for the exam.

Caste critique in print — Ambedkar and Periyar

• In the twentieth century two writers carried this forward, and their work was read all over India:
• B.R. Ambedkar in Maharashtra.

• E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, called Periyar, in Madras.

• Ambedkar's use of print:

• Founded the Marathi paper Mooknayak ("Leader of the Voiceless") in 1920, to put Dalit rights before a reading public that big newspapers ignored [3][4].
• Started Bahishkrit Bharat on 3 April 1927 for the cause of the depressed classes [4].
• Set up the Bahishkrit Hitkarini Sabha in 1923 to spread education among the downtrodden [4].

• His first published article was "Castes in India — Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development", read as an essay in 1916 [4].

• Periyar's use of print:

• Began the Tamil weekly Kudi Arasu ("Republic") on 2 May 1925 [5].
• Launched the Self-Respect Movement in December 1925, and used the weekly to spread its ideas [5].
• Through it he wrote on property inheritance, child marriage, widow remarriage and women in politics, along with his attack on caste [5].

• He criticised the caste system, religious orthodoxy and patriarchy [5].

• Protest movements of this kind produced their own journals. These journals did two things:

• Criticised the ancient scriptures used to justify caste.
• Pictured a just future — a society without birth-based rank.

Worker writing: caste plus class

• Kashibaba, a Kanpur millworker, published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal in 1938.
• The title means "the question of the small and the big".

• Its argument: caste exploitation and class exploitation are linked. A worker is pressed down twice — once as low caste, once as poor labour.

• Sudarshan Chakr, another Kanpur millworker, wrote poems between 1935 and 1955.

• They were collected and published as Sacchi Kavitayan ("true poems").

Worker libraries

• By the 1930s, cotton millworkers in Bangalore set up libraries to teach themselves.
• They were following the example of Bombay workers, who had done this earlier.
• These libraries were sponsored by social reformers. The reformers had their own aims:
• Temperance (keeping workers away from drink).
• Literacy (teaching reading and writing).

• Sometimes nationalism (spreading the freedom movement's ideas).

• So the worker library had a double character: workers wanted knowledge and self-respect; sponsors wanted reform and discipline.

Prelims Hooks

• Gulamgiri (1871) — written by Jyotiba Phule, a Maratha pioneer of 'low caste' protest.
• Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal (1938) — by Kashibaba, a Kanpur millworker, linking caste and class exploitation.
• Sacchi Kavitayan — collected poems (1935–55) of Sudarshan Chakr, a Kanpur millworker.
• E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker (Periyar) belonged to Madras; B.R. Ambedkar to Maharashtra.
• Kudi Arasu ("Republic"), Periyar's Tamil weekly, started 2 May 1925 [5].
• Mooknayak ("Leader of the Voiceless"), Ambedkar's Marathi paper, founded 1920 [3][4].
• Bahishkrit Bharat, Ambedkar's paper for the depressed classes, started 3 April 1927 [4].
• Very cheap small books were sold at crossroads in nineteenth-century Madras towns.
• Bangalore cotton millworkers set up self-education libraries by the 1930s, following Bombay workers.
• First printing press in India: brought by Jesuits to Goa, September 1556 [6].

Mains Points

• Print turned caste protest from local speech into an all-India argument. Phule's Gulamgiri (1871), and later Ambedkar's and Periyar's writings, could be read far from where they were written. A spoken protest dies in one village; a printed one travels and survives.
• Print gave the excluded their own platform. Mainstream papers ignored Dalit concerns, so Ambedkar started Mooknayak (1920) and Bahishkrit Bharat (1927), and Periyar started Kudi Arasu (1925) [4][5]. This shows that access to a press, not only literacy, decides whose voice is heard.
• Worker writing joined two critiques that are often kept apart. Kashibaba's Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal (1938) argued that caste oppression and class oppression work together — useful for GS-I answers on the social base of labour and anti-caste movements.
• Libraries carried mixed motives. For rich patrons a library meant prestige; for reformers sponsoring worker libraries it meant temperance, literacy and sometimes nationalism; for workers it meant self-education. The same institution served different interests at once.