The Rise of Press, Literature and Public Opinion

The Rise of Press, Literature and Public Opinion

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The “press,” in a sense, is as old as the human race itself — the instinctive human curiosity to know what is happening around us has always existed. Writings on walls and stones, dating back several centuries before Christ, were the earliest signs of the press’s origin in India; Emperor Ashoka’s edicts renouncing violence after the Kalinga war survive on stone to this day. Later, with the invention of paper and writing materials, state records — including messages from spies — began to be maintained in rudimentary form.

According to J. Natarajan, “newsletters” represented the earliest, if rough, form of a “newspaper.” These were regularly issued during the Mughal period, serving as the primary — indeed, only — source of information on developments across the empire, for kings and subjects alike, down the ages. This practice appears to have continued until the East India Company began ruling over India; it may well have been the circulation of these newsletters that inspired James Augustus Hickey to launch his newspaper, the Bengal Gazette, in 1780.

Origin and Rise of the Press in India

• The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1454 marks a turning point in human history, enabling the rapid dissemination of information to the masses and facilitating the development of ideas through debate, writing, and counter-argument in the years that followed.
  • Printing technology became popular in Italy in 1465, followed by France (1470), Spain (1483), Portugal (1495), Russia (1555), and Austria (1640). Newspapers themselves became popular during the 18th century.
• The printing press was first introduced in India by the Portuguese Jesuits in 1557, for printing Christian literature.
  • The first printing press in India was established in Bombay in 1674, the second in Madras in 1772, and the third in Calcutta in 1779. Although the British were responsible for bringing the printing press to India, they were, ironically, deeply averse to the emergence of a genuine newspaper in the country.
• Dr. R. Das Gupta, former Director of the National Library, Calcutta, writes: “About 14 years before the establishment of the Bengal Gazette, one William Bolts, a merchant of Dutch origin, pasted a notice on the door of the council House in Calcutta to inform the public that the want of a Printing press in this city is a great disadvantage. On 17 April, 1767, the council at Fort William asked Bolts to quit Bengal and proceed to Madras … in order to take his passage from there to Europe. The history of the Indian press begins with the deportation of a person who wanted to found a newspaper. Hicky’s initiative to publish his gazette was therefore an adventure … .”
• James Augustus Hickey, an Englishman, started India’s first newspaper, The Bengal Gazette, or Calcutta General Advertiser, on 29 January 1780, describing it as “A weekly Political and Commercial Paper Open to All Parties but Influenced by None.”
  • The paper was devoted largely to gossip, rumour, and sensational stories about the doings and misdoings of East India Company staff — where Hickey himself worked as a clerk.
  • His exposure of the private lives of the powerful led to his imprisonment, and the temporary banning of his paper. As Hickey himself wrote: “I have no particular passion for printing of a newspaper. I have no propensity: I was not bred to slavish life of hard work, yet I take a pleasure in enslaving my body in order to purchase freedom for my mind and soul.”
  • His paper languished under heavy financial losses, and finally closed in March 1782, when an order was issued for the seizure of its printing types.
  • Hickey proved fearless in criticising the establishment led by Warren Hastings, ultimately resulting in the closure of his press in 1782.
• Several newspapers subsequently emerged in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras in quick succession, though most had short lives.
  • Peter Reed founded the Calcutta Gazette and Oriental Advertiser in 1784, and was able to secure Government patronage. In Madras, Richard Johnston founded the Madras Courier in 1785, while the Bombay Gazette was published in 1791.
• The East India Company now began taking a serious view of newspaper content, imposing ruthless restrictions on printing presses and editors.
  • Censorship was introduced in Madras in 1795, when a newspaper titled The Madras Gazette was required to submit all publishable material for scrutiny.
  • Similarly, in Bengal, papers such as the Bengal Journal, Indian World, and Bengal Harkaru had all, in one form or another, incurred the displeasure of Company authorities — leading soon after to a range of legal restrictions on the press.
• As J. Natarajan observes, “the first two decades of the 19th century saw the imposition of a rigid control of the press by Lords Wellesley and Warren Hastings.”
  • The May 1799 regulations required newspapers to carry the names of the printer, editor, and proprietor in every issue, and to submit all publishable material for scrutiny — though these censorship rules were not, in practice, strictly followed or severely enforced.
• A number of important developments took place between 1813 and 1818; among other things, several missionaries began publishing weekly and monthly newspapers in Bengal, such as Dig Darshan, Samachar Darpan, and The Friend of India — the precursor of today’s The Statesman.
  • A set of regulations known as the Adam’s Regulations of 1818 were issued, granting editors a fair degree of freedom while still keeping a strict watch over the content of their papers.
• Around this time, Raja Ram Mohan Roy and James Silk Buckingham raised their voices in favour of press freedom. Though pre-censorship was withdrawn, several restrictive rules remained in force.
  • Ram Mohan Roy’s weeklies — Sambad Kaumudi in Bengali and Mirat-ul-Akhbar in Persian — along with Bombay’s notable Mumbai Samachar (which survives even today), began publication around this period.
• As the press began voicing some criticism of the administration, the first Press Ordinance was issued in 1823, laying down stringent regulations for editors, with heavy penalties and fines prescribed for infringement.
  • Company staff were prohibited from any association with newspapers, and while political writing was forbidden, social and religious news — particularly from missionaries — was actively encouraged.
• Things changed, however, when William Bentinck became Governor-General of India. He and Raja Ram Mohan Roy were instrumental in improving the country’s social climate, and the authorities adopted a somewhat more liberal attitude towards the press, allowing it a measure of freedom.
  • In 1835, when Charles Metcalfe became Governor-General, he relaxed several of the restrictions previously imposed on the press.
• The first Indian-owned newspaper, according to N. Krishna Murthy, was the Bengal Gazette, started by Gangadhar Bhattacharya.
  • The press in various Indian languages now began making rapid strides — Urdu and Persian papers won readers across north-west India, while the Marathi and Gujarati press also began establishing a presence.
  • Newspapers in Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Oriya, Assamese, and Punjabi appeared around 1850 or later.

The War of Independence

• When the 1857 War of Independence broke out, the growth of the press received a severe setback, with press freedom curtailed drastically.
  • After the war’s failure, governance of India passed from the East India Company to the Crown. In 1859, with Lord Canning as Viceroy, the Indian Penal Code (IPC) was adopted in 1860.
  • A number of Bengal newspapers — including Nil Darpan, The Hindu, Patriot, Shome Prakash, Indian Mirror, and Bengalee — significantly shaped Indian public opinion during this period. With the appearance of the Amrita Bazar Patrika — first in Bengali, and then dramatically switched over to English — the character of Indian journalism transformed suddenly and radically.
• Several notable English-language newspapers were also established around this time.
  • The Times of India was formed through the amalgamation of four papers — The Bombay Times, The Courier, The Standard, and The Telegraph. Three other notable English papers — The Pioneer, Civil and Military Gazette, and The Statesman — were also born in this period.
  • In Madras, The Mail (an evening paper) and The Hindu — today the largest-circulated paper in the country — also came into existence around this time.
• This period witnessed a genuine boom in the Indian-language press, with newspapers appearing across almost all major Indian languages — the Bengali-language press led the way, followed closely by publications in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Tamil, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, and others.

Nationalism and the Indian Press

• A number of India’s great men — intellectuals, political leaders, thinkers, and journalists — came to be closely associated with the press, in both English and Indian languages.
  • Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Lala Lajpat Rai, Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, Surendranath Banerjee, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Mahadev Govind Ranade, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Motilal Ghosh, Syed Abdullah Brelvi, Aurobindo Ghose, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, among many others, made remarkable contributions to the development of the Indian press. Indeed, most eminent journalists of the period were equally eminent freedom fighters, and vice versa.
• Several famous newspapers emerged during this era, including Bande Mataram (Hindi), Kesari and Maratha (Marathi), Swadeshmitran (Tamil), Amrita Bazar Patrika, National Herald, The Civil and Military Gazette, Free Press Journal, Bombay Chronicle, The Leader, The Tribune, Madras Standard, The Hitavada, and numerous other English papers.
  • These newspapers had to confront a barrage of problems, with kaleidoscopic restrictions imposed on news-gathering, printing, and display.
  • The Vernacular Press Act, the Official Secrets Act, the Newspaper (Incitement to Offences) Act, the newly introduced Sections 124-A, 153-A, and 505 of the Indian Penal Code, the Defence of India Rules, the Post Office Act, the Press and Registration of Books Act, the Sea Customs Act, and a whole raft of ordinances throttled the press’s growth and development in India from the very beginning.
• Yet the fact remains that this plethora of ruthless laws could not effectively suppress the growth and development of the Indian press. The support the press received from the wider public was, indeed, remarkable.
  • As Gandhiji fittingly put it: “One of the objectives of a newspaper is to understand the popular feelings and give expression to it; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects.”

Some Great Newspapers

• By the time the Indian National Congress was established in 1885, a number of newspapers across several languages already commanded large readerships — The Tribune, Kesari, Spectator, Indu-Prakash, Maratha, Amrita Bazar Patrika, The Pioneer, The Bengalee, The Englishman, The Hindu, and others enjoyed high reputations and substantial circulations across the country.
  • This period also saw the emergence of periodical journalism: The Illustrated Weekly was launched in Bombay, while Capital was founded in Calcutta; The Hindustan Review and Indian Review also began publication as monthly journals.
• In 1889, when Lord Curzon became Governor-General of India, a series of new measures — including the Partition of Bengal and the enactment of the Indian Official Secrets Act, 1889 — further alienated the Indian public from the British Government. The press opposed these steps vigorously.
  • By this time, a number of draconian laws — including the Press and Registration of Books Act, and Sections 124-A and 505 of the IPC — had created tremendous difficulties for the press, and numerous nationalist leaders, including Lala Lajpat Rai, Aurobindo Ghose, B.C. Pal, and Lokmanya Tilak, had been arrested for their press-related contributions in various ways.
• Most of India’s great English-language newspapers, in fact, emerged between the 1860s and the early 1920s — including modern-day institutions such as The Hindu, The Times of India, The Statesman, The Amrita Bazar Patrika (now defunct), The Pioneer, and The Hindustan Times, alongside numerous Indian-language publications across the country.

The Vernacular Press Act, 1878

• An unfortunate legacy of the Rebellion of 1857 was the growth of racial bitterness between rulers and ruled.
  • As a result, the European press in India, after 1858, remained firmly aligned with the Government in all political controversies.
  • The vernacular press, meanwhile, had grown at an unprecedented scale since 1857, becoming increasingly vocal and critical of governmental policy — fuelling a strong body of public opinion critical of Lord Lytton’s imperialist acts.
  • The terrible famine of 1876–78, which claimed over six million lives, and the lavish expenditure on the Imperial Darbar at Delhi in January 1877, made both public opinion and the press decidedly restive.
  • Lytton, for his part, viewed the newly rising intellectual class in India as “a deadly legacy from Macaulay and Metcalfe,” and sought to stifle its views.
• The Vernacular Press Act, 1878, was designed to “better control” the vernacular press, empowering the Government with more effective means of punishing and repressing seditious writings.
  • Directed only against Indian-language newspapers, the Act was conceived in great secrecy and passed at a single sitting of the Imperial Legislative Council.

Provisions

• The Act empowered a District Magistrate, with the prior permission of the Local Government, to require the printer and publisher of any vernacular newspaper to enter into a bond, undertaking not to publish anything likely to excite disaffection against the government, or antipathy between persons of different races, castes, and religions among the Queen’s subjects.
  • The magistrate could further require a publisher to deposit a security, forfeiting it should the newspaper contravene the regulation; on repeat offences, the printing press equipment itself could be seized.
  • The magistrate’s action was final, with no appeal to any court of law.
  • A vernacular newspaper could gain exemption from the Act by submitting proofs of each issue to a government censor.
• The Act’s worst feature was that it discriminated openly between the English and vernacular press, offering no right of appeal to a court of law.
  • Proceedings under the Act were instituted against papers including The Som Prakash, The Bharat Mihir, The Dacca Prakash, and The Sahachar.
  • The Act partly succeeded in its objective — the tone of the vernacular press grew markedly more submissive, with newspapers of the period showing far less originality and increasingly borrowing content from the English press.
• Lord Cranbrook, the new Secretary of State, objected to the Act’s pre-censorship clause, on the ground that censors would necessarily be Indians, who would effectively be forced to rewrite the newspapers themselves.
  • Consequently, in September 1878, the pre-censorship clause was deleted.
  • At the Secretary of State’s suggestion, a Press Commissioner was appointed, charged with supplying authentic and accurate news to the press.
• Indian nationalist opinion firmly opposed the Act.
  • The first great public demonstration on an issue of national importance was organised in Calcutta, with a large meeting held at the Town Hall; various public bodies and the press also campaigned actively against the Act.
  • The Act was aimed, in particular, at the Amrita Bazar Patrika, then published in both Bengali and English — the objective being to take summary action against it.
    • When officials woke the morning after the Act was passed, however, they discovered that overnight, the editors had converted it entirely into an English newspaper.
• The Vernacular Press Act was ultimately repealed in 1882 by the Government of Lord Ripon.
  • Ripon, a nominee of Gladstone’s Liberal Government, held that the circumstances which had justified the 1878 Act no longer existed.
  • He instead subjected the entire press to Section 124-A of the IPC, which prescribed adequate punishments for seditious writing.
  • The press now enjoyed relative freedom, and even the law of sedition was invoked only infrequently.
• The misery caused by the famine of 1896–97 and the bubonic plague stirred considerable discontent in the Deccan, leading to cases of violence, with the newspaper press playing an active part in the resulting political controversies.
  • By Act VI of 1898, Section 124 of the Penal Code was restated and expanded, and a new Section 153-A was added.
  • Section 505 of the Penal Code was similarly amended, to punish statements likely to cause public mischief, provoke disaffection among the armed forces, or induce persons to commit offences against the state.
• In 1898, the Government’s amendment of Section 124-A, along with the new Section 153-A, made it a criminal offence to attempt “to bring into contempt” the Government of India, or to create hatred between different classes — most notably, between Indians and Englishmen in India.
  • This once again sparked nation-wide protest.
• Surendranath Banerjea was the first Indian to go to jail (in 1883) in the performance of his duties as a journalist.
  • The public reaction was immediate and angry — a spontaneous hartal broke out in Calcutta; students demonstrated outside the courts, and demonstrations spread to numerous towns across Bengal, as well as to Lahore, Amritsar, Agra, Faizabad, and Poona, among other cities.
  • Calcutta, for the first time, witnessed several large, open-air public meetings.

Role of Tilak

• Bal Gangadhar Tilak is most closely associated with the struggle for press freedom during the nationalist movement.
  • In 1881, along with G.G. Agarkar, he founded the newspapers Kesari (in Marathi) and Mahratta (in English).
  • By 1888, he had taken over both papers, using their columns to spread discontent against British rule and to preach national resistance.
• In 1893, Tilak began the practice of using the traditional religious Ganapati festival to propagate nationalist ideas through patriotic songs and speeches.
  • In 1896, he launched the Shivaji festival, to stimulate nationalism among young Maharashtrians.
  • That same year, he organised an all-Maharashtra campaign for the boycott of foreign cloth, in protest against the excise duty imposed on cotton.
• Tilak was, perhaps, the first national leader to fully grasp the important role that the lower middle classes, peasants, artisans, and workers could play in the national movement — accordingly, he saw the necessity of drawing them into the Congress fold, criticising Congress for having largely ignored the peasantry.
  • In pursuit of this objective, he initiated a no-tax campaign in Maharashtra during 1896–97, with the help of young workers of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha.
    • Referring to the official famine code, printed in Marathi and distributed by the thousand, he urged famine-stricken Maharashtrian peasants to withhold payment of land revenue where their crops had failed.
• In 1897, plague broke out in Poona, prompting the Government to undertake severe measures of segregation and house searches.
  • Unlike many other leaders, Tilak stayed in Poona, actively supporting the Government while organising his own measures against the plague — though he also criticised the harsh, heartless manner in which officials treated plague-stricken people.
  • Popular resentment against these official measures culminated in the assassination of Rand (Chairman of the Plague Committee in Poona) and Lt. Ayerst, by the Chapekar brothers, in 1898.
• The Government, determined to make an example of the press, saw its opportunity in the Rand murder.
  • Tilak was by now well-known as a hostile and effective journalist; the British-owned press and bureaucracy were quick to portray the Rand murder as a conspiracy by the Poona Brahmins, led by Tilak.
  • He was arrested under Section 124-A of the IPC on the charge of sedition — spreading disaffection and hatred against the Government — and, despite being a member of the Bombay Legislative Council, received a barbarous sentence of eighteen months’ rigorous imprisonment.
• Tilak’s imprisonment sparked widespread protest across the country, with many nationalist newspapers hailing him as a martyr in the battle for press freedom.
  • Overnight, Tilak became a popular all-India leader, earning the title of “Lokamanya” (“respected and honoured by the people”) — becoming a living symbol of the new spirit of self-sacrifice.
• With the rise of individual terrorism following the Swadeshi movement, the Government grew unnerved, once again turning newspapers into a major target.
  • Attention again turned to Lokamanya Tilak, the mainstay of the Boycott movement and militant politics outside Bengal.
  • Tilak wrote a series of articles on the arrival of the “Bomb” on the Indian political scene.
    • While he condemned violence and individual killings — describing “Nihilism” as “this poisonous tree” — he simultaneously held the Government responsible for suppressing criticism, dissent, and the people’s legitimate desire for greater freedom, arguing that in such an atmosphere, “violence, however deplorable, became inevitable.”
• On 24 June 1908, Tilak was again arrested and tried for sedition, this time over published articles, and sentenced to six years’ transportation, sent to a prison in Mandalay, Burma.
  • The public reaction was massive: newspapers proclaimed they would defend press freedom by following Tilak’s example.
  • All markets in Bombay city closed on 22 July, the day the sentence was announced, remaining shut for a full week.
    • Workers across the city’s textile mills and railway workshops went on strike for six days, and efforts to force them back to work led to a violent clash with the police — the army was eventually called out, and sixteen workers died, with nearly fifty more seriously injured.
    • Lenin hailed this episode as “the entrance of the Indian working class on the political stage.”
• Echoes of Tilak’s trial resurfaced years later, when Gandhiji, his political successor, was tried in 1922 for the same offence of sedition under the same Section 124-A, for articles published in Young India.
  • When the Judge noted that Gandhiji’s offence mirrored Tilak’s, and that he would receive the same sentence of six years’ imprisonment, Gandhiji replied: “Since you have done me the honor of recalling the trial of the late Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, I just want to say that I consider it to be [the] proudest privilege and honor to be associated with his name.”
  • The only real difference between the two trials was that Gandhiji pleaded guilty, whereas Tilak had pleaded not guilty.

The Newspapers (or Press) Act, 1908

• The disaffection generated by Lord Curzon’s unpopular measures fuelled the rise of an Extremist Party within the Indian National Congress, leading in turn to acts of violence — with newspapers of the day frequently commenting adversely on Government policy.
  • In response, the Government pursued a repressive policy, enacting the Newspapers (Incitement to Offences) Act, 1908.

Provisions

• Magistrates were empowered to confiscate printing presses and connected property belonging to newspapers that published material inciting murder or acts of violence.
• The Local Government was empowered to annul any declaration made by a newspaper’s printer or publisher under the Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867.
• Newspaper editors and printers retained the right to appeal to the High Court within fifteen days of a forfeiture order.
• Under this Act, the Government prosecuted nine newspapers and confiscated seven presses.
  • Several newspapers — including Yugantar, Sandhya, and Bande Mataram — ceased publication as a result.

The Indian Press Act, 1910

• The Government further tightened its grip through the Indian Press Act, 1910, which revived the worst features of Lytton’s Press Act of 1878.
  • The Act empowered the Local Government to demand, at the time of registration, a security deposit of Rs 500 to Rs 2,000 from any keeper of a printing press or newspaper publisher, and to forfeit such security while annulling the newspaper’s registration, in case of an offence.
  • The Government could permit fresh registration, but might demand a further security of Rs 1,000 to Rs 10,000 — forfeiting this too, and even confiscating the press and all copies of the newspaper or related material, should objectionable content persist.
  • The aggrieved party could appeal to a Special Tribunal of the High Court against forfeiture orders, within two months.
  • Every newspaper’s printer was required to supply the Government, free of charge, two copies of each issue published.
  • The Act also empowered the Chief Customs Officer to detain any imported packages containing objectionable material.
• Under this Act, action was taken against 991 printing presses and newspapers — of which 286 were warned, and heavy securities were demanded in 705 cases; more than Rs 60,000 worth of security was ultimately forfeited across 300 newspapers.

Press and the World Wars

World War I

• From 1914 to 1947, the freedom struggle gathered increasing momentum, and the British Government grew anxious to secure press support for its war effort — even as the press itself grew increasingly aligned with the nationalist struggle for freedom.
• When the First World War broke out in 1914, the British released several nationalist leaders from jail, hoping to solicit their wartime support. Papers such as The Madras Standard, New India, Bombay Chronicle, and Maratha, however, took divergent stances — as a result, some 180 newspapers were required to deposit security and pledge support to the Government during 1914–15.
  • The press gradually softened its stance towards the Government: by 1918, only 30 newspapers (down from 180 in 1914) were still required to deposit security.
  • After the war, however, and through the 1920s, the British Government took a stiffer stance on the question of granting Indians greater freedom, particularly as leaders launched the Non-Cooperation Movement — and the press lent active support to the nationalist cause.
    • Mahatma Gandhi wrote in Young India on 2 July 1925: “I have taken up journalism not for its sake, but merely as an aid to what I have conceived to be my mission in life.” In 1942, he added: “It is better not to issue newspapers than to issue them under a feeling of suppression.”
  • As the Indian press passed through this difficult period, several newspapers were founded and run by freedom fighters themselves, acting as proprietor-editors — alongside Gandhiji’s Young India, examples included Motilal Ghosh (owner-editor of Amrita Bazar Patrika), Surendranath Banerjee (of The Bengalee), and Kasturi Ranga Iyengar (of The Hindu).

Defence of India Rules

• During the First World War (1914–18), the Defence of India Rules were promulgated — the executive using these new powers not merely for war purposes, but also to repress political agitation and free public criticism.

Press Committee, 1921 (Sapru Committee)

• In 1921, a Press Committee was appointed under the chairmanship of Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, then Law Member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, to review the working of existing press laws.
  • On the Committee’s recommendations, the Press Act of 1908, the Press Act of 1910, and the Press and Registration of Books Act were repealed.

The Indian Press (Emergency Powers) Act, 1931

• The rise of political mobilisation in the 1930s, alongside the Second Civil Disobedience Movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi in 1930, prompted the British Government to enact a fresh Press Act in 1931, aimed at better controlling the Indian press.
  • This Act essentially revived the provisions of the Press Act of 1910, and granted sweeping powers to provincial governments to suppress propaganda for the civil disobedience movement.
  • The Act sought to punish words, signs, or visible representations that:
    • incited, encouraged, or tended to incite or encourage any offence of murder, or any cognizable offence involving violence; or
    • directly or indirectly expressed approval or admiration of such an offence, or of any person — real or fictitious — alleged or represented to have committed it.

Other Provisions

• Owners of printing presses were required to deposit a security amount.
• The Government was empowered to declare such security forfeited in certain circumstances.
• Should a printer apply for a fresh declaration, a magistrate could demand a fresh security of Rs 1,000 to Rs 10,000.
• If, even after forfeiture and a fresh deposit, the newspaper continued publishing objectionable material, the Provincial Government could forfeit this new security as well.
• These provisions applied equally to printing press keepers and newspaper publishers.
• The penalty for printing objectionable material was imprisonment up to six months, with or without a fine.
• The Act also restrained the publication of pictures of Civil Disobedience Movement leaders, along with news relating to the movement.
• Under this Act, the Government took action against numerous newspapers — the printers and publishers of the Bombay Chronicle were each asked to deposit Rs 3,000, for publishing an article by Horniman; the printer and publisher of the Anand Bazar Patrika each received a demand for Rs 1,000; a security of Rs 6,000 was demanded from the Amrit Bazar Patrika; Rs 10,000 was deposited by The Liberty of Calcutta; and a security of Rs 6,000, deposited by the Free Press Journal, was later forfeited by the Bombay Government.
• In 1932, the Press Act of 1931 was further expanded through the Criminal Amendment Act, 1932, made comprehensive enough to cover virtually all activities calculated to undermine Government authority.

Foreign Relations Act, 1932

• This Act aimed to penalise publications calculated to interfere with the maintenance of good relations between the British Government and friendly foreign states — its necessity arose after newspapers criticised the administration of certain states bordering India’s frontiers.
  • Any book, newspaper, or document containing specified defamatory material likely to prejudice such relations could be seized in the same manner as seditious literature.

Indian States (Protection) Act, 1934

• This Act was passed to prevent unreasonable attacks on the administration of Indian states, empowering the Government to deal with bands or demonstrations organised on semi-military lines, aimed at entering and spreading disaffection within the territories of Indian states.

World War II

• For roughly two decades, between 1925 and 1946, Gandhiji and his approach to journalism dominated the Indian press, marking the rise of “opinion journalism,” with editorials often overshadowing the news itself. These same decades saw newspapers proliferate across almost all Indian languages, particularly Hindi and English.
• During the Second World War (1939–45), the press initially supported the British Government’s stance in India. A conflict soon arose, however, over the reporting of war news — as Gandhiji resorted to civil disobedience, several newspapers extended him full support.
  • The Government subsequently issued a notification “prohibiting the printing and publishing of any matter calculated directly or indirectly to foment opposition to the persecution of war…”
• It was around this time that the All India Newspapers’ Editors Conference (AINEC) was founded, with the objective of “preserving high traditions and standards of journalism; safeguarding the freedom of publication of news and comment; representing the press in India in its relations with the public and the government.”
• As the Second World War drew to a close, and the first rays of India’s approaching freedom began to appear, Lord Mountbatten’s arrival in India and revelation of the partition plan were met, according to Krishna Murthy, with “a general tone of acquiescence with a satisfaction that after all freedom of the country was ultimately becoming a reality.”

Defence of India Act, 1939

• This Act aimed to enable the Government to control newspapers throughout the Second World War (1939–45), effectively depriving the press of its freedom.
  • Pre-censorship was reinforced, the Press Emergency Act and Official Secrets Act were amended, and the publication of all news relating to Congress activities was declared illegal.
  • The special wartime powers assumed by the Government finally ended in 1945.

The Press Enquiry Committee

• In March 1947, the Government of India appointed a Press Enquiry Committee, charged with examining existing press laws in light of the fundamental rights then being formulated by the Constituent Assembly of India.
  • Among the Committee’s key recommendations were: repeal of the Indian Press (Emergency Powers) Act, 1931; amendments to the Press and Registration of Books Act; modification of Sections 124-A and 153-A of the Indian Penal Code; and the repeal of both the Indian States (Protection against Disaffection) Act, 1932, and the Indian States (Protection) Act, 1934.