Education and the Press under British Rule — Complete UPSC Notes

1. Why Education Mattered to the British

British engagement with Indian education was not driven by philanthropy. It served three concrete imperial purposes — and these motives shaped what was taught, in what medium, and for whom.

1.1 The clerk-producing motive

• The expanding colonial administration (Topics 05 and 07) needed a steady supply of literate Indians to staff the lower rungs of the civil service, the railways, the post office and the courts.
• It was prohibitively expensive to employ Englishmen for these jobs — Macaulay's Minute (1835) famously argued for producing "a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect."
• The doctrine of "downward filtration" — education provided to the upper classes was expected to "filter down" to the masses — was both a fiscal economy (don't fund mass schooling) and a political strategy (cultivate the elite).

1.2 The market-creating motive

• English-educated Indians were expected to develop tastes for British manufactures — not just clothes but also books, newspapers, household goods, instruments. The educated consumer was a colonial economic asset.
• Charles Trevelyan's 1838 work On the Education of the People of India made this explicit — education was a tool of "civilising the market" for British goods.

1.3 The hegemony-building motive

• British rule depended on consent as much as on coercion. An educated Indian class taught to admire British liberalism, science and rule of law would defend British rule against both reactionary Hindu/Muslim sentiment and revolutionary unrest.
• Macaulay was clear about this: he wanted to create a translator class between the British rulers and the millions they ruled. Bipan Chandra calls it the strategy of "intellectual incorporation".

1.4 The unintended consequence

British education succeeded in all three goals — clerks were produced, markets were created, and a westernised middle class emerged. But it also produced a class that turned the lessons of English liberalism against British rule. The Moderates of the INC (Topic 13) used Burke, Mill, Bentham, Spencer and Adam Smith to argue for self-government. The extremist Tilak and the revolutionary Aurobindo were both products of this English-educated class. The colonial education project, in the long run, produced the colonial education project's own undoing.

2. The Orientalist Phase — 1781 to 1813

The first three decades of formal British engagement with Indian education were dominated by "Orientalists" — British officials who believed Indian knowledge in Sanskrit and Persian was worth preserving and patronising. The motive was both intellectual (curiosity, scholarship) and political (winning over Hindu pandits and Muslim ulema as collaborators).

2.1 Key institutions of the Orientalist phase

2.2 The character of Orientalism

• Orientalists like William Jones, H.T. Colebrooke, H.H. Wilson and Nathaniel Halhed believed that Indian knowledge was a legitimate sister-civilisation to Greek and Roman antiquity — not inferior.
• They produced foundational scholarship: Jones's translation of the Manusmriti (1794), Wilkins's translation of the Bhagavad Gita (1785, the first translation into a European language), Colebrooke's editions of mathematical and grammatical texts.
• They argued that British government should be conducted through Indian laws, languages and customs — not against them.

2.3 Indian initiatives in parallel

Indian reformers were not waiting for British policy. Raja Ram Mohan Roy wrote to Governor-General Lord Amherst on 11 December 1823, urging the government to spend the Charter Act 1813 grant not on Sanskrit and Arabic but on European mathematics, natural philosophy and chemistry. The Indian middle class wanted access to the knowledge that was making Britain powerful. This Indian demand — rather than British zeal — was the real driver of the eventual shift to English education.

3. Charter Act 1813 — Section 43

The Charter Act 1813 (passed on 21 July 1813) was the first parliamentary statute that made the Government of India directly responsible for the education of its subjects. Section 43 of the Act required the Governor-General to set aside, out of the surplus revenues of India, a minimum of Rs 1 lakh annually for the revival and improvement of literature and the encouragement of the learned natives of India and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories in India.

3.1 Why this clause mattered

• It was the first formal recognition that the colonial state had a duty in education — even if the sum was tiny (Rs 1 lakh against total revenue of about Rs 22 crore).
• It opened British India to Christian missionaries, who had been kept out until then under EIC policy of religious neutrality. Missionaries became major providers of schools and colleges — Serampore Mission College (1818), Scottish Church College Calcutta (1830), Wilson College Bombay (1832), Madras Christian College (1837).
• The phrase "sciences among the inhabitants" was the textual seed of the eventual Anglicist victory in 1835 — though for two decades it was interpreted to mean Sanskrit and Arabic learning.

3.2 The dispute begins

Between 1813 and 1835, the General Committee of Public Instruction (GCPI), set up in 1823 under the Governor-General-in-Council, was split between Orientalists (H.T. Prinsep, H.H. Wilson) and Anglicists (Charles Trevelyan, Macaulay, William Bentinck). The committee deadlocked repeatedly over how to spend the Rs 1 lakh.

4. Orientalist–Anglicist Controversy & Macaulay's Minute (1835)

4.1 The factions

4.2 Thomas Babington Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education — 2 February 1835

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) was a barrister, Whig MP, and from 1834 the first Law Member of the Governor-General's Council. On 2 February 1835 he wrote his famous Minute on Indian Education, intended to break the GCPI deadlock.

• The central claim: "I have no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value... I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia."
• The recommended policy: The Rs 1 lakh should be spent on English-medium education, teaching European science and literature, to a select Indian elite. From this elite, knowledge would "filter down" to the masses (downward filtration theory).
• The desired product: "a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect."
• The contempt: Macaulay dismissed Indian classical learning as "false history, false astronomy, false medicine... false religion." His Minute is the foundational document of cultural imperialism in modern India.

4.3 Why Macaulay won

• Governor-General William Bentinck, an evangelical liberal, was already sympathetic to the Anglicist cause.
• The Indian middle class — especially in Bengal — was demanding English education as the route to government jobs and modern knowledge.
• Anglican missionaries (Alexander Duff in Calcutta) had already demonstrated that English-medium teaching was popular and effective with Indian students.
• The financial argument — mass vernacular education would cost crores; elite English education cost lakhs — was decisive for a parsimonious colonial state.

5. Bentinck's Resolution — 7 March 1835

Governor-General William Bentinck issued the Resolution of 7 March 1835, accepting Macaulay's recommendations.

5.1 Provisions

• The "great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India."
• All government funds for education would henceforth be devoted to English-medium instruction.
• Government would no longer patronise the printing of Sanskrit or Arabic books from public funds (though existing Madrasas and Sanskrit Colleges would continue with existing endowments).
• The Rs 1 lakh of Charter Act 1813 would be spent on English-medium higher education.

5.2 Immediate consequences

• 1835 — Calcutta Medical College founded by Bentinck — first Western-medicine medical school in Asia; admitted students from all castes (a revolutionary act — Madhusudan Gupta performed the first human dissection by an Indian on 10 January 1836).
• 1837 — English replaces Persian as the language of the higher courts and government correspondence (Lord Auckland's Act).
• 1841 — Bombay University-equivalent body: the Board of Education (Bombay) established with English as the medium.
• The number of English-medium schools and colleges grew steadily through the 1840s, mostly run by missionaries with government grant-in-aid.

6. Adam's Reports on Vernacular Education — 1835, 1836, 1838

While Macaulay was framing his English-medium policy, a Scottish missionary, William Adam, was conducting the most thorough survey of indigenous vernacular schooling ever undertaken in India.

6.1 The three reports

• First Report (1835): survey of indigenous schools in 1 thana of Burdwan district.
• Second Report (1836): survey of 1 district each in Rajshahi and South Behar.
• Third Report (1838): survey of Murshidabad, Beerbhoom, Burdwan, South Behar, Tirhoot.

6.2 Adam's findings

• Bengal and Bihar had about 1,00,000 indigenous schools (pathshalas, maktabs, tols) — roughly one school per 400 inhabitants.
• These schools taught reading, writing, arithmetic and religious texts in the vernacular (Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Persian); enrollment was largely upper-caste boys but some lower-caste enrolment existed.
• Adam recommended that the government support and improve these indigenous schools rather than dismantle them in favour of English-medium colleges for the elite.

6.3 Why Adam's recommendations were ignored

• The Anglicist faction (Macaulay, Trevelyan, Bentinck) had already won the policy battle. Indigenous schools did not fit the strategy of producing English-speaking clerks.
• Mass vernacular education would require enormous expense.
• The traditional pathshalas were seen as backward and unscientific by the new Westernised elite as well as by the British.

7. Wood's Despatch — 19 July 1854 — "The Magna Carta of English Education in India"

The Despatch of 19 July 1854 by Sir Charles Wood (President of the Board of Control of the EIC, addressed to Governor-General Dalhousie) is the foundational document of modern Indian education. It set up the framework that survived — with modifications — until 1947, and substantial parts of which still operate today.

7.1 The 100-paragraph blueprint

• Department of Public Instruction in each of the five Presidencies / provinces (Bengal, Madras, Bombay, NWP, Punjab) under a Director.
• Three Universities at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras — "affiliating universities" on the model of the University of London (incorporated 1836); they would set syllabi and conduct exams, but not teach.
• Grant-in-aid system: the government would not run schools directly except where private effort was inadequate. It would give grants to schools (mostly missionary) that met government standards.
• Vernacular schools at the primary level: education in regional languages for the masses (this was the most progressive part of the Despatch and the one most under-implemented).
• Anglo-vernacular at the middle level: bilingual schooling bridging primary and college.
• English at the college and university level: the elite tier.
• Teacher training colleges (Normal Schools) in each province.
• Female education — the Despatch explicitly endorsed government support for girls' schooling, the first official recognition of this need.
• Inspection system — school inspectors to verify grant-in-aid claims.
• Recruitment to government jobs through this educational pipeline.

7.2 Why Wood's Despatch was called the "Magna Carta of English Education"

• It was the first comprehensive educational policy — covering all levels from primary to university, vernacular and English, male and female.
• It explicitly endorsed mass vernacular schooling, abandoning the pure "downward filtration" theory.
• It created the institutional architecture — Departments of Public Instruction, affiliating universities, grant-in-aid — that organised Indian education for the next 90 years.
• It explicitly favoured the spread of European knowledge as the long-term goal but accepted that English-medium would always be a minority preserve.

7.3 The implementation gap

The Despatch was visionary on paper. In practice, the government invested in higher (English-medium) education far more than in primary (vernacular) education throughout the colonial period. By 1900, English-medium higher education had produced an articulate elite of about 5 lakh; primary vernacular education reached only 5% of school-age children. This unbalanced inheritance is why post-1947 India had to spend decades trying to universalise primary education.

8. Universities Act 1857 — Calcutta, Bombay, Madras

Following Wood's Despatch, the three Presidency Universities were established by Acts of the Government of India in 1857 — remarkably, in the same year as the Revolt.

8.1 The three Universities

8.2 The affiliating-university model

• Modelled on the University of London, these universities did not teach — they set syllabi, conducted examinations, and awarded degrees.
• Affiliated colleges (mostly missionary; some government) did the actual teaching.
• BA (3 years), MA (2 years), and Law, Medicine, Engineering as professional courses.
• The first BA degrees were awarded in 1858 (Calcutta).

8.3 Later universities of the colonial era

9. Hunter Education Commission — 1882

Viceroy Ripon's Liberal administration appointed the first Indian Education Commission on 3 February 1882 under Sir William Wilson Hunter (the same statistician who had compiled The Indian Empire). It reported on 21 October 1882.

9.1 Mandate

To review the implementation of Wood's Despatch (1854), to recommend improvements particularly in primary and secondary education, and to address the position of indigenous schools and women's education.

9.2 Major recommendations

• Primary education should be the special charge of the state and should be in the vernacular. Spread of primary education should be the chief concern of government.
• Secondary education should be divided into two streams: Literary (preparing for university) and Vocational (preparing for commercial/industrial careers).
• Transfer of secondary and collegiate education to private Indian enterprise, with government acting through grant-in-aid.
• Government should withdraw from direct provision of education at higher levels and act as a regulator/grant-giver.
• Encouragement of women's education and education of backward classes — though the recommendations on the latter were tepid.
• Better salaries and training for teachers; expansion of Normal Schools.

9.3 Impact

• Massive expansion of private (Indian-managed) secondary and collegiate education in the 1880s and 1890s — particularly in Bengal, where the bhadralok class founded scores of colleges and high schools.
• Vernacular primary education remained chronically under-funded; the Hunter recommendation was honoured on paper, not in budgets.
• Women's education saw modest growth — Bethune College Calcutta (1879, oldest women's college in Asia, established by John Eliot Drinkwater Bethune), Sarda Sadan in Pune (Pandita Ramabai, 1889), Indian Women's University in Pune (Maharshi Karve, 1916).

10. Indian Universities Act 1904 — Curzon's Reforms

Viceroy Lord Curzon (1899–1905) believed Indian universities had become "factories of degrees" producing political agitators. The Indian Universities Act passed on 21 March 1904 tightened government control.

10.1 Background — the Raleigh Commission 1902

The Universities Commission of 1902 under Sir Thomas Raleigh (Curzon's Law Member) reviewed the working of the Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Punjab and Allahabad universities. Curzon convened a confidential conference of educators at Simla in September 1901 (Indians were excluded — one of his many tone-deaf moves) that pre-figured the Raleigh recommendations.

10.2 Provisions of the 1904 Act

• Reduction in the size of the Senates: from 200+ life-members to 50–100, of whom most were now government nominees.
• Empowerment of Syndicates: smaller, more government-dominated executive bodies.
• Universities to take up teaching as well as affiliating — they could establish their own departments (originally only the affiliating model existed).
• Stricter conditions for affiliation: stricter inspection of colleges, with power to dis-affiliate sub-standard institutions.
• Higher fees to discourage "the unfit".
• Increased government grants — from Rs 4 lakh per year to Rs 5 lakh per year — with strings attached.

10.3 Nationalist response

• Indian opinion across the spectrum condemned the Act as designed to curb Indian initiative and political activism on campuses.
• Gokhale called it "a piece of political reaction".
• The Act became one of the grievances feeding the Swadeshi Movement (1905–08) against the Partition of Bengal — a movement in which Calcutta University students were the foot-soldiers.
• Bengal National College was founded on 14 August 1906 as an alternative to government-controlled education; Aurobindo Ghosh was its first Principal.

11. Saddler Commission — The Calcutta University Commission, 1917–19

The largest and most influential education commission of the colonial era was the Calcutta University Commission, appointed on 14 September 1917 by Viceroy Lord Chelmsford under the chairmanship of Sir Michael Saddler (Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds). It reported on 13 March 1919 in 13 thick volumes — the most thorough audit of any Indian university ever undertaken.

11.1 Membership

Five British members plus two Indians — Sir Asutosh Mookerjee (former VC of Calcutta University, "the maker of Calcutta University") and Dr Ziauddin Ahmad (Aligarh).

11.2 Key recommendations

• The 10+2+3 structure — 10 years of school + 2 years intermediate + 3 years university degree. This is the structural model that India still follows.
• Intermediate Boards — separate Boards of Secondary and Intermediate Education, distinct from universities. (Implemented in UP 1921, in other provinces later.)
• Universities as teaching-cum-residential institutions, not merely affiliating bodies. The Calcutta affiliating-only model was condemned as unmanageable (Calcutta then had 27,000 students — the largest university in the world).
• Unitary universities with their own teaching departments, residential life and intellectual community.
• Single Boards for primary, secondary, intermediate — not mixed under universities.
• Vocational and applied courses — commerce, engineering, agriculture, medicine.
• Female education — expansion of women's colleges; appointment of "Special Officer for Women's Education" in each province.
• Purdah schools for Muslim girls.
• English as medium at university level retained, but more space for Indian vernaculars in higher education.

11.3 Impact

• The 1919 report's recommendations were implemented gradually after the Government of India Act 1919 transferred education to the Provinces as a "transferred" subject under dyarchy.
• 14 new universities were established between 1916 and 1947 — most as teaching-and-residential bodies on the Saddler model: Banaras, Mysore, Patna, Osmania, AMU, Lucknow, Delhi, Dhaka, Andhra, Agra, Annamalai, Travancore, Utkal, Sagar.
• The 10+2+3 structure became national policy under the Kothari Commission (1964–66) and remains the basic structure of Indian higher education today.

12. Hartog Committee 1929 & the Sergeant Plan 1944

12.1 Hartog Committee — 1929

Appointed in 1928 as an auxiliary committee of the Simon Commission (1927–30), under Sir Philip Hartog (former Academic Registrar of London University and the first VC of Dhaka University). Reported in September 1929.

Key findings

• "Wastage" and "stagnation" in primary education — about half of the children admitted to Class I dropped out before completing Class IV; literacy was not lasting. Many "literate" children relapsed into illiteracy within a few years of leaving school.
• "Lop-sided expansion" — secondary and university education had grown disproportionately while primary education remained weak.
• Recommendation: consolidate primary education rather than expand it — concentrate on better teachers, longer primary cycle (7 years), inspection.
• Diversion of unsuitable students from the literary stream to vocational, industrial and commercial education.
• Restrict college admission through entrance examinations to maintain standards.
• Adult education through evening classes and libraries.

Critique

The Hartog recommendations were criticised by nationalists as defeatist — "consolidation" meant freezing the under-coverage of mass education. Tagore, Gandhi and Indian educators argued for expansion and quality. The Government of India accepted the Hartog recommendations but did not fund them; the Depression years (1930s) saw education budgets cut.

12.2 Wardha Scheme (Basic Education) — October 1937

An Indian alternative emerged from the Congress provincial ministries that took office after the 1937 elections under the GoI Act 1935.

• Wardha Conference (22–23 October 1937) convened by Gandhi at Wardha; presided over by Dr Zakir Husain (later President of India 1967–69).
• Basic Education (Nai Talim) principles:
  • Free and compulsory primary education for 7 years (Class I–VII).
  • Mother-tongue as the medium of instruction.
  • Productive handicraft (carpentry, weaving, agriculture) at the centre of learning — not as a separate subject but as the integrating activity.
  • Self-supporting through the sale of student products (in principle).
  • Inculcation of civic virtues, dignity of labour, non-violence.
• Zakir Husain Committee report (December 1937) drew up the detailed curriculum.
• Wardha schools opened in Congress-ruled provinces; expansion halted by Congress resignations in October 1939 over WWII.

12.3 Sergeant Plan — January 1944

The Post-War Educational Development in India plan, drawn up by Sir John Sergeant, Educational Adviser to the Government of India, and approved by the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) in January 1944.

Key proposals

• Universal, compulsory, free education for ages 6–14 — to be achieved within 40 years.
• Pre-primary education for ages 3–6.
• Two streams of secondary education (academic, technical) for ages 11–17.
• Higher education for the most able; expansion of universities.
• Adult literacy campaign.
• Teacher training expansion.
• Estimated cost: Rs 312 crore per year by the end of the 40-year period.

Critique & legacy

The Sergeant Plan was the most ambitious British educational plan but came too late — just 3 years before independence. Indians criticised the 40-year horizon as too long. The plan's framework was largely adopted by the Radhakrishnan Commission (1948–49, University Education) and the Mudaliar Commission (1952–53, Secondary Education) of independent India.

13. Women's and Vernacular Education

13.1 Women's education — the long crawl

Female schooling was almost non-existent in 1800. Cultural taboos against girls in mixed institutions, purdah, early marriage, and the absence of women teachers were all obstacles. The state was reluctant to fund what private (mostly missionary or Indian-reformist) initiative had to pioneer.

Pioneer institutions

• 1819 — Female Juvenile Society of Calcutta by Christian missionaries (Baptist Mission).
• 1849 — Bethune School, Calcutta founded by John Eliot Drinkwater Bethune (Law Member, Council of India); became Bethune College on 6 December 1879 — the oldest women's college in Asia and one of the oldest in the world.
• 1851 — Hindu Female School, Bombay by Jagannath Shankarseth.
• 1 January 1848 — First school for girls by an Indian: Savitribai Phule and Jyotiba Phule opened the first school for girls in Pune (at Bhide Wada).
• 1854 — Wood's Despatch explicitly endorsed state aid to female schools.
• 1882 — Hunter Commission recommended expansion of female education.
• 1885 — Sharda Sadan, Pune by Pandita Ramabai for widows.
• 1896 — Mahila Vidyalaya, Calcutta.
• 1916 — Indian Women's University, Pune, by Dhondo Keshav Karve (Maharshi Karve) — the first university in India for women. Later renamed SNDT Women's University (1949).
• 1917 — Lady Hardinge Medical College for Women, Delhi — first women's medical college in India.
• 1929 — Sarda Act (Child Marriage Restraint Act) — raised marriage age to 14 for girls (improving the conditions for girls' schooling).

Female literacy

• 1881: 0.2%
• 1901: 0.7%
• 1921: 1.8%
• 1947: 7–8%

The colonial state's record on female literacy was abysmal — 92% of Indian women were illiterate at Independence.

13.2 Vernacular education — the perpetual stepchild

• The British prioritised English higher education over vernacular primary education throughout the colonial period.
• 1901 literacy rates: 11% for males, 0.7% for females, 5% overall — among the lowest of any major country in the world.
• 1947 literacy rates: 24% for males, 8% for females, 12% overall — still among the lowest.
• Most government expenditure went to a thin layer of elite English-medium schools and colleges in the cities, while the vast majority of village children never saw a classroom.
• The grant-in-aid system meant that schools without private funders (most rural schools) got nothing.

13.3 Education of "depressed classes" and Adivasis

• Caste-based exclusion from village pathshalas was the norm; Brahmin teachers refused to teach lower-caste children.
• Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule's Pune school (1848) was the first formal school in India to admit Dalit and Shudra children alongside others.
• The Hunter Commission (1882) noted depressed-class exclusion but recommended only tentative measures.
• The colonial state's record on depressed-class education was negligible — the major expansion came after Independence under reservations (Articles 15(4), 15(5), 46).
• Ambedkar's intellectual journey — from Elphinstone College Bombay, Columbia University (1913–16), and LSE London — was made possible by the Sayajirao Gaekwad of Baroda's scholarship for a Mahar Dalit boy, not by colonial state policy.

14. The Indian Press — The Early Period (1780–1857)

14.1 Hicky's Bengal Gazette — 29 January 1780

• James Augustus Hicky, an Irishman, launched Hicky's Bengal Gazette (also called The Calcutta General Advertiser) on 29 January 1780 — the first newspaper published in India and indeed in Asia.
• A weekly, two-sheet newspaper printed in Calcutta. It satirised Warren Hastings and Chief Justice Elijah Impey unsparingly.
• Suppressed in March 1782: Hicky was prosecuted for libel, his press was seized, and he was imprisoned. He died destitute in 1802.
• Hicky pioneered the adversarial tradition of the Indian press — suspicion of authority, satire, the public's right to know.

14.2 The next two decades

• 1780 — India Gazette by B. Messink and Peter Reed (more cautious than Hicky).
• 1784 — Calcutta Gazette (semi-official).
• 1785 — Madras Courier by Richard Johnston — first newspaper in southern India.
• 1789 — Bombay Herald — first newspaper in western India.
• 1818 — Bengal Gazette (weekly) by Harihar Dutta — first Indian-owned newspaper.
• 1818 — Digdarshan — first Bengali monthly, by the Serampore Mission.
• 1818 — Samachar Darpan — first weekly Bengali newspaper, by the Serampore Mission (William Carey, Marshman, Ward).
• 1822 — Sambad Kaumudi by Raja Ram Mohan Roy — reformist Bengali weekly campaigning against Sati.
• 1822 — Mirat-ul-Akhbar by Raja Ram Mohan Roy — first Persian newspaper, raising political and religious issues.
• 1822 — Bombay Samachar by Fardunjee Marzban — oldest continuously published Indian newspaper (in Gujarati), still in circulation.

15. Press Regulations — From Wellesley to Metcalfe

15.1 Wellesley's Censorship of Press Act — 1799

• Lord Wellesley, fearing French invasion and revolutionary ideas, imposed pre-censorship — every newspaper had to be approved by the Secretary to the Government before publication.
• Pre-censorship abolished by Lord Hastings in 1818 (replaced by general guidelines).

15.2 Adams Regulation — 1823

• Acting Governor-General John Adam imposed strict licensing — every newspaper required prior government permission to publish; printing presses needed a licence.
• Specifically aimed at Raja Ram Mohan Roy's papers (Mirat-ul-Akhbar closed down rather than submit to censorship).
• Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore filed the famous "Memorial against the Press Regulation" with the Supreme Court of Calcutta and the King-in-Council in London — the first organised Indian protest for press freedom. The Memorial argued press freedom was essential to good government — an Indian articulation of liberal principle that pre-dated Macaulay's Minute by 12 years.

15.3 Metcalfe's Press Act — 1835 — "The Liberator of the Press"

• Sir Charles Metcalfe, acting Governor-General after Bentinck's departure, passed an Act in 1835 that repealed Adams's restrictive regulation.
• The 1835 Act abolished licensing; only a declaration of name and place of publication was required.
• This was the most liberal press regime in colonial India and earned Metcalfe the title "Liberator of the Indian Press".
• Operative for 22 years (1835–57). It was the period in which the Indian-owned vernacular press developed rapidly.

15.4 Licensing Act — 1857

• The Revolt of 1857 panicked the Government. Viceroy Canning's Licensing Act 1857 reimposed licensing as a temporary war-time measure.
• Lapsed in 1858 with the restoration of normalcy.

15.5 Registration of Books Act — 1867

• Required printers/publishers to register every book and periodical and submit copies to the government — primarily for cataloguing rather than censorship.
• This Act, with modifications, remained in force until the Press and Registration of Books Act 1867 was replaced in 2023.

16. Vernacular Press Act 1878 & the Repeal of 1882

16.1 Vernacular Press Act — 14 March 1878

Viceroy Lord Lytton (1876–80), facing rising criticism in the vernacular press over (a) famine relief failures, (b) the cotton excise, (c) the second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–80), pushed through the most repressive press legislation of the British era.

Provisions

• Applied only to vernacular newspapers (in Indian languages); English-language papers exempt. This naked racial discrimination earned the Act its alternative name — the "Gagging Act".
• District Magistrate could call on the printer/publisher to enter into a bond — with a deposit forfeitable on publication of "seditious" material.
• The Magistrate could seize the press equipment and confiscate the deposit without judicial trial.
• No right of appeal to a court of law.

Immediate targets

• Amrita Bazar Patrika (Bengali weekly by Sisir Kumar Ghosh, since 1868) — converted overnight into an English-language paper to escape the Act.
• Som Prakash (Bengali) — ceased publication.
• Bharat Mihir, Dacca Prakash, Sahachar, Sulabh Samachar — warned, fined, threatened.

16.2 Indian response

• Massive public meetings and petitions in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras.
• The Indian Association of Calcutta (founded 1876 by Surendranath Banerjea) organised the protests.
• Western press — British liberals in London — condemned the Act as a betrayal of Liberal principles.

16.3 Repeal — 1882

• Viceroy Lord Ripon (1880–84), a Gladstonian Liberal, repealed the Vernacular Press Act in 1882.
• This was part of the broader Ripon reform package — the Local Self-Government Resolution 1882, the Hunter Education Commission, the abortive Ilbert Bill (1883).

17. Press Acts of the 20th Century — 1908, 1910, 1931

17.1 Newspapers (Incitement to Offences) Act — 1908

• Passed by Viceroy Lord Minto II in the aftermath of the Muzaffarpur bombing (30 April 1908) by Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki — the start of revolutionary terrorism.
• Magistrates could confiscate the printing press of any newspaper that published matter likely to incite "murder or any act of violence".
• Aimed at the extremist press — Tilak's Kesari (Marathi) and Maratha (English) were targeted; Tilak was tried on 23 July 1908 for sedition, sentenced to 6 years' transportation to Mandalay (1908–14).
• The Yugantar (Calcutta), Bande Mataram (Aurobindo Ghosh), Sandhya (Brahmabandhab Upadhyay) were also targeted.

17.2 Indian Press Act — 1910

• Far more stringent than 1908. Passed by Viceroy Minto.
• Printers/publishers had to deposit security of Rs 500 to Rs 5,000; forfeitable on publication of objectionable matter.
• Magistrate could confiscate press and stop publication; no judicial review.
• Definition of "objectionable" was extraordinarily broad — any "seditious, scurrilous or obscene" matter.
• Over 1,000 cases were filed under the 1910 Act between 1910 and 1920; security of about Rs 5 lakh was forfeited.
• Repealed in 1922 on the recommendation of the Press Act Committee under Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, as part of the post-Mont-Ford liberalisation.

17.3 Press (Emergency Powers) Act — 1931

• Reimposed restrictions during the Civil Disobedience Movement (1930–34).
• Government could demand security deposits from any newspaper that published material "likely to incite or encourage" civil disobedience, contempt of court, undermining of law and order, etc.
• Strengthened in 1932 as the Foreign Relations Act and the Indian States (Protection) Act extended its reach.
• Used aggressively during 1930–34 and again during the Quit India movement (1942–43) — about 60 newspapers were closed or had security forfeited in 1942.
• Repealed after Independence; replaced by the Press (Objectionable Matter) Act 1951, which was itself allowed to lapse in 1956.

18. The Major Nationalist Newspapers

18.1 Pre-1885 pioneers

18.2 The Extremist and revolutionary press (1905–1920)

18.3 Gandhi's newspapers

• Indian Opinion — 4 June 1903, Durban (South Africa). In Gujarati, English, Hindi, Tamil. Vehicle for Gandhi's South African satyagraha (1906–1914).
• Navajivan (Gujarati) — took over editorship from Indulal Yajnik on 7 September 1919. Gujarati weekly published from Ahmedabad.
• Young India (English) — taken over by Gandhi on 8 October 1919; weekly published from Ahmedabad (later Bombay). Continued till 1932.
• Harijan — 11 February 1933, Pune; weekly in English (parallel editions in Gujarati and Hindi). Founded after Gandhi's Poona Pact 1932 to focus on Dalit upliftment.

18.4 Indian-language papers of the 20th century

• Anandabazar Patrika (Bengali, Calcutta) — 13 March 1922.
• Pratap (Hindi, Kanpur) — 1913, by Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi (assassinated 1931).
• Aaj (Hindi, Banaras) — 5 September 1920, by Shiv Prasad Gupta.
• Madhyamik Khabar (Hindi).
• Al-Hilal (Urdu, Calcutta) — 1912, by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad — Pan-Islamic and nationalist.
• Al-Balagh (Urdu) — 1915 by Azad after Al-Hilal was banned.
• Comrade (English, Calcutta) — 1911 by Maulana Mohammad Ali; Hamdard (Urdu).
• Swadeshamitran (Tamil, Madras) — 1882 by G. Subramania Iyer (first daily Tamil newspaper).
• Andhra Patrika (Telugu) — 1908 by Kasinathuni Nageswara Rao.
• Mathrubhumi (Malayalam, Calicut) — 18 March 1923 by K.P. Kesava Menon.
• Hindustan Standard (English, Calcutta) — 1937 by Suresh Chandra Majumdar.

19. Education and Press Statistics — 1900 and 1947

19.1 Educational scale — from poor to less poor

19.2 Press scale

19.3 The unequal inheritance

At Independence in 1947, India had:

• An English-educated elite of about 2.5 lakh university graduates — among the largest in Asia (only Japan had a comparable highly-educated stratum).
• A general literacy rate (12%) among the lowest in the world.
• A vibrant nationalist press — the institutional core of the future democracy.
• An almost untouched rural primary education infrastructure that would take 70 years (to the RTE Act 2009 and beyond) to even approach universal coverage.

20. Continuity to Independent India

20.1 Education — the post-Independence commissions

• University Education Commission (Radhakrishnan Commission), 1948–49 — chaired by Dr S. Radhakrishnan; review and reform of university education on the foundations of Saddler (1917) and Sergeant (1944). Recommended UGC (set up 28 December 1953; statutory under UGC Act 1956). National holidays for Teachers' Day (5 September, Radhakrishnan's birthday) honour this commission.
• Secondary Education Commission (Mudaliar Commission), 1952–53 — chaired by Dr Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar; recommended diversified secondary education, multipurpose schools, three-language formula in embryonic form.
• Education Commission (Kothari Commission), 1964–66 — chaired by Dr Daulat Singh Kothari (Chairman, UGC). The most influential post-Independence education commission. Recommended:
  • The 10+2+3 structure (Saddler 1917 finally adopted as national policy).
  • Common school system to bridge the gap between elite and vernacular schools.
  • National investment of 6% of GDP in education (a target never met).
  • Three-language formula (mother tongue / regional + Hindi + English in non-Hindi states; Hindi + English + a modern Indian language in Hindi states).
  • Curriculum reform, teacher quality, work experience.
• National Policy on Education 1968 — first formal national education policy; adopted Kothari's recommendations.
• National Policy on Education 1986 (revised 1992 after the Acharya Ramamurti Review).
• 86th Constitutional Amendment 2002 — inserted Article 21A: "The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years."
• Right to Education (RTE) Act 2009 — implementing legislation for Article 21A; came into force 1 April 2010.
• National Education Policy 2020 — framework for school and higher education reform; introduced 5+3+3+4 schooling structure (replacing 10+2+3 in school), four-year multidisciplinary undergraduate degree, multiple entry-exit, Academic Bank of Credit, single regulator HECI (announced).

20.2 The press — from regulation to constitutional protection

• Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution (effective 26 January 1950) guarantees freedom of speech and expression, which the Supreme Court has consistently interpreted to include freedom of the press (no separate Article).
• Romesh Thapar v. State of Madras (1950) and Brij Bhushan v. State of Delhi (1950) — first major SC press-freedom cases; led to the First Amendment 1951 adding "reasonable restrictions" under Article 19(2).
• Press Council of India set up 1966 (revived 1979 after Emergency).
• Sakal Papers v. Union of India (1962), Bennett Coleman v. Union of India (1973), Indian Express Newspapers v. Union of India (1984) — landmark SC judgments protecting press freedom.
• The Emergency (25 June 1975 — 21 March 1977) saw the most severe press censorship since 1947 — foreshadowed in the colonial Press Acts of 1908, 1910, 1931.
• Press and Registration of Books Act 1867 replaced by Press and Registration of Periodicals Act 2023 — the last colonial press statute removed 76 years after Independence.

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