Chapter 5: Print Culture and the Modern World (History)

(a) Woodblock printing had developed in China. Marco Polo, a great explorer, returned to Italy in 1295 after many years of exploration in China, and he brought back the knowledge of woodblock printing with him. Only after that did Italians begin producing books with woodblocks, and the technology soon spread to other parts of Europe.

(b) In 1517, Martin Luther, a religious reformer, wrote Ninety Five Theses criticising many practices and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. A printed copy was posted on a church door in Wittenberg. His writings were immediately reproduced in vast numbers and read widely; this led to a division within the Church and the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. His translation of the New Testament sold 5,000 copies within a few weeks. Deeply grateful, Luther said, "Printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one."

(c) Print and popular religious literature stimulated many different interpretations of faith, even among little-educated working people. In the sixteenth century, Menocchio, a miller in Italy, began reading books and reinterpreted the message of the Bible in ways that annoyed the Church. Troubled by such effects of popular readings and questionings of faith, the Roman Church, beset by such expressions of dissent, began to impose severe controls over publishers and booksellers, and from 1558 kept an Index of Prohibited Books.

(d) Gandhi said these words in 1922. The colonial government was repressing the national movement by censoring the press, banning newspapers and imprisoning editors (as under the Vernacular Press Act of 1878 and other laws). Gandhi believed that the freedom to speak, to write and publish one's views, and to meet and organise were essential for self-rule. Without these liberties people could not form and express public opinion against the government, so the fight for Swaraj was also a fight for these freedoms.

(a) Marco Polo brought the technology from China to Italy in 1295. (b) Print spread his ideas widely and started the Reformation. (c) To control the spread of dissenting interpretations of faith. (d) Because colonial censorship suppressed free expression, which is essential for self-rule.

(a) The Gutenberg Press

• Johann Gutenberg, the son of a merchant in Strasbourg, grew up on a large agricultural estate where he saw wine and olive presses. He learnt the art of polishing stones and became a master goldsmith.
• Drawing on this knowledge, he adapted the existing technology to design his innovation: the olive press provided the model for the printing press, and moulds were used to cast the metal types for the letters of the alphabet.
• By 1448, he had perfected the system. The first book he printed was the Bible: about 180 copies were printed, taking three years.
• It was a great step forward: printing became faster and cheaper, and in the hundred years after 1450 printing presses were set up in most countries of Europe.

(b) Erasmus's idea of the printed book

• Erasmus, a Latin scholar and Catholic reformer, criticised the excesses of Catholicism but kept his distance from Luther, and he was deeply anxious about printing.
• He wrote: "To what corner of the world do they not fly, these swarms of new books? ... the very multitude of them is hurting scholarship ... the printers fill the world with books, not just trifling things but stupid, slanderous, scandalous, raving, irreligious and seditious books."
• He feared that printed books would spread rebellious and irreligious ideas and that the value of good books would be lost among so many.

(c) The Vernacular Press Act (1878)

• After the Revolt of 1857, the attitude of the colonial government to the freedom of the press changed. Enraged Englishmen demanded a clamp-down on the "native" press.
• As vernacular newspapers became assertively nationalist, the government passed the Vernacular Press Act in 1878, modelled on the Irish Press Laws.
• It gave the government extensive rights to censor reports and editorials in the vernacular press. The government kept regular track of the vernacular newspapers in different provinces; if a report was judged seditious, the newspaper was warned, and if the warning was ignored, the press was liable to be seized and the printing machinery confiscated.

See the three notes above.

(a) Women

• Writers began writing about the lives and feelings of women, so women's reading increased enormously in middle-class homes. Liberal husbands and fathers began educating their womenfolk at home and sent them to schools when these were set up.
• Many journals carried writings by women and explained why women should be educated. Some women wrote themselves: Rashsundari Debi wrote her autobiography Amar Jiban (1876); Kailashbashini Debi wrote about women's experiences; Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai wrote with passionate anger about the miserable lives of upper-caste Hindu women, especially widows.
• Conservatives, however, feared education and reading, and some girls learnt to read secretly.

(b) The poor

• Very cheap small books were brought to markets in nineteenth-century Madras towns and sold at crossroads, so that poor people travelling to markets could buy them. Public libraries were set up from the early twentieth century, mostly in cities and towns.
• Issues of caste discrimination began to be written about. Jyotiba Phule wrote about the injustices of the caste system in Gulamgiri (1871); B. R. Ambedkar and E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker (Periyar) wrote powerfully on caste.
• Factory workers such as Kashibaba, a Kanpur mill worker, wrote about their lives (Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal, 1938), and workers set up libraries to educate themselves.

(c) Reformers

• Print helped reformers spread their ideas to a wide public and debate social and religious questions in the vernacular languages, so that ordinary people could take part.
• Reformers like Raja Rammohun Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi (1821) to criticise practices such as sati and widow immolation, while Hindu orthodoxy replied through the Samachar Chandrika.
• Muslim reformers (e.g. the Deoband Seminary, from 1867) published thousands of fatwas on how to lead a disciplined life; among Hindus, religious texts in vernaculars reached new audiences.

For women it opened up reading and writing about their own lives; for the poor it brought cheap books, libraries and writings against caste; for reformers it was a way to spread and debate their ideas widely.

• Print brought the ideas of scientists and philosophers such as Isaac Newton, Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau within the reach of common people. Their ideas about science, reason and rationality found their way into popular literature.
• Through print, people could critically examine tradition, superstition and despotism; reason, rather than custom, could be the basis of judgement.
• Many believed that books could change the world, liberate society from despotism and tyranny, and herald a time when reason and intellect would rule. Louis-Sébastien Mercier, a novelist in eighteenth-century France, declared: "The printing press is the most powerful engine of progress and public opinion is the force that will sweep despotism away."
• Print created a new culture of dialogue and debate: all values, norms and institutions were re-evaluated and discussed by a public that had become aware of the power of reason. This helped bring about the French Revolution.

Because print spread the rational ideas of thinkers like Voltaire and Rousseau to common people, encouraging them to question tradition and despotism and to think for themselves.

Not everyone welcomed printed books. Many feared that if there was no control over what was printed and read, rebellious and irreligious thoughts would spread, and the authority of "valuable" literature would be destroyed.

• Europe: the Roman Catholic Church feared the spread of dissent. When Menocchio, an Italian miller, began giving new interpretations of the Bible and of creation based on books he read, he was hauled up before the Inquisition and executed. The Church then imposed severe controls over publishers and began an Index of Prohibited Books (1558). Religious authorities and monarchs, as well as writers like Erasmus, feared that books would encourage rebellion.
• India: conservative Hindus and Muslims feared that education and reading would corrupt women and make them widows or disobedient; some were terrified that reading novels would ruin women's minds. Similarly, the colonial government feared nationalist ideas in vernacular newspapers and passed the Vernacular Press Act (1878) to censor them.

People feared that uncontrolled printing would spread rebellious and irreligious ideas, e.g. the Catholic Church's Index of Prohibited Books in Europe, and in India conservatives' fear of women reading and the British fear of the nationalist vernacular press.

• Cheap, small books were sold in markets and at crossroads (as in Madras towns), so the poor could buy and read them.
• Public libraries set up by rich patrons and local bodies, mostly in towns and cities, gave access to books.
• From the late nineteenth century, issues of caste discrimination began to be written about in many printed tracts and essays. Jyotiba Phule, the Maratha pioneer of "low caste" protest movements, wrote about the injustices of the caste system in Gulamgiri (1871). In the twentieth century, B. R. Ambedkar in Maharashtra and E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker (Periyar) in Madras wrote powerfully on caste, and their writings were read by people all over India.
• Workers began to write about their own lives and injustices. Kashibaba, a Kanpur mill worker, wrote and published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal in 1938 to show the links between caste and class exploitation. Sudarshan Chakr's poems (1935–55) were collected and published as Sacchi Kavitayen.
• Mill workers in Bangalore and Bombay set up libraries to educate themselves, often sponsored by social reformers, who hoped to stop excessive drinking and bring literacy.

Cheap books and libraries made reading possible for the poor, and print spread writings against caste and class exploitation by Phule, Ambedkar, Periyar and workers themselves.

• Newspapers and journals in many Indian languages spread nationalist ideas, discussed colonial misrule and encouraged nationalist activities. Despite repressive laws, they continued to grow.
• Print created a public opinion and a sense of shared identity across different regions and communities. People in faraway places could read about events like the Jallianwala Bagh massacre or Gandhiji's movements.
• Leaders used print to communicate: Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote with great sympathy about revolutionaries in his Kesari, which led to his imprisonment in 1908 and widespread protests. Gandhiji used his papers Young India and Navjivan, and Jawaharlal Nehru and others wrote widely.
• Reform and nationalist writings, novels, songs (like Vande Mataram in Bankim Chandra's Anandamath) and cheap pamphlets spread pride in India's culture and history.
• Even censorship (the Vernacular Press Act, 1878) made people more aware of colonial injustice and strengthened their demand for freedom of the press as part of swaraj.

Newspapers, journals, books and pamphlets spread nationalist ideas, built public opinion across India, carried leaders' messages (e.g. Tilak's Kesari), and exposed colonial repression.

Here is an outline for the project.

Conclude by discussing how each change made printed material faster, cheaper and more widely available, and how it changed the way people read and share information.

Print moved from electric and offset presses to computers, desktop publishing and digital and online publishing, making reading material cheaper, faster and more widely available.