The on-going growth story of Indian newspapers

The first newspaper in India – the Bengal Gazette, popularly called Hicky’s Gazette – was published in 1780. It was a two-pager in foolscap size. From then on, newspapers grew rapidly in number. In 1861, there were eight Hindi and 11 Urdu newspapers. They mushroomed in the Bombay Presidency, North West Province, Oudh and Central Provinces and the Madras Presidency. Their total readership was not perhaps more than 150,000. Around 1,500 to 3,000 copies of each paper were printed, and the readers w

by Som Nath Sapru