in the first Malayalam book was printed by them. By , Dutch Protestant missionaries had printed Tamil texts, many of them translations of older works. The English language press did not grow in India till quite late even though the English East India Company began to import presses from the late seventeenth century. From , James Augustus Hickey began to edit the Bengal Gazette , a weekly magazine that described itself as ‘a commercial paper open to all, but influenced by none’.
So it was private English enterprise, proud of its independence from colonial influence, that began English printing in India. Hickey published a lot of advertisements, including those that related to the import and sale of slaves. But he also published a lot of gossip about the Company’s senior officials in India. Enraged by this, Governor-General Warren Hastings persecuted Hickey, and encouraged the publication of officially sanctioned newspapers that could counter the flow of information that damaged the image of the colonial government.
By the close of the eighteenth century, a number of newspapers and journals appeared in print. There were Indians, too, who began to publish Indian newspapers. The first to appear was the weekly Bengal Gazette , brought out by Gangadhar Bhattacharya, who was close to Rammohun Roy. As late as , a William Bolts affixed a notice on a public building in Calcutta: ‘To the Public: Mr.
Bolts takes this method of informing the public that the want of a printing press in this city being of a great disadvantage in business ... he is going to give the best encouragement to any ... persons who are versed in the business of printing.’ Bolts, however, left for England soon after and nothing came of the promise.