What did the spread of print culture in nineteenth century India mean to:

Reformers

The reformers:

(i)In north India, the ulama were deeply anxious about the collapse of Muslim dynasties. They feared that colonial rulers would encourage conversion, change the Muslim personal laws.To counter this, they used cheap lithographic presses, published Persian and Urdu translations of holy scriptures, and printed religious newspapers and tracts.

(ii)The Deoband Seminary, founded in 1867, published thousands upon thousands of fatwas telling Muslim readers how to conduct themselves in their everyday lives, and explaining the meanings of Islamic doctrines.

(iii)Among Hindus, too, print encouraged the reading of religious texts, especially in the vernacular languages. The first printed edition of  the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, a sixteenth-century text, came out from Calcutta in 1810.

(iv)By the mid-nineteenth century, cheap lithographic editions flooded north Indian markets. From the 1880s, the Naval Kishore Press at Lucknow and the Shri Venkateshwar Press in Bombay published numerous religious texts in vernaculars.

(v)Religious texts, therefore, reached a very wide circle of people, encouraging discussions, debates and controversies within and among different religions.