India And The Contemporary World Ii Chapter 7 Print Culture And The Modern World

In 1295, Marco Polo, a great explorer, returned to Italy after many years of exploration in China. As China already had the technology of woodblock printing. Marco Polo brought this knowledge back with him. Now Italians began producing books with woodblocks, and soon the technology spread to other parts of Europe.

Reason of Martin Luther: 
In 1517, the religious reformer Martin Luther wrote Ninety Five Theses criticising many of the practices and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. A printed copy of this was posted on a church door in Wittenberg. It challenged the Church to debate his ideas. Luther’s writings were immediately reproduced in vast numbers and read widely. This lead to a division within the Church and to the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Luther’s translation of the New Testament sold 5,000 copies within a few weeks and a second edition appeared within three months. Deeply grateful to print, Luther said, ‘Printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one.’ 

Gandhi said in 1922: ‘Liberty of speech ... liberty of the press ... freedom of association. The Government of India was then seeking to crush the three powerful vehicles of expressing and cultivating public opinion. The fight for Swaraj meant a fight for this threatened freedom before all else ...’

Gutenberg was the son of a merchant and grew up on a large agricultural estate.

(i)Here handle was used to turn the screw and press down the platen over the printing block that was placed on top of a sheet of damp paper.

(ii)Gutenberg developed metal types for each of the 26 characters of the Roman alphabet and devised a way of moving them around so as to compose different words of the text.

(iii)This came to be known as the moveable type printing machine, and it remained the basic print technology over the next 300 years.

(iv)Books could now be produced much faster than was possible when each print block was prepared by carving a piece of wood by hand.

(v)The Gutenberg press could print 250 sheets on one side per hour.

Erasmus's idea of the printed book:

It may be that one here and there contributes something worth knowing, but the very multitude of them is hurtful to scholarship, because it creates a glut, and even in good things satiety is most harmful. Printers fill the world with books, not just trifling things but stupid, ignorant, slanderous, scandalous, raving, irreligious and seditious books, and the number of them is such that even the valuable publications lose their value.’

The Vernacular Press Act:

(i)As vernacular newspapers became assertively nationalist, the colonial government began debating measures of stringent control. In 1878, the Vernacular Press Act was passed, modelled on the Irish Press Laws.

(ii)It provided the government with extensive rights to censor reports and editorials in the vernacular press.

(iii)From now on the government kept regular track of the vernacular newspapers published in different provinces.

(iv)When a report was judged as seditious, the newspaper was warned, and if the warning was ignored, the press was liable to be seized and the printing machinery confiscated.

(v)Despite repressive measures, nationalist newspapers grew in numbers in all parts of India.

Print culture in nineteenth century India meaning to Women:
(i)Lives and feelings of women began to be written in particularly vivid and intense ways. Women’s reading, therefore, increased enormously in middle-class homes.

(ii)Liberal husbands and fathers began educating their womenfolk at home, and sent them to schools when women’s schools were set up in the cities and towns after the mid-nineteenth century.

(iii)Many journals began carrying writings by women, and explained why women should be educated.

(iv)They also carried a syllabus and attached suitable reading matter which could be used for home-based schooling. 

(v)Since social reforms and novels had already created a great interest in women’s lives and emotions, there was also an interest in what women would have to say about their own lives.

Print and the Poor People:

(i)Very cheap small books were brought to markets in nineteenth-century Madras towns and sold at crossroads, allowing poor people travelling to markets to buy them.

(ii)Local protest movements and sects also created a lot of popular journals and tracts criticising ancient scriptures and envisioning a new and just future.

(iii)Kashibaba, a Kanpur millworker, wrote and published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal in 1938 to show the links between caste and class exploitation.

(iv)The poems of another Kanpur millworker, who wrote under the name of Sudarshan Chakr between 1935 and 1955, were brought together and published in a collection called Sacchi Kavitayan.

(v)By the 1930s, Bangalore cotton millworkers set up libraries to educate themselves, following the example of Bombay workers.

It was feared that if there was no control over what was printed and read then rebellious and irreligious thoughts might spread. If that happened the authority of ‘valuable’ literature would be destroyed. Expressed by religious authorities and monarchs, as well as many writers and artists, this anxiety was the basis of widespread criticism of the new printed literature that had began to circulate.

Examples:

(a)Europe: In the sixteenth century, Menocchio, a miller in Italy, began to read books that were available in his locality. He reinterpreted the message of the Bible and formulated a view of God and Creation that enraged the Roman Catholic Church. When the Roman Church began its inquisition to repress heretical ideas, Menocchio was hauled up twice and ultimately executed.

(b) India: Conservative Hindus believed that a literate girl would be widowed and Muslims feared that educated women would be corrupted by reading Urdu romances. The story of a girl in a conservative Muslim family of north India who secretly learnt to read and write in Urdu. Her family wanted her to read only the Arabic Quran which she did not understand.

The effects of the spread of print culture for poor people in nineteenth century India:

C.

China

A.

To recruit the civil servants through written examination

C.

A parchment made from skin of animal

A.

1753

C.

1430

B.

Diamond Sutra

A.

The Buddhist Diamond Sutra

B.

An inventor of Germany

B.

Martin Luther

A.

The imperial State of China

A.

Silk Route

A.

Printing press

A.

Religious reformer of Germany

C.

1450-1550 C.E.

A.

Art of writing

C.

1295

C.

17th

A.

868 C.E.

A.

Sambad Kaumudi

C.

They wrote the manuscripts by hand

A.

Chapbooks

B.

Biliotheque Bleue in France

C.

China

A.

An explorer

A.

Martin Luther

B.

Louise Sebastien Mercier

B.

The link between caste and class exploitation

B.

The Vernacular Act was passed by the British government to put some check on Vernacular newspapers which had become assertively nationalist

D.

He published gossip about senior East India Company officials

D.

Buddhist missionaries

B.

Marco Polo

C.

China, Japan and Korea

C.

Ballad

A.

C.

Everyone welcomed the printed book or the new printed literature

D.

Europe

D.

All of the above

A.

 Jam-i-Jahan Nama

D.

Akbar Nama

D.

Begum Rokya Sakhawat Hossein

B.

The Kesari

B.

The Kesari

B.

1780

A.

William Bentinck

B.

1878

A.

Jayadeva

A.

To censor reports and editorial in the Vernacular press

C.

Bengal Gazette

B.

The Catholic Priests

B.

Voltaire, Rousseau

C.

Biliotheque Bleue

C.

Portuguese missionaries

D.

Martin Luther

B.

Penny magazines

A.

Irish Press Laws

C.

Chapbooks

Tips: -

M. Imp.

D.

all the above

D.

The onset of the Great Depression

A.

A children press, devoted to literature for children alone was set-up in France in 1857

D.

Richard M. Hoe

B.

Rashsunderi Debi

B.

The injustice of the caste system

A.

To recruit the civil servants

(i) China, (ii) Japan, (iii) Korea.

The art of beautiful and stylish writing is known as calligraphy.

(a) As both sides of the thin, porous sheet could not be printed, the traditional Chinese ‘accordion book’ was folded and stitched at the side.

(b) The Buddhist Diamond Sutra is the oldest Japanese book. It was printed in 868 C.E. It contains six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations.

Marco Polo was a great Italian explorer who had visited China.

He brought back the technology of woodblock printing from China.

The imperial state in China was the major producer of printed materials.

(i)China possessed a huge bureaucratic system which recruited its personnel through civil service examinations.

(ii)Textbooks for this examination were printed in vast numbers under the sponsorship of the imperial state.
From the sixteenth century, the number of examination candidates went up and that increased the volume of print.

The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Japan and Korea. This was a system of hand printing.

From AD 594 onwards, books in China were printed by rubbing paper – also invented there – against the inked surface of woodblocks.

As both sides of the thin, porous sheet could not be printed, the traditional Chinese ‘accordion book’ was folded and stitched at the side. Superbly skilled craftsmen could duplicate, with remarkable accuracy, the beauty of calligraphy.

The significance of imperial state of China:

(i)The imperial state in China was, for a very long time, the major producer of printed material.

(ii)China possessed a huge bureaucratic system which recruited its personnel through civil service examinations.

(iii)Textbooks for this examination were printed in vast numbers under the sponsorship of the imperial state.
From the sixteenth century, the number of examination candidates went up and that increased the volume of print.

Kitagawa Utamaro, born in Edo in 1753, was widely known for his contributions to an art form called ukiyo, ‘pictures of the floating world’ or depiction of ordinary human experiences, especially urban ones. These prints travelled to contemporary US and Europe and influenced artists like Manet, Monet and Van Gogh.

(a) Johann Gutenberg of Germany in 1430 had developed the first printing press.

(b) Bible was the first book published by Johann Gutenberg in Europe.

(c) The shift from hand printing to mechanical printing led to the print revolution.

(a) Lending libraries had been in existence from the seventeenth century onwards. In the nineteenth century, lending libraries in England became instruments for educating white-collar workers, artisans and lower-middle-class people. Sometimes, self-educated working class people wrote for themselves. After the working day was gradually shortened from the mid-nineteenth century, workers had some time for self-improvement and self-expression. They wrote political tracts and autobiographies in large numbers.

(b) Women became important as readers as well as writers. Penny magazines were especially meant for women, as were manuals teaching proper behaviour and housekeeping. When novels began to be written in the nineteenth century, women were seen as important readers. Some of the bestknown novelists were women: Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot. Their writings became important in defining a new type of woman: a person with will, strength of personality, determination and the power to think.

The printing press first came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century.

(i)Jesuit priests learnt Konkani and printed several tracts. By 1674, about 50 books had been printed in the Konkani and in Kanara languages.

(ii)Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book in 1579 at Cochin, and in 1713 the first Malayalam book was printed by them.

(iii)By 1710, Dutch Protestant missionaries had printed 32 Tamil texts, many of them translations of older works.

The line that separated the oral and reading cultures became blurred. And the hearing public and reading public became intermingled.

(i)Printers began publishing popular ballads and folk tales, and such books which was profusely illustrated with pictures. 

(ii)These were then sung and recited at gatherings in villages and in taverns in towns.

(iii)Oral culture thus entered print and printed material was orally transmitted.

Tips: -

Imp.

(a) Batala is central Calcutta was well known for publishing popular books.

(b) Rashsundari Debi, a young married girl in a very orthodox house hold, learnt to read in the secrecy of her kitchen. Later, she wrote for autobiography Amar Jiban which was published 1876.

(c) A Murathi author wrote about the miserable life of the upper class women specially widows.

(d) Kashibaba, a Kanpur will workers wrote and published chhote aur Bade ke sawal in 1938 to show the links between caste and class exploitation.

(e) In 1878, the Vernacular Press Act was passed, modelled on the Irish Press Laws.

Jyotiba Phule

Portuguese missionaries.

Palm leaves or on handmade paper.

Chapbooks.

Governor General warren Hastings.

There were variety of cultural processes through which nationalism captured people’s imagination. They were:

(i) Image – With the growth of nationalism, the identity of India came to be visually associated with the image of Bharat Mata.

(ii) Song − In 1870, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote ‘Vande Mataram’ as a hymn to the motherland.

(iii) Folklore − Nationalists began recording folk tales sung by bards. These tales, they believed gave a true picture of traditional culture that had been corrupted and damaged by outside forces.

(iv) Flag − The flag became a symbol of defiance. Gandhiji himself had designed the Swaraj flag which was tricolour and had a spinning wheel in the centre.

(v) Reinterpretation of history − Indians recalled their glorious past to instill a sense of pride in the nation.

Development of the national movement made the national leaders aware that icons and symbols helped in unifying the people of the nation. It also helped to bring about a feeling of nationalism among the people. Thus, during the Swadeshi movement in Bengal, a tricolour flag was designed.

i. The flag consisted of three colours—red, green and yellow.

ii. It also had eight lotuses which represented the eight British provinces in India.

iii. It had a crescent Moon which represented both Hindus and Muslims.

Culture played an important role in creating the idea of a nation; art and poetry, stories and music helped express and shape nationalist feelings.

(i) Romanticism, a cultural movement, sought to develop a particular form of nationalist sentiment. Romantic artists and poets generally criticised the glorification of reason and science and rather focused on emotions, intuitions and mystical feelings. Their efforts was to create a sense of shared collective heritage, a common cultural past, as the basis of a nation.

(ii) Collecting and recording of different forms of folk culture was essential to the project of nation building. For example, Karol Kurpinski celebrated the national struggle through opera and music, turned folk dances like the 'polonaise & mazurka' into nationalist symbols.

(iii) Language too played an important role in developing nationalist sentiments. After Russian occupation, the Russian language was imposed in schools as medium of education. The use of Polish language came to be seen as symbol of the struggle against Russian dominance.

B.

She took part in the French Revolution.