Hicky’s Bengal Gazette: The Untold Story of India’s First Newspaper review: Winds of freedom

In 1780, an Irishman took on the British in Calcutta with a tell-all weekly that covered everything from corruption to politics

July 14, 2018 07:50 pm | Updated November 09, 2020 11:34 am IST

It was 1780. Great events were shaping and shaking the world. Four years earlier, in 1776, Britain had lost its first colony; a new nation was born, namely, the United States of America. And nine years, later, in 1789, the French revolution ushered in a new era of freedom and hope in Europe.

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At a time when the western world was changing rapidly a new spirit was also taking shape in one of Britain’s eastern colonies. Calcutta, then capital of British India, though the East India Company ruled only a small part of India at that time, was witnessing developments that were new not only in India, but in all of Asia. As free thought and freedom of expression swept across the world, an Irishman called James Augustus Hicky gave Calcutta and India its first printed newspaper in 1780.

Taking on power

Hicky’s Bengal Gazette , according to the young American scholar Andrew Otis, was a four-page weekly newspaper priced at ₹1. And it took on the rich and mighty of British Calcutta. What did Hicky publish in the pages of his newspaper? “He tried to cover everything that might be important to Calcutta, devoting many sections to politics, world news and events in India.” Topics that featured regularly were poor quality of sanitation and lack of road maintenance. Houses of poor Indians had thatched roofs, prone to catching fire. The outbreak of fires was frequently reported in Hicky’s paper. Through the letters he solicited and published, the editor gave voice to Calcutta’s poor.

He attacked corruption in the East India Company and in high echelons of society. The Bengal Gazette reported that the Governor of Madras, Sir Thomas Rumbold, had been recalled to England to answer charges of corruption in front of Parliament. “Hicky sarcastically wrote,” Otis tells us, “Rumbold was a great man for only amassing a fortune of about 600,000 pounds while in India, much of it from bribes and extortion.”

Hicky did not spare any institution. He exposed the problems of low pay for soldiers in the subaltern ranks of the Company’s army. Failed wars of the Company also came under its gaze. The Company’s army suffered a crushing defeat in the Battle of Pollilur at the hands of Hyder Ali, then ruler of Mysore. As the news of the disaster trickled in, Hicky questioned why the British were fighting in India. He accused the Company of squandering the lives of its soldiers. He even praised the noble actions of Hyder Ali in his treatment of the captured soldiers of the Company.

But as Hicky continued his fearless mission against corruption, the powers of the day did not sit idle. A rival newspaper was born in Calcutta. The India Gazette of Messink and Reed differed from Hicky in every possible way. The two papers represented two sides of the political spectrum.

Tough rival

Hicky emphasised independence while the India Gazette made no secret that they had the support of Governor Warren Hastings. So much so that Hastings had given the facility of free postage to India Gazette . There were hardly any opinion columns in it, a clear sign of their obeisance to Hastings’s authority. And they did so for a good cause, that was monetary rewards. India Gazette became the Company’s de facto mouthpiece; the Company’s departments placed advertisements and notices in that paper.

Press freedom

But Hicky took on the might of the establishment. He alleged through his pieces in the paper how one Simeon Droz had sought a bribe from him and wanted to get favours for him from Marian Hastings, wife of Warren Hastings, in lieu of the bribe. Hastings fumed that someone could show such imprudence. He passed an order that the Post Office would no longer extend its facility to the Bengal Gazette .

Hicky fought back. He hired 20 hircirrahs (courier men) to deliver his newspaper, and his newspaper’s popularity soared. He continued his fight against the most powerful man of the day and his entourage.

Hastings hit back and the Chief Justice Elijah Impey decreed that Hicky be imprisoned on charges of libel. A grand jury sat to decide the fate of Hicky.

After a fierce courtroom battle, the jury acquitted him. Hicky won, Hastings lost. As Otis tells us, “He had proven that it was possible to protect the Press against the most powerful people in British India.”

There were still three more trials to come that tried to muffle the voice of Hicky. What happened; did freedom of the press triumph? For that you must turn to Otis’s book, as he sketches a riveting tale of the struggle of India’s first newspaper editor.

Hicky’s Bengal Gazette: The Untold Story of India’s First Newspaper ; Andrew Otis, Westland/ Tranquebar, ₹899.

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