Indigenous Media and the Making of India's Democratic Ethos in the Nineteenth Century: Decolonizing the Public Sphere

Publication Details

Publication Date

10/07/2026

Volume / Issue

Vol 1, Issue 2 (2026)

Article No.

024

Journal

British Journal of Contemporary Research

Received

23 Jun 2026

Views

3

Downloads

2

Abstract

This paper examines the role of print media in the articulation of democratic elements in India in the 19th century in Bengal in India. Did media take a crucial role in such a manner in the colonial era during the 19th to mid-20th century? What was the role of emerging print media in India during the 19th century under British colonial rule? One of the reasons which made the nineteenth century remarkable was the historical emergence of print media in Bengal as well as India. It has been found that most of the liberal modernizers of the nineteenth century took journalism not only for their profession but also for the diffusion of their liberal ideas to form a keen public opinion in India. Though there were a good number of papers that emerged during the first half of the nineteenth century, it was only in the second half of the century that print media became the chief engine of the vehicle of growing political consciousness and constitutionalism in India. This study is theoretical and exploratory, focusing on the role of print media in 19th-century Bengal in India. It follows a qualitative, descriptive, and analytical approach, utilizing archival and interpretative methods. Primary sources include books, magazines, biographies, letters, newspapers, and web data. The theoretical foramework of the paper is based on the studies of Jurgen Habermas on ‘public sphere’ locating print media as a platform of public debate, civil/political society; Frantz Fanon’s decolonization as a liberal enfranchisement; Benedict Anderson’s print capitalism and nation formation, Niogi Thiong’s Decolonizing the mind and Partha Chatterjee or Ranajit Guha’s Subaltern Studies catering indigenous resistance through vernacular political modernity. This paper, therefore tries to explore the significant role of print media in the making of a liberal and democratic ambience in India in the nineteenth century.

License

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License . Free to read, share, and adapt with attribution.