PORTUGUESE are said to have brought the earliest printing press to the Indo-Pak subcontinent. In 1550, a Portuguese ship brought printing machinery to a port in Malabar, Southwest India. No matter how rudimentary the machinery was from toady’s point of view, it was the beginning of the great print culture that was to take the subcontinent by storm a few centuries later and play a vital role in promoting education, literature and journalism, not to mention subcontinent’s independence.

The earliest books printed on the machine that arrived in 1550 — and a few more brought in later on — were in Malayalam and Tamil. But researchers have not been able to trace the copies of those books and merely their names are quoted in some works, wrote Ateeq Siddiqi in his Hindustani Akhbar Navisi: Company Ke Ehd Mein, or Indian journalism, in the reign of company (here Company refers to The East India Company).

In mid-17th century in Surat, Gujarat, there existed a printing press. A Parsee, named Bhim Jee Parekh, had established it and two workmen, expert in type casting, were invited from England to die cast the letters used in Gujarati script, shows a letter sent in 1676 from East India Company’s office in Surat to London, says Ateeq Siddiqi. A printing press was set up at Madras (now Chennai) in 1772. A book titled Grammar of the Bengal Language was published from Hooghly in West Bengal, in 1778. It included examples in Bengali script. In 1779, another press was working in Calcutta (now Kolkata), the then capital of British India, under the supervision of Charles Wilkins, who was instrumental in getting cast the types for scripts used in writing different local languages, including Persian, Urdu, Devanagari and Bengali.

A printing press ran commercial operations in Calcutta and an Irishman, James Augustus Hicky, owned it. On January 29, 1780, from the same press, Hicky launched an English-language weekly newspaper named Hicky’s Bengal Gazette. It was the first-ever ‘printed’ newspaper in the subcontinent as in earlier days some handwritten newspapers-like bulletins were not uncommon in the subcontinent. But Hicky paid dearly for criticising Warren Hastings. Through his newspaper, Hicky accused the administration of corruption and the East India Company seized the type-setting facilities and the press. Though Hicky’s newspaper had to cease publication in March 1782, the pioneering effort had set an example for the locals to emulate.

But for a newspaper, it was difficult to survive without official support and criticising the rulers was a lethal mistake, as Hicky’s example had made it clear. So weekly India Gazette, the second English newspaper in India, launched from Calcutta in November 1780, decided to toe the line after authorities took action against Hicky. Soon English newspapers began to appear from cities like Calcutta, Madras and Bombay (now Mumbai) and, according to Tahir Masood, at least 28 newspapers were launched from these cities between 1780 and 1799 (Urdu Sahafat Unnisveen Sadi Mein).

In 1802, John Gilchrist prepared a report for Fort William College, listing in it the books that till then had been published by the College. It shows that there were at least four printing presses in Calcutta that could facilitate the printing of books in Devanagari and Persian scripts and Urdu and Hindi books got written by the College were printed there.

Bengal Gazette, launched from Calcutta in 1817, was the first-ever Bengali language newspaper. The first-ever Gujarati newspaper, Mumbai Na Samachar, or Bombay News, was launched in 1822 from Mumbai. As for Persian newspapers launched in the subcontinent, Miratul Akhbar, launched by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in April 1822 from Calcutta, was the first Persian language newspaper ever printed in the subcontinent. Interestingly, the first-ever Persian-language newspaper published from Iran, named Kaghaz-i-Akhbar, a monthly, began its publication in 1837, that is, 15 years later.

Jam-i-Jahan Numa was the first-ever Urdu newspaper printed in the subcontinent and Imdad Sabri wrote in his Tareekh-i-Sahafat-i-Urdu that it was launched from Calcutta on May 16 1822. But the date was challenged. Some scholars said Jam-i-Jahan Numa was a Persian-language newspaper and used to publish a few Urdu pages. Further research, however, revealed that it was launched on March 27, 1822, as an Urdu newspaper. But as Persian was the dominant language, from May 8, 1822, it had to be converted into a Persian-language newspaper. A little later, an Urdu supplement of was added to the Persian pages. But about a couple of years later the editors decided to discontinue the Urdu portion, citing “lack of interest shown from the readers” as the reason.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2025