Freedom of press was always elusive.
On this day, 245 years ago, the first Indian newspaper was born when James Augustus Hicky printed Hicky’s Bengal Gazette. Its brief, brilliant, outrageous and checkered career illustrates, quite spectacularly, what can happen when a newspaper holds power to account.
If there is any resemblance between the people and the events then and now, and the coming together of the state, the church and the media looks familiar, blame it on history.
Hicky, an Irishman who landed in Calcutta to make his fortune, had an equal talent for taking risks and being in the public eye. An initial stint in prison in Calcutta for his debts did not deter him from going ahead with his ambition of being the printer of the first newspaper in this part of the world.
The first issue of Hicky’s Bengal Gazette came out on January 29, 1780, from his printing office at No. 67, Radha Bazar. Written in English, it was printed every Saturday, cost Re 1 and had four pages.
It became very popular.
At first, it carried news, of the city and the world, and advertisements. Hicky pointed at civic problems: overflowing graveyards or bad roads. The tone was set from the beginning: the paper lampooned public figures with bawdy humour.
But at the beginning Hicky stayed away from politics.
This was to change. Hicky soon realised that his newspaper was becoming a powerful tool. To the paper’s masthead were added the words: “Open to all Parties, but influenced by None.”
Hicky would try to take down the most powerful man around him: Governor-General Warren Hastings. It was an act of hubris on Hicky’s part, but also his quest for justice.
Andrew Otis, in his book Hicky’s Bengal Gazette, quotes one of Hicky’s pieces on why he chose journalism: “I was not bred to a slavish Life, of hard work, yet I take a pleasure in enslaving my body, in order to purchase freedom for my mind and soul.”
Hicky would strike, and be hit back, with a bigger blow, but he would strike again at authority.
Hastings, who was consolidating the British empire, was no saint. He resented the power of the Supreme Court, instituted by the British. He made Elijah Impey, Chief Justice of the apex court, his ally, placing him at the head of the newly set up Sadar Diwani Adalat, which would be able to hear cases that would come to the Supreme Court earlier.
Hicky was troubled by this nexus, to which would be added another newspaper.
On November 18, 1780, The Indian Gazette came up, with the patronage of the government. It became the government’s mouthpiece, a phenomenon with which we may be familiar, too. The India Gazette received free postage to reach its readers, even as Hicky had to pay to post.
He felt was meant to sabotage his. He wanted to hit back.
He accused Simeon Droz, who was on the Board of Trade, of having organised a meeting with Hastings’s wife, Marian Hastings, which would result in some unfair advantage to Hicky.
Droz had Hastings’s ear. Hastings promptly issued a notice that “the Bengal Gazette…has lately been found to contain several improper Paragraphs tending to vilify private characters and… is no longer permitted to be circulated through the channel of the General Post-Office.” Something like blocking a news website on the Internet?
In response, Hicky hired 20 hurkaras for delivery in Calcutta. He asked people he knew to reach his newspaper outside Calcutta. Apparently his circulation increased.
Hicky would often invoke the epic to talk about himself. He wrote now, as quoted by Otis, “before he will bow, cringe, or fawn… He wou’d compose Ballads, and sell thro’ the streets of Calcutta, as Homer did”.
He intensified his campaign against the government, increasing his news sources and writers, focusing on illegitimate contracts given by Hastings to his friends. Not surprisingly, army contracts were most important, and most corrupt. The name of Charles Crofts, nicknamed “Charley Bullock” by Hicky, came up.
Perhaps even more striking was Hicky naming Chief Justice Impey in connection with the contract on Poolbundy, river embankments. Hicky was very critical of Impey for approving a bye-law that banned straw-houses and enacted a property tax. He went after Colonel T.D. Pearse. Hastings was deluged with appeals from his officials to stop the newspaper.
Hicky also accused John Zachariah Kiernander, who established the Old Mission Church in Calcutta, of embezzling church funds. Kiernander vowed to seek justice.
In Hicky’s paper someone named “Cassius” issued a call to overthrow Hastings, says Otis. Someone called Britannicus called for revolution. Somewhere along the way, Hicky had also called Hastings Robert Clive’s “miserable successor”; “Wild, Pusilanimous, disgraceful, and wicked”; and “Despotic”. He had even insinuated that Hastings suffered from erectile dysfunction, according to Otis.
Hicky was sent an arrest warrant in June 1781. He was charged on five counts of libel, three from Hastings and two from Kiernander. Justice Impey proposed a bail of ₹40,000, which Hicky could not pay. He remained in prison, but kept bringing out his paper, not lowering his tone.
He was finally found guilty by the jury of all charges and sentenced to a fine and imprisonment. Hastings would bring more charges against him. But all along, Hicky had thought his press would be protected. However, in April 1781, on the order of Justice Impey, his press and his types were seized.
That was the death of the first Indian newspaper.
Hicky did not ever succeed in bringing out the paper again. He died on board the Ajax, sailing towards China, a broken, old man.
It is another thing that Hastings and Impey were recalled and impeached in Britain. Not everything Hicky had said was unfounded.