The weekly Bengali newspaper Sambad Kaumudi was first published on this day from Kolkata by Ram Mohan Roy. With this newspaper, he campaigned actively for the banning of Sati, which was abolished exactly eight years later, on December 4, 1829.
Roy had stated earlier that the aim of the paper was the moral and intellectual improvement of his countrymen, and though it was owned by someone, it belonged to the public.
Roy was its promoter. Its first owner and editor abandoned the project because of its radical views. The government looked at it with suspicion. It stopped publication one year after it started, but started again.
Sambad Kaumudi was always supported enthusiastically by James Silk Buckingham’s Calcutta Journal, which had to shut down because it was an outspoken critic of the East India Company. Roy’s paper finally stopped being published in 1836.