Amrita Bazar Patrika, with its strong anti-British stand, started on this day. It was the brainchild of brothers Sisir Kumar Ghosh and Moti Lal Ghosh and was first published as a Bengali weekly from a village in Jessore district, now in Bangladesh.
Sisir Kumar was the first editor of the paper. At first, it operated out of a battered wooden press purchased for Rs 32. When Jessore faced a scarcity of paper, Sisir Kumar went to Pandua, to learn the art of papermaking.
In 1871, the publication moved to Calcutta and became a bilingual weekly, published in Bengali and English. Its uncompromising criticism of the British made it an influential voice and the government began to be disturbed by the spread of its influence among the people.
The Vernacular Press Act of 1878 was promulgated by Lord Lytton, Viceroy of India, mainly to target Amrita Bazar Patrika.
In 1891, the publication became a daily. According to Shashi Tharoor, the same year a journalist from the paper went through the wastepaper basket at Viceroy Lord Lansdowne’s office and found torn pieces of a letter containing the Viceroy’s plans to annex Kashmir, then ruled by a Hindu Raja. The letter was published on the front page of the paper. Through the next decades, the paper would launch many campaigns against the British.
It would discontinue publication in 1991.