On this day, the newspaper Calcutta Gazette announced that the governor-general and the Supreme Council of Bengal had expressed their disapproval of some matter published on September 30, 1784.
Calcutta Gazette had been founded by
well-known orientalist and lexicographer Francis Gladwin in 1784.
It follows the first Indian newspaper, Hickey’s Bengal Gazette, in 1780, and its rival, The India Gazette, the same year, both published from the city. Neither newspaper lasted long, for different reasons. Hicky’s Bengal Gazette was shut down in 1782 because it attacked the government.
Calcutta Gazette established itself as an important space for public information from the start.
It did not refrain from criticising the government, though its tone was very different from Hicky’s vitriolic one, and had the government publishing its disapproval in it.
The paper would have a checkered career, changing hands. The Calcutta Gazette, which was published from 1832, was the official government paper. Kolkata Gazette continues.
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