Print Culture And The Modern World (Question answer) CBSE BOARD

WORDS THAT MATTER

Calligraphy: The art of beautiful and stylised writing.

• Despotism: A system of governance in which absolute power is exercised by an individual, unregulated by legal and constitutional checks.

• Denominations: Sub-groups within a religion.

• Almanac: An annual book giving astronomical data, information about the movements of the sun and moon, timing of full tides and eclipses.

Chapbook: Pocket size books that were sold by travelling peddlars called chapmen and became popular in the 16th century print revolution.

Protestant Reformation: A movement to reform the Catholic Church. Inquisition: A former Roman Catholic court for identifying and punishing heretics

Heretical: Beliefs which do not follow the accepted teachings of the Church.

Satiety: The state of being fulfilled much beyond the point of satisfaction.

Seditious: Action, speech or writing that oppose the government. Ballad: Historical account or folk tale in verse, usually sung or recited.

Taverns: Places where people gathered to drink alcohol, to be served food and to meet friends and exchange news. Vellum: A Parchment made from the skin of animals.

Platen: A board which pressed onto the back of the paper to get the impression from the type in letterpress printing. Compositor: Person who composes the text for printing

Galley: Metal frame in which types are laid and the text composed.

• Biliotheque Bleue: Low priced small books printed on poor quality paper, and bound in cheap blue covers (in France) • Shilling Series: Cheap series where popular works were sold during the 1920s in England.

Dust cover: Also called as book jacket, is a twentieth-century innovation.

Ulama: Legal scholars of Islam and the sharia (a body of Islamic law)

Fatwa: Legal pronouncement on Islamic law usually given by a mufti (legal scholar) to clarify issues on which the law is uncertain.

• Monotheism: Belief in a single deity especially within an organised religion.

DATELINE

768-770 AD : Introduction of handprinting technology into Japan by Buddhist missionaries from China.

868 AD : The oldest Japanese book The Diamond Sutra was printed.

1295: Marco Polo brought the knowledge of producing books with woodblocks to Europe.

1430s: Johann Gutenberg developed the first-known printing press.. : 

1448: Gutenberg perfected the printing system and printed his first book - the Bible

1517: Martin Luther wrote Ninety-Five theses criticising many of the practices and rituals of the Roman Cathollic church.

1558: An Index of Prohibited Books was formulated to control publishers and booksellers.

1579: Catholic priests printed the first Tamil books at Cochin.

1674 : 50 books had been printed in the Konkani and in Kannada langauges.

• 1710: Dutch Protestant missionaries had printed 32 tamil texts.

1713: Catholic priests printed the first Malayalam book.

1780: Bengal Gazette was started by James Augustus Hickey.

1810: First printed edition of sixteenth-century text, Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas came out from Calcutta.

1812 : Grimm Brothers in Germany published a collection of traditional folk tales. 

1821: Rammohun Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi.

1822: Two Persian newspapers - Jami-i-Jahan Kauma and Shamsul Akhbar published. Bombay Samachar a Gujarati newspaper, also published.

1835 : Governor-General Bentinck revised the press laws. 

1857 : Children's press devoted to literature for children alone, set up in France. 

1860s: Kailashbashini Debi wrote books highlighting the experiences of women.

1870s : Caricatures and cartoons were published in journals and newspapers. Hindi printing began soon.

1871 : Jyotiba Phule wrote Gulamgiri about the injustices of the caste system.

1876: Rashsundari Devi wrote her autobiography Amar Siban in East Bengal in the Bengali language.

1878: Vernacular Press Act (modelled on the Irish Press laws) was passed. 

1880s: Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai wrote about the miserable lives of upper- caste Hindu women, especially widows.

1907: Balgangadhar Tilak published Kesari.

1908 : Balgangadhar Tilak was imprisoned, provoking in turn widspread protests all over India.

1920 : Popular works/novels were sold in cheap series, called the Shilling Series in England.

1922: Gandhi spoke about liberty of speech, liberty of the press and the freedom of association.

1926: Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossein, an educationist and literary figure, strongly condemned men for withholding education from women.

1938: Kashibaba published Chhote Aur Bade Ke Sawal to show the links between caste and class exploitation.

Write in Brief

Q1. Give reasons for the following: 

a) Woodblock print only came to Europe after 1295.

Ans- In 1295, Marco Polo, a great explorer, returned to Italy after many years of exploration in China. We know that China already had the technology of woodblock printing. Marco Polo brought this knowledge back with him. Now Italians were able to produce books with woodblocks and soon the technology spread to other parts of Europe.

b) Martin Luther was in favour of print and spoke out in praise of it.

Ans- Print made Martin Luther able to publish his ideas as a religious reformer.

In 1517, he wrote Ninety Five Theses in which he criticised many of the practices and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. He challenged the church to debate his deas Luther's writings were immediately reproduced in vast numbers and were widely read. This led to a division within the Church and led to the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Luther expressed his gratitude to print, by saying, Printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one. Several scholars, in fac think that print brought about a new intellectual atmosphere and helped spread the new ideas that led to the Reformation.

c) The Roman Catholic Church began keeping an Index of Prohibited Books from the mid-sixteenth century.

Ans-  In the sixteenth century, Menocchio, a miller in Italy, read a few books and reinterpreted the message of the Bible and created a view of God and its Creation It infuriated the Roman Catholic Church. Menocchio was hauled up twice and ultimately executed.

Then Erasmus, a Latin scholar and a Catholic reformer, als criticised the extreme Then Ericisms. The Roman Church, in order to control these developments, impo of Catholicisms over publishers and booksellers and started maintaining an Inde of Prohibited Books from 1558.

d) Gandhi said the fight for Swaraj is a fight for liberty of speech, liberty of the press, and freedom of association.

Ans-  In 1922, Gandhi strongly spoke about liberty of speech, liberty of the press and freedom of association when the Government of India tried to crush the thres powerful vehicles of expressing and cultivating public opinion. At that moment he encouraged Indians to fight for Swaraj, for Khilafat which meant a fight for liberty of speech, liberty of the press, and freedom of association. 

Q2. Write short notes to show what you know about:

(i) The Gutenberg Press

Ans. Johann Gutenberg developed the first known printing press in the 1430s. He had seen the wine and olive presses right from his childhood. As he had learnt the art of polishing stones he became a master goldsmith acquiring the expertise in creating lead moulds used for making trinkets. He innovated his own design drawn on from his knowledge. The olive press provided the model for the printing press and moulds were used for casting the metal types for the letters of the alphabet. By 1448, Gutenberg perfected the system and printed the first book of the Bible. As Gutenberg devised a way of moving the twenty-six characters of the Roman alphabet around, so as to compose different words of the text. It was known as the movable type printing machine. It remained the basic print technology over the next 300 years. It made the production of books faster. It could print 250 sheets on one side per hour. It was in fact a revolution in print technology.

(ii) Erasmus's idea of the printed book.

Ans- Erasmus was a Latin Scholar and a Catholic reformer. Like Martin Luther he criticised the excesses of Catholicism but unlike him, he was not grateful to print. He expressed a deep anxiety about printing. For him books were stupid, ignorant, slanderous, scandalous, irreligious and seditious. These kinds of books were too many and so they had reduced the value of the good books.

(iii) The Vernacular Press Act

Ans- The Vernacular Press Act was passed in 1878. The Act provided the colonial government with extensive rights to censor reports and editorials in the vernacular press. From now on the government kept regular track of the vernacular newspaper published in different provinces. When a report was judged as seditious, the newspaper was warned. If the newspaper ignored the warning, the government had right to seize the press and confiscate the printing machinery.

Q3. What did the spread of print culture in nineteenth century India mean to:

(I) Women

Ans- As a result of the spread of print culture in the 19th century India, women's reading increased enormously in middle-class homes. Liberal husbands and fathers began educating their womenfolk at home, and sent them to schools when women's schools were set up in the cities and towns after mid-19th century. But conservative Hindus and Muslims were not in favour of educating women. Sometimes, rebel women defied them. The story of a Muslim girl is worth-mentioning here. Her family wanted her to read only the Arabic Quran which she did not understand. So, she insisted on learning to read and write in Urdu, a language that was her own. In East Bengal, in the early 19th century, Rashsundari Debi, a young married girl in a very orthodox household, learnt to read in the secrecy of her kitchen. Later, she wrote her autobiography Amar Jiban which was published in 1876, became the first full-length autobiography published in the Bengali language. From 1860s, a few Bengali women like Kailashbhashini Debi wrote books highlighting the experiences of women about how women were imprisoned at home, kept in ignorance and forced to do hard domestic labour. In 1880s, in present-day Maharashtra, Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai wrote about the miserable lives of upper-caste Hindu women, especially widows. In 1926, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossein, an educationist and literary figure, strongly condemned men for withholding education from women.

(ii) The poor

Ans- With the spread of print-culture, very cheap small books, were brought to markets in the nineteenth century and sold at crossroads, allowing poor people travelling to markets to buy them. Public libraries were set up to expand the accessofbooks. From the late 19th century, issues of caste discrimination began to be written about in many printed tracts and essays. Jyotiba Phule wrote about the injustices of the caste system in his famous book Gulamgiri in 1871.

Workers in factories lacked education to write much about their experiences. But Kashibaba, a Kanpur mill worker, wrote and published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal in 1938 to show the links between caste and class exploitation. The poems of another Kanpur millworker under the name of Sudarshan Chakr between 1935 and 1955, were brought together and published in a collection called Sacchi Kavitayan.

(iii) Reformers

Ans-  From the early 19th century, wider public could participate in public discussions and express their views. New ideas emerged through clashes of opinions. Debates over religious reforms took place, which were opposed by the Hindu and Muslim orthodoxy. They always discouraged people from reading printed material. Rammohun Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi from 1821 and the Hindu orthodoxy commissioned the Samachar Chandrika to oppose his opinions. The Deoband Seminary, founded in 1867, published thousands upon thousands of fatwas telling Muslim readers how to conduct themselves in their everyday lives, and explaining the meanings of Islamic doctrines.

DISCUSS

1. Why did some people in eighteenth century Europe think that print culture bring enlightenment and end despotism?

Ans. (I) There was a general conviction among the people in the 18th century that books were a means of spreading knowledge and enlightenment.  Many believed that books could change the world, liberate society from despotism and tyranny and herald a time when reason and intellect would rule.

(ii) Print time popularised the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers. Collectively their writings provided  a critical commentary on tradition, superstition and despotism. They argued for the rule of reason rather than custom and demanded that everything be judged through the application of reason and rationality. 

(iii) Print created anew culture of dialogue and debate. All They values, norms and institutions were re-evaluated and discussed by a public that had become aware of the power of reason and recognised the need to question existing ideas and beliefs. Within this public culture, new ideas of social revolution came into being.

(iv) By the 1780s there was an outpouring of literature that mocked the royalty and criticised their morality. Questions began to be raised about the existing social order. 

Q2. Why did some people fear the effect of easily available printed books? Choose one example from Europe and one from India.

Ans. (1) Print created the possibility of wide circulation of ideas and introduced new world of debate and discussion. Even those who disagreed with establishe authorities could now print and circulate their ideas. This developed fear at some people. They became apprehensive of the effects that the easier access to the printed words and the wider circulation of books, could have on people's minds. 

(ii) It was feared that if there was no control over what was printed and read them rebellious and irreligious thoughts might spread. If that happened the authority of valuable' literature would be destroyed.

(iii) Expressed by religious authorities and monarchs, as well as several writers and artists, this anxiety was the basis of widespread criticism of the new printed literature that had begun to circulate. For example, in 1517, the religious reformer Martin Luther wrote Ninety Five Theses criticising many of the practices and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. It challenged the Church to debate his ideas. 

(iv)) Luther's writings were immediately reproduced in vast numbers and read widely. The led to a division within the Church and to the beginning of the Protestant Reformation

(vi) In India, conservative Hindus believed that a literate girl would be widowed and Muslims feared that educated women would be corrupted by reading Urdu romances. Sometimes, rebel women defied such prohibitions. 

Q3. What were the effects of the spread of print culture for poor people in nineteenth century India?

Ans. (i) In the 19th century, with the spread of printed books, the interest in reading books also increased among the poor people. To fulfil their desire of reading, cheap small books were published and public libraries were set up for them by the social reformers.

(ii) The problems of the poor people began to be written and published. Gulamgin of Jyotiba Phule exposed the ill-treatment to the low castes. Dr Ambedkar and EV Ramaswamy Naicker wrote powerfully against untouchability.

 

(iii) Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal of Kashibaba exposed the link between caste and class exploitation. Sudarshan Chakr published a collection called Sacchi Kavitayan about the Kanpur mill worker.

(iv) These books highlighted how poor people were exploited by the upper caste people These books were read all over India. Efforts were made by the social reformers to improve the condition of poor workers through print.

Q4. Explain how print culture assisted the growth of nationalism in India. 

Ans. Print culture assisted the growth of nationalism in India in the following ways:

(i) Several newspapers, that began to be published in India, carried nationalist feelings. They reported on colonial misrule and encouraged nationalist activities.

(ii) Attempts to throttle nationalist criticism provoked militant protest. This in turn led to a renewed cycle to persecution and protests.

(iii) When Punjabi revolutionaries were deported in 1907, Balgangadhar Tilak wrote with great sympathy about them in his Kesari.

(iv) This led to his imprisonment in 1908, provoking in turn widespread protests all over India.