Rammohun Roy’s Idea of ‘Public Good’ in the Early Days of Journalism Ethics in India

Abstract

The main purpose of this chapter is to provide a historical context and reference point against which the development of journalism ethics in India in a global context can be framed. At a time of democratic deficit due to ‘paid news’ seriously narrowing the range of facts and opinions available to citizens to enable them to make informed choices (Guha Thakurta 2011), the reference point is important if only to assess — or lament — the state of journalism ethics in contemporary India. The effort is more to set out the context in which ethical considerations engaged the first Indians who ventured into modern journalism, than to build or explore theory. The chapter is focused on a point in time when the first printed journals — in English and ‘native’ languages — came into existence and marked a significant height in India’s ancient tradition of argument and debate. Several events and issues of the period between the late 18th and early 19th centuries sowed the seeds of political activism, prose and literature in Indian languages, social and religious reform, and the conceptual beginnings of an imagined nation. After 1780, when the first journal was published by James Augustus Hicky, print journalism soon outlined the contours of a reading public, a colonial public sphere, and became a forum of debate between the colonial

‘But to no individuals is the Indian Press under greater obligation than to the lamented Rammohun Roy and the munificent Dwarkanaut Tagore’.

R. Montgomery Martin (1834, p. 254)