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g Rabindranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra Muhammad Iqbal—Bande Mataram and Saare
Chatterjee and Sarat Chandra Chatterjee in Jahan Se Achchha—respectively, later became
Bengali. our national songs.
g Fakir Mohan Senapati in Oriya. Munshi Premchand wrote about the misery of
g Hemchandra Barua and Lakshminath the poor and the oppressed of Indian society.
Bezbaroa in Assamese. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s novel Ananda
Math became the source of inspiration for writers
g Hari Narayan Apte and Vishnu Shastri
all over India. Bengali poetry developed further
Chiplunkar in Marathi.
in the writings of Michael Madhusudan Dutt.
g Kumaran Asan and Vallathol K Narayana
Dinabandhu Mitra’s play, Neel Darpan depicted
Menon in Malayalam.
the atrocities of the British indigo planters and
g Gurazada Appa Rao in Telugu. established drama as a powerful medium. The
g K. Venkatappa Gowda Puttapa in Kannada. writings of all these people were a deep source of
g Subramania Bharati in Tamil. inspiration for the masses. The literature of this
period also aroused the spirit of patriotism
among people and made them conscious of the
injustice and oppression that existed in Indian
society.
Growth of the Press
Some of the earliest newspapers in India were
started by the British. During the course of the
nineteenth century and later, a powerful Indian
press grew, both in English and in the vernacu-
lars. Most of the reformers had either themselves
started newspapers or were connected with them
Rabindranath Tagore Fakir Mohan
as regular contributors.
With the growth of political consciousness and
the beginning of political activities by Indians in
the second half of the nineteenth century, there
was a sudden increase in the number of Indian
newspapers. While some English newspapers
owned by the British, were supporters of the
British rule, most others, both in English and the
vernaculars, voiced the aspirations of the Indians
and their social, economic and political
demands. During the freedom struggle, they were
Kumaran Asan Subramania Bharati a powerful force to mobilize the people. Many
newspaper owners and editors suffered persecu-
A song composed by Rabindranath Tagore later tion at the hands of the British for supporting the
became our National Anthem. The two songs nationalist movement. Sometimes, the newspa-
composed by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and pers were closed down and their editors jailed.
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