Criminalizing Political Conversation: The 1891 Trial of the Bangavasi

Abstract

The prosecution of cultural text and its producers has to be one of the more bizarre episodes in the history of the nationalist movement. From 1891 to the 1940s, authors, newspapers, editors, printers, and proprietors were charged by local governments and administrations with producing seditious texts. As the introduction mentions, poetry, song lyrics, fiction, drama, essays, gramophone records, posters, broadsheets, and even garments, such as dhotis, were subject to confiscation. The gap opened up by the Indian press’s discovery of counterdiscursivity, which kept the distinction between ethics and (colonial) law visible at all times, was possibly the most crucial effect of the Bengal government’s decision, made in 1891, to employ the law on disaffection in its handling of the Bengal press. It was, without a doubt, a calculated gesture that was intended to intimidate the Indian public by threatening criminal legal visibility, which it did. But the decision led also to a legal recognition of counterdiscursivity two decades after it had been seeded, as a notion, in the law on disaffection. In this chapter, I explore the politics of the 1891 trial of the Bengal newspaper, the Bangavasi. The trial represents a moment in which a solidification of views takes place within the Bengal government, which appears preoccupied with securing a legal ruling on the law on disaffection that would be in consonance with its own views of the Indian press.

It is the Indian climate that is responsible for the speedy deterioration of the liberal instincts of the Englishman who resides in this country.

—Sahachar, 1 Sept. 1891, Bengal NNR, week ending 12 Sept. 1891, para. no. 46

The Prakriti (a new paper) of the 22nd August, referring to the proceedings instituted by Mr. Pugh against the Indian Mirror newspaper in the Calcutta High Court, says that it is both grieved and astonished at this attitude of Government towards the native press. Has the Lieutenant-Governor lost his wits with increasing years? Every newspaper has the right to comment on any action of Government whatever, and it argues narrowness of mind to harass any paper for doing it. Every newspaper has expressed its opinion on the prosecution of the Bangavasi, Are all of them, in the opinion of Mr. Pugh guilty of contempt of court? By the proceedings instituted against the Mirror, Government has probably become more unpopular with the people.

Bengal NNR, week ending 29 Aug. 1891, para. no. 58