Dinbandhu and Dinmitra

Mishca Peters — Sun, 20 Oct 2024 15:25:54 +0000

Lower caste assertion in Modern India has been a topic of critical interest for several researchers in the recent past. The Satyashodhak movement spearheaded by Jotirao Phule in 1873 is one such important movement. However, the movement has largely been studied in a teleological manner, from its birth as a social movement to its culmination into a political party. The overwhelming focus on ‘reformism’, I seek to argue, limits our understanding in gauging the more fundamentally radical aspects of the movement. I argue that this radical rupture was the incoming of the print technology. Dīnbandhu (brother of the oppressed) was started by Krishnarao Bhalekar in 1877. This was the first non-brahmin newspaper not just from Western India but from all of India. This was later followed by a newspaper called Dīnmitra, started by Bhalekar’s son Mukundrao Patil. Dīnmitra began in 1910 and continued as a fortnightly newspaper till 1967. It is interesting to note that Dīnmitra was started from a small village called Tarawadi in Ahmednagar district in Western India, which makes it colonial India’s first rural newspaper. Both these newspapers in the Marathi language are unique historical examples wherein one family initiated and nurtured a discourse on caste oppression for close to 100 years… read more

1880s – Revolutionary Papers

Dinbandhu and Dinmitra