The Dacca News was the first English weekly in East Bengal. It was also the first newspaper published in Dhaka. The Dacca News began its journey on April 26, 1856. Here we publish verbatim the first editorial of The Dacca News which appeared on that day. Alexander Forbes, a Scottish citizen, was the founding editor of the weekly. The Dacca News was a mouthpiece of indigo planters.
The Dacca News
It is fear and trembling that we make this our first appearance on any stage: fear, not that our articles will be so witty, so withering , or so sarcastic ( we are in opposition of course) as to lash into fury the lion Couchant of the East India Company and cause us to be deported, or, as the more modern style of punishment is to have a Mochulka taken from us; but lest we should fail in gaining the approbation of those whose approbation is worth having.
We have what have being considered peculiar views on several subjects. Though not exactly disciples of Dr. Cumming’s, we believe that the day of India’s progress has dawned and that she is commencing to throw off the maction [?] in which she has so long remained. Looking to the workings of the native mind, both Hindoo and Mahommedan we believe that this progress is a moral one as well as physical. It will be our aim to assist the movement as much as in our power. We are presumptuous enough to differ from most of our friends and even from such men as Mackintosh, Macaulay and Dr. Chevers, in thinking that the native has not a different mental constitution from the Englishman; that under as favorable circumstances, he will be as truthful, as generous, and as brave, as the Briton; and when we think of what the Highlander and the Irishmen were even in our own day, we cannot think we are much in the wrong.
Another of our strange notion is that Indigo planters are not robbers, adulterers, and oppressors; but very enterprising , hard working, honest men – but if we go on exposing all our weaknesses we are afraid we shall be considered more worthy of a cell in a lunatic asylum, than a place among the brethren of the fourth estate.
We shall earn our prologue by stating that we intend to be peculiarly a Moffussil Journal. We shall occupy ourselves chiefly with the matters of our own Little Pedlington, Dacca: and with matters relating to the inhabitants of the Moffussil, the zemindar, the ryot, and the Planter. We have no time to bestow upon the affairs of Europe. We must leave them to our larger brethren: who we trust, will look kindly upon the weakest and latest born of the family.
Finally, we bespeak the forbearance of all, in consideration of the many difficulties under which we labour; one of not the least of which is, that in addition to our editorial duties we shall have to be for some time our own devil.
Banner image: An indigo factory in Bengal, 1867. Source: William Simpson’s ‘India: Ancient and Modern’.
