Parsi Press pioneers

The techno-economic basis for a Press independent of both Christian missions and the English government was already existing among Parsis around 1800, generations before it appeared in other Indian communities: In 1670, the Parsi Bhimjee Parikh had, through the agency of the East India Company, the first printing press and a printer brought to Bombay from England. In 1777, Bombay’s first English newspaper, the Bombay Courier, was printed in the printing works of the Parsi Rustomji Keshaspathi.

Before the first Marathi newspaper (Dig-Dursan) appeared in 1837 and the first Hindu-Gujarati newspaper (Vartaman) in Ahmedabad in 1849, there were already four (in 1837), respectively six (in 1849) Parsi-Gujarati newspapers in circulation:

1822 — Bombay Samachar, first publisher Fardoonji Marzban, 1830-43 — Mumbai Vartaman, first publisher Nowroji Dorabji, 1832 — Jam-e-Jamshed, first publisher Pestonji Maneckji Motivala, 1832-50 — Mumbaina Chabuk, first publisher Nowroji Dorabji, 1844-52 — Samachar Durpun, first publisher Nowroji Gae, 1845-46 — Chitranjan Durpan, first publisher Behramji Jamshedji Gandhi.

The initial stages of a native Press in western India were, therefore, almost exclusively dominated by Parsi journalism, which, as a result, played an important role in integrating the Gujarati-speaking elite in that region.

The Parsees in India: A Minority as Agent of Social Change by Eckehard Kulke