New Delhi, May 30 (Representative) Hindi Journalism Day is celebrated every year on May 30 to commemorate the country’s first ever Hindi newspaper. ‘Udant Martand’ started being published on this day in 1826. It was published from Calcutta (now Kolkata). It was started by Pandit Jugal Kishore Shukla, who was its publisher and editor. ‘Udant Martand’ was a weekly, published every Tuesday and priced Rs 2 annually. Five hundred copies of the were printed although the readership was negligible among the dominantly Bengali speaking people of Calcutta. It had to be sent to other states via post but the postal service was expensive then. Despite Shukla’s appeals to the British government, no solution was found, leading to the paper’s closure on December 4, 1827. The paper ended with the following editorial: “The day marks the death of Udant Martand, Here it goes to sunset the sun at last.” Udant was not a political newspaper but its contributions to the development of publications in Hindi language can hardly be overstated. Eventually, many newspapers tried to keep the light of the independence burning.
These included more than just anti-British propaganda but also essays and articles which helped in the advancement of Hindi and Hindi journalism. “Banaras Akhbar” (1845) from Kashi was one of the first weeklies published from any Hindi state. Though the name of the paper was in Hindi, it was composed using words from Devnagari, Arabic and Persian, making it rather complex for common people to read. Its editor was Govind Raghunath Thatte. A monthly feature included a section called “BuddhiPrakash” which came out from Agra in 1852 under the editorship of Munshi Sada Sukhlal. Bhartendu Babu Harishchandra’s contributions to advancing Hindi journalism, drama and poetry are unparalleled as he made the whole concept richer, versatile, advanced and dynamic, helping ignite the flames of national consciousness. He also sought to promote social, economic and academic reforms in Hindi regions. Considered often to be the father of Hindi Renaissance, Bhartendu sought to expose the exploitation of the people by the Raj and the poverty on them by the colonial rulers through his masterful writings.