BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 75 of 144

Correct — D, 1, 2 and 3. All three statements hold, and the option set makes that conclusion unavoidable even before you adjudicate the nickname. Statement 1 is right. The Vernacular Press Act was Act IX of 1878, formally 'An Act for the better control of publications in Oriental languages', taken through the Governor-General's Legislative Council in March 1878 — introduced and passed at a single sitting — during the viceroyalty of Lord Lytton (Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, Viceroy 1876–1880). Its provocation was the Indian-language press's sustained attack on Lytton over two things: his handling of the great famine of 1876–78, and his forward policy in Afghanistan. Statement 2 is right. The Act let a district magistrate call on the printer or publisher of a vernacular newspaper to enter a bond undertaking not to publish matter likely to excite disaffection against the Government or antipathy between persons of different races, castes or religions, and to lodge a money security; on breach, the security and the printing plant itself could be forfeited, and the magistrate's order was final, with no appeal to any court of law. A paper could buy exemption in advance by submitting its proofs to a government censor. And the Act reached only publications in Indian languages — an English-language paper printing the identical sentence was untouched. Prior restraint, no judicial remedy, and a line drawn by language: that is why it was called a gagging act at the time and has been ever since. Note the stem's careful wording — 'a Gagging Act', not 'the'. The label is in fact older than 1878; it attaches first to Canning's Licensing Act XV of 1857. The indefinite article keeps the statement true without claiming exclusivity. Statement 3 is right, and the parliamentary record dates it precisely. On 18 July 1881 in the House of Commons, Mr Summers asked the Secretary of State for India whether he could assure the House that 'The Vernacular Press Act, 1878' would be repealed without any unnecessary delay. The Marquess of Hartington answered by referring him to the Government of India's despatch of 28 February 1881, laid on the Table, in which it was stated that the Act would be repealed on the re-assembling of the Government of India early the following winter. That government was Lord Ripon's (Viceroy 1880–1884), and the repeal followed in 1882. Because 1 and 3 are beyond argument and no option offers '1 and 3 only', (d) is the only code that can survive.

• (a)Only 1 and 2 — Drops statement 3, and statement 3 is the best-documented item on the list. This is the trap for a candidate who remembers Lytton and the gagging label but assumes a colonial press law simply stayed on the books, or who blurs Ripon's several liberal measures — the 1882 Resolution on local self-government, the Ilbert Bill of 1883, the repeal of the cotton import duties — into one another. The Commons was told in July 1881 that repeal was already decided; it was carried out in 1882.
• (b)Only 2 and 3 — Drops Lytton, which means attributing the Act to some other Viceroy. The standard misattribution is Curzon — UPSC set that exact wrong pair in 2004 as the answer to a 'not correctly matched' question. Others reach for Canning, because his Licensing Act of 1857 is the original 'Gagging Act'. Neither works: the Vernacular Press Act is Lytton's, and it is dated 1878, two years into his term.
• (c)Only 1 — Concedes Lytton's authorship but denies both the nickname and the repeal, so it fails twice over. It is the option a candidate picks out of caution — accept only what you are sure of — and on this stem caution is punished, because the two statements it discards are the two that are documented in the parliamentary record and in the Act's own drafting.

Press regulation in British India swung between licence and liberty for a century and a half, and each swing carries a Governor-General's or Viceroy's name. Wellesley imposed pre-censorship in 1799 against the fear of French influence; Adam's Licensing Regulations of 1823 required a licence for every press and were used to shut John Silk Buckingham's Calcutta Journal; Charles Metcalfe repealed them in 1835 and was thanked as the 'Liberator of the Indian Press'; Canning's Licensing Act XV of 1857, passed in the emergency of the Revolt, brought licensing back and became known as the Gagging Act. The Vernacular Press Act of 1878 was the sharpest turn of all, because it was the first to discriminate explicitly by language rather than by content, aiming at the fast-growing Indian-language newspapers — Bengali, Marathi, Urdu, Hindi — while leaving the Anglo-Indian press free. Lord Ripon undid it in 1882, but the cycle resumed after 1905: the Newspapers (Incitement to Offences) Act of 1908 and the Indian Press Act of 1910 revived security deposits and forfeiture against the Swadeshi-era press.

This is a statement-verification item, and the fastest route is structural rather than factual. Statements 1 and 3 are hard, checkable attributions — Lytton enacted it, Ripon repealed it — and once you accept both, look at the codes: (a) excludes 3, (b) excludes 1, (c) excludes both. There is no '1 and 3 only'. So the moment you are sure of the two attributions, (d) is forced, and you never have to rule on whether 'Gagging Act' is precisely the right nickname. That is a habit worth building: read the codes before you agonise over the softest statement. The one discriminating fact most candidates lack is statement 3, because it runs against an instinct that colonial repressive laws lasted until 1947. They often did not. Lytton's Act survived four years. Ripon, who arrived in 1880 with Gladstone's Liberal government behind him, repealed it as part of a deliberate change of tone, and the Government of India had committed to doing so in a despatch of February 1881 — a year before the repeal itself. The best-remembered consequence of the Act, meanwhile, came from the press rather than from Parliament: the Amrita Bazar Patrika of Calcutta escaped the Act by turning itself from a Bengali paper into an English-language one, which is the sharpest possible illustration of what the phrase 'vernacular press' was doing in the Act's title.

• Vernacular Press Act = Act IX of 1878, 'An Act for the better control of publications in Oriental languages', enacted under Viceroy Lord Lytton (Viceroy 1876–1880) and pushed through the Legislative Council at one sitting
• It bound the printer or publisher of an Indian-language paper by bond and money security not to publish matter exciting disaffection against the Government or antipathy between races, castes or religions; breach meant forfeiture of the deposit and of the press plant, with no appeal to a court
• It applied only to publications in Indian languages — English-language papers were outside it entirely; a vernacular paper could obtain exemption by submitting proofs in advance to a government censor
• HC Deb 18 July 1881, vol 263 c1127: the Secretary of State for India, the Marquess of Hartington, pointed the Commons to the Government of India's despatch of 28 February 1881 stating that the Act would be repealed on the Government's re-assembling early the following winter; repeal followed in 1882 under Lord Ripon (Viceroy 1880–1884)
• The nickname is older than 1878 — 'Gagging Act' was first applied to Canning's Licensing Act XV of 1857, which required a licence for every printing press after the Revolt; the stem's indefinite article ('a Gagging Act') is what keeps statement 2 accurate
• Lytton's 1878 legislative record also includes the Indian Arms Act of the same year, which required a licence to keep arms and exempted Europeans — the same discriminatory design as the press law

• Attributing the Vernacular Press Act to Curzon or to Canning — Curzon is the standard wrong pair in exam sets, Canning owns the earlier 1857 Gagging Act
• Assuming 'Gagging Act' can only mean the 1857 Licensing Act and therefore rejecting statement 2 — the stem says 'a Gagging Act', not 'the'
• Assuming a repressive colonial statute must have lasted until 1947 — this one was repealed within four years, in 1882

BPSC asks press history as multi-statement verification with a codes list, and pairs it with Bihar's own newspapers — the 71st CCE wanted the first newspaper published in Bihar. UPSC almost always asks a single crisp attribution instead: 'Who among the following repealed the Vernacular Press Act?' in 2005, and the Vernacular Press Act–Curzon pair planted inside a 'not correctly matched' item in 2004. For BPSC, memorise the Act with both bookend Viceroys attached; for UPSC, be able to defend either bookend on its own.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Vernacular Press Act, 1878 did NOT apply to which of the following?

  • (a)Bengali-language newspapers
  • (b)Urdu-language newspapers
  • (c)English-language newspapers
  • (d)Marathi-language newspapers

  Answer(c) English-language newspapers — the Act reached only publications in Indian languages, which is exactly the discrimination that earned it the 'gagging' name and let the Amrita Bazar Patrika escape by switching to English.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  During whose viceroyalty were both the Vernacular Press Act and the Indian Arms Act passed?

  • (a)Lord Canning
  • (b)Lord Lytton
  • (c)Lord Ripon
  • (d)Lord Curzon

  Answer(b) Lord Lytton — both were passed in 1878, and both exempted Europeans or the English-language press from a restriction imposed on Indians.