Consider the following historical events in India carefully: 1. The Indian press failed to protest against the Vernacular Press Act of 1878. 2. The Vernacular Press Act of 1878 was introduced by Viceroy Lytton against the counsel of his own Law Member. Which of the above is/are correct?

Correct — B, 2 only. Statement 1 is the one that fails, and it fails badly. The Indian-language press protested at once. The Amrita Bazar Patrika of Calcutta turned itself into an all-English weekly within a week of the Act, because the law bit only on papers printed in Indian languages and an English sheet fell outside it. Every shade of native association denounced the measure, the Indian Association under Surendranath Banerjea led the agitation in Calcutta, and the pressure did not stop until Lord Ripon's government announced repeal in a despatch of 28 February 1881 and the Act went off the books in 1882. A law withdrawn after four years of continuous public attack is not a law nobody protested against. Statement 2 puts the Act where it belongs, on Lord Lytton, who proposed it and pushed it through his Council on 14 March 1878.

• (a)1 only — Statement 1 is the false one. The response was immediate and organised — the Amrita Bazar Patrika switched to English inside a week, the native associations condemned the Act together, and the agitation ran until it was repealed.
• (c)Both 1 and 2 — This accepts statement 1, which would mean the Indian press sat quiet in 1878. It did not; the campaign against the Act is one of the better-documented episodes in the history of the Indian press.
• (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — This rejects statement 2 as well, but the Act really was Lytton's own measure — he proposed it and carried it in a single sitting of his Council on 14 March 1878.

The Vernacular Press Act of 1878 required the printer and publisher of a newspaper in an Indian language to enter into a bond undertaking not to publish matter likely to excite disaffection, and allowed the government to seize the press and the printed paper if the undertaking was broken. Its defining feature was that it applied only to the vernacular press. English-language papers, read mainly by Europeans and by the western-educated Indian elite, were untouched, and that open discrimination — rather than censorship as such — is what made the Act notorious.

Read the two statements one at a time and the item collapses quickly, because statement 1 is checkable and wrong. The Amrita Bazar Patrika's overnight switch to English is the single fact that settles it, and it also explains the Act's design: the paper escaped by changing language, which proves the law was drawn by language rather than by content. That leaves only options (b) and (d), and the key marks (b). On statement 2, one clause deserves an honest caveat. That Lytton introduced the Act is beyond dispute. The added claim that he did so against the counsel of his own Law Member is repeated widely in examination literature, usually attaching the name of Sir Arthur Hobhouse, but we could not confirm it from a primary record of the Council's proceedings, and Hobhouse had in fact left the Law Membership in 1877. Treat the substance of statement 2 — that this was Lytton's measure, driven through over internal misgivings — as what the key is testing, and do not memorise a name for the dissenting Law Member.

• The Act was proposed by Lord Lytton, Viceroy from 1876 to 1880, and passed by the Viceroy's Council on 14 March 1878.
• It applied only to newspapers printed in Indian languages; the English-language press was exempt.
• The Amrita Bazar Patrika converted itself into an all-English weekly within a week and so escaped the Act entirely.
• The Government of India's despatch of 28 February 1881 announced the repeal; the Act was off the statute book in 1882, under Lord Ripon.
• Lytton's other measures of the same year include the Indian Arms Act, 1878, which required a licence to keep or carry firearms and exempted Europeans and Anglo-Indians.

• Assuming the Act muzzled all newspapers. It reached only the vernacular press, which is exactly why an Indian paper could escape by publishing in English.
• Reading 'the press failed to protest' as plausible because the Act survived four years. It survived despite the protest, and was withdrawn because of it.
• Mixing up Lytton's 1878 measures with Ripon's 1883 Ilbert Bill; they belong to opposite ends of the same decade and to opposite political impulses.

As a statement pair on Lytton's repressive laws, as a question on who repealed the Act, or inside a year-to-event matching set.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Vernacular Press Act of 1878 did not apply to which category of newspapers?

  • (a)Papers printed in Bengali
  • (b)Papers printed in Marathi
  • (c)Papers printed in English
  • (d)Papers printed in Urdu

  Answer(c) Papers printed in English — the Act reached only the Indian-language press, and the Amrita Bazar Patrika escaped it by turning itself into an English weekly.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which Viceroy's government announced the withdrawal of the Vernacular Press Act?

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

  Answer(b) Lord Ripon — his government's despatch of 28 February 1881 announced repeal, and the Act was gone by 1882.