Question

How were novels useful for the nationalism?
Or
Print Revolution transformed the lives of people. How it had changed their relationship with information and knowledge?

Answer 1

Novels had played a very significant role for imbibing a sense of nationalism in Indians.
Novels had brought this aspect by bringing together people from varied background and produced a sense of shared community.

The novels had produced a sense of sharing and promoted an understanding of different people, different values and different communities. Different groups had begun to question or reflect upon their own identities, thus indirectly bonding them with a national feeling.

Printers began publishing popular ballads and folk tales and such books would be profusely illustrated with pictures. These were then sung and recited at gatherings in villages and in taverns in towns.

Vernacular press depicted lives of rural people and hardships faced by them. When these were translated to English, it provided more understanding to the British about the problems faced here.

The novels created a sense of collective belonging. The novels also made the readers familiar with the ways in which people in other parts of India spoke their language.