Question

What were the effects of the spread of print culture for the poor people in the 19th century in India?
OR
Explain how novels promoted the colonial mind-set?

Answer 1

The effects of the spread of print culture for the poor people in the 19th century in India were as follows
(i) As the literacy rate improved in India, printed material, especially for entertainment, began to reach even the poor in the 19th century. Publishers started producing small and cheap books. Public libraries were set-up by Christian missionaries and rich people.
(ii) Books could be hired on a nominal fee from some book owners. Many writers started writing about the issue of class distinctions. Local protest movements and sects created a lot of popular journals and tracts which criticised ancient scriptures advocated for a new and just future.
(iii) From the last 19th century, issues of caste discrimination began to be written about in many printed tracts and essays.
OR
Novels promoted the colonial mind-set by making the readers feel that they were a part of a superior community of fellow colonists. e.g. the hero of Daniel Defoe's 'Robinson Crusce' is an adventurer and a slave trader. Shipwrecked on an island, he hates the coloured people because he considers them inferior creatures not as human beings equal to him. The colonisers were always depicted as heroic and honourable - confronting native people, strange surrounding, adapting to native life as well as changing it, colonising new territories and developing nations there.