Practising Global Journalism

6 South Asia

Newspapers

Fifty years ago, fewer than one in four Indians could read or write. The editorial in one of India’s major newspapers more than 110 years ago discussed education of the untouchables, the lowest caste, though none of them could read it. The evolution of the press in the world’s largest democracy shows the struggle between rulers and the journalists who cover them. As much as India’s early leaders respected the press, they took it for granted when writing the Constitution in 1947. The Constitution guarantees an enviable amount of freedom of speech and expression, but the legislators seemed to think that it was enough to cover the press, too. Eventually, the courts set laws for freedom of the press, but it took nearly 30 ...