The decades of the 1930s and 40s, in which India’s struggle against British rule gained momentum, also ushered in critical technological change in the way texts in many Indian languages were materially produced and represented in print. The foremost facilitators of this change were third parties precariously placed in the colonial equation. Focusing on the dilemmas and contradictions of one such concern, the New York-based Mergenthaler Linotype Company and its program for the Devanagari script, this essay examines the mechanics of the power struggle embodied in the process of technological and typographical change. Against the backdrop of India’s independence movement, in deeply contested territories of language and script, the examination of typographical networks that formulated and realized this project throws new light on the richly ambivalent ideological negotiations involved—between popular and academic aspirations, altruistic and commercial enterprises, communal agendas and nationalist politics, and between imperial administration and colonial subjects.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
“India’s Culture,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (April 13, 1930).
“Project to Further Human Knowledge: Garrett Collection of Manuscripts to be Edited—University Press to Publish Results with New Equipment,” The Princeton Alumni Weekly (April 5, 1929).
“Teaching a sixth of the world to read: now a machine is to carry literacy to India,” New York Herald Tribune (June 18, 1933).
“Typographical Font,” Hari G. Govil, US Patent (filed 1933, granted 1937).
Arnold, David. Everyday Technology: Machines and the Making of India’s Modernity. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Boag, Andrew and Christopher Burke, eds. History of the Monotype Corporation. London: PHS and Vanbrugh Press, 2014.
Das, Sisir Kumar. Sahibs and Munshis: An Account of the College of Fort William. New Delhi: Orion Publications, 1978.
Dalmia, Vasudha. The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu Harischandra and Nineteenth-Century Banaras. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Edgerton, David. The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900. London: Profile Books, 2006.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Fedirka, Sarah A. Towards a Locational Modernism: Little Magazines and the Modernist Geographical Imagination. Arizona State University, 2008.
Fraser, Robert. Book History through Postcolonial Eyes: Rewriting the Script. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Freitag, Sandria B. Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Hobsbawm, Eric. Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991. London: Michael Joseph, 1994.
Israel, Milton. Communication and Power: Propaganda and the Press in the Indian National Struggle, 1920–1947. Cambridge: University Press, 1994.
Jeffrey, Robin. India’s Newspaper Revolution: Capitalism, Politics and the Indian Language Press 1977–1999. London: Hurst & Company, 2000.
Kesavan, B.S. History of Printing and Publishing in India: A Story of Cultural Re-awakening. 3 volumes. New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1997.
King, Christopher R. One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India. Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Masten, Jeffrey, Peter Stallybrass, and Nancy Vickers, eds. Language Machines: Technologies of Literary and Cultural Production. New York, London: Routledge, 1997.
Monier Williams, ed. Original Papers Illustrating the History of the Application of the Roman Alphabet to the Languages of India. London: Longmans, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1859.
Mukul, Akshaya. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India. Noida: HarperCollins, 2015.
Naik, Bapurao S. Typography of Devanagari. 3 volumes. Bombay: Directorate of Languages, 1971.
O’Gormon, Francis. The Victorian Novel. London: Michael Joseph, 1994.
Orsini, Francesca. The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: Language and literature in the Age of Nationalism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Orsini, Francesca, ed. The History of the Book in South Asia. Surrey: Ashgate, 2013.
Priolkar, Anant K. The Printing Press in India: Its Beginnings and Early Development. Bombay: Marathi Samshodhana Mandala, 1958.
Rai, Alok. Hindi Nationalism. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2001.
Romano, Frank. History of the Linotype Company. Rochester: RIT Press, 2014.
Ross, Fiona G. E. The Printed Bengali Character and its Evolution. Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999.
Shaw, Graham. “Printing in Devanagari: The Evolution of Types in Devanagari Script.” Monotype Recorder, new series no.2 (1980): 28–32.
Singh, Vaibhav. “Devanagari Type in the Twentieth Century: Motivations, Imperatives, Technology, and the Design Process.” PhD Dissertation, Department of Typography & Graphic Communication. University of Reading, 2017.
Southall, Richard. Printer’s Type in the Twentieth Century: Manufacturing and Design Methods. New Castle and London: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2005.
Stark, Ulrike. An Empire of Books: The Naval Kishore Press and the Diffusion of the Printed Word in Colonial India. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007.
Trevelyan, Charles. The Application of the Roman Alphabet to All the Oriental Languages. Serampore: Serampore Press, 1834.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 962 | 138 | 12 |
Full Text Views | 115 | 11 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 110 | 30 | 0 |
The decades of the 1930s and 40s, in which India’s struggle against British rule gained momentum, also ushered in critical technological change in the way texts in many Indian languages were materially produced and represented in print. The foremost facilitators of this change were third parties precariously placed in the colonial equation. Focusing on the dilemmas and contradictions of one such concern, the New York-based Mergenthaler Linotype Company and its program for the Devanagari script, this essay examines the mechanics of the power struggle embodied in the process of technological and typographical change. Against the backdrop of India’s independence movement, in deeply contested territories of language and script, the examination of typographical networks that formulated and realized this project throws new light on the richly ambivalent ideological negotiations involved—between popular and academic aspirations, altruistic and commercial enterprises, communal agendas and nationalist politics, and between imperial administration and colonial subjects.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 962 | 138 | 12 |
Full Text Views | 115 | 11 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 110 | 30 | 0 |