What did the spread of print culture in 19th century India mean to (a) Women (b) The poor (c) Reformers.

(a) Women: The spread of print culture in nineteenth-century India brought about educational reforms for women. Liberal husbands and fathers educated their womenfolk at home or sent them to schools for women. Women who had been restricted to a domestic life for generations, now found a new medium of entertainment. They also began to write articles for journals, in favour of women's education and literacy. Some even wrote books; Rashsundari Devi’s autobiography “Amar Jiban” was the first full-length autobiography, published in 1876. Conservatives believed that education and reading would make women widows, or corrupt them. Many women learnt to read and write in secret in such traditionalist environments.

(b) The poor: They benefitted from the spread of print culture in India on account of the availability of low-price books and public libraries. Enlightening essays were written against caste discrimination and its inherent injustices. These were read by people across the country. On the encouragement and support of social reformers, over-worked factory workers set up libraries for self-education, and some of them even published their own works, for example, Kashibaba and his “Chhote Aur Bade Sawal”.

(c) Reformers: Print culture’s popularity was an advantage for social and religious reformers as they could now spread their opinions, through newspapers and books, across the masses. These ideas could then be debated upon by different groups of people. Reformist ideas were put forward in the local, everyday languages of the common people so as to create a wider platform for the same.