{"id":59,"date":"2013-11-03T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-03T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/on-this-day\/3rd-november-1838-the-times-of-india-the-newspaper-was-founded\/"},"modified":"2013-11-03T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-03T10:00:00","slug":"3rd-november-1838-the-times-of-india-the-newspaper-was-founded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/on-this-day\/3rd-november-1838-the-times-of-india-the-newspaper-was-founded","title":{"rendered":"3rd November 1838: The Times of India, the newspaper, was founded"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Times of India<\/em> (ToI), the world\u2019s largest selling English-language newspaper, was founded at a time when the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar still sat at his throne in Delhi, the seven islands of Bombay had not yet been fully joined, and there was no such thing as the Indian Railways. <\/span><\/p>\n

When it came to life on November 3, 1838, it was not yet The Times of India<\/em>: it was called The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce<\/em>, and was published every Saturday and Wednesday. J.E. Brennan was the editor and the owners included a British syndicate of 11 firms. It was launched as a semi-weekly edition by R.N.D. Velkar, a reformist leader. It became a daily in 1850, and was renamed The Times of India<\/em> after a merger with other papers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The merger was carried out by Robert Knight, \u201cone of the most inspiring figures in Indian journalism during the 19th century\u201d, according to Dileep Padgaonkar, renowned journalist and himself an editor of the ToI during 1988-94. \u201cThrough his [Knight\u2019s] sharply-worded editorials, Knight campaigned for a sound system of popular rights in India and sought massive investments to extend the rail network, improve Bombay\u2019s water supply, construct roads and set up irrigation facilities,\u201d Padgaonkar wrote in the\u00a0Outlook<\/em> magazine in November 2012. \u201cHe continued to upbraid British officials for the perks they enjoyed, for their nastiness towards Indians and for doing precious little to eradicate India\u2019s abysmal poverty. Moreover, unlike the rest of the Anglo-Indian press, he sympathised with the Great Uprising of 1857 even while he deplored the large-scale destruction of lives and property.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 19th century, the ToI had around 800 employees and was circulated in India and Europe. In 1892, its editor, T.J. Bennett, entered into a partnership with F.M. Coleman, resulting in the formation of the joint stock company, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (BCCL). Just before India attained independence, the BCCL was bought by Seth Ram Kishen Dalmia, thus passing into Indian hands. In an article in the\u00a0Outlook<\/em> in 2003, writer and journalist Khushwant Singh recalled a \u201cvery brief\u201d meeting he had with Dalmia after Singh had applied for post of editor of The Illustrated Weekly<\/em>, which was part of the BCCL family. \u201cHe [Dalmia] asked me one question: \u2018Do you know Sanskrit?\u2019 I replied, \u2018No, Sir, I don\u2019t.\u2019 He dismissed me curtly: \u2018Go and learn Sanskrit, then come to me.\u2019 I got the job 20 years later, without a word added to my Sanskrit vocabulary.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Later, BCCL was taken over by Shanti Prasad Jain, who belonged to a business family with roots in Uttar Pradesh.<\/span><\/p>\n

The BCCL steadily increased its footprint in the Indian media space. The company launched its Hindi daily, the Navbharat Times<\/em>, in Delhi, in 1947. The ToI\u2019s Delhi edition was launched in 1950; the Bollywood news magazine, Filmfare<\/em>, in 1952; the women\u2019s magazine Femina<\/em> in 1959; the financial newspaper The Economic Times<\/em> in 1961; and the Marathi newspaper The Maharashtra Times<\/em> in 1962.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the first 40 years after Independence, the ToI had some legendary editors such as Sham Lal and Girilal Jain, but in the last two decades, editors are no longer the towering figures that some of their predecessors used to be. As Singh put it bluntly: \u201cThe one lasting contribution Bennett Coleman has made to Indian journalism is to cut to size editors who had grandiose notions about their positions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

ToI has seen other changes as well after 1990.\u00a0<\/span>In his book JS & The Times of my life<\/em>\u00a0the journalist Jug Suraiya, perhaps best known for his satirical columns in ToI, defends a decision to make the actress Madhuri Dixit\u2019s wedding, and not another scam in Bihar, the lead edit of the day in the paper. \u201cFor \u2018serious\u2019 journalists, Madhuri\u2019s wedding wasn\u2019t serious; Bihar scams were. For the general reader, male or female, Madhuri getting hitched was serious, as in seriously interesting. Bihar scams were serious, as in seriously boring. You took note of them not because you wanted to but because you felt you had to. Because you felt that taking note of them was good for your moral health the way eating spinach and other green leafy vegetables was good for your physical health.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

With the ToI entering its 175th\u00a0year in 2013, the Times Group is the country\u2019s largest media conglomerate. The BCCL and its subsidiaries are present across media platforms, including newspapers, magazines, books and Television, TV, Radio and Internet. The group has a turnover of over a billion dollars. Explaining the central role Samir Jain, the current vice-chairman of BCCL, has played in the recent evolution of thr ToI, the writer and journalist Samanth Subramanian wrote in Caravan<\/em> magazine in December 2012: \u201cOver the last two-and-a-half decades, Jain has imprinted himself indelibly onto The<\/em> Times of India<\/em>, and thereby onto Indian journalism. He preserves an Olympic detachment from his newspaper\u2019s coverage of politics, . . . [but] has been exacting and forceful in his mission to shape The<\/em> Times of India<\/em> [. . .] in his image.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also on this day:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

1901 \u2014 Prithviraj Kapoor, Indian theatre and film actor, was born\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

1933 \u2014 Amartya Sen, economist and Nobel laureate, was born<\/span><\/p>\n

1992 \u2014 Prem Nath, Indian actor, passed away<\/span><\/p>\n

2012 \u2014 Kailashpati Mishra, Governor of Gujarat, passed away<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Times of India (ToI), the world\u2019s largest selling English-language newspaper, was founded at a time when the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar still sat at his throne in Delhi, the seven islands of Bombay had not yet been fully joined, and there was no such thing as the Indian Railways. When it came to life on November 3, 1838,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n3rd November 1838: The Times of India, the newspaper, was founded -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"- 3rd November 1838: The Times of India, the newspaper, was founded\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/on-this-day\/3rd-november-1838-the-times-of-india-the-newspaper-was-founded\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"3rd November 1838: The Times of India, the newspaper, was founded -\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"- 3rd November 1838: The Times of India, the newspaper, was founded\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/on-this-day\/3rd-november-1838-the-times-of-india-the-newspaper-was-founded\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"What Happened on This Day in History - 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