The Indian Press (A Collection of Papers Presented at the Fourth Annual Conference of the Institute, Mysore-1966) -Edited by DR. S.P. Sen

The present volume on the Indian Press is a collection of eleven papers,presented at the Fourth Annual Conference (1966) of the Institute of Historical Studies, held at the University of Mysore. It is not a connected history of the Indian Press, and readers would be disappointed if they take up the book with any such expectation. The volume merely seeks to bring together an assorted collection of papers, each dealing with a particular or narrow field of investigation. The principal focus of interest is the Indian language press, and hence the English language papers have been excluded from the purview of the present study. There are two papers on the Bengali Press,two papers on the Kannada Press, and one paper each on the Marathi,
Hindi, Urdu, Tamil and Telugu Press. The volume also contains a detailed
bibliography on the history of the Indian Press.It is necessary to forewarn our readers about wide disparities in length
and contents among the papers. Some papers are as short as five or six pages only, while some cover more than thirty pages. Again, some papers give a general survey of the history and development of the press in any particular Indian language, while some papers are intended as serious research studies dealing with limited periods or particular aspects. We crave the indulgence of our readers for this obvious weakness of the volume, but we hope they would appreciate that it was not possible to eliminate such disparities in the Proceedings Volume of a Conference.
While the main interest of the volume is the modern Indian Press, two papers have been included on news-writing in Medieval India. Medieval news-writing, in general, cannot be placed in the same category as modern journalism; but, as the two papers will bring out, medieval news-writers may, in a sense, be considered as forerunners of modern journalists, as collectors and purveyors of news. Hence we did not think it out of place to include these two papers in the volume on the Indian Press.After the explanations given above, our readers will possibly accept the volume in its proper light and not with any mistaken expectations about its contents. We can only hope that they will find the papers both informative and interesting. We shall feel gratified if the volume as a whole is considered as even a small and humble contribution to the study of the subject.
(Preface by S. P. SEN)