Question

By whom and why was samba kaumudi published in 1821?

Answer 1

Hint: The newspaper was scrutinised by the government with mistrust. The publication was allegedly inspired by the Calcutta Journal and patronised by its owner James Silk Buckingham, according to officials. Buckingham was chastised in the Asiatic Journal, the East India Company's unofficial organ published from London, for sponsoring and patronising an Indian journal like the Sambad Kaumudi.

Complete answer:
Ram Mohan Roy published Sambad Kaumudi, a Bengali weekly newspaper, from Kolkata in the first part of the nineteenth century. It was a well-known pro-Reformist periodical that actively advocated for the Sati Pratha's removal.

Ram Mohan appealed to his people in the prospectus for the Sambad Kaumudi, which was published in English and Bengali in November 1821, to lend him "the support and patronage of all who consider themselves concerned in the moral and intellectual progress of our countrymen."

In the same prospectus, he declared that religious, moral, and political problems, domestic events, foreign as well as local intelligence, including unique communications on numerous heretofore unpublished intriguing local topics, and so on would be published every Tuesday in the Sambad Kaumudi.

Sambad Kaumudi wrote a series of editorials condemning Sati as cruel and un-Hindu. It served as the principal platform for Ram Mohan Roy's anti-Sati crusade. "The paper which was deemed so loaded with peril and destined to explode over all India as a spark dropped into a barrel of gunpowder," said an editorial in the Calcutta Journal on February 14, 1823.

Note: Despite the fact that Ram Mohan Roy owned the company, Kaumudi was published under the name of Bhabani Charan Bandyopadhyay. Ram Mohan's beliefs were eventually judged to be too radical by the latter, and they split up to form a rival newspaper, Samachar Chandrika, which became an organ of orthodox Hinduism.