India's first newspaper 1780 - Hicky's Bengal Gazette

• Hicky’s Bengal Gazette, was the Indian subcontinent’s first English language weekly newspaper published in Kolkata (then Calcutta), the capital of British India and was started by Irishman James Augustus Hicky on 29th January 1780. 
• The Gazette was a weekly publication, typically running at a length of four pages, with three columns of text. 
• The Gazette newspaper was published once a week on Saturday, and retailed for Re 1. Its circulation was estimated to be around 400 copies per week. The newspaper became famous not only among the British soldiers posted in India at that time but also inspired Indians to write newspapers of their own.
• The Gazette was almost solely the product of J.A. Hicky’s labor, with Hicky acting as writer, editor, and publisher. Hicky's first editing policy was neutral and his slogan was "Open to all Parties, but Influenced by None."
• The paper was a mixture between tabloid and satire, rather unlike the more serious tone of newspapers in Britain at the time, which had just won the right to report on Parliamentary proceedings. 
• Though Hicky’s Bengal Gazette was ostensibly concerned with political developments within the East India Company, Hicky primarily focused his coverage on the mockery of his personal enemies.
• His male writers opined that women should be chaste, faithful, and submissive. Their role was to satisfy and please their husbands. Their value was in how many children they could produce, and their responsibility was to preserve society’s moral values. 
• One of his correspondents wrote: "A good wife is one who ever mindful of the solemn contract which she has entered into, is strictly and conscientiously virtuous, constant, and faithful to her husband; also chaste, pure and unblemished in every thought, word and deed. She ought to be humble and modest from reason and conviction, submissive from choice, and obedient from inclination. She must make it her constant study to appear truly amiable in the eyes of her husband, being conscious that every thing which promotes his happiness, must in the end contribute to her own."
• Hicky argued in his columns that women should be subservient, reflecting thoughts of those times but chiefly on the profligacy of our women, and women should remain modest, virtuous and be educated only for the pleasure of men. They should be taught only subjects like dancing, music and French. He spread the idea that education made women less sexually attractive, that it stripped them of their femininity, and that women’s biology made them intellectually inferior and unable to participate in serious male-only conversation.
• Hicky reprinted sections from a 1772 book 'Fatal Consequences of Adultery' which argued that it should be illegal for someone to marry the person they committed adultery with. The book's hope was to reduce adultery by reducing the incentive to commit it. The burden fell hardest on women, who unlike men, would have to live with society’s judgment of their actions.
• Hicky  realized that a person’s religion did not matter, nor their education or social class. Anyone from any background, man or woman, could be good and righteous. In conclusion Hicky let people draw was that goodness did not come from class, education, or modernity. Goodness was innate. Indian women were not inferior to their European counterparts.
• His success meant that others saw a good business opportunity. And, an event was about to come that would make it easier for any competitor with the right connections to challenge him.
• Despite the paper’s satirical tone, it was widely read by members of colonial society at the time. Hicky’s criticism of Governor General Warren Hastings, and his particularly malicious ridicule of Hasting’s wife, landed him in jail repeatedly. 
• He was finally suppressed when Hastings instituted fresh law suits against him. Hicky's Bengal Gazette ceased publication on 23 March 1782 when its types were seized by an order of the Supreme Court.