What was the effect of print on the poor in the 20th century ?
With the coming of print, issues of caste discrimination etc. were raised in the late 19th century by Jyotiba Phule. In the twentieth century, B.R. Ambedkar in Maharashtra and E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker in Madras, better known as Periyar, wrote on caste and their writings were read by people all over India. Local protest movements and sects also created a lot of popular journals and tracts criticising ancient scriptures and envisioning a new and just future. Workers in factories were too overworked and lacked education to write much about their experiences. But Kashibaba, a Kanpur mill-worken wrote and published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal, in 1938 to show the link between caste and class exploitation. The poems of another mill-worker wTio wrote under the name of Sudarshan Chakr were published in a collection Sacchi Kavitayan. By the 1930s, Bangalore cotton millworkers setup libraries to educate themselves, following the example of Bombay workers. These were sponsored by social reformers who tried | to restrict excessive drinking among them, to bring literacy and, sometimes, to propagate the message of nationalism.
