Serampore College Archives - INKED HAPPINESS

Categories : featuresTags : 1835 1872 census A Descriptive Catalogue of Bengali Works adult literacy rate advertisements almanac Aniline antorpur-bashinis art form asleelata Babu Ram bangladesh Banyan tree Battala Battala print culture Beliaghata Bengal Bengali language Bengali space Bengali titles Bengali typography Bethune College Bethune School Bhadrolok Bharati pen Birmingham Black Town Bohemian lifestyle booksellers Bortolla British Calcutta Calcutta Medical College Chap Books Chitpur Road Chowringhee Civil Engineering College Class coarse College Street comatose societal norms commercial inks commercially mass-produced Company Raj culture democratisation of knowledge Derozians dip dip pen handles Dr Radhika Nath Saha dye early 19th century ebonite pens ecosystem educational institutions English ephemera European-owned F N Gooptu Factory farce female literacy rate foreign exchange crunch Fort William Fort William College fountain pen lover fountain pens freedom fighters G C Laha G C Law & Co.gender General Assembly’s Institution German chemist Gooptu’s Perfection Gora Sahibs Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore handle Hare School Henry Louis Vivian Derozio High Literature Hindoo College holier-than-thou attitude home-made inks home-spun IACS IIEST imported indigenous printing presses indigenous substitute inkwell jhakawalas John Mitchell of Birmingham Kajal Kalim Shantiniketan Khager Kolom Khidirpur Kumartuli La Martiniere Lal Dighi locally made Mahatma Gandhi Middleton Street moral muscles multi-dimensional multi-layered native native-owned press Nonigopal and Shankaracharya Maitra Obscene Books and Pictures Act (1856)Otto Unverdorben outreach overindulgence in wine P.M. Bagchi & Co Panchanan Karmakar paper merchants Park Street Pataldanga peddlers pen and ink Penmanship pens with metal nibs Plebeian Accessibility Ponjika popular literature pornography Presidency University printing Printing presses Prohoshon prototype publication publishers pundits Rabindra Sarani Rajshahi readers reed pens religious texts Reverend James Long Reverend James Long’s catalogue river Hooghly Sanskrit College Sanskrit hyperbole Scottish Church College self-help books Serampore College Serampore Mission Press sexually explicit Shyam Bazar Sonagachi soot-based Sovabazar spread of literacy St Xavier’s College stamping steel nibs Stylo sub-altern Sulekha Swadeshi University of Calcutta Vernacular vibrant Victorian Era vulgar Western knowledge White Town William Carey wood pencil wood-block artists woodcuts wooden rod writing instruments Young Bengal

Battala – printing, publication, pornography … and penmanship.

On August 14, 2026August 14, 2026 By chawm

Battala – printing, publication, pornography … and penmanship. The “Gora Sahibs” were concentrated in their White Town around Fort William – down Chowringhee, all the way to Park Street. The natives were huddled in the squalor, as the river flowed, both up and down, in what was variously, contemptuously called