Bengalee, The

Bengalee, The an English newspaper published from Calcutta from 1862 to 1931. It started as a daily newspaper and subsequently turned into a weekly. The Bengalee had a series of renowned editors including Girish Chandra Ghose and surendranath banerjea. In 1931, an evening town edition, known as the Calcutta Evening News, was launched and the Mufassil edition continued to be known as the Bengalee. The two editions were, however, amalgamated into one from 1932 and were renamed as the star of india .

Since its inception the Bengalee had been serving as an important organ of the indian nationalist movement . Its articulate views about the excesses of the Anglo-Indian community, Ilbert Bill, protecting the rights of ethnic communities, agrarian relations, famines and contemporary social movements had considerable influence on public opinion. Under the editorship of surendranath banerji the paper grew int the highest circulated weekly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But since the Surat Rift (1907) in the Congress, the paper became the mouthpiece of the minority moderate group of the divided Congress. The moderate policy adopted by the paper on the swadeshi and revolutionary movements and the extremist politics of the Congress considerably diminished its popularity. The death of Surendranath Banerji (1925) further weakened the paper and eventually was closed down in 1931. [Abhijit Dutta] [Dutta, Abhijit Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata]