Question

Which one of the following areas in Calcutta was devoted to the printing of popular books in the 19th century?

• A. Baranagar
• B. Jadavpur
• C. Alipore
• D. Batala

Hint:

Think of the crowded central quarter of Calcutta where cheap religious tracts and popular books were printed and then carried to homes by pedlars.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is D

Concept:

• A locality becomes a printing centre only when cheap paper, presses, binders and a nearby market all come together in the same few streets.
• In nineteenth century Calcutta one central quarter answered to that description.

Step 1: Work out the kind of place needed.
Popular printing was a low-cost, high-volume business. It needed to sit in the crowded central part of the city, close to the book bazaar and to the pedlars who carried the books to households.
An outlying residential suburb could not serve that purpose.

Step 2: Name the quarter.
That central quarter was Battala, written as Batala in the options, where a large number of presses were set up.

Step 3: Confirm from what came out of it.
Battala presses turned out cheap religious tracts, scriptures and popular literature, often with woodcut and coloured lithograph illustrations. Pedlars carried these into homes, and women read them in their spare time.

Step 4: Set the other options aside.
Baranagar, Jadavpur and Alipore are known as residential and institutional areas of Calcutta, not as the home of the cheap print trade.

Final Answer: (D) Batala