[ >39 1 SISIB KUMAR GHOSH. Sisir Kumar Ghosh is an interesting name in the history of Modem Bengal. In a very important sense of the term, he was the pioneer of popular journalism in this country. The Amrita Bazar Patrika has made the name of Babu Sisir Kumar a household word not only in Bengal but in India, It was the Patrika, which, by reason or its being a faithful vehicle of the wishes and sentiments of the general population for the first time exhibited the power and the potentiality of popular journalism in this country. Babu Sisir Kumar Ghosh was bom in the year 1842 at a village named Magura now known as Amrita Bazar in the district of Jessore. His early life Was one of struggles. There is no authentic account of his substantive attainments in youth or in boyhood. But from what can be gleaned trom his writings, it appears almost certain that he gave much of his attention to the history of this poor country. He is also the apostle of a new creed known as Neo-Vaishnavism. His Amiya-Nimai Charity Narottam Ckarit t and Kalachand Gita have contributed not a little to the making of his reputation. Sisir Kumar's first appearance in public was in connection with that great storm of "indigo oppression" which convulsed Bengal in 1859. Sisir Kumar soon found that if the people was to be properly served, it could only be done through the medium of a newspaper. He therefore started the Amrita Bazar Patrika at Magura in 1868. The paper, which was originally published in Bengali, soon attracted wide attention. In 187 a the office of the paper was removed from Magura to Calcutta. There was a time when Babu Sisir Kumar was not merely the editor and manager of the paper, but its compositor and printer as well. However, so hrillknt was the manner in which the paper was conducted, that it soon became a vigorous organ of the oppressed and the down- 9
