''Rast Goftar'' ("The Truth Teller") was an Anglo-Gujarati paper operating in

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the '' de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the sec ...

that was started in 1854 by

Dadabhai Naoroji Dadabhai Naoroji (4 September 1825 – 30 June 1917) also known as the "Grand Old Man of India" and "Unofficial Ambassador of India", was an Indian political leader, merchant, scholar and writer who served as 2nd, 9th, and 22nd President of t ...

and Kharshedji Cama and championed social reform among

Parsi Parsis () or Parsees are an ethnoreligious group of the Indian subcontinent adhering to Zoroastrianism. They are descended from Persians who migrated to Medieval India during and after the Arab conquest of Iran (part of the early Muslim con ...

s in Western India.

Background

A riot between Parsis and Muslims concerning the printing of a picture of Mahomet in 1851 was an immediate cause of the founding of the paper. As the Riots in

continued, the Parsis became frustrated with their leaders, and

started the paper with the purpose of voicing the grievances of the poor and middle class of his people. Postal rates tended to limit their circulation to local or nearby areas, but sometimes enthusiasm for a cause led the managers of a paper to distribute several copies of each issue free. Thus, the founders of the paper lost some 10,000 rupees by distributing the first issues of the ''Rast Goftar'' free, impatient at the state of

society, obviously in a hurry to reform it. In 1857 the proprietors of ''Rast Goftar'' in Bombay converted their property into a joint-stock concern so that Nasarvanji Cama, who had financed the paper from the beginning, would not be the sole loss-bearer. K. R. Cama, Sorabji Shapoorji Bengalee, and Nowroji Fardonji all became proprietors. The local governments subsidized several vernacular journals in northern India, though only a few in Bengal and Bombay. Their subsidy consisted in subscribing to a certain fixed number of copies of the journals concerned. In 1858 circulation rose from 432 to 852, a number then unheard of for native journalism. The widened from exclusively Parsi topics to larger questions of Indian politics. During the

Rebellion of 1857 The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the for ...

, the paper remained loyal to the British, and it even began the first English columns in Gujarat, mostly written by Nowroji Fardoonj. By the 1870s ''Rast Goftar'' was one of the four daily newspapers operating in

, and it was not only vigorous in itself, but was also the cause of vigor in other journals either by way of antagonism or support.

References

{{reflist Newspapers published in Mumbai Defunct newspapers published in India Zoroastrian media Parsi culture