Bombay Samachar History: Asia’s Oldest Newspaper

Bombay was already a major Indian Ocean port by the early 19th century, connecting Gujarat, Arabia, Persia, East Africa, Britain and other Indian ports in a dense trading network. Merchants needed to know which ships had arrived, which were leaving, what cargo was moving, what property was changing hands, and who had died or been appointed to what post. On 1 July 1822, Fardunjee Marzban — a Parsi scholar who had already established a native printing press in western India by 1812 and had produced Gujarati-language works and calendars before turning to newspapers — launched a Gujarati weekly to answer exactly that need.

The first issue was small: historical accounts describe it as three small quarto sheets plus a half-sheet supplement, roughly 14 pages of printed material, reaching an estimated 150 subscribers. Early content leaned heavily on shipping information, advertisements, government and court appointments, death notices, and news from other Indian and international centres — a printed information network for Bombay’s commercial world, not yet a vehicle for political debate.

The newspaper’s publishing frequency increased over time. Government of India records describe Bombay Samachar becoming a daily around 1832; other historical accounts describe an intermediate bi-weekly phase before a permanent daily footing from 1855. Sources do not describe the intermediate schedule identically, but the long-term direction is clear: weekly, then more frequent, then daily — and a daily newspaper becomes something readers expect rather than simply consult.

That transition mattered because of what came next. The 1857 uprising against British rule transformed India’s political landscape, and information about it travelled by ship, telegraph, letter and other newspapers to reach readers far from the fighting. Mumbai Samachar’s own historical archive includes coverage connected to the uprising, including developments involving Tatya Tope and Rani Laxmibai — a newspaper that had started with shipping notices was now recording a major political upheaval.

The Indian National Congress was founded in Bombay in 1885, by which point the city’s press environment was already mature, debating representation, taxation, colonial administration and reform. World War I (1914–18) tied Bombay’s port directly to a global wartime economy, dramatically expanding what “international news” meant for a paper that had begun by tracking ships. The 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre intensified anger against British rule and accelerated the growth of nationalist journalism across India, Bombay included.

Historical accounts associated with the newspaper say its reports and editorials were read or cited by prominent nationalist leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel — material highlighted by the Government of India at the paper’s 2022 bicentenary event. The paper did not single-handedly drive the independence movement, but its pages existed inside that movement’s information network, through World War II (1939–45) and the August 1942 Quit India movement, when colonial censorship made journalism harder just as public demand for information was highest.

After passing through several hands, the publication came under serious financial strain by 1933. The Cama family’s business had been supplying the newspaper with newsprint and ink; when the matter reached court, rather than let the publication close and its employees lose their jobs, the Cama family was asked to take over the newspaper. They agreed — and that stewardship has continued without interruption since 1933, making it one of two remarkable continuities in the paper’s history: 1822, when the newspaper began, and 1933, when the family that still oversees it stepped in.

India became independent on 15 August 1947; three years later, on 26 January 1950, it became a republic. For a paper that began under colonial administration, this meant covering an entirely new system of government, citizenship and law. Its readers had become citizens of a democracy rather than subjects of an empire, alongside a country facing Partition-era migration, food shortages, princely-state integration, constitution-making and its first elections.

A further political boundary shifted in 1960, when the bilingual Bombay State was divided into Maharashtra and Gujarat, with Bombay becoming Maharashtra’s capital. For a Gujarati-language newspaper based in that city, this was a significant cultural and political transition — its readership base was now formally split across a new state boundary, even though the paper’s own Gujarati identity and Bombay base remained unchanged.

From 25 June 1975 to 21 March 1977, the Indian government imposed extraordinary restrictions on political activity and the press. Different newspapers responded differently — some were censored, some protested, some adapted. Mumbai Samachar’s current editorial leadership has said the newspaper continued publishing both government and opposition viewpoints during the Emergency and was not subjected to the same censorship restrictions as many other publications. These are claims made by the newspaper’s own current leadership, reported in recent accounts; they are presented here as part of the paper’s institutional history rather than as an independently verified, uncontested finding.

Bombay was officially renamed Mumbai in 1995. The newspaper’s own name had long carried “Mumbai na Samachar” in usage, and in 2025, PTI reported that politician Chhagan Bhujbal displayed a copy of Mumbai Samachar in the Maharashtra legislature as part of an argument that the city had long been known locally as Mumbai — an unusual episode in which the newspaper’s own masthead became part of the city’s naming history.

Today the paper is commonly called Mumbai Samachar, while its publishing company has continued to use the legal name Bombay Samachar Pvt. Ltd. — a distinction recent reporting has specifically noted. The simplest formula: Bombay Samachar became Mumbai Samachar in common usage, while the institution itself traces continuous publication back to 1822 regardless of which name is used.