Print History: Red Tape in Black Type - Government Press, Madras

How should an Indian spell his name? The prescription was unambiguous: “In all ordinary official correspondence and publications Indian names should follow the spelling adopted in the following examples.” A long list of ‘Hindu Personal Names’, exclusively male, followed: Jagannatham, Lakshmana, Vaidyanatha, and so on. But if one hailed from an area where Odia was spoken, one had to consult another list in which the same names were spelt Jogonnatho, Lochhomono and Boidyonatho respectively. Muslims had to cross-check with the list of ‘Mussalman Names’, but if they belonged to either the Mappilla or Marrakayar communities of Kerala, they had to consult separate listings. The guidelines for place names were also equally precise:

The following list contains in alphabetical order for ready reference the authorized spelling of the more important places in the Madras Presidency. The spelling in the latest edition of the “Alphabetical list of villages, taluks and districts of the Madras Presidency” should be followed for other places not in this list (except in publications for which a special system is sanctioned in preference to the spelling adopted in the Imperial Gazetteer). 

Names which were not included in any of these lists had to “be transliterated from the vernacular according to the equivalent roman letters or combination of letters shown in the transliteration table.” These inviolable instructions were part of the Printing Manual issued by the Government of Madras in 1930 “for the use of government offices in the Madras Presidency.” Printing manuals were generally designed for print practitioners: how to choose fonts, set type, proofread, lay out pages, calculate printing costs, etc. However, this printing manual was different. It was for the clients, the innumerable government departments and institutions of the sprawling Madras Presidency who had to use the services of the Government Press in Madras and its affiliated presses.  

The backstory
By 1930, the Government Press in Madras had been in existence for nearly a hundred years. But the colonial government had held back investments in print for a long time. The first printing press in Madras can be traced to 1761 when a press began functioning in Vepery, on the outskirts of Fort St. George, the seat of the colonial government in Madras. The printing needs of the government were outsourced to private printers, mainly the Madras Male Asylum Press. It was only in 1831 that the Madras government set up a printing press to print its weekly gazette which contained proclamations, notifications and other official news. The gazette, published from the fort since January 1832, was called the Fort St. George Gazette. According to a later account, “The original plant consisted of some second-hand types, three presses and a staff of about 10 hands.” From this modest start, the government increased its printing infrastructure quickly. By the 1850s, presses were set up in all districts of the Madras Presidency so as to cater to local printing requirements. 

The Madras Presidency, like most other administrative units in colonial India, spanned a vast linguistic geography. It included most of the modern states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, some parts of Kerala and Karnataka, and the southern districts of Odisha. The printing needs of the government were in numerous languages: besides English, imprints were printed in Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam, Kannada and Odia. Though many of the reports were printed only in English, innumerable forms and circulars had to be printed in all these languages. By the 1920s, the printing needs of the Presidency were centralised in Madras, and most district presses were shut down. A press in Ganjam district (Chatrapur Collectorate) was retained to print material in Odia while the one in the Nilgiris was necessary as the governor wintered there. In the city itself, the Government Press had three branches. The largest press was in the Mint Buildings in George Town and the Printing Manual highlighted its wide range of print capabilities:

This press is allotted the work of printing Government orders, Board’s proceedings, the Fort St George [Gazette], Police and Registration Gazettes, District Gazettes for all Telugu districts, General District Gazette supplements, all confidential papers, vernacular work, High Court documents and forms, general forms work, covers, labels and flags, general binding and manufacture of rubber stamps. Types are available for printing in Tamil, Telugu, Kanarese (for Tulu), Malayalam (for Cingalese), Hindustani (Urdu), Persian, Arabic, Oriya, Devanagiri (for Sanskrit, Marathi and Konkani), Grantha, Gujarati (small work only), Greek, Anglo-Saxon and Music.

The branch at the Mount Road focused on printing in Tamil. Besides gazettes for Tamil-speaking districts, it printed “Post office forms, Government House work, standardized forms for the Secretariats, Public Works, Educational and Medical groups, large type notices and demiofficial forms.” The printing press in the Madras Jail, known as the Penitentiary Branch, was “restricted mainly to the printing and binding of standardized forms for the Revenue, Registration, Jail, Police, Survey, Magisterial, Civil Procedure Code and other judicial groups, and to the binding of settlement registers and Stationery office blank registers.” A small printing press at the Central Museum was only authorised to print labels while the one at the Madras Survey office printed lithographic transfers. 

The Government Press had a large number of clients with very different and specific requirements. The Printing Manual listed all of them. Perhaps the most important client was the Governor of Madras whose Private Secretary was empowered to issue orders for any kind of print commission. Next in line were the Chief Secretary to Government and the Secretaries to the departments of Revenue, Law, Finance, Development, Local Self-Government and Public Works. Further down the hierarchy were the Collectors and District Magistrates. These officers not only issued most of the printing orders in the presidency, but they also controlled the printing powers of other governmental institutions. On the judicial side, the High Court through its Registrar could exercise similar powers. The lower courts of judicature including the Court of Small Causes and the District and Sessions Judges also had large print requirements. Numerous legal officials such as the Crown Prosecutor, Advocate General and the Sheriff of Madras could raise printing indents. Other important clients included the Madras Legislative Council and the members of the Executive Council. The Director of Public Instruction and the Surgeon-General of the Madras Presidency superintended the education and medical departments, both of which had large printing requirements. And there were many others whose designations might now seem outdated: Government Mycologist, Chief Inspector of Steam-Boilers and Prime-Movers, Inspector of European Schools, Hindustani Translator to Government, etc. 

Managing these clients, each with their specific requirements, would have been difficult for any printing press. Without a precise set of detailed instructions, the printing press would not have been to fulfil a wide variety of print jobs, some of them with very large print runs running into the thousands, and others for which only five confidential copies were necessary. 

How to print 
The Printing Manual for the use of government offices in the Madras Presidency was not a static book. It was a compilation of all the rules and regulations that had been issued or revised over the course of a century. Though this manual was dated 18 September 1930, it was constantly being updated. Even before the printing for the manual could be completed, some of the rules had already been revised and an appendix had to be added. Further revisions would be printed in slips and users would paste them at the relevant location. Until a new edition was printed, a well-thumbed and pasted-over copy of the Printing Manual was a mandatory presence in every government office. 

The 1930 Printing Manual was a tome of three hundred pages in two parts, the first dealt with the administrative aspects of printing and the second listed the “Rules for Proof correcting, Spelling, Transliteration, Punctuation, etc.” The first part was arranged in 250 numbered paragraphs organised by topic and covered all aspects of placing print orders which could be classified into three broad categories. Forms and periodicals were the two main categories of printing and the manual described how indents for these print jobs had to be raised. The other print jobs were classified under ‘ordinary printing’ and included government orders, notes, circular letters, and proceedings of heads of departments. There were special rules for printing maps, diagrams and illustrations. 

The colonial machinery required a mind-boggling variety of forms, that is “printed works in which additional matter has to be filled in, also labels, envelopes, ‘flags’, and bound registers, if printed, colour-embossed, or ruled, and circulars, etc.” A list of standardised forms was maintained by the Government Press. These forms were printed according to a specific format and had to be indented annually by the departments which needed them. There were forms for ‘cattle mortality’, ‘petty construction and repair’, ‘forest code permits’, and myriad other subjects, including forms for use within the Government Press. Any additions to this list were strictly regulated and these new forms had to adhere to the rules prescribed in the Printing Manual, “such as the restrictions as to the minimum number required annually, over-printing on forms, printing in ink of more than one colour, die-stamping, wide spacing, names in columns of registers and lists, etc.”

Periodicals were another area of printing which called for detailed guidelines. These were imprints whose frequency ranged from weekly intervals to annual and decennial reports. The most important periodical printed at the Government Press was the Fort St. George Gazette issued weekly on Wednesday noon. In the ordinary course of work, government departments had to send matter for insertion by Monday afternoons and proofs returned by noon on Tuesday. 

The Police Gazette was issued weekly while the Registration Gazette was a fortnightly publication. District gazettes were printed monthly for each of the twenty-six districts of the Madras Presidency. These were published in English and in one or more local languages. The English versions were sold to the general public for an annual subscription price of two rupees while the vernacular editions cost a rupee and a half. 

Print as privilege
As with every other aspect of colonial life, a strict hierarchy was maintained in matters of print. It could be the quality of paper one was entitled to print in or the priority with which print orders would be attended to. Die-stamping, that is embossing on paper using a die to slightly raise text or images, was a privilege limited to secretary-level officials and certain heads of departments. But there were limits to the privileges of even these high-ranking officials: “Special or service crests or more than one die are not to be embossed on any paper at Government expense.” And they could not get embossing done in private presses without special permission from the Superintendent of the Government Press. 

Envelopes were also a symbol of privilege. Eleven different sizes of envelopes were prescribed for regular use ranging from 16'' × 11¾'' for bulky correspondence to 4¾'' × 3¼'' for octavo notepaper, once folded. Based on their size, they were generally made of brown paper of different grammage. But exemptions were made for members of the Executive Council who were entitled to heavier azure laid paper. The Governor had higher privileges; envelopes sent from his office were made from English-made white cartridge paper. 

Gilt lettering on bound volumes was also a privilege; besides works intended for long-term use such as manuals, it was extended “for Government orders and other permanent printed papers for the Secretariat and the Board’s office and for the Secretary of State.” 

Soon after independence, when the author of the anonymous memoir retired from the Government Press in 1948, “the officer strength was nine, there were 980 permanent employees and 193 temporary ones in the non-composing section, 399 permanent compositors and machine operators, 234 temporary ones, 163 ‘casuals’ and 315 convicts working in the Penitentiary Branch Press, 2293 employees in all.” The Government Press, Madras was thus one of the largest printing establishments in the country. The Printing Manual itself became outdated as the administrative and judicial processes were gradually restructured. After the reorganisation of states on linguistic principles, many parts of the manual were rendered obsolete. However, when a fresh edition of the manual was issued in the 1960s, it still carried over the format and much of the content from the 1930 edition. Though the printing requirements of the government had become more complex, the print management procedures were largely the same. Print privileges were, if anything, further reinforced. 

Though its operations have been drastically restructured, the Government Press at Madras (now Chennai) continues to function and discharge many of its original responsibilities, making it one of the oldest and longest surviving presses in India.