Lahore’s past is often remembered through its forts, gardens, shrines, and rulers, but the city’s entry into the age of print is a quieter story. At the centre of that story stands Munshi Muhammad Azim, the man associated with the founding of the Lahore Chronicle, the first English newspaper of Lahore and Punjab. Emerging from Naulakha soon after the British annexation of Punjab, the paper appeared at a moment when Lahore was being reshaped by new colonial institutions. It did not begin as a mass newspaper in the modern sense, but as an early experiment in English journalism, printing, and public communication in a city where power, information, and authority were beginning to pass through the press.
Muhammad Azim came from a family in which learning and religious reputation carried deep importance. His ancestor, Maulana Muhammad Arab of Mecca, was remembered as a scholar of such standing that Emperor Shah Jahan invited him to India and entrusted him with a high religious office in the Mughal state. This lineage matters because Azim’s movement towards English education and printing was not simply a departure from inherited traditions. In his life, an older world of scholarship met the modern discipline of the printing press.
Establishing the Lahore Chronicle
The date of the Lahore Chronicle requires careful handling. Some writers connect its beginning with the period after the British occupation of Lahore in 1846. SMA Feroze, in Press in Pakistan, also writes that no trace of a newspaper is found in western Punjab until after British occupation in 1846, when “the first newspaper in the Panjab, nay in the whole of Pakistan” appeared at Lahore. Yet the more precise and better-supported date is 1849. Syad Muhammad Latif, in History of Lahore, states that the old Lahore Chronicle English Press and journal was founded at Naulakha in 1849, and adds that it was the first English newspaper and press established in Punjab. This is reinforced by Feroze’s own citation of the Civil and Military Gazette of the 2nd of March 1877, and by the Indian News and Chronicle of Eastern Affairs of London, which in 1850 called it “a journal recently established at the Punjab capital.” Together, these references make 1849 the most convincing date.
The timing was crucial. The British annexed Punjab in 1849, and Lahore, newly absorbed into colonial administration, became fertile ground for new institutions. Azim had already been trained in the Delhi Gazette Press, where he began as a compositor and later became a skilful printer. Latif describes him as an enterprising and public-spirited man who had studied at Delhi College and brought to Lahore a trained printing establishment from Agra, including Europeans, Eurasians, Bengalis, and others. Abdus Salam Khurshid’s research similarly notes Azim’s Delhi training and his later reputation as the “Father of the Press in the Punjab.”
It did not begin as a mass newspaper in the modern sense, but as an early experiment in English journalism, printing, and public communication in a city where power, information, and authority were beginning to pass through the press
The Chronicle was rooted in a changing city. Latif places the Lahore Chronicle English Press at Naulakha, near the railway station area. HR Goulding, in Old Lahore, records that Henry Cope, its first editor, lived in Dai Anga’s Mosque after annexation, before the building later passed into railway use. This does not prove that the press itself stood inside the mosque, but it shows the world in which the paper operated: Mughal buildings, European residences, railway expansion, colonial offices, and the English press were beginning to occupy the same urban landscape.
The Lahore Chronicle should not be romanticised as an independent public voice in the later nationalist sense. J Natarajan, in History of Indian Journalism, writes that it was started soon after annexation and “had for its object the strengthening of patriarchal rule.” Feroze similarly notes that the paper was promoted by high officials. It spoke largely from within the world of officials, European residents, and colonial interests. Yet its founder complicates that picture. Azim was a South Asian Muslim printer whose technical skill, capital, and ambition helped create Lahore’s first English newspaper. Feroze adds that the Chronicle was “not a financial success,” and that its registered stock consisted of 283 shares held by 57 individuals, of whom 43 were Indians. Politically close to colonial authority, it nevertheless drew materially and institutionally upon Indian participation.
The Form and Content of the Newspaper
The form of the newspaper tells us almost as much as its politics. Feroze, who examined an old file of the Lahore Chronicle, describes it as a bi-weekly paper. An advertisement of the 2nd of September 1857 announced that it was published every Sunday and Saturday. Its size was close to that of the later Civil and Military Gazette, and its issues usually contained four to eight pages. Supplements appeared in the same size, while late-arriving news was printed in “Extras” on single-page sheets of varying dimensions. This was a newspaper still finding its modern form: part journal, part notice sheet, part correspondence paper, and, in moments of crisis, a rapid carrier of urgent information.
Its layout reveals the readership it served. The front page was usually filled with single-column advertisements, often continuing into the next pages. “Letters to the Editor” appeared under “Correspondence.” News appeared as letters, brief notices, extracts from other newspapers, or reports introduced with phrases such as “We have received the following from a correspondent at Pashawur.” From the 18th of July 1857, the paper seems to have begun using small italicised catchwords as headings. The Chronicle belonged to a transitional stage in journalism, where news, comment, correspondence, and advertisement had not yet fully separated.
The subscription rates confirm that this was not a newspaper for casual mass circulation. The advertisement of the 2nd of September 1857 gave the annual subscription as Rs 36 in advance, the half-yearly subscription as Rs 20, the quarterly subscription as Rs 12, and the monthly subscription as Rs 4. A single copy cost one rupee. Such prices suggest a readership of officials, European residents, institutions, and regular subscribers. No advertisement, however small, was inserted for less than one rupee, and the Lahore Chronicle Press also undertook job printing, so it was a wider printing establishment as well as a newspaper office.
The contents of the paper reflected an expanding but improvised world of information. Its 1857 file included features such as “Europe,” “Indian Press,” “Epitome of News,” “Correspondence,” “Domestic Occurrences,” “Literature,” and “Original Poetry.” It had business agents in important towns of India and in London, and a fortnightly digest called Overland Summary was prepared for readers abroad. Since modern news agencies did not yet exist, newspapers relied heavily on exchange, copying, and acknowledgement. The Chronicle once complained that The Telegraph and Courier had copied news from it but credited the Mofussilite instead. Even in Lahore’s earliest English press culture, attribution mattered.
Conflicts, Litigation, and the Aftermath
The inner life of this early press was less stable than its public authority might suggest. Henry Cope became involved in a dispute with Oswald Welby, the manager, in the mid-1850s, and the conflict ended in litigation. Cope was eventually removed, and Azim, who had sponsored the paper, was also displaced from the company. The Punjab Record later preserves another revealing case, G. W. Leitner v. G. Plowden, arising from a dispute in which Dr GW Leitner, editor of Indian Public Opinion, had sued Major CH Strutt, editor of the Lahore Chronicle, over statements injurious to his character. A draft apology prepared during compromise efforts later appeared in Indian Public Opinion, raising the question of whether such a document was private property or public through its use in court. The case shows that Lahore’s early English newspapers were producing controversies, fighting them, and carrying them into court.
After losing control of the Chronicle, Azim did not withdraw from journalism. In 1856 he started the Punjabee, another important newspaper of early Punjab journalism. Feroze describes it as a tri-weekly English journal, printed at the Punjabee Press, and notes that in style and standard it resembled the Lahore Chronicle. It collapsed after a few years, but its vernacular edition, introduced later, continued until 1890. The Lahore Chronicle was Azim’s first major intervention, but his later ventures show that his commitment to print was deeper than one title or one company.
The Crisis of 1857
The most revealing surviving window into the Chronicle belongs to 1857. Feroze records that an old file of the paper, held in the Punjab University Library under catalogue number F 915, 482/L 125, was a gift of Dr Batson and contained issues from the 4th of July to the 30th of December 1857. He describes its pages as time-worn, worm-eaten, and decayed, and notes that the first page of each issue bore Dr Batson’s signature. Batson himself had escaped from Delhi in June 1857, giving the file a particular historical poignancy. This rare file was also examined by Abdus Salam Khurshid, and it provides the basis for understanding the Chronicle’s conduct during 1857.
The file shows a newspaper deeply shaped by crisis. Although formally bi-weekly, the Chronicle used supplements and extras to respond quickly to late news. Khurshid observed that during the events of 1857 it virtually became a daily, because extras were published almost every day for the swift communication of news. When the Press Act of 1857 came into force, the paper had to obtain a licence, granted on the 3rd of December 1857, on an application signed by Oswald Welby, the manager, and Mr McArthy, the printer. The Chronicle therefore stood at the intersection of information and control. It circulated news rapidly, but within a tightening colonial regulatory system.
The same surviving file reveals the social limits of the paper’s world. Domestic notices recorded births, deaths, and marriages among Europeans, while local news largely followed the social and cultural activities of the European community. The life of Lahore’s ordinary inhabitants barely entered its pages. The Chronicle claimed to report from Lahore, but the Lahore it saw was mainly the colonial station, the administrative circle, the European household, and the official camp.
The events of 1857 exposed the paper’s politics with even greater force. Its columns carried severe and openly hostile comments about Muslims. One correspondent argued that “none but Christians” should be promoted to high positions. Another proposed special taxes for Muslim traders. In an editorial titled “Our Policy,” the paper argued that neutrality in religion had failed and that the country must be held by a Christian army and governed by Christians. Its language on Delhi was even harsher, with one passage demanding that the city be razed and blotted from the map. These were not merely passing remarks of wartime anxiety. They show how the paper became a vehicle for fear, vengeance, and imperial confidence.
There is a deep irony here. The man who founded Lahore’s first English newspaper was himself a Muslim from a learned Delhi background. Yet the paper he founded, once it had changed hands, could become a platform for some of the harshest anti-Muslim opinion during 1857. That contradiction gives the Chronicle its historical importance. Lahore’s English press began with both promise and prejudice.
Legacy of the Lahore Chronicle
Its afterlife was significant. Indian Public Opinion was launched on the 16th of November 1866 by young civil servants, and a sharp struggle followed between it and the Lahore Chronicle. Within about a year, the Chronicle collapsed and was purchased and absorbed by Indian Public Opinion. Latif states that it was later amalgamated with the Civil and Military Gazette. The connection was remembered in the long title under which the Civil and Military Gazette appeared in 1877: The Civil and Military Gazette and Indian Public Opinion, in which the Panjab Times, the Mofussilite, and Lahore Chronicle are incorporated. The Chronicle did not simply disappear. Its title, habits, conflicts, and political vocabulary entered the longer history of Lahore’s English press.
The Lahore Chronicle deserves attention not only because it was the first English newspaper of Lahore, but because its story captures a turning point in the city’s intellectual and political life. It began with Muhammad Azim’s initiative, technical training, and ambition; it grew within the structures of colonial rule; it served a limited European and official readership; and it later became part of the lineage that led to Indian Public Opinion and the Civil and Military Gazette. Its pages also remind us that the beginning of modern journalism in Lahore was not innocent or uncomplicated. It carried the energy of a new public medium, but also the exclusions, anxieties, and prejudices of its time. To read the Lahore Chronicle today is therefore to see Lahore entering the age of print with all the contradictions of the nineteenth century still visible in the ink.