Mangalore’s tryst with media history

How many of us know that July 1 is a very significant day in the history of Mangalore?

It is quite likely that apart from a few journalists and a few dozens of mass communication students, we the ordinary Mangaloreans would treat it as just any other day.

The day is significant not just because it is celebrated as the Pathrika Dina or Newspaper Day across Karnataka. It was on this day that Mangalore acquired a permanent place in the history of mass communication.

For starters, it was on this day in the year 1843, that Harmann Mogling, a German missionary from the Basel Mission, launched the first ever newspaper in Kannada, called Mangalooru Samachara.

Mogling (1811–1881), who spent most of his career in the western regions of the state, including Mangalore and Kodagu, has also been awarded a doctorate for his literary work in Kannada – Bibliotheca Carnataca. He has also translated a great amount of Kannada literature into German, including the works of Purandaradasa and Kanakadasa.

A theology student from Eberhard Karls University, Mogling came to Mangalore as a missionary of Basel Mission in the year 1836. He learned Kannada as it was important for him to understand the local people and their culture. In those days, there was hardly any mass communication tool to disseminate information to the general public. Those were the days when radio and newspapers had not yet arrived on to the scene.

It was Mogling’s desire to communicate information to the public in their local language that saw the birth of the Mangalooru Samachara. It started as a fortnightly and consisted of four pages. The paper was printed using stone slabs and some of the news items covered were related to local developments, demography, as also news related to the East India Company and its laws and regulations. Songs of Purandaradasa and moral stories also saw their way into its pages.

Mangalooru Samachara was received well by the local populace, but for some reasons, Mogling decided to shift its publication to the city of Bellary where it was renamed as Karnataka Samachara. The first issue of Karnataka Samachara, which was launched on 1 May 1844, was incidentally the 15th issue of the erstwhile Mangalooru Samachara. Karnataka Samachara, the first Kannada newspaper to be printed using the movable type, however survived for just three issues. But Mogling had already earned a place in the history of Indian journalism with his pioneering mission.

The contributions of Mogling to Kannada language and literature need a special mention. They can be compared with the seminal work of Reverend Ferdiand Kittel, also a German missionary, who is credited with compiling the first Kannada-English dictionary in 1894, containing around 7,000 words. Mogling’s first job as a missionary was introducing Christianity to the local people, and precisely for this reason he exchanged letters with a number of local intellectuals in Kannada. Anandaraya Kaundinya, one of his converts, and his family exchanged a number of letters with Mogling, which were later published under the title Iraaru Patragalu (Twelve letters). This book has been dubbed the first collection of letters ever published in Kannada.

A compilation of more than 3,000 Kannada proverbs, an anthology of 20 poems, a collection of Kannada classics titled Bibliotheca Carnataca are among his significant contributions to Kannada literature. He also supervised the publication of eight titles including Ravana Digvijaya – Yakshagana Prasanga.

Mogling also spent some years in Kodagu, which provided content for his book Coorg Memoirs, which is believed to be one of the earliest travel books on Karnataka. In this book, he has described the social life of Kodava community and their lifestyle in great detail.

Mogling died in the year 1881 and a memorial has been constructed in his honour in Esslingen.

Mangalore’s growth as one of the key hubs of media activities can be attributed primarily to the contributions of visionaries like Mogling. With the changing times, the city has also opened itself to new experiments, well complemented by the spurt in the number of journalism graduates arising from the city. Many would not know that Mangalore’s tryst with innovations in media services has already grabbed international attention, with a UK-based international media conglomerate running its operations from the city, offering a capacity of over 100 seats.

image courtesy: www.payer.de, wikipedia.org, zimbio.com

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