The most primitive
potential form of message in the ancient India was the carving prepared on the
walls of the caves with pointed rocks. These epigraphs represented the thinking
and language of our ancestors. Slowly, the papyrus leaves gave birth to
superior form of papers that became the major mode of communication of thoughts
and perspectives in India. Even until the British rule, the mainstream communication
was spread through writings in newspapers, pamphlets and so on.
With time communication in India improved and technologies in India enabled individuals from the extreme boundary of the nation can collect, process, and exchange information. The new communication technologies in India are unlike either interpersonal communication or mass media communication, because they are interactive, defined as the degree to which the participants in a communication process have control over, and can exchange roles in, their mutual communication as well.
New communication technologies in India such as satellites, cable television, wireless telephony, the Internet, and computers have brought about noticeable changes in the society. Such developments in the communication in India have significantly aided individuals collect, process, and exchange information. The new media have certain characteristics that are similar in some respects to those of both interpersonal and mass media communication, but they are different in many other respects as well. Interpersonal communication consists of a face-to-face exchange between two or more individuals. The story of Indian communications has to be discussed in different dimensions of languages, arts and literature.
Languages
The
government of India recognizes 112 mother tongues that have more than 10,000
speakers. India has a total of 1,652 different languages and dialects! The
study of language, linguistics, has been developing into a science since the
first grammatical descriptions of particular languages by Panini, thousands of
years ago. Sanskrit is the oldest language in the world, more than 4,000 years
old.
Literature
Indian
literature is generally believed to be the oldest in the world. With vast
cultural diversities, there are around two dozen officially recognized
languages in India. Over thousands of years, huge literature has been produced
in various languages in India. It is to be noted that a large part of Indian
literature revolves around devotion, drama, poetry and songs. Sanskrit language
dominated the early Indian literary scene whereas languages like Prakrit and
Pali too had fair share as they were the languages of the common people.
Performing
Arts
Theatre in ancient India was an important
medium of communication. There were several dramatists in ancient India like
Kalidasa and Bhasa who wrote many dramas.They wrote several dramas which made
them immortal in the mind of Indian audience.Richard Salomon while discussing
his typological analysis of inscriptions in Indian Epigraphy has mentioned that
in the literary inscriptions we can find the reference of drama. It proves that
drama was popular in ancient India. For that reason it can be said that drama
was also referred in an important medium of mass-communication of ancient world
i.e. inscriptions.
Paintings
The
earliest Indian paintings were the rock paintings of prehistoric times, the
petroglyphs as found in places like Bhimbetka, and some of them are older than
5500 BC. Such works continued and after several millennia, in the 7th century,
carved pillars of Ellora, present a fine example of Indian paintings.
Thereafter, frescoes of Ajanta and Ellora caves appeared. Indian paintings provide
an aesthetic continuum that extends from the early civilization to the present
day. From being essentially religious in purpose in the beginning, Indian
painting has evolved over the years to become a fusion of various cultures and
traditions. The Indian painting was exposed to Greco-Roman as well as Iranian
and Chinese influences.
Translation
In the Indian tradition we have an exalted
notion of translators. We do not designate Tulsidas, Krittivas, Pampa or Kamban
as ‘translators’ of our great epics but as great poets per se. However, in
India, if we leave out the re-telling of the stories of the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata in regional languages, the first significant translations took place
at the time of Emperor Akbar. In his efforts to promote understanding among
religions and promote interfaith dialogue, Akbar sponsored debates among
scholars of different religions and encouraged the translation of Sanskrit,
Turkish and Arabic texts into Persian by setting up a Maktabkhana or
translation bureau. Persian translation of Sanskrit texts included Ramayana,
Mahabharata, Bhagvad-gita, Bhagavat Purana, Atharva Veda, Yoga Vashisht etc
The western world had tremendous impact over Indian history of
communication dominated much by the need of imperialism and colonization.
Telegraph
Telegraph services in India date back to 1850, when the first experimental
telegraph line was established between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour. The
British East India Company started using the telegraph a year later, and by
1854—when the system opened to the public—telegraph lines had been laid across
the country.
In India, as in the rest of the world, a trend toward digital
communications that began with the advent of the digital computer in the 1960s,
increasingly threatened the continued relevance of the telegraph. By the 1980s,
the analog facsimile telegraph, perfected in the 1930s and used to send
information over telephone and telegraph lines, was replaced by the digital fax
machine. Fax—and later email—began to eclipse telegrams, regular mail and other
earlier communications systems, a process that only accelerated with the rise
of the Internet.
The postal history of India is closely tied
to India’s complex political history. As the Portuguese, Dutch, French, Danish
and British colonialists gained power in India, their postal systems existed
alongside those of independent states.
Britain’s involvement in the
postal services of India began in the eighteenth century. Initially the service
was administered by the East India Company who established post offices in
Mumbai, Chennai and Calcutta (now Kolkata) between 1764 and 1766.
Telephone
The
rapid growth of mobile telephony in India ranks inarguably as one of India’s
greatest success stories. Cheap telephone connectivity has empowered
individuals in myriad ways, and has served as a massive productivity multiplier
for the economy by collapsing communication costs. It is important to trace the
history of telephony and draw lessons from this success story, for such
successes have been rare in our history.
There
are two facts about the telecom boom that are obvious but merit
repetition—first, the growth was driven by the private sector, not state-owned
companies or the government; and second, the boom has been brought about by the
rapid uptake of mobile telephony, not landline telephones or public call office
(PCO) booths.
The
New Telecom Policy (NTP) announced by the government of India on 3 March 1999
recounted some facts about the status of the telecom sector in India at the
time. It noted that India had “over 1 million” mobile phone subscribers. Ten
years after Rajiv Gandhi’s government left office in 1989 and eight years after
Pitroda returned to the US, following Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination,
tele-density moved from 0.6% in 1989 to 2.8% in 1999.
Internet
Internet is one component which has recently
become the key ingredient of quick and rapid lifestyle. Be it for communication
or explorations, connecting with people or for official purposes, ‘internet’
has become the central-hub for all.
There is a funny quote that says ‘Anything not in Google does not exist’. This
essentially states that internet has everything and anything that a man needs
virtually. Narrowing down the broad view and classification of internet, it’s
intervention into education, corporate sector, military, fashion,
entertainment, communication and travel, so on, Internet, has become the ‘sixth
element’ of life!
Cutting the long story short, settling upon
the topic ‘India and the Internet’, many changes of events are being envisaged
and experienced. Indian system of governing is a marshy affair, eliminating
that complicated segment of discussion, let us look at the changes internet
(the most powerful branch of media) has created in our peninsula.
Conclusion
A long, long time ago, some ancestors of ours decided it would be a
splendid idea to invent language. Great! Now, we can communicate with each
other and pass ideas onward! But that really wasn’t enough. We had to invent a
way in which that information would outlive us and overcome the inevitability
of distortion, a common problem when sharing something by word of mouth. That’s
when we conceived of written language. For thousands of years, this was all we
had. We were happy with it. But then we wanted more.
Social media defined is a special class of websites designed to meet
three specific criteria. These criteria include-the majority of the
content on the site is user generated, there is a high level of interaction
between social media website users, and the websites are easily integrated with
other websites. One of the most popular social media platforms is
blogging. A weblog or “blog” was first developed in 1997. A blog makes
it possible for any person with Internet access to create a type of website
without having to be familiar with any form of HTML coding that is generally
necessary to create a website. Blogs are replacing journals as a form of
self expression for many young people today. Social
media and blogging have had a significant impact on personal and professional
relationships. Reputations have been made and destroyed with a few
keystrokes.
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