Colonial surveillance of vernacular newspapers began with monitoring sedition trials.

Evidence

The government followed commentary on the case in the Bengali and Urdu press in some of the earliest existing reports on native newspapers, a system of surveying vernacular newspapers that would become a mainstay of the government’s attempt to keep abreast of native public opinion. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 112

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to C.A. Bayly’s Empire and Information on colonial intelligence gathering, cited in the same chapter.