The Hindu is an English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. It was started as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889.
It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the second most circulated English-language newspaper in India, after The Times of India. As of March 2018, The Hindu is published from 21 locations across 11 states.
The Hindu was founded in Madras on 20 September 1878 as a weekly newspaper, by what was known then as the Triplicane Six consisting of 4 law students and 2 teachers:- T. T. Rangacharya, P. V. Rangacharya, D. Kesava Rao Pantulu and N. Subba Rao Pantulu, led by G. Subramania Iyer (a school teacher from Tanjore district) and M. Veeraraghavacharyar, a lecturer at Pachaiyappa's College.
Started in order to support the campaign of Sir T. Muthuswamy Iyer for a judgeship at the Madras High Court and to counter the propaganda against him carried out by the Anglo-Indian press, The Hindu was one of the newspapers of the period established to protest the policies of the British Raj.
About 100 copies of the inaugural issue were printed at Srinidhi Press, Georgetown, on one rupee and twelves annas of borrowed money. Subramania Iyer became the first editor and Veera Raghavacharya, the first managing director of the newspaper.
The paper was initially printed from Srinidhi Press but later moved to Scottish Press, then to The Hindu Press, Mylapore. Started as a weekly newspaper, the paper became a tri-weekly in 1883 and an evening daily in 1889. A single copy of the newspaper was priced at four annas.
The offices moved to rented premises at 100 Mount Road on 3 December 1883. The newspaper started printing at its own press there, named "The National Press," which was established on borrowed capital as public subscriptions were not forthcoming. The building itself became The Hindu's in 1892, after the Maharaja of Vizianagaram, Pusapati Ananda Gajapati Raju, gave The National Press a loan both for the building and to carry out needed expansion.
The Hindu was initially liberal in its outlook and is now considered left leaning. Its editorial stances have earned it the nickname, the 'Maha Vishnu of Mount Road'. "From the new address, 100 Mount Road, which was to remain The Hindu's home till 1939, there issued a quarto-size paper with a front-page full of advertisements—a practice that came to an end only in 1958 when it followed the lead of its idol, the pre-Thomson Times [London]—and three back pages also at the service of the advertiser.
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In between, there were more views than news." After 1887, when the annual session of Indian National Congress was held in Madras, the paper's coverage of national news increased significantly, and led to the paper becoming an evening daily starting 1 April 1889.
The partnership between Veeraraghavachariar and Subramania Iyer was dissolved in October 1898. Iyer quit the paper and Veeraraghavachariar became the sole owner and appointed C. Karunakara Menon as editor. However, The Hindu's adventurousness began to decline in the 1900s and so did its circulation, which was down to 800 copies when the sole proprietor decided to sell out.
The purchaser was The Hindu's Legal Adviser from 1895, S. Kasturi Ranga Iyengar,[10] a politically ambitious lawyer who had migrated from a Kumbakonam village to practise in Coimbatore and from thence to Madras.
Iyengar's son, Kasturi Srinivasan, became managing editor of The Hindu upon his father's death in 1923 and Chief Editor in February 1934. The descendants of Kasturi Ranga Iyengar have since owned and, through most of the paper's life, held the top editorial positions in the company.
