The periodicals published in Colonial Bengal occupy a very important space in the evolutionary history of the culture of Bengal in the modern period. They not only exhibited the way in which public propagation of social reforms through print media began in modern India but also laid down the basic parameters of cultural reformism.

These journals attempted to create a discursive medium for discussing social and cultural issues, practices and beliefs and there by constituted a framework of normative behaviour for the then society in Bengal.

They acted as a conduit for documenting, collecting, processing and disseminating information regarding previous and contemporary personalities, literary artefacts, and contemporary events in Bengal. They also focused on the recapitulation of the philosophical, theological, scriptural and exegetical core of the Bengali tradition.

As part of the project, the team will scan, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and proofread these periodicals and create an online platform to facilitate the showcasing, searching and studying of theseperiodicals.The periodicals which will be covered as part of the first phase of the project include The Daily Nadia Prakash newspaper, the weekly Gaudiya magazine and Sajjana Toshani.