A Tale of Two "Times"
As the map’s publisher, The Times of India clearly wanted to clarify its own importance within the city of Bombay. Its offices across from Victoria Terminus are marked with the map’s largest label, despite their small physical size.
This emphasis was not unreasonable. By 1900, the Times was one of the largest daily newspapers in India, with a staff of over 800 and a steady readership in both India and Europe [1]. It has retained its prominence to this day, and is now the world’s largest English-language daily [2]. As proof of its longevity, it has retained its original headquarters, which still stands in the same location.
As an English-language daily, the Times catered to Bombay’s elites: Europeans, merchants, and all others capable of speaking the language of the city’s imperial rulers. Nevertheless, it often adopted a pro-Indian or even anti-Western editorial stance. Dileep Padgaonkar, a former Times editor-in-chief, points out that the Times was founded and run by Indian reformers [1]. Further, its most prominent editor-in-chief Robert Knight was a famous advocate for Indian welfare, “[sparing] no words to criticise the greed and mismanagement of the British authorities, their policy of annexing native lands, their arbitrary and unjust tax regime and the type of education they sought to impose on Indians” [1].
By considering the Times’ editorial history, we gain a framework for evaluating the map’s rhetorical agenda. As a prominent English publication, the Times promoted an openly Western or Westernized viewpoint, and did so from a position of power. Yet it also considered the city’s non-Western, native voices, creating a polarity of culture that will become apparent in our analysis.
[1] Padgaonkar, Dileep. "A Knight Rode The Columns." Outlook India, 5 Nov 2012. Web. 23 Nov 2016
[2] "National Newspapers Total Circulation". International Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circulations (IFABC). 2011. Web. 21 Nov 2016.