AI-generated practice question — model-generated for extra practice, not a previous-year CBSE board question.
Early printing in India was primarily religious in motivation. The Portuguese missionaries who brought the press to Goa in the mid-sixteenth century used it to print Konkani and Kanara tracts for spreading Christianity. Catholic priests printed Tamil and Malayalam books for the same purpose. Dutch Protestant missionaries similarly printed Tamil texts. English-language printing, which could have served commercial or colonial interests, developed much later. Even the East India Company imported presses only from the late seventeenth century, and meaningful English printing began only in 1780 with Hickey's Bengal Gazette.
Source: Print Comes to India, Chapter 5
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The examiner wants you to take a clear stand (religious), then justify it using specific evidence from the passage — names, dates, languages, and communities involved. Notice the contrast between early missionary printing (quick, purposeful) and the slow growth of English printing (commercial/colonial) — that contrast is the justification. Avoid vague statements; cite specific facts like "1579 Tamil book at Cochin" or "32 Tamil texts by Dutch missionaries."