<Li> Media of India </Li> <Li> List of newspapers </Li> <P> Hicky's Bengal Gazette or the Original Calcutta General Advertiser was an English language weekly newspaper published in Kolkata (then Calcutta), the capital of British India . It was the first newspaper printed in Asia, and was published for two years, before the East India Company seized the newspaper's types and printing press . Founded by James Augustus Hicky, a highly eccentric Irishman who had previously spent two years in jail for debt, the newspaper was a strong critic of the administration of the Governor General Warren Hastings . The newspaper was important for its provocative journalism well before its time and its fight for free expression in India . </P> <P> Hicky began publication of Hicky's Bengal Gazette on January 29, 1780, having first printed a prospectus announcing that he would begin printing a newspaper . The idea of printing a newspaper in India had been first floated twelve years earlier by the Dutch Adventurer William Bolts, but Hicky was to execute the concept . </P>

Who started the first english newspaper in india