Gita Press, Gorakhpur
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Contents |
History
A backgrounder
Arjun Sengupta, June 19, 2023: The Indian Express
Based out of Gorakhpur, the 100-year-old Gita Press is the world’s biggest publisher of Hindu religious texts, having sold 93 crore copies of over 1850 books in 15 languages.
A publisher of Hindu religious texts, Gita Press was established in 1923, and is presently one of the world’s largest publishing houses. Including copies of its monthly magazine, Kalyan, it has thus far sold approximately 93 crore copies of over 1,850 religious books, in 15 languages. Notably, Gita Press has sold over 3.5 crore copies of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, and over 16 crore copies of Shrimad Bhagvad Gita.
Its website says that its “main objective is to promote and spread the principles of Sanatana Dharma” in the general public through its highly “subsidised” publications of “the Gita, Ramayana, Upanishads, Puranas, discourses of eminent saints, and other character-building books and magazines”. Scholar Paul Arney has referred to the publisher as the “leading purveyor of print Hinduism in the twentieth century”.
Gita Press will receive the citation but not accept the Rs 1 crore cash award that comes with the Gandhi Peace Prize. “We never take any awards or donations. In this present case, we are going to receive the citation but we will not accept any award-money as receiving a cash award will be against our principles”, Gita Press manager and spokesperson Lalmani Tiwari told The Indian Express.
We take a brief look at Gita Press and its journey to become one of the world’s largest publishing houses.
Founding of Gita Press
Gita Press was founded officially in 1923 by Jaydayal Goyandka, a Marwari businessman from Bankura, West Bengal. However, the seeds for the idea were sown over a long period of time, during Goyandka’s business travels.
A trader in cotton, kerosene oil, textiles and utensils, his work took him all over the place, from small towns like Chakradharpur (now in Jharkhand) and Sitamarhi in Bihar, to cities like Kharagpur and Calcutta. A religious man, Goyandka formed groups of friends in these towns, mostly other businessmen, who joined him in satsangs (religious congregations), discussing different religious texts, most importantly, the Bhagavad Gita.
However, there was a problem. Goyandka and his friends yearned for an authentic translation of the Gita, along with a faithful commentary. After initial attempts to get the text published by an external publisher failed, Goyandka decided to start his own publishing house.
Ghanshyamdas Jalan, Goyandka’s friend and a businessman from Gorakhpur, offered to set up the press in his hometown. By April 1923 Gita Press was ready to print its first translation of the Gita with commentary, on a hand press bought for Rs 600.
Gita Press takes off with Kalyan
But it was only in 1926 that Gita Press truly came to life as a serious player in the fast-emerging Hindi publishing world of the early twentieth century. According to Akshaya Mukul, author of Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (2015), this was with the beginning of its monthly magazine, Kalyan, the first monthly journal to be devoted exclusively to Hinduism.
This put Goyandka’s organisation in the centre of a number of important socio-political developments of the time. Mukul points at a couple of important factors.
First, was the consolidation of Hindi as a language – specifically, as ‘a language of Hindus’ – and the rapid growth of its use in the public sphere by the end of the nineteenth century. More importantly, the rise of competing political nationalism among Hindus and Muslims in the period, created a space for an entity like Kalyan to rapidly expand by acting as a vehicle to spread the Hindu nationalist message.
In its initial years, Kalyan was helmed by Hanuman Prasad Poddar, a rising Marwari leader with links to Hindu Mahasabha. Under Poddar, Kalyan took the message of sanatan dharma to the hinterland through its extremely accessible pieces on Hindu scripture. Moreover, Poddar was not wary of being political – Kalyan also put forth ideas of nationalism, and what a modern Indian state would look like.
Cultivating the feeling of being Hindu
Kalyan, along with the publication of cheap yet high-quality editions of the Ramayana, Gita, Mahabharata, Puranas and other Hindu religious texts made the Gita Press one of the most important institutions in modern Hinduism and Hindu nationalism.
Monika Freier, in her paper “Cultivating emotions: the Gita Press and its agenda of social and spiritual reform” (2012) wrote that one of the key reasons behind Gita Press’s success was its ability to reconcile “reformist organisations” like the Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj, and “traditionalist organisations” like the Hindu Mahasabha and Bharat Dharma Mahamandal.
Freir argues that Gita Press founders deliberately avoided writing on the differences between different Hindu sects and schools of thought, instead offering “a framework for emotion cultivation that could serve as an ideal point of reference and identification for the Hindu community as a whole.”
Gita Press today
Today, Gita Press is one of the world’s largest publishers and the only indigenous publishing enterprise of colonial India that continues to thrive in the 21st century. Its books are published in 15 languages including English, Urdu and Nepali, with 20 retail outlets and over 2500 book sellers in India and abroad selling them. And it is growing like never before.
During the pandemic, when publishers across the world were facing major crises, Gita Press grew. Speaking to The Indian Express, spokesperson Lalmani Tripathi said that “such is demand from everywhere these days that we are often unable to meet it. In the financial year 2022-23, we have sold over 2.40 crore copies of our books for nearly Rs 111 crore.”
As per Tripathi, Gita Press sells nearly 10 lakh copies of Ramcharitmanas every year. Moreover, Kalyan presently has a print order for approximately 1.60 lakh copies. Over the years, it has sold over 17 crore copies of Kalyan.
2019: increase in sales
Rohan Dua, May 15, 2019: The Times of India
Inside the bustling 1923-built printing press in Gorakhpur, BB Tripathi and Lal Mani Tiwari take every visitor, to verses painted on walls and hand-painted impressions of Lord Krishna and Lord Rama inside the Leela Chitra Mandir.
They have been doing this for three decades now — running up and down between Lila Chitra Mandir and the printing press facility for the Gobind Bhawan Karyala Trust that manages the century-old Gita Press, that publishes Hindu religious texts including Ramcharit Manas, Bhagvad Gita, Ramayana and Mahabharat, Puran and Upanishads among 1,800 such sacred texts. With increased everyday ritual practices and sharp uptick in religiosity, curiosity in texts has grown and the Gita Press is feeding that hunger. It has registered an annual sales turnover of Rs 69 crore, up nearly Rs 22 crore since 2017 when GST was introduced and there were rumours of it impacting sales. “GST certainly increased cost of production but sales are not down. It shows the faith in religious and spiritual knowledge is only increasing day by day,” says sales manager Tripathi, adding, “We recently introduced Upnayan Sanskar and Vivah Paddati last year, based on knowledge of janeyu and wedding rituals.”
Gorakhpur votes on May 19. The trust that publishes texts of Hinduism proudly holds that it has steered clear of political leanings for almost a century. Its officials believe, however, that every political party “must always promote and support religious lectures and knowledge of sacred Hindu texts”. The press works on a no profit-no loss system. Its sales stood at Rs 39 crore in 2016, Rs 47 crore in 2017, Rs 66 crore in 2018 and Rs 69 crore in 2019. In India, it runs 21 wholesale centres of its own but has five retail shops and 52 railway station vends, including one in Kathmandu.
Gandhi and the Gita Press
Akshaya Mukul’s article
Akshaya Mukul, June 21, 2023: The Indian Express
In early 1937, the founding editor of Kalyan had an early morning dream that Gandhi would not live for long. He shared his dream with Gandhi, who said, “Even if I live to be a hundred it will seem too short to my friends. Then what does today or tomorrow matter?” He took the dream as a “sign of love”.
About a decade later, this editor and his publisher, the founder of the Gita Press, were among the thousands rounded up on suspicion of being involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi. Ghanshyam Das Birla, the influential industrialist, refused to get them out of trouble. For Birla, the two were not propagating sanatan dharma but shaitan (evil) dharma.
Between these opposite points lies the story of Gandhi and the Gita Press. The news of the Gandhi Peace Prize would surprise both. Gandhi might look askance, shocked that a prize had been named after him; on the Gita Press side, they might have felt embarrassed too. In Gandhi’s lifetime, the Gita Press often strayed from its motto of bhakti (devotion), gyan (knowledge), vairagya (renunciation). The figure of Gandhi bore the brunt of their belligerence since he was the only one who professed sanatan dharma, and yet kept his doors and windows open to progressive ideas. Gandhi’s constant evolution was the fly in the ointment.
Their relationship started auspiciously with bhakti. In 1926 when the Gita Press launched Kalyan, Hanuman Prasad Poddar, its editor, went to Gandhi with Jamnalal Bajaj. Gandhi had a piece of advice for the novice: Never take advertisements or carry book reviews. Advertisements made tall claims, often false, and once they started coming in, it would be impossible to turn down the revenue. As for book reviews, Gandhi said authors would expect them to be laudatory and honest appraisal may offend, so better not have them at all. Till date, Kalyan does not carry either. In fact, Gita Press has declined the Rs 1 crore cash component of the Gandhi Prize.
This deference, however, did not mean the Gita Press was a fellow traveller with Gandhi. On gyan, for instance. Gandhi’s translation of the Gita – Anashakti Yoga — was turned down by the Press. Gandhi would not accept the Gita as a historical text and the Gita Press would not accept this. Sometimes Gandhi’s articles would appear in Kalyan, a few extracted from Navjivan and Harijan and others commissioned through Jamnalal Bajaj, Mahadev Desai and Pyarelal. In 1935, Gandhi wrote to Poddar from Wardha, “What you are doing … is a great service to god. I feel I am part of what you are doing because you consider me your own and I consider you mine.” And yet three years before, in 1932, Poddar had bristled at Gandhi from his pages.
“These days a big agitation by Dalits is going on in the country that has intensified due to your fast. At various places, people are dining with Dalits and they are being allowed inside temples. Even those in favour of dining with Dalits agree (though I do not equate dining with them as a mark of equality) that they cannot be considered pure until they have a pure bath, wear fresh clothes, give up alcohol and meat or at least stop feasting on dead cattle. Only then co-dining makes sense. But your common dining and temple-entry movement is not even checking if they have fulfilled these norms. What is taking place is mere eating together, letting them inside temples, and allowing them to participate in rituals. No one is talking of upliftment of Dalits but only reiterating their untouchable status. Is this lack of restraint or reform?”
Poddar also showed the mirror to Gandhi, reminding him of his article in Navjivan where he had argued that inter-dining would not remove untouchability. Gandhi stood by every word Poddar had cited. “To understand what I say one needs to understand my conduct for I try to avoid saying anything that contradicts my conduct and doing anything contrary to what I say. And I admit my own weakness whenever my conduct is inconsistent with the opinions I express.” No amount of aggression from Poddar could make Gandhi rethink his new position that caste Hindus had created outcastes who were treated in an irreligious and brutal manner for which they would have to atone. This was not the Gandhi Poddar had met for the first time in 1915 as a young Hindu Mahasabhaite in Calcutta’s Alfred Theatre.
Writing to a friend now, Poddar said Gandhi was a western sadhu in Indian dress whose many ideas he did not agree with and some he found unacceptable. Gandhi became the biggest stumbling block before the traditional Hindu order, and a challenge to it. In 1946 when news came that Prabhakar, a Dalit, presided over a marriage as a priest and Gandhi blessed the couple, Poddar lost whatever respect was left. “Detractors of Hindu religion feel strengthened when they find Gandhi’s action endorsing their belief. The biggest problem is Gandhi considers himself a sanatani Hindu and despite believing in marriage rituals, participates and encourages such un-shastric acts,” he wrote in Kalyan. By the late-1940s, Gandhi had become immensely unpopular with the Gita Press.
In 1949, R S S chief M S Golwalkar was touring the United Provinces after being released from jail for his alleged role in Gandhi’s murder. Himself now free, Poddar presided over a function to welcome Golwalkar at the Town Hall in Banaras. Outside the venue, distraught socialists and communists protested with the slogan “Golwalkar laut jao” (Golwalkar go back) and “Bapu ka hattiara Sangh” (killers of Bapu R S S). Post-Gandhi’s assassination, Kalyan went quiet on him for few months but resumed carrying his old articles. It was Gandhi only in name and as ironical as the peace prize Gita Press has received in his name.
The writer is author of ‘Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India’
Political stance
Kalyan ‘'
June 19, 2023: The Times of India
Before Gita Press, the publication of religious texts was on the agenda of publishing houses like Naval Kishore Press. [Scholar of modern Hindi literature] Ulrike Stark discusses how printing texts like the Ramayana , Mahabharata and Puranas had started from the beginning of the 19th century and even Muslim publishers were involved in the task. It could have very well been argued that the dissemination of religious texts by established publishers like Naval Kishore Press would have left no space for other religious publications in north India.
In such a context, the launch of Gita Press and its eventual success may be largely ascribed to its monthly Kalyan — the first journal to be devoted exclusively to the Hindu religion. The existing journals, political, literary, women- or child-specific, did devote a few pages to religious issues that reflected the growing concerns about identity among readers.
The increasing communalisation of Indian politics in the 1920s contributed to this identity crisis in a big way. Gita Press’s declaration in Kalyan that the all-round decline in society was the result of Hindus having moved away from the path of religion made it clear that here was a journal that meant business insofar as defending the religion was concerned. Gita Press’s defence of religion was a “solution to an existing societal crisis”, to the “dark age” that “threatened order and well-being in society”.
Significantly, there was also recognition by the promoters of Gita Press that Kalyan should specifically address the crisis that the Marwari community faced internally and in the eyes of society. Gita Press founder Jaydayal Goyandka was aware of the widespread anger and distrust that Marwari trade practices evoked. In the second year of Kalyan , he addressed the problem within the trading community.
Refusing to lay the entire blame on the colonial government (a common refrain during the period), Goyandka “condemned the traders themselves for their moral and emotional decline as their transactions were riddled with lies, fraud and cheating”.
Religion and morality
He ascribed such practices to ‘lobh’ or greed that “had brought on the decline of the community and was manifested in practices of speculation, in the widespread adulteration of food and other illegal or shady business practices”. He also warned them that “immoral business practices would bar them from spiritual merit and also, as a consequence, from the attainment of god”.
Over time, Kalyan took to instilling the fear of god in its readers to dissuade them from indulging in acts that were against the tenets of religion and morality. An ingenious ‘bania’ (trading-class) model of devotion or bhakti was invented, that promised sure-shot salvation if the well-laid-out path of sanatan dharma was followed.
One of the key assets of Gita Press was its ability to resolve the conflict between, in [Hindi language lecturer] Monika Freier’s words, “reformist organisations like the Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj and traditionalist organisations based on sanatan dharma principles for the larger project of Hindu nationalism promoted by organisations like the Hindu Mahasabha and Bharat Dharma Mahamandal”.
To achieve this, Freier argues, “Gita Press founders deliberately styled their writings as religiously and politically impartial. Instead of focusing on the difference with other Hindu sects or sampradayas, they offered a framework for emotion cultivation that could serve as an ideal point of reference and identification for the Hindu community as a whole.” However, Gita Press has only partially translated Freier’s argument that the “new political philosophy demanded effacement of all existing divisions of caste, creed and religious sects”. Though it has kept away from attacking other Hindu sects or reformist organisations like the Arya Samaj, Gita Press has not changed its rigid stance on the validity of the caste system.
Gita Press no longer has to contend with the towering presence of someone like BR Ambedkar, who it viciously attacked — “himself of hinvarna (low caste) who has married a Brahmin in old age and introduced Hindu Code Bill” — but that does not mean that the Press can loosen its grip over the idea that “those who do noble deeds are born as Brahmins or Kshatriyas and those who indulged in bad deeds are born as chandals”.
Sticking to stereotypes As in the past, for Gita Press the doors of sanatan Hindu dharma are so well locked from inside that neither Gandhi’s ambivalence on caste nor Ambedkar’s stout criticism of it can waft through. It has place only for the top three varnas and the consequent benefits — a monotonous pattern for centuries now — that accrue to them on the basis of birth.
The mission, therefore, of working for all Hindus and being their spokesperson remains a mere promise whose time will never come. Its publications also continue to propagate gender stereotypes that relegate women to the inner world of the household while men dominate in the outer world.
But the aspect of Gita Press and Kalyan that has the greatest significance in present times is the platform it has provided for communal organisations like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (R S S), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and many others.
[Scholar Paul] Arney points out that Gita Press was “able to take advantage of the introduction of mass printing technology and successfully promote a homogeneous, popular, bhakti-oriented brahminical Hinduism to which spiritual aspirants of many theological and sectarian persuasions could relate”.
He cites a special issue of Hindu Chetna , a VHP publication, which came out in 1992 in honour of [Kalyan ’s founding publisher Hanuman Prasad] Poddar. The issue carried a 1964 interview of Poddar by Shivram Shankar Apte, earlier with the R S S and later loaned to the VHP. Poddar, who was among the founders of the VHP, told Apte that it was Gita Press that “sowed the tolerant ideals that have now blossomed into the plant of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad”.
An enduring success
Gita Press and its flagship Kalyan would grow and prosper as the only indigenous publishing enterprise of colonial India that continues till this day. Other Hindi journals of the period, whether religious, literary or political, survive only in the archives to be read by scholars interested in unravelling the heady days of Hindi and Hindu nationalism.
Today, Kalyan has a circulation of over 200,000 copies while the English Kalyana-Kalpataru has a circulation of over 100,000.And the key mission of Gita Press — publishing cheap and well-produced editions of the Gita , Ramayana and Mahabharata — is a stupendous success, unheard of in the world of publishing.
For instance, in April 1955 when President Rajendra Prasad visited Gita Press, a pamphlet was published which stated that Gita Press, in the 30-odd years since its inception, had printed and sold 6.1mn copies of the Gita and 2mn copies of the Ramayana . Not including Kalyan and Kalyana-Kalpataru , 27.8mn copies of all Gita Press publications had been sold in the market.
As of February 2014, 71.9mn copies of the Gita have been sold; for the Ramcharitmanas and other works by Goswami Tulsidas the figure is 70mn copies, while 19mn copies of the Puranas, Upanishads and ancient scriptures have been sold. Then there are the tracts and monographs on the duties of ideal Hindu women and children, of which 94.8mn copies have been sold so far, while more than 65mn copies of stories from India’s mythic past, biographies of saints and devotional songs have been bought.
Though the bulk of the titles (739 to be precise) are in Hindi and Sanskrit, Gujarati titles number 152, the second highest after the combined figure for Hindi and Sanskrit. Gita Press also publishes in Telugu, Oriya, English, Bangla, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, Assamese Malayalam, Nepali and Punjabi. Urdu publications were started in the 1990s, but only two titles have come out so far. Excerpted from Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India, published by Harper Collins India.
