Revision as of 12:40, 13 July 2023

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.