Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (2 page)

Chand
, essentially a woman’s journal, under the editorship of Ramrakh Sahgal, embarked on a unique method of boosting its circulation and hence fortune by bringing out six special issues on a wide range of subjects: capital punishment (
Phansi Ank
), prostitutes (
Veshya Ank
), Marwaris (
Marwari Ank
), Kayasthas (
Kayastha Ank
), untouchables (
Achhoot Ank
) and literature (
Sahitya Ank
). While commercially most of them were a huge success, selling as many as 15,000 copies each, the journal’s tendency to publish vulgar stories and indulge in no-holds-barred personal attacks drew widespread flak from the likes of Premchand—guest editor of
Chand
’s special number on literature—and Banarsi Das Chaturvedi, editor of
Vishal Bharat
and self-proclaimed conscience-keeper of the Hindi literary world. Even if the idea was to expose social ills, the Hindi intelligentsia did not support making a public spectacle of these. What had particularly irked Premchand was
Chand
’s
Marwari Ank
of 1927 that painted Marwari women as being lustful and promiscuous, not sparing the men either. The strong Marwari community immediately sued Sahgal, but the damage had been done.
Kalyan
’s criticism of the
Marwari Ank
was subdued as the issue had also exposed an infamous sex scandal in Gobind Bhawan, its parent body based in Calcutta.

Hindu Panch
’s strategy was different. It was provocative in its tone, strident in language and content, courted controversy openly—yet cleverly. What could one say of a weekly that stated its fivefold mission on the cover—Hindu Sangathan (Organization), Shuddhi Sanskar (Culture of Reconversion), Achhootoddhar (Removal of Untouchability), Samaj Sudhar (Social Reform), Hindi Prachar (Spread of Hindi)—and a motto on its cover page that openly spelt out its goal of restoring the dignity of Hindus, saving the Hindu name, bringing Hindu rule to India and waking Hindus up from their slumber (
Lajja
Rakhn
e Ko Hindu Ki, Hindu Naam Bachane Ko, Aaya Hindu Panch
Hin
d Mein, Hindu Jati Jagane Ko
).

Hindu Panch
claimed to be working for the defence of the Hindu religion.
¹⁵
But the articulation of this defence was not very sharp despite the occasional article on the merits of sanatan Hindu dharma by the likes of Ganesh Damodar Savarkar, the eldest of the Savarkar brothers.
¹⁶
The task was better undertaken by Gita Press and
Kalyan
.
Hindu
Panch
would focus on reports of Muslims attacking and abducting Hindu girls and widows, carrying highly objectionable columns like ‘
Choti Banam Dadhi
’ (Brahmin Tuft versus Muslim Beard) where Muslims would be derided and their alleged acts of high-handedness against Hindus in general and Hindu women in particular would be reported. While
Hindu Panch
brought out special issues on Lord Krishna (6 September 1928), Lord Rama (29 March 1928), Vijayadashami (28 October 1926) and the Hindu Mahasabha (12 April 1928), it also had a special issue on the Congress (30 December 1926)—a clever balancing act. Two years later,
Hindu Panch
thanked Jawaharlal Nehru for visiting its editorial office in September 1928 and called him ‘adarsh veer’ (ideal hero). Nehru was reminded that the ‘nation is bigger than a community and even more important than the nation is world humanity’ . . . ‘You belong to that world humanity.’
¹⁷

 

Marwari Munificence
Essayist, polemicist, journalist and a first-rate satirist Bal Mukund Gupt finds pride of place in all histories of Marwaris as a leading literary figure—next only to Bharatendu Harishchandra. Like Bharatendu, Gupt also died young, at the age of forty-two. Passionate and acerbic, Gupt would spare no one, not even his own community. On learning that the Calcutta Marwaris had opened a school that would impart education in English, Hindi and Sanskrit to their boys, Gupt, writing under the pseudonym Shiv Sambhu Sharma in
Bharatmitra
, the Calcutta journal he edited, hit out at the community telling them not to ‘dare come near knowledge’. Instead, he said, it would be better if they worshipped the camel that had brought them to Calcutta, and if possible bring a camel to the city zoo since it did not have one. He wrote, ‘Your wealth has been acquired through hard work and mental machinations. Whatever you have is yours and not related to knowledge. People who cannot digest your prosperity are whispering “vidya, vidya” (knowledge, knowledge) in your ears. Of what use is vidya? You cannot wear or eat it. If you have money hundreds of knowledgeable persons bow before you even if you are a fool. They praise your sad face . . . without education you have become Raja and Rai Bahadur and the future only knows what more is in store.’
¹⁸

Gupt’s dig came at a time when Marwaris across India had consolidated their position as the top mercantile community that worked through a wide, often complicated, network of sub-castes and village affiliations going back to Rajasthan. Now they were aspiring to gain wider social acceptability and standing in tune with their growing clout in business. For this vaishya or trading-class community, the quest for education and social status was a big leap.

With Marwari domination of the growth of Indian capitalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, two crucial but contradictory things happened.
¹⁹
One, the community became an object of jealousy and derision, the butt of jokes and condemned as being self-aggrandizing, like the Jews in Europe. Two, the Marwaris themselves were undergoing an identity crisis of a peculiar kind. Here was an economically powerful community that did not have the commensurate social standing. Their simple lifestyle did not help their quest for status either. However, the decline of landed gentry across north India and the overall economic situation of the early twentieth century saw the Marwaris take centre stage, a process Lutgendorf terms ‘semi-involuntary upward mobility’, in which vaishyas became the new kshatriyas, owning villages and getting kshatriya titles like Raja. For instance, as Timberg points out, Raja Gokuldas of the banking firm of Sevaram Khushalchand of Jabalpur reportedly owned 158 villages: ‘Most of these estates were picked up at forced sale for tax defaults.’
²⁰
These upwardly mobile Marwaris often donated generously to religious and social causes.

Marwari munificence greatly contributed to their social standing, but came with its own share of tensions—a simple personal life pitted against a public persona based entirely on liberal charity mostly religious and social in nature. As Lutgendorf says, ‘Merchants faced a crisis of identity that reflected the classic tension in Hindu society between upward social aspiration and downwardly imposed order’, and in the ‘special circumstances of the period, the interaction of these forces in the assertion of new identities helped fuel both nationalism and religious revival’.
²¹

Marwaris were not alone in their search for a social identity. Intermediate castes like the Ahir Yadavs and Kurmis, with the influence and active help of the Arya Samaj and Ramanandis respectively, were at the forefront demanding kshatriya status. They had started wearing the sacred thread and formed caste associations like the Ahir Yadav Kshatriya Mahasabha in Haryana (1910) and the Gop Jatiya Mahasabha in Bihar (1912). The Kurmis, helped by the Ramanandis in tracing their lineage to Rama and Krishna, formed several caste associations like the Kurmi Sabha and All India Kurmi Kshatriya Mahasabha (1910).
²²

The Yadavs, traditionally worshippers of cows, played an active role in the cow-protection movement and setting up of gaurakshini sabhas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The cow as a cause of communal strife between Hindus and Muslims had already entered the daily discourse of national politics. Various sanatan Hindu dharma sabhas were advocating a complete ban on cow slaughter. From the 1870s to the early twentieth century, a series of communal riots on the issue of consumption of cow meat by Muslims further polarized the two communities.

The Marwaris with their economic might were at the forefront of bankrolling gaurakshini sabhas (cow protection associations) while the Yadavs took on the mantle of foot soldiers at the time of riots. Cow protection was also one of the pronounced goals of Gita Press, for which
Kalyan
was used as a vehicle with two special issues,
Gau Ank
(Issue on Cows) and
Ga
u Seva Ank
(Issue on Service to Cows), besides innumerable articles on cows in various issues of the journal. Poddar, along with Prabhudatt Brahmachari and Karpatri Maharaj, was instrumental in getting many slaughterhouses closed post 1947. He was part of one of the largest processions of sadhus and members of right-wing parties like the Jana Sangh and organizations like the RSS, Hindu Mahasabha and various sanatan dharma bodies, on a dharna (protest) outside Parliament on 7 November 1966.

Playing an important role in the cow-protection movement, a key facet of sanatan Hindu dharma, was not the only way in which Marwaris gained social standing. This was also achieved through building temples, shelter houses, schools and hospitals as well as sponsoring recitations of the
Ramcharitmanas
. Aggarwal Jati Ka Itihas
²³
lists hundreds of works of charity bankrolled by rich Marwari businessmen throughout the country. The writers add a disclaimer that the list that runs into thirteen pages is just a cursory one and to put together an exhaustive list would be impossible. The book does mention the role of Marwari philanthropy in the use of print technology to further the cause of sanatan dharma as well as to highlight the ills afflicting the community. In the view of the writers, Hinduism could only be saved by following the principles of sanatan dharma that had existed in the golden past but was being marred in the present ‘dark age’. Gita Press founders Jaydayal Goyandka and Hanuman Prasad Poddar find rich mention in this book, as in many other histories of the Marwaris.
²⁴

Kalyan
and Gita Press might have become the most successful print ventures to salvage and consolidate the spread of sanatan dharma, but the initiative and goal itself were not new. Two brothers in Bombay, Ganga Vishnu Bajaj and Khemraj Krishnadas Bajaj (originally from Churu) were among the earliest Marwaris to take to printing as a business and bring out Hindu religious works. In 1871, the duo started the Shri Venkateshwar Press from a single room in the Moti Bazar area of Bombay. By 1880 they had moved to a bigger place in Khetwadi, formally launching the Sri Venkateshwar Steam Press.
²⁵
Hanuman Chalisa
and
Vishnu Sahasranam
were the earliest titles to come out, and in the next few years the press printed 2,800 titles, almost the entire pantheon of texts on religion, spiritualism, philosophy, culture and history. In 1896, the brothers launched
Venkateshwar Samachar
, a non-controversial weekly that kept itself aloof from politics during the most intense period of the national movement in the first quarter of the twentieth century.
²⁶
As we shall see later, Venkateshwar Press would print the first thirteen issues of
Kalyan
for Gita Press.

In 1889, the weekly
Rajasthan Samachar
was started from Ajmer, financed by Samarthan Das, a Marwari businessman. Its avowed aim was to be a mouthpiece of the Arya Samaj and spread the teachings of Swami Dayanand Saraswati. By 1912,
Rajasthan Samachar
was a daily and, significantly, had moved away from the ideals of the Arya Samaj to promote sanatan Hindu dharma. Editor of
Bharatmitra
Bal Mukund Gupt severely criticized the paper for this shift, pointing out that even articles by social reformists had stopped appearing in
Rajasthan
Samachar
. Gupt blamed the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, a key proponent of sanatan dharma, for the change.
²⁷

Then there were publications like the Calcutta-based fortnightly
Marwari Gazette
(1890) that highlighted the problems of Rajasthan in general and Marwaris in particular. Its focus was on education for Marwaris, social and religious solidarity, and societal control to contain the growing streak of individualism among members of the community. Departing from the prevailing Hindu view that abhorred foreign travel, the
Marwari Gazette
celebrated such forays, as when the Raja of Khetri went abroad in 1897: ‘The Raja’s foreign travel is a daring act that would open the doors of progress.’
²⁸

The publications so far were mostly philanthropic or business efforts of individual wealthy Marwaris. It would be a while before community bodies would get involved in bringing out journals with the aim of reforming the new generation that had apparently deviated from the simple Marwari way of life, the ideals of sanatan dharma being the prescription for the desired correction. Through such initiatives, Marwaris replaced the ‘aristocracy and wealthy landlords’ as religious patrons, and changed ‘the kshatriya–brahmin interface of Hindu society’ to a ‘vaishya–brahmin interface’ that eventually resulted in the ‘Marwari-ization of Hinduism’.
²⁹

Marwari Sudhar
was the first such initiative from Ara in Bihar. Launched in 1921 through the efforts of Navrang Lal Tulsiyan, Haridwar Prasad Jalan and Durga Prasad Poddar,
Marwari Sudhar
had a non-Marwari editor in Shivpujan Sahay, among the tallest Hindi writers of his era. Sahay’s efforts saw a journal primarily catering to Marwaris become a serious voice in Hindi journalism. Published from Balkrishna Press in Calcutta, it attracted the best names of the Hindi world, such as Ayodhya Singh Upadhyay ‘Harioudh’, Ramcharit Upadhyay, Suryakant Tripathi ‘Nirala’, Ram Naresh Tripathi, Bhagwati Charan Varma and Viyogi Hari. For the little over two years that the journal was in existence, Sahay fiercely protected his editorial freedom. Often, substandard articles came in from Marwaris who assumed they had the right to have their contributions published in the community journal. Sahay would reject such contributions sternly but without malice. His autonomy as editor was evident even in the inaugural issue, where, in his editorial comment, Sahay wrote: ‘Marwaris have very little regard for learning. Even if a small fraction of their time spent in business was used for learning, the community would have been leading the nation.’
³⁰