Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (26 page)

When G.P. Birla agreed to resume supply of newsprint, he made note of Poddar’s assurance that the ‘paper supplied to them for publication work would not be resold in the market’
.
²³⁶
But Shyam Sundar Goenka, G.P. Birla’s aide, was blunt, telling Poddar that the ‘difficulty being faced by Gita Press is due to their own deeds’
.
²³⁷
He assured Gita Press that ‘an institution working for a good cause’ would not find difficulty in the matter of getting supplies required for their own consumption. In what seemed to be an acknowledgement of Poddar’s growing disenchantment with the functioning of Gita Press, Goenka asked him if the press would sincerely act as per his assurance.

Within a few months Gita Press faced another major shortage of newsprint. While the monthly allotted quota was of 150 tonnes, it was getting merely 30 per cent of this. Poddar had to intervene again and take up the issue with G.P. Birla so that Gita Press could continue to ‘carry out its work of producing noble literature’
.
²³⁸

When in 1970 Ramnath Goenka found a text called
Narayanam
consisting of 1,008 Sanskrit shlokas (verses) rendered in Devanagari, he sent the text to Poddar with a request that it be published along with a translation. However, on discovering from Jaidayal Dalmia that Gita Press was facing a newsprint crunch and was even outsourcing some of its own work, Goenka offered to get it published from Delhi.
²³⁹

As the losses piled up, Gita Press had to consider hiking the prices of its publications. Gobind Bhawan incurred a loss of Rs 34,000 in 1970, whereas the previous year it had made a profit.
²⁴⁰
Rising input costs—paper, postage and salaries of employees—were making it difficult to run the operations. This time, however, Poddar resisted the price rise. He said any hike would go against the basic ethos of Gita Press to provide high-quality books at cheap rates. Poddar convinced trustee Ishwari Prasad Goenka that the hike, if any, should take place only after the preparation of the balance sheet for 1970. Keeping the rising Naxalite violence in Bengal in mind, Poddar also argued that any hike in the price of books leading to extra income would not be advisable in the prevailing political circumstances. He was worried about the spread of violence from Bengal to other provinces.
²⁴¹

At the same time, Poddar expressed the fear that mounting losses could result in the suspension of publication of religious literature. He cited the instance of
Ramcharitmanas Gutka
(handbook) that was sold at 90 paise though it cost Rs 1.25 plus the commission to booksellers.

The price of
Ramcharitmanas Gutka
was intensely debated within Gita Press as it had received a bulk order for 100,000 copies from Mauritius in 1970. Caught in the dilemma of charging just the cost price or weaving in a marginal profit, Poddar and Jaidayal Dalmia considered various options. One was not to mention the cover price and to put the name of Indo-Mauritius Maitri Sangh (India-Mauritius Friendship Federation) as the publisher instead of Gita Press.
²⁴²
After much discussion each copy was priced at Re 1. It was proposed that the cost of Rs 3,500 for preparing the negatives for offset printing be contributed by Vishnu Hari Dalmia, son of Jaidayal Dalmia and a senior member of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). The objective of this right-wing organization with members drawn from the RSS and other Hindu groups, established in August 1964, was to create a large network of Hindus across the world. Mauritius with more than 50 per cent Hindu population and a large number of religious organizations was an ideal hunting ground, and it is possible that the VHP had a role in this bulk order.

Around the same time, Gita Press approached the Reserve Bank of India for issuance of a blanket permit for export of religious literature.
²⁴³
The permit was probably being sought to meet the order from Mauritius. Gita Press already had an export permit that was sanctioned on a monthly basis. The extension of this permit every thirty days, Gita Press argued in its application, usually took a long time, as a result of which the shipments regularly missed the Scindia Steam Navigation Company vessel that used to carry them free of cost. Gita Press, therefore, sought an annual permit for the ‘export of religious books free of charge to various countries except China, Portugal and Pakistan’
.
²⁴⁴
It was pointed out to the RBI how the export of such literature was helpful ‘for developing better religious and cultural ties with other countries of the world’
.

Over the decades since Poddar’s death, Gita Press has seen further financial highs and lows. However, it remains a phenomenon in India’s publishing world and has moved with the times, at least technologically speaking, with its user-friendly website offering copies of its publications as well as online subscriptions to
Kalyan
and
Kalyana-Kalpataru
, still at surprisingly low prices.

Besides the epics and historical texts, Gita Press publications drew on Shruti, Smriti and the Puranas for their form and content.
²
Shruti, ‘the most sacred part of the scriptures of Hinduism, is considered an ultimate authority in matters of faith and practice; it can be interpreted, but not superseded or bypassed’
.
³
It is believed, as historian A.L. Basham points out, that Shruti was ‘directly revealed to its authors’.
⁴
The Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, Upanishads come under this category. Smriti, ‘what has been revealed’, consists of Hindu religious texts written in the post-Vedic period; these texts ‘deal mainly with law ascribed to inspired lawgivers, such as
Manusmriti
and
Yajnavalkyasmriti
’
.
⁵
Smriti is a few notches lower than Shruti in sanctity.
⁶
Without getting into the larger philosophical, religious and social conflict of Shruti vs Smriti, Gita Press straddled the two worlds, taking from texts of both the genres. The larger idea was to educate the masses about India’s golden past as a point of reference for the current dark age. In an enterprise that looked at the ‘entire nation as a classroom’ and its publications as tools of pedagogy,
⁷
making any distinction between Shruti and Smriti would have meant digressing from the larger mission of defending sanatan Hindu dharma and restoring its glory.

The editorial policy aimed at inculcating six qualities in human beings through two means—conscience and detachment. The six ultimate goals were listed as titiksha (forbearance), sam (equilibrium), dum (vitality), uprati (freedom from physical desires), shraddha (faith/respect) and samadhan (resolution).
⁸
However, these lofty goals were diluted by ambivalence when the journal stated that it recognized the importance of money and carnal desire in the life of human beings while stressing that the yearning for these two should be moderated by religion.
⁹

Seeking contributions for
Kalyan
and other publications was a secular exercise. Poddar would knock on each door, regardless of the writer’s religious or political affiliation. The contributors to
Kalyan
were a mix of Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Parsi mendicants and spiritualists, academics and Indologists (both Indian and foreign), poets and writers, community or political leaders. The idea was to create a wide consensus on the need for Hinduism’s revival and to make this a collective exercise.

Sri Aurobindo Ghose and the Mother (born Mirra Alfassa in Paris) together contributed more than fifty articles to
Kalyan
. Poddar and Aurobindo had known each other from Calcutta. Poddar claimed that the Ghose-edited newspapers
Bande Mataram
and
Dharma
that later became
Karmayogin
influenced him as a young man to take to revolutionary activity, join the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti and Anushilan Samiti. Poddar’s relationship not only with Ghose, but also his followers at the Pondicherry ashram, was to last a lifetime. Many of the ashram inmates were associated with the various departments of Gita Press.

Preparing an exhaustive list of the sadhus/sanyasis who wrote for
Kalya
n
, and the stories associated with their contributions, is an exercise in itself. Based on an index of authors in the Poddar Papers, one may state with a fair amount of conviction that a majority of India’s god- men wrote for Gita Press. After all, it was a religious journal, the first of its kind, and captured the imagination of readers, particularly those involved in the Hindu religious world.

There was, for instance, the contributor Madhava Ashish, born as Alexander Phipps to Protestant parents. He went from a public school to the College of Aeronautical Engineering at Chelsea, London, but could not finish his course. Phipps came to India during World War II as an aircraft engineer, and a chance meeting with Ramana Maharshi took him to Uttar Brindavan Ashram in Mirtola village of Almora district. Phipps was rechristened Madhava Ashish by his guru Sri Krishna Prem, and became Krishna Prem’s closest aide. In 1959, Madhava wrote to Poddar expressing his guru’s inability to write for the
Manavta Ank
(1959) since he ‘had completely given up writing’
.
¹²
Madhava also declined to write himself. However, seven years later he wrote for the
Dharma Ank
(1966).

Other sanatan dharma organizations sometimes sought Gita Press’s collaboration. Bharat Dharma Mahamandal founded in 1902, in which Madan Mohan Malaviya had played an important role, was one of the first such organizations. By 1934, the Mahamandal, which claimed to be an ‘all-India socio-religious association of the sanatanists recognized by the Imperial government, Hindu ruling princes, all religious heads and all Hindu communities’ realized that, despite its experience, its publications were not reaching the public in the same manner as those of Gita Press. The Maharaja of Darbhanga, who headed the organization, wrote to Poddar that its publications were not doing well since it was run by brahmins who did not have knowledge of commerce. Poddar was requested to take over the entire range of Mahamandal publications and print them the way he wanted. ‘You are also doing the work of Bharat Dharma Mahamandal. It is not only for the welfare of Hindus but you have been entrusted this task by gods themselves to spread the light of knowledge in the world.’
¹³
However, for reasons unknown, Gita Press could not oblige.

Similarly, there was yoga teacher Swami Dev Murti, who had taken yoga to Europe in a big way and operated out of his headquarters in Lauf, Germany. In 1968, the Swami was visiting India after a decade, with thirty European disciples. His contact person in Delhi, one Shyam Swarup Sharma, wrote that Gita Press and Swami Dev Murti were on a similar mission to propagate Indian civilization, culture, philosophy and religion; that the Swami had deep appreciation for the work being done by Gita Press and desired that all its publications be kept in his ashrams in Europe. Sharma said during his one-day visit to Banaras, Swami Dev Murti would like to visit the office of Gita Press there.
¹⁴

Towards some god-men Gita Press was not so positively inclined, for example Mahesh Yogi whose new form of yoga and philosophy of transcendental meditation—loosely explained, it involved the merging of the conscious and the subconscious mind—had become a sore point with Poddar. The Beatles had visited Mahesh Yogi in his Rishikesh ashram in 1968, bringing him and his meditation technique under blazing international media spotlight. Gita Press saw Mahesh Yogi’s practice as a deviation from the well-laid-out shastric path and a threat to sanatan Hindu dharma.

Poddar chose to ignore him, calling his principles ‘blatantly against the tradition of sanatan dharma devotion’
.
Ruling out any article on Mahesh Yogi in
Kalyan
, Poddar said even criticism would amount to giving him publicity: ‘Readers of
Kalyan
who do not know about him will also become aware of him.’
¹⁵
However, in his column where he replied to readers’ queries, Poddar did refer to Mahesh Yogi, though not by name, questioning the interpretation of a stanza from the Gita in support of transcendental meditation: ‘Popularity and large crowd is not an index of being truthful . . . These days there are many non- shastric sects in existence. This is also one of them.’
¹⁶

With the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in the USA, and its founder Swami Prabhupada, Poddar and Gita Press shared a more gentle relationship at both personal and institutional levels. Though at times Prabhupada would be highly critical and even dismissive of Poddar—calling him a ‘mundane type’,
¹⁷
‘not so formidable rascal’ and ‘impersonalist’
¹⁸
—he held Gita Press in high esteem for popularizing the Gita and the cult of Krishna. He was also appreciative of the fact that Gita Press did not accept any advertisement or review books in
Kalyan
and
Kalyana-Kalpataru
.
¹⁹
In 1961 or 1962, Prabhupada visited Gorakhpur as the guest of Poddar, and in February 1971, Prabhupada and forty of his students from ISKCON were the guests of Gita Press.
²⁰

In January 1970, Poddar wrote to Prabhupada for information as he wished to carry a comprehensive article on him and the growth of ISKCON in
Kalyan
. Since Prabhupada was travelling, he replied to Poddar only in the beginning of February, sending a long autobiographical sketch, beginning with his days as a manager in Calcutta’s Dr Bose Laboratory and the life-changing experience of his meeting with his guru Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati who asked him to preach the message of Lord Chaitanya in the Western world. Prabhupada thanked Poddar for helping him and ISKCON in the publication of the first volume of
Srimad-Bhagavatam
(1960–61) and explained in great detail the working of ISKCON, rules of the sect, etc.
²¹

Even as Prabhupada was preparing to send material for the
Kalyan
article to Poddar, the latter sought permission to also publish the ISKCON account in a book form. Prabhupada agreed. He told Poddar that ISKCON’s London office would send more pictures and newspaper cuttings for the book, writing: ‘This book will enthuse me as well as the whole Vaisnava society . . . So in India also we have to do many things because very recently, by the propaganda of the politicians the younger generation has become victimized to become Godless.’
²²

The article appeared in
Kalyan
’s April 1971 issue. Prabhupada wrote a thank-you letter, asking Poddar to send a specimen copy by airmail.
²³
Prabhupada also informed N.C. Chatterjee, independent member of the fourth Lok Sabha and former president of the Hindu Mahasabha, about the
Kalyan
article which, he said, had ‘very nicely presented news’ about ISKCON’s activities. ‘As a result we are getting many inquiries from India,’ Prabhupada told Chatterjee.
²⁴

Though early issues of
Kalyan
carried several pieces by Gandhi, who also blessed the journal with a handwritten note carried in
Bhakta
Ank
, the annual issue of
Kalyan
in 1928, Poddar was not willing to publish Gandhi’s translation of the Gita—
Anashakti Yoga
—as he felt that Gandhi’s refusal to accept the Gita as a historical text was not in consonance with the views of Gita Press.
²⁶
Kalyan
’s disagreement with Gandhi on the question of Gita spilled over to other journals as well. Reviewing
Kalyan
’s
Shri Krishna Ank
(1931), journal
Saraswati
highlighted Padam Singh Sharma’s critique of Gandhi. Sharma had mocked Gandhi for calling the battle of Mahabharata an imaginary tale but still lifting lessons on ahimsa from the Gita—Arjuna at the beginning of the battle had already articulated the ideals of peace and non- violence.
²⁷

The relationship between Gita Press and the Mahatma grew tempestuous after a series of deep disagreements on caste and communal issues, such as temple entry for Harijans and the Poona Pact. Still,
Kalyan
carried a total of fifty-four articles by Gandhi going by index of writers in Poddar Papers, some extracted from
Navjivan
and
Harijan
, but most others specially commissioned and a few even carried posthumously. Poddar would often contact Jamnalal Bajaj or Mahadev Desai for a contribution from the Mahatma. At times, Pyarelal, another of Gandhi’s aides, would select the piece and send it to
Kalyan
with Bapu’s approval.
²⁸
Gandhi wrote on a whole range of issues, from the importance of God in one’s life to the influence of Western culture, the status of Hindu widows and the merits of cow protection. Interestingly, Gandhi’s articles appeared even during the tumultuous 1940s when
Kalya
n
was severely critical of him for his stand on Muslims.