Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (29 page)

Karpatri wrote thirty-nine articles for
Kalyan
, a majority of them communal in nature. Held in high esteem by Poddar and Gita Press, Karpatri Maharaj’s role in the movements for cow protection and against the Hindu Code Bill would be of great significance in a comprehensive assessment of his contribution to the Hindu cause.

On the other hand, Prabhudatt Brahmachari, ‘the saint of Jhusi’,
⁸³
was more open to political manoeuvring. Unlike Karpatri, Prabhudatt took to religion after being a full-time political activist. Born in Aligarh, he was among the earliest sadhu-politicians to participate in the national movement. He edited the newspaper
Aaj
in Banaras
⁸⁴
before giving it all away and setting up an ashram in Jhusi near Allahabad.

He had developed a close relationship with front-line RSS leaders, and Golwalkar and others convinced him to contest against Jawaharlal Nehru in the first general election of 1952.
⁸⁵
Despite a strong campaign by the RSS network and other right-wing groups on issues like cow protection and the avowed threat to Hindu family values by the proposed Hindu Code Bill, Prabhudatt could garner only 56,718 votes against Nehru’s 233,571. Still, overnight, Prabhudatt became the darling of the conservative set. In the next few years, he joined a galaxy of right- wing political groups and leaders that included Poddar and Gita Press, to make common cause on cow protection and against the Hindu Code Bill. A contributor to
Kalyan
from its second year on, Prabhudatt wrote fifty-four articles. He and Poddar shared a great personal rapport.

Kaka Kalelkar and Vinoba Bhave not only contributed to
Kalyan
but also became fellow-travellers of Poddar and Gita Press in their campaigns for cow protection and the popularization of Hindi and the Gita. However, despite their closeness to the Hindu Mahasabha and later Jana Sangh leaders, both of them retained their inclusive core and Gandhian values. Bhave, spiritual inheritor of Gandhi, an expert on Gita and leader of the Bhoodan movement, wrote on a range of subjects—from Gita to Hinduism to family planning—from
Kalyan
’s early days to the time it turned forty and beyond.

Kalelkar, who headed the Backward Classes Commission in 1953, was also a contributor to
Kalyan
from its early years but would not mince words when he felt the need to disagree with the editor. In 1968 he was invited by Poddar to contribute to
Kalyan
’s 1969 annual number on
Parlok Aur Punarjanam
(Next World and Rebirth). Critical of the ‘200 to 250’ topics that Poddar had listed for the issue, Kalelkar wrote that though he believed in the concept of rebirth, it made him angry whenever he heard that a person could be released from the cycle of rebirth if he/she bathed in a particular river or had a darshan of a particular statue of a god.
⁸⁶
He believed in the importance of karma (deeds): ‘One’s deeds in this life are based on actions of the previous life. At the same time, a person is also guided and inspired by resolutions made in this life.’ Kalelkar warned Poddar that he would end up collecting garbage from innumerable belief systems that would be difficult to review. He said detractors of sanatan Hindu dharma would immensely enjoy a special issue of
Kalyan
on a topic like rebirth: ‘They would be able to say that the followers of sanatan Hindu dharma believe in concepts that are idiotic and make no sense.’ Kalelkar nevertheless complimented Poddar for his effort, and requested him to carry his letter in the special issue of
Kalyan
.

Poddar carried Kalelkar’s letter of criticism in full, but with his own rebuttal. To claim that whatever was logically acceptable was the sole truth, Poddar said, would be a daring act. ‘There are things beyond our understanding that are considered to be true. Belief and logic do not coexist . . . Even if it is considered a sign of our poor knowledge we consider historical Krishna and Lord Krishna to be indistinguishable. When Kaka talks of garbage I take it as a compliment, as his style of humour. It is possible that from the mountain of garbage some of us would be able to find a pearl or two.’

Kalelkar liked the manner in which his letter was reproduced with Poddar’s reply. Later, Kalelkar told Radheshyam Banka, a key Gita Press functionary, ‘If Poddar is agreeable
Kalyan
can be used to debate differences of approach on sanatan dharma.’
⁸⁷

 

Intellectuals, Academics, Journalists, Artists
Historian Radha Kumud Mookerji had cut his teeth in politics during the Swadeshi movement against the Partition of Bengal. Associated with the Dawn Society, Mookerji along with a few others was instrumental in leading the boycott of university examinations. Later, he became a part of the National Council of Education, designing the syllabus and teaching in Bengal National College, the Swadeshi movement’s initiative in higher education in Calcutta.
⁸⁸
His involvement with what is called the national education movement did not last long, but the historical research conducted by him and others of his group had a ‘swadeshi wind’ about it.
⁸⁹
Mookerji researched and produced works on Chandragupta Maurya and ancient Indian oceanic trade and shipping.
⁹⁰
He relied on ‘classical Hindu texts and scriptures’ to argue for India’s fundamental unity, an attempt to counter the ‘colonial notion’ that Indian unity had been brought about by the British. Mookerji’s thesis endeared him to Hindu nationalists, whether in the Hindu Mahasabha or at Gita Press.

As the clouds of Partition darkened, Mookerji presided over the 7–8 October 1944 meeting of the Akhand Hindu Conference, a brainchild of Veer Savarkar, that saw the coming together of adversarial groups representing sanatanists, lower castes, Sikhs, organizations like the Arya Samaj and political parties like the Democratic Swaraj Party, Congress Nationalist Party and a few others. The idea was to present a united front against Partition. In his speech Mookerji said, ‘A crisis of the first magnitude has been created in our national history by some great leaders who have convinced themselves that it is impossible for our mother country to attain her independent status which is her birthright, except on the basis of Hindu-Muslim unity.’
⁹¹

For Mookerji, Poddar was a reverential figure: ‘I regret I do not know how to address an exalted personality like yourself. I am unable to express my feeling of greatness towards you which has increased all the more as you have made me look small by addressing me as His Highness.’
⁹²
Mookerji wrote for
Kalyan
and in turn invited Poddar to write for a publication with which he was involved. In 1954, when Mookerji’s article on Vedic thought was accepted for publication in
Kalyan
, the happy author asked if it would be possible to ‘print the Sanskrit terms, with which the article bristles, with necessary diacritical marks and accented types, as prescribed for their transliteration’
.
⁹³
However, his request could not be granted.

Radha Kumud’s brother Radha Kamal Mukerjee was a sociologist, economist, ecologist, spiritualist and institution-builder. Radha Kamal lived for some time with Benoy Kumar Sarkar who was a friend and colleague of Radha Kumud at Bengal National College.
⁹⁴
A brilliant student, successful teacher and a polyglot, Radha Kamal, as historian Ramachandra Guha points out, ‘anticipated, by decades, the methodological alliance recently forged in American university departments between ecology and the social sciences’
.
⁹⁵
Drawn to the Ramanandi sect very early in life, in his later years, Radha Kamal held discourses on the Gita in Lucknow where he taught sociology and economics at Lucknow University after stints in Calcutta, Gwalior and other places. For him, the study of history was important to ‘recover the glory of his motherland’,
⁹⁶
an argument that must have endeared him to Gita Press. A contributor to
Kalyan
from its early years, Radha Kamal wrote four articles on topics as varied as religious mystique, science and power, and the relationship between forests and pastureland.

Radha Kamal shared a warm relationship with Poddar, addressing the
Kalyan
editor as ‘Poddar Mahashaya’, and expressing ‘surprise’ that Poddar had not met him when visiting Lucknow. In future, he requested Poddar, ‘kindly stay in my house’.
⁹⁷
Theirs was not the usual editor– contributor relationship. In one communication, Radha Kamal asked Poddar if he had ‘sent Rs 100 to Messrs Longmans’, but there is no reference in the Poddar Papers that explains this transaction. Both brothers often wrote for
Modern Review
published from Calcutta.

Also among the contributors were academics such as Satyendra Nath Sen, professor at City College, Calcutta, former member of the Bengal legislative assembly and a political activist working for the rights of Hindus. In the index of writers maintained by Gita Press, the title Dharmaratna (jewel of religion) is prefixed to Sen’s name. Sen wrote for both
Kalyan
and
Kalyana
-
Kalpataru
. When asked to contribute an article on ‘dharma and politics’ for
Kalyana
-
Kalpataru
, he agreed but requested more time as he was ‘awfully busy these days in connection with an agitation for counteracting government’s interference with the civic and religious rights of the Hindus as manifested by the immersion tangle in many places in Bengal’
.
⁹⁸
The government had banned the passing of Durga Puja immersion processions with music through areas that had mosques, resulting in protests throughout Bengal. Hindu Mahasabha leaders were actively involved in the movement that led to widespread communal tension.
⁹⁹
In 1945, when asked to write on the cow, Sen told Poddar he was busy and instead asked him to carry his review of
Kalyan
’s
Gau Ank
that had appeared in
Voice of India
,
¹⁰⁰
a monthly published by the National Committee for India’s Freedom based in Washington DC.

Lending diversity to Gita Press’s corpus of contributors was Kshitimohan Sen, eminent scholar of Sanskrit and a Santiniketan don (grandfather of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen). With a life spent studying Hindu religious texts and social institutions, Sen’s interpretation, whether of the Islamic influence on Hinduism, the caste system among Hindus or the position of women, was fundamentally different from the tenets of sanatan Hindu dharma. However, Sen was an ‘unusual combination of consummate scholarship and undogmatic open- mindedness’,
¹⁰¹
and his stature as a scholar seems to have brought him into
Kalyan
’s fold of contributors. He wrote four articles, including one on Kabir and the unity of Hinduism. Medieval poets of both bhakti and Sufi traditions were Sen’s area of expertise, as is proven by the continuing publication of his 1929 classic
Medieval Mysticism of India
. Sisir Kumar Ghosh, translator of Sen’s
Hinduism
, was also a regular in the pages of
Kalya
n
.

Many articles by Rabindranath Tagore, who had managed to get Kshitimohan Sen to Santiniketan after much persuasion,
¹⁰²
were extracted in
Kalyan
. Though early issues of
Kalyan
carried Tagore’s writings, by 1936 his staff were citing his age in reply to requests for contributions from him: ‘Rabindranath Tagore has reached the age when it is finally necessary for all people to retire from public activity. Ominous physical signs are becoming manifest and his medical advisers and relatives have been able now to persuade him to make himself free from all work which may be avoided . . . Will you therefore kindly forgive him his inability to comply with your request?’
¹⁰³

Four years before the publication of
The Position of Women in
Hindu Civilisation
in 1938, a shastric defence of how women were protected and respected in ancient India, historian A.S. Altekar of Banaras Hindu University was requested to write for
Kalyan
’s
Shakti
Ank
. Altekar sent a letter of regret, his tone and tenor suggesting familiarity with Poddar and
Kalyan
. After thanking Poddar for the invitation, he wrote: ‘I am, however, extremely sorry that owing to my present literary commitments, it would not be possible for me to send any contribution for the number.’
¹⁰⁴
It is likely that Altekar was already working on his magnum opus on women.

India’s best-known linguist and an authority on Indo-European languages, Suniti Kumar Chatterjee took the time to write on the concept of Shiva in India for
Kalyan
’s annual issue on Shiva in 1933. When the
Hindu Sanskriti Ank
was being planned, Poddar wooed Chatterjee again. Thanking him for his ‘valuable’ article on Shiva, Poddar requested him to ‘contribute an article on the glory of greater India in the days of yore’ that would present an account of ‘all the important aspects of Indian culture as it existed and is still found in greater India’
.
¹⁰⁵
Chatterjee did not write this time.

The father-son duo Sir Ganganath Jha and Amar Nath Jha were scholars of repute in Sanskrit and English respectively. The two had long dominated the academic world of Allahabad and Banaras and could not escape the attention of Poddar, always in search of reputed contributors. Jha senior wrote eleven articles for
Kalyan
on various aspects of yoga, Vedanta, Gita and God. Unlike many scholars of his time, he stands out for confining himself to his subject. On the occasions that he failed to write on the topic requested by Poddar, he would send an alternative piece, giving Poddar the freedom to take the editorial call: ‘I hope this might be acceptable. If not please do not hesitate to tell me so. I shall then try to send something else.’
¹⁰⁶
Jha’s son Amar Nath wrote for the
Balak Ank
in 1953.