Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (30 page)

Three eminent foreigners who came to India in search of spirituality, peace and love, and made it their home, were pursued by Poddar and convinced to write for
Kalyan
and
Kalyana
-
Kalpataru
. During the first quarter of the twentieth century, C.F. Andrews, Nicholas Roerich and George Arundale had made their home in Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Madras respectively, and contributed immensely to India’s intellectual enrichment.

Andrews, a British clergyman and lecturer at St Stephen’s College in Delhi since 1904,
¹⁰⁷
became a key person in Gandhi’s inner circle and played a crucial role in the national movement as a passionate advocate of the Indian cause. The period Andrews was coming close to Gandhi is also the time Poddar was deeply enamoured of him, and it is likely the two disciples had formed a bond. A certain degree of comfort must have existed early on between Andrews and Poddar as we find a 1923 letter from Andrews, then in Santiniketan, recommending Satyendranath Banerjee for an artist’s job at Gita Press.
¹⁰⁸
Gita Press had just come up in Gorakhpur, publishing religious texts in small numbers, and
Kalyan
had not yet been conceived, though Poddar was already close to Goyandka. Andrews’ first article appeared in the third issue of
Kalyan
in the first year. It was on St Francis of Assisi. Fourteen years later, he contributed another one on the worldwide propagation of the Gita.

Cambridge-educated Arundale was principal of Central Hindu College, and tutor to J. Krishnamurti and his brother Nityananda who succeeded Annie Besant as president of the Theosophical Society. First asked in 1935 to send an article, Arundale refused: ‘I am afraid that with my innumerable preoccupations, especially just now, it is quite impossible for me to send you any article.’
¹⁰⁹
In 1940, Arundale wrote an article on the Gita, his sole contribution to
Kalyan
.

Sophia Wadia of the United Lodge of theosophists, shot to fame with her
Brotherhood of Religions
, a compendium of essays that showed the ‘similarity in the fundamentals’
¹¹⁰
of all religions. Her quest for knowledge of all religions had brought her in touch with Gita Press. In 1934, when the Gita Society was floated, Wadia ‘greatly approved of the idea’111 and ‘gladly’ joined. In
Kalyan
she wrote on the concept of God in theosophy. Like Wadia, Sir S. Subramanya Iyer, founding member of Theosophical Society of India and a close associate of Annie Besant during the time of the Home Rule League, wrote a lone article for
Kalyan
on the lifeline of ‘Aryans’.

In 1928, after a long journey throughout the country, painter Nicholas Roerich had made his home in Naggar, Kulu, in the then state of Punjab. Here he ran his Urusvati Himalayan Research Institute ‘to study the results of their (the Roerichs’) expedition, and of those explorations that were yet to come’
.
¹¹²
A keen observer impressed with Indian spiritualism, ‘philosophical concepts were turned into visual images’ by him. (His son Svetoslav, also an artist, married noted Indian actor Devika Rani.) Within few years of Roerich’s settling in India, he and Poddar were communicating with each other. In 1932 Poddar was informed about ‘spare leaflets of Prof. de Roerich’s book
Realm of Light
’ and the ‘possibility of including these with your magazine (
Kalyan
) to your closest subscribers’
.
¹¹³

Roerich himself was excited about writing for
Kalyan
. A request in 1932 from Poddar to contribute for the
Ishwar Ank
met with an enthusiastic response. Roerich promised not only to write the article ‘
Raj Rajeswari
’ but also to send a photograph of one of his paintings. Along with this he also sent a ‘coloured reproduction of the same painting amongst a set of coloured postcard reproductions of paintings’ housed in his museum in New York. He had fulsome praise for Gita Press and
Kalyan
: ‘I greatly rejoice seeing your sincere enlightened strivings towards the highest principles of Existence and I certainly wish your journal full deserved success.’
¹¹⁴

Yet another novel contributor to
Kalyan
was C.Y. Chintamani. Born in a family of priests that served the royal family of Vizianagaram, he made the United Provinces his karmabhumi (place of work)—first as the editor of
Indian People
, promoted by Motilal Nehru, and later as the editor of Madan Mohan Malaviya’s
Leader.
A one-time Congressman, Chintamani left on grounds of corruption within the party and floated his own National Liberal Federation with the likes of Tej Bahadur Sapru, Chimanlal Setalvad, Dinshaw Wacha and S.N. Banerjea. An eccentric follower of Gopal Krishna Gokhale—to the extent that he would book an extra train berth and keep it vacant for his idol (who died in 1915)—Chintamani became a member of the UP legislative council and the province’s first education minister.
¹¹⁵
On Poddar’s insistence he wrote two articles for
Kalyan
in the late 1930s, on Tulsidas’s
Ramcharitmanas
and on the Gita.

Then there was journalist and writer Shripad R. Tikekar of Poona, who proved to be a tough negotiator and remarkably blunt about money. In 1927, Tikekar had written for
The Crisis
, the journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, edited by African–American civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois.
¹¹⁶
When this article was offered for publication in
Kalyana-Kalpataru
, Poddar refused to pay for it—which was unacceptable to Tikekar. In 1935 Tikekar wrote again, this time with an offer Poddar could not resist. Tikekar said he had the full text of Warren Hastings’s 40,000-word note on the first English translation of the Gita published in 1784. After stressing the novelty of what he had, Tikekar told Poddar: ‘You can imagine the difficulty in securing such an old copy of the original, let alone the trouble and cost of typing. To you I need not request to consider the worth or importance of the note, especially when it comes from the pen of so known a personality as Warren Hastings. May I therefore know what terms you would offer me for the contribution if at all you care to have it?’ Further on, Tikekar descended to his blunt language: ‘Let me plainly say, that whatever high your ideals, and howsoever laudable the objects for which you work, you cannot and I am sure, will not expect others to work for you for the mere love of labour.’
¹¹⁷

From Tikekar’s next letter it is clear Poddar had shown some interest and made inquiries about the payment expected. Tikekar demanded Rs 20 for the full text, and repeated: ‘. . . under no circumstances, will it be allowed to be published gratis’
.
¹¹⁸
Finally, Poddar asked Tikekar to edit Hastings’s note to 5,000 words. This Tikekar sent to Gorakhpur in April 1935, reminding Poddar that what he was charging was not a fee but money that he had spent from his own pocket. As their relationship had thawed a bit, Tikekar asked for more work, ‘Will you please allow me to be of some use to your magazine? But you will have to allow little considerations for the expenses which I have to suffer.’
¹¹⁹
He offered an entire list of Hindu temples in Afghanistan, and requested that he be sent a copy of the issue of
Kalyana
-
Kalpataru
in which the Hastings note appeared.

 

Response of the Hindi Literary World
For
Kalyan
it was not enough to have gathered the mightiest, the best and the holiest among its writers; this first-of-its-kind religious genre journal needed to be noticed and patronized by the Hindi literary world. Poddar’s legendary networking skills and almost dogged perseverance were on full display here. The Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, that started as an offshoot of the Nagari Pracharini Sabha in 1910 and became an independent body with headquarters in Allahabad, held annual meetings at various venues in north India. In 1930, the meeting was held in Gorakhpur and Poddar hosted stalwarts like Banarsi Das Chaturvedi, Thakur Shivmurti Singh and others. Poddar’s aide Ramjidas Bajoria was entrusted the task of taking care of the writers, prompting Chaturvedi to remark: ‘If ever a school of care and hospitality is opened Bajoria should be made its principal’
.
¹²⁰

Poddar also got involved with the Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha started by Gandhi in 1918 to popularize Hindi as the national language.
¹²¹
He participated in literary politics from the margins and made
Kalyan
a forum for articles on Hindi as the keystone of nationalism. Most of these articles were one-sided, glorifying the spread of Hindi as a unifying force, a kind of cultural glue. The Hindi Sahitya Sammelan would appreciate Poddar’s initiative and efforts in 1967 by honouring him with its highest award, Sahitya Vachaspati.

However, Gita Press’s mission of defending and disseminating sanatan Hindu dharma and addressing the question of cultural and political identity failed to cut much ice with the leaders of the Hindi movement. As a result, despite its vast body of work, Gita Press failed to find a place in authoritative accounts of twentieth-century Hindi literature. Two exceptions were
Mishrabandhuvinod
and
Hindi Bhasha
Aur Uske Sahitya Ka Vikas
.

Mishrabandhuvinod
(Delight of the Mishra Brothers), a monumental four-volume history of Hindi literature and a passionate defence of Hindi as a language of independent standing with its own grammar, was the first ‘comprehensive attempt from within the Hindi community to craft a historical narrative for their own literature’
.
¹²²
‘Those who depend on Sanskrit grammar to write Hindi language are the ones who do not recognize the existence of Hindi. We consider them enemies of Hindi,’
Mishrabandhuvinod
stated.
¹²³

A collaborative exercise of three brothers—Ganeshbihari, Shyambihari and Sukhdevbihari Mishra—
Mishrabandhuvinod
was a raging success when it appeared in 1913. Sold out immediately (black marketeers seem to have made a killing),
¹²⁴
the book was updated with subsequent editions including new writers, those omitted in earlier editions and those on the horizon.

The novelty of
Mishrabandhuvinod
was its chronicling of the major, minor and even minuscule initiatives that helped Hindi find its feet. The mammoth exercise was inclusive in intent, lending space to all kinds of writers and all genres of writing without discrimination, but with critical analysis of the potential of each one of them.

In the 1934 edition of
Mishrabandhuvinod
, Poddar finds a brief mention with ‘Marwari’ suffixed to his name as
Kalyan
’s editor whose articles are full of ‘scholarship’.
Kalyan
, the book states, ‘has a circulation of 20,000 per month; among all Hindi journals it has special importance but the articles are ordinary’
.
¹²⁵
Call it a reflection of Poddar’s ability or his considerable networking skills, his persona had subsumed both Gita Press and Jaydayal Goyandka, the prime mover behind the initiative.

Hindi Bhasha Aur Uske Sahitya Ka Vikas
(The Origin and Development of the Hindi Language and Its Literature) was a compilation of lectures delivered by Ayodhya Singh Upadhyay ‘Harioudh’ at Patna University, published by the university in 1934. A former kanungo (land registrar) from Nizamabad in Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh and a sanatani (traditionalist) in his religious beliefs, Harioudh wrote during his years in service and later took to teaching at Banaras Hindu University and elsewhere.
¹²⁶
An acquaintance of G.A. Grierson who conducted the Linguistic Survey of India (1898– 1928), Harioudh was also a contributor to
Kalyan,
mostly of poems. His book, less ambitious than
Mishrabandhuvinod
, contextualized the growth of Hindi more cogently. It did not go into reporting each personality and every change. While admitting that Urdu literature had reached a level of sophistication, Harioudh vehemently argued that the two languages were not only different but ‘Hindi is the mother of Urdu . . . I do not agree that Hindi is based on principles of Urdu language’
.
He praised Gita Press for its publication of religious books, but reserved the credit for Poddar: ‘His enthusiasm is not only praiseworthy but worthy of even superlative commendation. He not only writes religious books but also gives the task to others. He is seriously involved in popularizing these religious books.’ Harioudh placed
Kalyan
, clearly a religious journal, along with Hindi mainstream and literary magazines like
Madhuri
,
Chand
,
Sudha
,
Saraswati
,
Vishal
Bharat
,
Vina
,
Hans
and
Vigyan
, that in his opinion were not only well edited but considered prestigious in the Hindi literary world.
¹²⁷

Between
Mishrabandhuvinod
and Harioudh’s
Hindi Bhasha Aur
Uske Sahitya Ka Vikas
, appeared Ramchandra Shukla’s
Hindi Sahitya
Ka Itihas
in 1929, the most authoritative account of Hindi literary history. Though Shukl’s work would later be comprehensively criticized, it still retains its seminal position. Shukl laid stress on including only important writers and major literary trends to place the growth of Hindi in a historical context, and this may account for his omission of Gita Press,
Kalyan
and even Poddar. Interestingly, Shukl wrote on ‘
Mana
s Ki Dharmbhumi
’ (Spirituality of Mind) for
Kalyan
in 1938. Omission from Shukl’s influential book presumably played a role in the lack of critical attention paid by modern historians of Hindi nationalism and public sphere to Gita Press’s contribution.