Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (16 page)

Sanyal’s construct of Indian history as Hindu history, denying even a mention to centuries of Muslim and British rule and influence, was in line with the view of Hindu nationalism as representing Indian nationalism. In this view, both Muslims and the British would bear the tag of foreigners and polluters of sanatan Hindu dharma that had resulted in the ‘dark age’ of the late nineteenth–early twentieth century. Partha Chatterjee contends that this ‘notion of Hindu-ness’ should not be seen as a religious construct alone, since there are ‘no specific beliefs or practices which characterize this “Hindu” and the many doctrinal or sectarian differences among Hindus are irrelevant to this concept’.
⁹
The only distinction that the Sanyal kind of history made was between what happened in India and what came from outside. In the process, as Chatterjee points out, even the most vocal opposition to brahminical Hinduism, as posed by Buddhism and Jainism, finds place in the Indian history while Islam and Christianity are left out.

The novelty of a religious journal upholding sanatan Hindu dharma meant many readers would turn to
Kalyan
for spiritual solace and even for advice on direct communion with and darshan (vision) of God. Poddar concealed the identity of one such reader from Gujarat who wanted a categorical reply about whether it was possible to have darshan of God.
¹⁰
For someone like Poddar, who for the next few years would claim to have several visions of gods and conversations with them that became part of the carefully cultivated folklore around him, there was nothing outrageous or unrealistic about the question. The crux of his long reply was a resounding yes, provided the devotee had supreme longing to see God, almost akin to a lover’s pining for his beloved.

Gita Press benefited greatly from its new vehicle
Kalyan
. Its activities were not limited to the print arena. Regretting that India had slipped into a dark age as people had stopped thinking about God, Gita Press through
Kalyan
appealed to Hindus to recite
Hare Ram, Hare Ram;
Ram
, Ram, Hare, Hare; Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna; Krishna, Krishna,
Hare
, Hare
—a mantra that has the name of God sixteen times. A similar attempt in 1925 by Satsang Bhavan had not been very successful, but a year later the power of
Kalyan
was on display.
¹¹

Kalyan
asked its readers to recite the mantra three-and-a-half crore (35,000,000) times within a Hindu calendar month, which would mean that God’s name would be repeated a total of fifty-six crore times. Readers were asked to spread the message to every nook and corner of the country. Participants in this exercise were to report the number of times the verse was recited but not name those who recited it. A new department called Naam Jap Vibhag was set up in Satsang Bhavan to maintain a record of the recitations being reported. This continues as a department of Gita Press in Gorakhpur today.

The striking feature of this initiative was its comprehensive nature, belying Gita Press’s firmness on matters of ritual, varnashram dharma (the four stages of life) and gender. One, it made clear that while each individual should recite the verse at least 108 times daily there was no harm if the process was interrupted. Further, the appeal was to Hindus of all castes, men, women and children. This ran counter to Gita Press’s dominant discourse on upholding the fourfold caste system and prescribing strict rituals and moral and public rules for women—most significantly the need for them to be segregated from God and their husbands during the ‘impure’ period of menstruation.

Gita Press used
Kalya
n
in its first year as a testing ground for issues that it would later take up on a sustained basis—cow protection being chief among them. Ganga Prasad Agnihotri, a leading voice on cow protection, lamented the practice of cow slaughter and advocated the spread of literature on the cow as an auspicious symbol representing good fortune.

One of the first letters to the editor in
Kalyan
was from Lajjaram Mehta, author of
Adarsha Hindu
(The Ideal Hindu), published in 1915. Mehta was a prominent writer of the pre-Premchand era and his work exemplified ‘resistance to the social transformation’ taking place in India at the time. In
Adarsha Hindu
, Mehta had attempted to ‘emphasize the significance of Hindu religion, eradicate the evils in Hindu society and to create a healthy and virtuous society based on the beliefs of sanatan dharma’.
¹²

In his letter to
Kalyan
, Mehta praised the initiative ‘especially at a time when, intoxicated with the dream of Swaraj (self-rule), sanatan dharma is being attacked’.
¹³
He continued, ‘There is need for a journal that would explain issues like untouchability and widow remarriage from the point of the shastras (traditional texts) and save varnashram dharma from our friends who are advocating a mixed-varna (caste) system.’ His ire was directed at political leaders who ‘don’t have knowledge of Sanskrit and the shastras, are not leaders of sanatan dharma nor have the right to enter the provincial council or rule the country’.

The letter was given a place of prominence in
Kalyan
, and in his editorial response, Poddar entirely agreed with Mehta. Poddar justified untouchability but urged upper castes to be benevolent and kind towards lower castes—without coming in contact with them, just the way ‘we do not come in contact with our respectable mother and beloved wife when they are menstruating’.

Further, he termed widow remarriage a sin. In his view, one who enticed a widow into marrying again denied her the virtue of spending the rest of her life in remembering her husband. ‘A fear is being created among widows that suppressing their physical urges will torment them. Invoking passion amongst widows is the biggest threat to Hinduism’s holy and glorious tradition of virtuous women.’

Gita Press in general and
Kalyan
in particular claimed to uphold Hindu tenets delineated in the shastras
.
Gender segregation was prescribed even during Holi, the popular north Indian festival of colours that saw temporary suspension of gender and caste barriers. For
Kalyan
, a man playing Holi with ‘other women’ was a form of sexual union and even playing with ‘apni stri’ (one’s own woman) would cause loss of virility. Instead, it said, Holi should be spent propagating stories of Prahlad and reciting devotional songs.
¹⁴

The early issues of
Kalya
n
were defining ones: their broad sweep of contents and various columns would remain more or less unchanged for decades. Though new columns were added and some columns became irregular, the template of the inaugural year endured in spirit. Several special columns appeared in
Kalyan
over the years.

The column ‘
Kalyan
’ was written by Poddar under the name Shiva. After Poddar’s death, the column continued, with his articles and speeches being republished. Though rechristened ‘
Kalyan Vani
’ for a while after he died, it soon reverted to ‘
Kalyan
’. ‘
Padho, Samjho Aur
Karo
’ (Read, Understand and Practise) appeared in 1958 for the first time and was aimed at inculcating high moral values among readers by citing real-life incidents to prove the existence of a supreme power. In another early column, ‘
Paramhans Vivekmala
’ (Moral Tales of the Supreme Seer), Swami Bhole Baba’s discourse appeared in question- answer format. ‘
Vivek Vatika
’ (Garden of Conscience) consisted of sayings and writings of seers and extracts from religious texts. Through ‘
Parmarth Patravali
’ (Letters on Salvation) Poddar and Goyandka replied to the religious and spiritual queries of readers, while ‘
Parmarth Ki
Pagdandiyan
’ (Roads to Salvation) carried notes and advice for devotees. ‘
Sadhakon Ke Prati
’ (For the Devotees) was a column by Swami Ramsukh Das, a trusted friend of Poddar’s, and dealt with questions from people caught in spiritual and religious dilemmas. After the Swami’s death in 2005 the column continued, using views from his discourses. ‘
Satsang
Vatika Ke Bikhre Suman
’ (Scattered Flowers of the Garden of Discourse), since discontinued, contained nuggets of advice for those involved in prayer, meditation and devotion to God. In ‘
Kaam Ke Patra
’ (Meaningful Letters) Poddar replied to the devotional, moral, practical, social, political, familial and personal questions of readers. This was one of the most popular columns of
Kalyan
. The column ‘
Bhakt Gatha
’ (Tales of Devotees) has been in existence since 1926, though it is not as regular now as in earlier years. ‘
Vratotsav
’ (Joy of Keeping Religious Vows) is immensely popular among those who keep fasts or perform other rituals on certain festivals or on the basis of the celestial positions of planets. ‘
Sadhnopayogi Patra
’ (Useful Letters on Devotion) is similar to ‘
Kaa
m Ke Patra
’.
¹⁵

Kalyan
’s leading light, Jaydayal Goyandka, suffered from stomach ailments, and towards the end of 1926 was taken from his hometown Bankura to Banaras for treatment under the prominent city vaidya (Ayurvedic practitioner) Trimbak Shastri. The journal would regularly carry updates on his health and continued to publish his replies to readers, many given during his discourses and speeches.

At the end of the first year,
Kalyan
had done exceedingly well, with a circulation of 3,000 copies each month, an unbelievable figure for a genre-based journal. In fact, as was customary in India, most copies were read by more than one individual, being passed from hand to hand, so the actual readership may have been five or six times more. There were instances of rich Marwari businessmen buying
Kalyan
in bulk: Kasturchand Goradia of the firm Shaligram Kasturchand took fifty subscriptions, another reader took ten and some promised to pay double the cover price if the publishers doubled the number of pages. Enthused by the response, a publisher’s note in the seventh issue of the first year promised a change in format and size of
Kalyan
.

Satsang Bhavan’s venture of publishing cheap but high-quality religious texts and commentaries on them had also grown within a year to eighteen titles, most of them related to the Gita. Then there were titles that adhered to Gita Press’s mission of pulling the Hindu society out of the darkness that threatened sanatan dharma. Texts like
Stri
Dharma Prashnottari
prescribed how women should conduct themselves, and
Sarva Tantra Siddhant Padarth Sangrah
, a collection of Sanskrit texts selected by Gaurishankar, a sanyasi (monk), was brought out to educate school-going children.

 

From Bombay to Gorakhpur
What was supposed to be a short-lived printing arrangement for four or five months between Satsang Bhavan and Sri Venkateshwar Press continued for a little over a year.
Kalyan
shifted to Gorakhpur in 1927 only after the year’s first special issue—
Bhagwan Naam Ank
(Issue on God’s Name)—had been published from Bombay with a print run of 6,000. The issue, devoted to a specific aspect of religion, was a great success and became a trend that still continues. In its review of
Bhagwan
Naam Ank
, the popular weekly
Hindu Panch
prayed for the success of
Kalyan
from its heart.
¹⁶

Within a month, the
Bhagwan Naam Ank
saw a reprint of 2,000 copies that came out from its new abode, Gorakhpur. One ‘Gujarati gentleman from Bombay’ bought 1,000 copies and another reader from Banaras bought 500 copies for free distribution.
¹⁷
Gita Press and
Kalyan
were no longer staring at success—they had achieved a feat unparalleled by any other journal of that era.

Later special issues of
Kalyan
on
Nari
(Woman, 1948),
Hindu
Sanskriti
(Hindu Culture, 1950),
Bala
k
(Male Child, 1953) and
Shiksha
(Education, 1988) are still in huge demand and keep getting reprinted. While the special issue of 1927 had 110 pages, subsequent years saw annual issues running into 700 to 800 pages covering various aspects of sanatan Hindu dharma.

In 1927, when
Kalyan
shifted to Gorakhpur, this eastern district of the United Provinces was known for sugar-cane farming, sugar factories and a railway junction in the district headquarters that facilitated trade. At the height of the non-cooperation movement, on 5 February 1922, peasants had burnt twenty-two policemen alive in Chauri-Chaura village of Gorakhpur district, leading Gandhi to suspend the movement.

Chauri-Chaura and Gorakhpur became known nationally and internationally because of this deplorable incident. However, Gorakhpur had also been home to other movements. Through the Nagari movement, Hindi was introduced as a court language in 1900 along with the already existing Persian.
¹⁸
In 1913, Gorakhpur’s Nagari Pracharini Sabha managed to get judicial forms printed in Hindi. The next year came
Gyan Shakti
, ‘a literary journal devoted to Hindi and Hindu
dharma prachar
(propagation) published by a pro-government Sanskrit scholar with financial support from the rajas of Padrauna, Tamkuhi and Majhauli as well as some from the
rausa
(notables) of Gorakhpur’, and in 1915, Gauri Shankar Mishra, later a prominent leader of the UP Kisan Sabha, launched
Prabhakar
, the aim of which was to ‘serve the cause of Hindi, Hindu and Hindustan’.
¹⁹
While
Prabhakar
closed down within a year and even
Gyan Shakti
was suspended for nearly a year in 1916–17, two other journals, the weekly
Sandesh
and monthly
Kavi
, played an important role in spreading Gandhi’s message in Gorakhpur.