Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (62 page)

The absence of chastity among students was blamed on inadequate textbooks, fashion, reading of gandey (dirty) plays and novels, popularization of obscene literature, luxurious and decadent lifestyles, co-education, spending time with inexperienced young teachers, schools and hostels modelled on Western lines and the practice of writing obscene letters to each other. Poddar claimed, without substantiation, that sexually transmitted diseases were prevalent among nearly 50 per cent of students.

Poddar lamented that students had become disrespectful to their parents and teachers: ‘The Aryan system of touching the feet of elders is no longer there. Instead, educated youth consider it below their dignity to even acknowledge their parents. There is very little respect for the mother and father. To disregard and treat them as inferior is considered a sign of progress.’

Poddar discredited Western education by questioning the end product itself—namely the quality of students who had completed university education. His contention was that such education had imbued students with a false sense of superiority to the extent that they considered doing any manual or household work below their dignity. Poddar doubted if the job market would be able to accommodate the thousands of university graduates each year, and raised the spectre of large-scale unemployment among educated youth.

Poddar offered a way out, advocating the production of indigenous textbooks as a counter to the Western-oriented books used in schools. Strategically, this was a clever move, but it derived from the very system he reviled, ‘built on bureaucratic control through textbooks and centralized examinations’, and suffered from the same problem of bias as the textbooks of the colonial education system did. Like the colonial educationists, Poddar also aimed at a makeover of people’s minds. What followed was a plethora of cheap texts by Gita Press, full of moral, social and religious lessons. Most of them proved successful and have gone through several reprints.

An article in
Balak Ank
had also raised serious questions about the authenticity of a centralized examination system, and cited rising unemployment among graduates and diploma holders as proof of its failure.
¹⁷⁷
Again it harked back to the traditional gurukul (residential school, usually in the teacher’s home) system of education where teaching was considered a form of devotion to Saraswati, the goddess of learning, and a student was evaluated continuously.

Lamenting the abandonment of the ancient system, the article demanded higher salaries for teachers and a greater consciousness in society towards education. Tests/examinations should be held without prior notice, and due importance be given to evaluation of debates and discussions in the class so that students could be judged on the basis of their arguments, ability to think on their own and presence of mind. As for the written examination, Gita Press was in favour of objective-type questions with overwhelming emphasis on general knowledge.

As for the textbooks and monographs published by Gita Press, Poddar had clear opinions on what they should contain. The ideal textbook, he stated, should contain truthful depictions of India’s ancient Aryan culture and examples from the lives of great men of the era that could be used for value education.
¹⁷⁸
Poddar wanted textbooks to carry extracts from Hindu religious texts, especially the Gita. He argued for religious education to be taught as an independent subject, but not confined to religious texts. The idea was to ‘cultivate Hindu morality’ through this subject, and the textbook was expected to contain a grand sweep of issues, ranging from the inculcation of belief in gods, devotion to parents, and values of truth, love, celibacy and fearlessness. The textbook, he said, should also help children not to nurse ill will towards others; to treat women as their mothers or sisters; not to criticize others; not to look down upon religious leaders of other faiths; not to resort to illegitimate methods at the workplace; and to value physical strength and earning through hard work. Poddar wanted schools to teach crafts to students so that after passing out they would not consider it beneath their dignity to take up jobs that entailed working with their hands. Strangely, Poddar also made a plea that textbooks should be shorn of material that encouraged communal tension—a principle that he himself would disregard by the 1940s in the pages of
Kalyan
.

The task of evolving a pedagogy for the Hindu male child was a gargantuan job. Unlike the education of the girl child, confined to the teaching of religious texts at home, a boy’s education had to be all- encompassing. After all, a Hindu male child had to become a model citizen equally versed in the ways of the outside world as in the cultural, social and moral foundation of the inner one.

Way back in 1935, Poddar had written to one ‘Chaturvediji Maharaj’, who seems to have been Banarsi Das Chaturvedi, the leading light of the Hindi movement, about Gita Press’s plans to bring out a five- volume graded Hindi Reader.
¹⁷⁹
Poddar said the press management had long been asking him to write the volumes, but he had been too busy to do so. He was hopeful that Chaturvedi would undertake the task and that the Hindi Reader would be accepted in private schools and schools run by Indian states. (He was not hopeful of getting them introduced in schools run by the colonial government, as he feared tough competition from other publishers who, he said, indulged in corrupt means.)

Poddar wanted the Hindi Reader to talk of dharma (religion), ishwarbhakti (devotion to God) and sadachar (good behaviour). He told Chaturvedi that the text should be such that boys did not easily become anti-religion, anti-God or anti-parent. ‘Instead of
ga
of the Hindi alphabet denoting gadha (donkey) and
kha
denoting khargosh (rabbit), children should memorize
ga
for Ganesh. The reader should be respectful to the Hindu way of life and illustrations should convey that children after getting up in the morning pray to God, touch the feet of parents, etc.’

Though Chaturvedi agreed to write the book, Poddar offered to write a few chapters and wanted his name to appear as a co-author after Chaturvedi’s, as including his name would help sales in the schools of Rajputana, Punjab and Sindh: ‘I have been asked by people there to write a book and I have made the promise.’ Alternatively, there should be no author mentioned.

Coming to the price of the Hindi Reader, Poddar requested Chaturvedi to be considerate since the book was meant for free dissemination. Poddar said a one-time payment for the author would be possible, and in case the education department accepted the book, the one-time sum could be enhanced.

The Hindi Reader in five volumes titled
Hindi Bal Pothi
was published without the name of Chaturvedi or Poddar. The first year of publication is not mentioned in any of the volumes. However, according to the 2011 edition of Volume I, 32.1 million copies had so far been printed, including the 50,000 copies printed that year. More than twenty million copies each of the other volumes have been printed.
¹⁸⁰

Among the surfeit of Gita Press literature for the male child, much of it repetitive,
Balak Ke Acharan
(Behaviour of a Male Child, hereafter referred to as
BKA
) has become a classic of sorts.
¹⁸¹
The thirty-two- page booklet priced at Rs 4 had gone through thirty-seven reprints till 2010 and sold more than 700,000 copies. With its emphasis on character building, it includes lessons for young children on saving the nation, dharma (both religion and duty) and jati (both religion and caste), and doles out sermons on the primacy of money, physical strength and intelligence, and ways to improve memory power—all in the form of rhymed verse.

BKA
presents Poddar’s attempt to promote a sense of national pride and honour in the child. But this project, as its contents strongly suggest, is exclusive in nature. As Veronique Benei puts it: ‘This entails building an exclusively Hindu raj whence the members of the Muslim as well as other non-Hindu—as well as “improperly Hindu”—communities would be excluded.’
¹⁸²
In fact,
BKA
and most other Gita Press monographs contributed to what Benei calls the ‘daily production of banal nationalism, the experience of nationalism being so integral to people’s lives that it goes unnoticed most of the time’.

‘
Desh Ki Laaj
’ (Nation’s Honour), the very first poem in
BKA
tells the male child that the nation he was born in is where Rama and Krishna were born as incarnation of gods, where sages like Valmiki and Vyasa composed the Ramayana and Mahabharata.
¹⁸³
The poem spans the millennia, presenting a mix of mythological and historical righteous Hindus such as Yudhishthira and Harishchandra, Maharana Pratap and Shivaji. The inclusion of Guru Gobind Singh but omission of Guru Nanak seems to be deliberate, emanating from the Gita Press practice of treating the Sikh religion as an offshoot of Hindu dharma and highlighting India’s heroic masculine past. Among the nationalists, Tilak, the karamveer (one who performs his duty nobly) and Malaviya, the nishthavan (devout) get precedence over Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence.

The Hindu women considered worth showcasing in
BKA
are Savitri and Anasuya, the two ideal Hindu wives considered the pillars of female morality. Tulsidas and bhakti poet Surdas barely make it to the list, and the poem completely ignores the Buddhist/Jain heritage, not to speak of the centuries of Muslim influence.

Securing the nation’s honour hinges on two things: following the path of dharma and retaining the purity of jati.
BKA
makes it clear that only those who follow the well-ordained path of religion can gain immortality and respect. Dharma,
BKA
tells the male child, is not only about religion per se, but high moral behaviour and living a righteous life. Dharma, therefore, is the secret of happiness, peace, fame and beneficence: ‘Only where dharma exists, compassion resides; where dharma dominates, truth also rules; if there is dharma, there is forgiveness; where there is dharma there is renunciation and dharma brings the ultimate joy.’
¹⁸⁴

While exhorting the balak to protect the Hindu jati, Poddar stresses that the rules of jati should not be subverted, condemned or broken at any cost. The sanctity of jati should be preserved through leading a disciplined and controlled life, not belittling others or spreading hatred against them.
¹⁸⁵

The rest of
BKA
is about honing various aspects of the male child’s character, teaching him not to borrow without permission, to admit mistakes and seek forgiveness, to renounce worldly pleasures including of the senses, to imbibe celibacy, to lead a simple life by learning to forgive and to help the needy.

As a Marwari enterprise, Gita Press never lost sight of the concept of profit as a tool to make people turn to God, religion, scriptures and leading a pure life. The bania model of bhakti created by Gita Press promised quick and sure-shot returns if a person maintained devotion, simplicity and humility.
BKA
, through an instructive poem, made an early attempt to acquaint the male child with various manifestations of wealth; why only a few are born with it and the manner in which it should be handled for it to remain with a person forever. ‘
Dhan Ka
Upyog
’ (Right Use of Wealth) was addressed to children born in wealthy families. They were told the wealth they possessed was the result of their good deeds in previous lives. But it should not be wasted in building a kothi (palatial house), buying a car, keeping a retinue of domestic help, leading a luxurious life and lording over others. ‘
Dhan
Ka Upyog
’ advised children not to get so overwhelmed with wealth as to discard simplicity, self-control and good behaviour. It argued that wealth would be short-lived if a person became lazy, arrogant and miserly.

In a certain sense,
BKA
spelt out the contours of education that Gita Press wanted the male child to get. But it was not a textbook and at best could only become a supplementary reader. Hooked to the idea of textbooks, Gita Press came up with the five-volume
Bal Pothi
(Book for Children) a set of textbooks full of moral lessons. A statement at the beginning of the Volume II of the
Hindi Bal Pothi
tells us that these texts were prepared in collaboration with experts in modern education, and an appeal was made to the education departments of the provinces to adopt the books as school textbooks.
¹⁸⁶
Till 2011, this volume has sold 1,943,000 copies and gone into sixty-three reprints.

The five volumes of
Bal Pothi
constitute a primer aimed at the male child, again doling out moral lessons on ideal behaviour at school and home, and with elders, teachers and guests. Interspersed with character- building stories and tales are lessons on how a motor car works and how vapour forms while cooking. Though there is an acknowledgement of India being home to many religions, the entire gamut of lessons on history and morality is drawn from the Hindu past.

From 1988 to 2012, the Gita Press discourse on education did not undergo any change despite changes in the education system and the promulgation of the Right to Education Act in 2010. In October 2012,
Kalyana-Kalpataru
brought out a special
Shiksha Number
that aimed to ‘bring out some of the forgotten areas of human development which might be helpful in reducing the prevailing darkness in educational field’.
¹⁸⁷
The darkness that
Kalyana-Kalpataru
talked of was (as before) brought by ‘modern education’. ‘Our English education has destroyed everything and left nothing in its place. Our boys have lost their politeness and humility. To talk nicely has become degrading. To be reverential to one’s elders is degrading. Irreverence has become the sign of liberty. Violence has become so rampant that classmates go to the extent of murdering another class fellow . . .’ For
Kalyana-Kalpataru
the solution lay in the ‘educational methodology used in ancient India for developing a young
brahmachari
to tackle the dimensions of life which is yet to unfold before him’
.