Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (63 page)

The
Shiksha Number
also carried extracts from Poddar’s much- published essay ‘
Vartama
n Shiksha
’ of 1936. In 2012, the primary aim of educating girls remained unchanged: ‘developing their qualities of chastity and motherliness, and their capacity as an ideal mistress of the home’.
¹⁸⁸

Kalyana-Kalpataru
editor Keshoram Aggarwal echoed Poddar’s world view when he talked of turning to the ‘saints and seers who are the architects of this great land for light and guidance for reorienting the present education in India’.
¹⁸⁹

In order to put into practice its vision of education, Gita Press runs a Vedic School in Churu, Rajasthan. The school is based on the gurukul system of learning and only admits children belonging to brahmin, kshatriya and vaishya castes.
¹⁹⁰
An all-male school, it teaches the Vedas, Sanskrit, Hindi, English and modern secular subjects. Students are charged a modest fee.
¹⁹¹

Through its publications, Gita Press pointed out flaws in the colonial education system in the hope that independent India would adhere to the Hindu nationalist template of politics, society and education. With the adoption of a secular Constitution, their dream of a Hindu India did not materialize, and Gita Press continued with its bitter criticism of government policies that in its view turned a blind eye to the aspirations of the majority and imposed education systems that have turned generations of male and female children into non-believers who have no value for Hindu identity. The relentless attempts by Gita Press to popularize the ancient system of education evidently failed to have the desired effect, though its monographs for children and the
Balak Ank
itself went through numerous editions and became best-sellers. Though some Gita Press writers (including Poddar) did raise some valid points—like rise in materialism and Western influence in day-to-day life—on certain issues, these were obscured by the mass of regressive and illogical arguments that dominated their publications. Still, Gita Press has not given up hope. Its numerous moral tracts continue to attract readers in schools and homes, and its journals and books carry its ideology across India and overseas, propagating the dream of a time when Hindu and India will become synonymous.

In April 2014 as the process of the sixteenth Lok Sabha elections got under way,
Kalyan
editor Radheshyam Khemka wrote a piece titled ‘
Vote Kisko Dein
’ (Whom to Vote For).
¹
Khemka began with the statement, laced with excerpts from religious texts, that an unjust ruler can squander away the empire inherited from his forefathers in the same way as wind blows away clouds. So, Khemka said, every alert citizen should vote for a leader who was immersed in the service of religion and had the potential to cleanse the system of corruption. He asked readers to extract the following promises from their chosen leaders: to pass a Central law banning cow slaughter; to make cheap food, clothing, education and medical care easily available, and to put an end to the rising demonic spirit as well as growing insecurity in society. He also wanted
Kalyan
readers to seek assurance from leaders that they would not indulge in financial corruption for personal benefit or to help their party.

Without the heft Poddar brought to the publishing house with his networking skills,
Kalyan
no longer attracts the bouquet of contributors who brought the journal substance, subscriptions and success. Though the format has changed, the journal still relies on the writings of Poddar and Goyandka, recycling their old published articles. But
Kalyan
seems to have lost its position as spokesperson of the conservative section of the Hindus. The regular features that made it the foremost voice on religious issues as reflected in society and politics have been replaced by an occasional outburst. What has not changed, however, is Gita Press’s missionary zeal, its supremacist belief in sanatan Hindu dharma and steadfast resolve to achieve that goal. The template remains unchanged; so does the highly complex Sanskritized Hindi of
Kalyan
and its other publications, though Khemka says an attempt is being made to make the language less daunting.

Khemka personifies the continuing orthodox tradition of Gita Press. He has been associated with the press from his childhood, first as a reader and later as a key member of the staff. His father Sita Ram Khemka was an important leader in the cow-protection movement after Independence who worked closely with Poddar, Swami Karpatri Maharaj and M.S. Golwalkar. Despite the odds, Khemka is convinced that the route to the country’s salvation and arrest of its continuing moral decay lie in the tenets of sanatan Hindu dharma—something his organization has propagated for over eight decades.
²

The continuity is remarkable in two other respects. As in the Poddar era, Gita Press through
Kalyan
regularly comments on important contemporary political events and forcefully intervenes on issues of religious conflict. Gita Press has also retained an undiluted stance on the sanctity of the cow, the place of women being in the home, and the fear of Muslims one day outnumbering Hindus in India. Its moral universe has remained impervious to the larger changes in Hindu society.

It is interesting to consider two issues that
Kalyan
took up in the years following Poddar, both related to Lord Rama. First, the matter of Ram Janmabhoomi, which had remained unresolved for years after Poddar was no more. In 1989–90, VHP laid the foundations of a Rama temple on a property adjacent to the site under dispute. On 6 December 1992, VHP and its allies, including BJP, organized a huge rally of kar sevaks (volunteers) at the site, with disastrous consequences. The mob of kar sevaks swarmed into the disputed site and demolished the Babri Masjid within the space of few hours, all under the watchful eyes of BJP stalwarts L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharati and a galaxy of top functionaries of the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal. What followed was a chain of incidents of rioting and communal violence on an alarming scale.

Kalyan
took a bizarre position on the event. Poddar had been dead for more than two decades now, but the culture of ambiguity that he had fostered was on full display. (An interesting aside is the then prime minister P.V. Narsimha Rao’s decision to issue a postal stamp in memory of Poddar earlier in 1992.) Two months after the demolition, editor Radheshyam Khemka began by calling the events in Ayodhya a ‘mistake’ and played down the spiral of communal violence throughout the country: ‘I see no relevance of the political frenzy that is being created after the events in Ayodhya and subsequent violence. As long as the Hindus and the Muslims have to stay together, they will have to respect each other. There is no option but to bring the situation to normal.’
³

After a long appeal for peace that was general in nature, Khemka came to the demolition. ‘The fact is a temple cannot be demolished to build a mosque and a mosque cannot be demolished to erect a temple. Both are against Indian culture. Ram Janmabhoomi is not a mandir– masjid issue. A temple can be built anywhere but a janmabhoomi cannot be changed and much less the birthplace of the avatar of Vishnu. This janmabhoomi is a magnificent memorial for crores of citizen and is among the holiest of places.’

Next, Khemka played the oft-repeated Hindus-as-victim card. He said temples in Kashmir, some of them ancient, had been demolished in the last few years, and after the demolition of Babri Masjid, Hindu temples had met the same fate in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Britain. ‘But unlike the sensitivity being shown for the demolition of this structure in Ayodhya built by Babur, no sensitivity was shown for the destruction of these temples. According to some people, the structure in Ayodhya was not a mosque since no prayer had taken place there for 400 years. It also did not have minarets and a well for ablutions before prayers. It was just a structure that for the past fifty years was being used as a temple.’

Khemka reserved his best for the end, concluding that what had been demolished in Ayodhya was not a mosque but a temple: ‘Till this clarity dawns on the political class, India will be a lost nation. Hindus and Muslims have to live together in India. The country belongs to both of them. If one of the two says India is not their homeland and they will not respect it, that community needs help.’

Months before the demolition,
Kalyan
had put out what it claimed was evidence from the shastras and Puranas about the birthplace of Lord Rama being the spot where the Babri Masjid stood.
⁴
Khemka’s discussion of the problem took note of the communal tension that was building up due to the continuous agitation of the BJP, led by L.K. Advani, the RSS, VHP and numerous Hindu right-wing organizations.
Kalya
n
was not in favour of abandoning or brushing under the carpet an issue as important as Lord Rama’s birthplace in the name of secularism. The journal said it would be ironic if a place of worship where no namaz had been offered for half a century but from where only the Ramdhun (recitation of the name of Rama) reverberated were to be called a mosque. ‘No honest Muslim would favour ruffling Hindu sentiments and aggravating the problem further. He would choose to settle the dispute.’ Politicians were told that a solution could be easy if they saw the problem from a larger perspective and not for their narrow political ends.

When a Delhi-based newspaper raised the question of the purity– impurity of the site, saying, ‘If the spot inside the Babri Masjid where the idol of Ramlalla is kept is the exact spot where he was born, then it cannot be a place of worship because in any childbirth, blood is spilt, which renders the place unfit for worship,’
Kalyan
reacted sharply, stating that the human mind was limited and such limitations often resulted in illogical behaviour.
⁵
Khemka liberally quoted from the Gita, Ramayana and other religious texts to argue that the birth of a god—whether Rama or Krishna—did not involve the usual labour pains or spilling of blood.

Even earlier, in 1990, as the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was gathering steam,
Kalyan
had lauded the efforts of India’s first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel who had begun the project of protecting Indian culture by announcing the reconstruction of the Somnath Temple in Dwarka, Gujarat.
⁶
After Patel’s death, Khemka said, Indian politicians had not paid attention to such matters as they were too busy looking after their political interests. Khemka’s refrain was that Ram Janmabhoomi should not be viewed as a political issue but purely as a spiritual matter and one of national pride. Repeating the argument that a site of birth could not be shifted, Khemka said that Hindus and Muslims could live as brothers only if there was mutual regard and willingness to sacrifice. He suggested that the Babri Masjid be respectfully shifted from its present site and rebuilt elsewhere. This would facilitate the revival of Ram Janmabhoomi as a place of worship of Lord Rama.

In 2007
Kalyan
took up cudgels against the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s Sethusamudram project. Officially called the Sethusamudram Shipping Channel Project, it proposed the ‘dredging of a ship channel across the Palk Straits between India and Sri Lanka’.
⁷
This would allow ships sailing between the east and west coasts of India, providing a shorter passage through India’s territorial waters, instead of having to circumnavigate Sri Lanka, saving up to 424 nautical miles (780 km) or thirty hours in sailing time. Though the seeds of this project had been sown during the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government’s rule between 1999 and 2004, when the Sethusamudram project was revived by the UPA in 2007, the conservative Hindu set—BJP, RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal and a whole host of militant Hindu organizations—sensed an opportunity to turn it into an emotive issue.

Completely disregarding archaeological or scientific evidence, the conservatives claimed the Sethusamudram project would result in the destruction of the Ram Setu—the bridge that, according to the Ramayana, Rama built at Rameshwaram with the help of Sugriva’s large army of monkeys, including Hanuman, to reach Sri Lanka and rescue Sita from Ravana.

Kalyan
led the Hindu protest, claiming that though the mythic Ram Setu had not been sighted for thousands of years, in 1860 a British sailor had experienced a huge obstruction submerged between Sri Lanka and Rameshwaram.
⁸
Radheshyam Khemka wrote that many committees had been formed over the past 145 years to remove the obstruction since it was making sea travel difficult. To give a scientific edge to his arguments, Khemka said an image collected by a NASA satellite had revealed that a bridge 48 km long and nearly 2 km wide was submerged between Sri Lanka and Rameshwaram. The water level above the bridge varied from 1 to 10 metres. Khemka quoted the NASA report as stating that the bridge was 1,750,000 years old, which according to the Hindu belief system corresponded to Treta Yuga, the ‘second of the four yugas (Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali) lasting for 12.96 lakh years’.

Responding to an affidavit by the Archaeological Survey of India, which said that Rama and Ramayana had no historical basis, Khemka resorted to a Poddar-like response. He criticized the ASI for being a useless institution on which thousands of crores were spent. The ASI’s job was to protect ancient heritage, but it was doing the opposite. The government’s Sethusamudram Shipping Channel Project at a cost of Rs 25,000 crore would destroy India’s oldest bridge.

Khemka wrote: ‘Work has started. Foreign-made dredgers have been pressed into action and attempt is being made to demolish the bridge. It is claimed this project will reduce sea travel between India and Sri Lanka by 400 nautical miles and reduce the journey time by sixteen hours. But according to experts the new route can be made without removing the Ram Setu.’ Khemka suggested that removing sand dunes between Rameshwaram and Mandapam village near Dhanuskodi could create a sea route that would not only save journey time but would also help in preserving a timeless piece of heritage like the Ram Setu.

Khemka then pressed the religious panic button. He described the unprecedented havoc that would take place if the Ram Setu was destroyed: ‘It is a big crime for which all of us would be held guilty. To protest against the government’s short-sightedness and indifference and to protect the sanatan Hindu values, many religious leaders have launched an agitation and warned of dire consequences. If any untoward incident takes place the government will be held accountable.’

The ASI’s affidavit was too hard to digest for the BJP and others of their ilk who attacked it vigorously. Under pressure, the UPA capitulated, the affidavit was withdrawn and the project was put on hold.

Kalyan
’s response to situations has always been selective; at times, significant events have been ignored. The imposition of Emergency by the Indira Gandhi government in June 1975 went largely unnoticed in
Kalyan
, barring an oblique reference in an article (six months after its lifting) stressing the role of religion in society. It is possible that fear of the censor had put
Kalyan
on the defensive to the extent that the article talked in general terms about ‘disturbances in society and selfish motives that lead to unjust fights’,
⁹
and traced them to the decline of religious values.

In the 1980s, when Punjab was in the midst of militancy,
Kalyan
could not keep itself aloof. Giving a brief overview of the glorious history of the Sikhs, Khemka regretted the entry of a ‘few elements who are spreading disaffection in the name of religion and distracting ordinary Sikhs from the path of peace’.
¹⁰
Despite clear resistance by Sikhs against any attempt to define their religion as an extension of Hinduism, Khemka did not hesitate to invoke the unity of the two religions. He said the Golden Temple at Amritsar and the Kashi Vishwanath Temple at Banaras exemplified that unity, since Maharaja Ranjit Singh had donated gold for both places of worship.