Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (64 page)

As sporadic violence continued in Punjab,
Kalyan
regretted the killing of innocent men, women and children travelling in buses, and appealed to the Sikh community to unite for the safety and security of the nation and to exterminate militancy from the ‘pious land of Punjab’. Sikhs were asked not to provide shelter and cover to militants or to help misguided youth.
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In the late 1980s, as India plummeted to new depths of political uncertainty and corrupt practices, such as the Bofors gun purchase,
Kalya
n
, slowly coming out of Poddar’s shadow, took a moral position reminiscent of the journal’s early years. The consistent decline of India’s standing in the comity of nations despite its spiritual superiority was deemed unacceptable. Resorting to a sensational style of presentation, incongruous for a religious journal,
Kalyan
said that principles had lost value in society and gave an elaborate account of aspects where such degradation was most visible. This included the new trend of violence inside parliament, assemblies and secretariats; the lure of money and threat of muscle power being used to encourage political defections; military consolidation by enemy nations across the border; growth of discontentment among the general public; and rise in illegal labour practices.
Kalyan
asked readers to keep away from such negative activities and work towards nation building.
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Pakistan, the proverbial bugbear of the Hindu right, became the target of intense attack by Gita Press at the time of the Kargil war in 1999. In his editorial, Khemka justified the Indian action against the aggressor Pakistan. Adopting Poddar’s tone and tenor during the Indo- Pak war of 1965, Khemka said resistance and retaliation alone would not be enough. He pitched for the extermination of Pakistan’s devilish tendencies as it would be beneficial to mankind. Only bilateral relationships based on true intent, action and commitment were successful, he argued. Khemka stressed on the wide gap between Pakistan’s promise of peace and the intrusion by the Pakistan army across the Line of Control. He saw it as nothing less than a grand conspiracy that needed swift retaliation. As if on cue, Khemka revived Poddar’s wound analogy about Pakistan, and said this time the poisonous wound consisted of intruders who needed to be operated upon.
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About Godhra and the subsequent Gujarat violence of 2002 against the Muslims,
Kalya
n
’s annual number
Nitisa
r Ank
(Issue on Principles, January–February 2002) was silent. Instead, Khemka wrote against what he called the new trend of dissociating religion from politics. He argued that, without religion, a society and its politics would become uncontrollable and this could even result in the withering away of the state’s power.
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Gita Press’s focus on protection of cows and consistent demands for ban on their slaughter has continued through the decades. In 1995, fifty years after the
Gau Ank
and twenty-four years after the death of Poddar, Gita Press published its
Gau Seva Ank
. This was a reiteration of the
Gau Ank
insofar as the social, religious and economic benefits from cows were concerned. Consisting mainly of extracts of old articles by leading cow campaigners, many of them dead by then, the novelty of the
Gau Seva Ank
was its review of the cow-protection movement of the late 1960s. Prabhudatt Brahmachari’s article explained how joining the government-sponsored Goraksha Samiti had sounded the death knell of the cow-protection movement, and regretted that, despite so many years of self-rule, cows were still under threat in India.
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He listed out and dismissed the various arguments advanced by opponents of the ban on cow slaughter. What outraged him the most was the argument that, in order to respect the sensitivity of Muslims, a minority community, the ban on cow slaughter should not be insisted upon.

Radhakrishna Bajaj, sarvodaya leader and an important member of the Goseva Sangh,
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chronicled the cow-protection movement after the failure of the 1960s movement.
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In 1975, at a meeting of the Goseva Sammelan (Cow Service Conference), Vinoba Bhave had declared that if cow slaughter was not banned by his next birthday (11 September 1976), he would sit on a fast unto death. News of Bhave’s threat was not cleared by the censorship in operation under the Emergency regime. Pamphlets and journals were confiscated and the CID issued a nationwide circular to stop solidarity marches and fasts.

Bajaj wrote that, even after the change of regime in 1977, the Janata government did not bring a central law to ban cow slaughter. He said, parallel to Bhave’s movement, a nationwide protest colloquially coined Roko Bhai Roko (Stop Brother Stop) was initiated at major centres of cow slaughter like Kosi Kalan in western Uttar Pradesh and Deonar in Maharashtra. The idea was to physically stop the transfer of cattle to slaughterhouses. According to Bajaj, sporadic protests, often localized, continued through the 1980s. In 1987, a mammoth Goseva Sammelan was held in Delhi’s Rajghat attended by 1,000 representatives from all over the country with the demand to ban cow slaughter through a Central law. As a result, Bajaj said, the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh assemblies passed laws banning cow slaughter. However, UP’s law did not get the president’s assent. For Bajaj, the best performing state was Gujarat, which not only passed the legislation but also implemented the law in letter and spirit. He was upset with the pace of implementation in Maharashtra, where the massive slaughterhouse in Deonar continued to function despite a protest at its gate for twelve years. Elsewhere in Maharashtra, Bajaj said, killing of cows continued unabated.

The lack of a Central law banning cow slaughter remained a sore point with
Kalyan
, which continued to be reflected in regular writings on the subject. In a 2012 issue, the subject of treatment of cows in the Quran was revived. The example of Saudi Arabia, with its ultra-modern dairies, was showcased as an example of Muslim love for cows.
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Al Shafi, a dairy farm in a place called Al Khiraj in Saudi Arabia, was said to house 36,000 cows in an air-conditioned environment attended by a 1,400-strong staff.
Kalyan
also claimed that in the Al Shafi farm there were 5,000 Indian cows whose milk, around 400 litres daily, was consumed by the royal family at Riyadh. The article went on to stress that the cow could be a means to unite the Indian Hindus and Muslims, like Ganga and Yamuna.

In early 2015, as BJP-ruled Maharashtra and Haryana completely banned cow slaughter,
Kalya
n
celebrated the news with aplomb. Editor Khemka thanked the two state governments, especially Maharashtra that had passed the legislation nineteen years ago but was waiting for presidential assent. He lamented that many states, like Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Sikkim and Kerala, still allowed cow slaughter. Khemka said the present government at the Centre has the ability to pass a Central legislation and hoped God will give it the strength to do so.
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Since Gita Press’s moral universe is unchanged, almost cast in stone, its fear of modern education for women has also not subsided. Radheshyam Khemka parroted Poddar when he said, ‘Though modern education among women has become common, they get so consumed with their passion for education that their ambition touches the sky.’ Further, ‘Women do whatever they feel like to fulfil their aspirations but it often results in tension, worry and disturbance and ultimately suicide.’ Khemka blamed women’s lack of religious education for their current state.
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Similarly, the anti-sati law coupled with intensification of the women’s movement in the new century has not resulted in a review of Gita Press’s stance on sati. Sitting in his well-appointed drawing room in Banaras, Khemka in 2011 expounded on the merits of sati and how in ancient times even women who lost their husbands at a young age immolated themselves willingly. ‘This is not possible in this day and age. Therefore, a widow should lead a sage-like life as spelt out in the shastras. Widow marriage is not sanctioned in the shastras. The reason is that a woman becomes a widow due to sins in her previous life. Sin is the cause behind sorrow, hardship and adversity. Bearing it happily is the only way in which a person can overcome the sins of the previous life. If, against the diktats of the shastras, a woman gets remarried what happens is that even before her cycle of sin is completed, a new sin is added which she has to pay for in the future.’
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In 2013, after the popular god-man Asaram Bapu and his son Narayan Sai were arrested on charges of rape and molestation,
Kalyan
warned its readers, especially women, to beware of such god-men. ‘Allegations of sexual exploitation have been levelled against a man who had a special standing in the spiritual world and one who had lakhs of devotees. While the truth will come out from courts, such incidents bring bad name to sadhus. Naturally, it shakes the faith of people in them.’
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Khemka severely criticized men who impersonate sadhus and sexually exploit innocent girls and women. He dismissed as ‘baseless’ Asaram Bapu’s reported claim that allegations of sexual impropriety had also been levelled against Swami Ram Tirth, Swami Ramsukh Das and Swami Vivekananda. Khemka stated that Swami Ramsukh Das, who was closely associated with Gita Press, never met a woman alone, and if by mistake any woman touched his feet he would go on a fast that day.

The static moral world of Gita Press wakes up every time any arm of the state makes a progressive intervention. The changes wrought by an evolving jurisprudence is hard for it to accept. In early 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that live-in relationships would not be considered illegitimate. Earlier, the Madras High Court had ruled that a man and a woman in a physical relationship without marriage would have the status of a married couple and a child born out of such a union would be their legal heir. These two decisions shook the very foundations of the edifice of Hindu marriage that Gita Press had propagated for ninety years.

Khemka could not accept the Supreme Court’s argument that, under Article 21 of the Constitution, a citizen is free to lead a life of his choice. In a restrained but angry editorial, he wrote that the apex court in one stroke had not only destroyed the sanctity of fire and God being witness to a marriage but even bypassed the formality of civil marriage (notwithstanding Khemka’s antipathy to the latter). Aware that the Supreme Court could not be attacked like other institutions, Khemka merely called the orders ‘desh ka durbhagya’ (nation’s misfortune) and lamented that the ‘liberty and sexual freedom prohibited to youth by Indian culture as well as other religions are gaining legitimacy instead of being labelled waywardness’.
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Khemka employed the old Hindu nationalist arguments of ‘nation in danger’, saying that even the British government had maintained an arm’s-length distance from the religious sphere. These arguments had been used at the time of the Hindu Code Bill and cow-protection movement with mixed success, and Khemka resorted to them: ‘After Independence, there is a tendency to make laws that are against the shastras. We can already see a rise in cases of divorce, female infanticide and widow remarriage. Earlier, perpetrators of infanticide were punished, now, under the family planning rules they have been designated as vaidyas.’ Khemka warned the courts and ‘responsible judges’ to be careful and avoid passing orders against the shastras and dharmashastras—only then would the nation’s future be bright.

However,
Kalyan
has not so far reacted to the Supreme Court’s order of 2013 decriminalizing same-sex relationships.

Under Khemka,
Kalyan
’s Islamophobic drive continues too, holding the government’s family-planning programme responsible for the falling Hindu and rising Muslim population. Like Poddar, Khemka laments the government’s failure (that he believes is deliberate) to bring Muslims under the family-planning umbrella; this is followed by what Patricia and Roger Jeffrey call ‘scare-mongering’
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of the worst kind: ‘Recently newspapers carried a report on Islamic population in the world. It shows out of India’s 102.86 crore population, 22.64 crore are Muslims, which roughly means 22 per cent of the total. Additionally there are 2 per cent Christians and other communities. In 1991, the Hindus were 85 per cent of population; that has come down to 76 per cent in 2002.’
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Khemka adds that the country is on the verge of a major crisis as the Muslim population is rising by a crore every year. He fears family planning will have disastrous consequences for Hindu culture and pride, and blames politicians for their vote-bank politics and for working against Indian culture by appeasing Muslims. He also ascribes the failure of the cow-protection movement to vote-bank politics.

A related issue that is cause for concern is abortion. Poddar had passed away the year parliament passed the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, which made abortion partially legal. A pregnancy could be terminated if it endangered the physical and mental life of a woman; if there was danger of a woman giving birth to a physically challenged child; if an unmarried under-eighteen girl got pregnant; if a mentally ill woman got pregnant; or if a woman got pregnant due to failure of contraceptives.

Gita Press published the views of the noted Gandhian Siddharaj Dhadda, minister of commerce and industry in the first Rajasthan government after Independence, who later quit the Congress. He attacked the government for making abortion ‘simple’ and the law ‘lax’: ‘A woman would express the desire to abort and a doctor would agree. The new law paves the way for both. For a doctor, abortion has become a means to make money. It is beneficial for him to meet demands for abortion. The law gives all the power and responsibility to the doctor. The law stresses “good faith” but it would be impossible to prove if a doctor works in that spirit or not . . . The new law has several loopholes and so many exceptions that a doctor need not fear.’
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