GITA PRESS
Author- Akshaya Mukul
Publisher- HarperCollins, Rs799
Akshaya Mukul’s Gita Press will doubtlessly prove to be a seminal reference book on the role of the Hindu consciousness, and its effect on the formation of modern nationalism, writes GAUTAM MUKHERJEE
Contemporary Indian historians who treat it as a discipline and not a pulpit, or basis for poetic licence, are few and far between. There is the erudite, Bengaluru-based Ramachandra Guha, chronicling mainly the saga of the Nehru-Gandhis. There is the NCR resident Scotsman with Indian sensibilities, William Dalrymple, writing sympathetic, pointedly non-imperial accounts of the Moghuls.
And now, joining the ranks of this select set, a self-effacing journalist-historian, still working hard for the The Times of India, Akshaya Mukul. Mukul has written an admirable and even-handed book based on painstaking research here. It will doubtlessly prove to be a seminal reference book on the role of the Hindu consciousness, and its effect both on the formation of modern nationalism, and indeed, the idea of one India.
The Gita Press and its publications, books, pamphlets, magazines in Hindi and English, have influenced and informed generations of Indians and admirers of India, at home and abroad, for nearly a century.
It continues to do so, in a lesser key, though its primary salience is much diminished in the age of globalisation, the Internet, 24x7 satellite TV and an evolving national identity shedding its post-colonial skin to become one of the leading nations of the contemporary world.
However, the Gita Press made its greatest contribution to an unstated mission — that of assisting Indians to believe in their own ancient culture in the face of fierce imperial propaganda, as a fuel for the yearning for independence. Independence came in 1947, after less than three decades of the Gita Press and its yeoman work. But yet, it had also come after almost a century of steady effort, following the abortive First Battle for Independence, or what the British Raj liked to label The Great Indian Mutiny of 1857.
By the Forties, Gita Press succeeded in providing a template, as much for acceptance and formation of a somewhat majoritarian national identity, as a trampoline for rejection of several of its suggestions and implications, in favour of what was thought to be a superior — egalitarian, secular, and a distinctly socialist vision of India. It has also sold 72 million copies of theGita amongst other scriptural texts from Tulsidas, the Puranas, the Upanishads, also running into sales of millions of copies.
But through it all, Gita Press, an essentially private effort, a publishing house, run by its long-time Marwari Hindu owner, and based in the smallish town of Gorakhpur in today’s Uttar Pradesh, enjoyed a kind of cultural centrality in Indian life. This particularly amongst Hindi and English-speaking people from all parts of India and the diaspora via its Hindi language Kalyan magazine, and its English counterpart Kalyana-Kalpataru.
Many prominent Indians in public life, famous Indian writers such as Munshi Premchand, and illustrators like Satyendranath Bannerjee, recommended in turn by the likes of clergyman CF Andrews, then located in Shantiniketan, wrote/painted/drew for Gita Press. Other foreigners and indophiles, such as painter Nicholas Roerich, also contributed towards its spiritualist world-view.
Its tireless editor-cum-managing director Hanuman Prasad Poddar, roped in most of the luminaries from various fields over his long stewardship both of the Press and its various publications.
MK Gandhi certainly wrote articles for Gita Press’s Kalyan magazine, even if Nehru resolutely did not. Nehru did not even deign to send Kalyan a short message of good wishes. Other marked socialists with their antipathy to religion had the same attitude as Nehru towards Gita Press.
But Kalyan magazine’s contributors also included others in the Centrist space of public life, such as Annie Besant, C Rajagopalachari, S Radhakrishnan, lal Bahadur Shashtri, Rajendra Prasad, among many others.
The Right was prominently featured, with Poddar ignoring the rivalries of organisations such as The Arya Samaj and the Sanatan Dharma Sabha in terms of his contributors and writers.
MS Golwalkar of the RSS sent in several articles. As did Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, the founder of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh. And many sadhus with a political bent of mind also contributed, such as the once well-known Swami Karpatri Maharaj.