The Gospel According to Poddar

At a time when most journalists tend to associate the rise of the Hindutva movement with the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation and its instalments of the 1980s and the 1990s, Akshaya Mukul has cast the net wider, breaking a certain preoccupation with reporters, columnists and political analysts to fall back on short-term memory to leap to conclusions, weird or otherwise. And in the process, he does readers a great service in illuminating a piece of history that has largely been forgotten by the purveyors of the myth around new political stars and the ‘awakening’ of a new Hindu India.

Mukul, who has spent years researching the role of Gita Press and its religious journal Kalyan in promoting militant Hindu nationalism, digs up the designs behind the running of the publishing house, founded in the 1920s and nurtured by Hanuman Prasad Poddar from 1926 until his death in 1971.

Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India is a product of extensive research and painstaking efforts to delve into the soul of a venture spearheaded by Poddar, a hard-nosed man who claims to have had several mystical experiences and was backed by Marwari businessmen and politicians, to instil the spirit of Hindutva, a term coined by militant nationalist VD Savarkar, among India’s Hindus. Poddar also managed to rope in icons of the freedom struggle to expound the Hindu cause. Among others, he also maintained close ties with Mahatma Gandhi with whom he disagreed on several counts. Mukul surveys, with the skill of a good reporter, the influence of Gorakhpur-headquartered Gita Press and Poddar on Hindus, especially in north India, and its deep impact in fomenting the communal overtones that currently dominate the nation’s political space. Despite claiming that he was a “partial Bhakt” of Gandhi, Poddar railed against Gandhi on the pages of Kalyan for speaking out against untouchability. He writes, ‘As late as 1956, Poddar maintained that ‘practising untouchability’ does not mean hatred for anyone’ and ‘untouchability is scientific and has the sanction of the shastras’.’ Poddar, who was deeply connected to the politics of the Marwari Aggarwal Mahasabha, was hugely critical of the politics of BR Ambedkar and temple- entry agitations, arguing that ‘letting all kinds of people enter places of worship against the wishes of those who run these institutions is against the spirit of freedom of religion’.

In his book that runs close to 550 pages, Mukul, a Times of India journalist based in Delhi, lays bare the history of a publishing empire created around the same time India was buffeted by multiple ideas of political thought, including communism and that of Gandhi. Gita Press under Poddar’s watch continued to bring up issues that it thought were important for Hindus to worry about. These included debates on the ban of cow slaughter, ownership of centres of worship demolished by Muslim invaders and various others that laid the foundation of a militant Hindu movement in India. In fact, RSS stalwart Guruji Golwalkar, who among several others (including tall Congress leaders) were contributors to Kalyan, treated opinions that appeared in the magazine like gold dust, and he would ask for a copy even when he was away in Pattambi in Kerala for oil therapy and recuperation, Mukul discovers.

His book tells the story of how Gita Press became what he calls ‘an attractive platform’ for liberal and orthodox Congress elements as well as those preaching and practising strident Hindu nationalism. Mukul also explains in detail how the Hindu far right used the publishing house to deepen religious polarisation in India, ‘especially during the communal flash points of the 1940s’. The author also traces how Kalyan began to sell ‘ideological wares’ to its readers, presenting ‘a new model of faith and devotion that promised instant results’. In the close run-up to Indian freedom, Kalyan argued for a free India which had to be a purely Hindu nation and entirely organised on the basis of Hindu culture. He suggested that the national flag be saffron and Vande Mataram the national anthem.

Other notable suggestions in the 12-point template Poddar presented for the Hindu-majority independent India includes one on the composition of the Army: that it should consist only of Hindus. He also wanted cow slaughter banned and that Muslims not be appointed to any high post.

Interestingly, Poddar was rounded up by the police after the assassination of Gandhi. Poddar had also attended a function held to celebrate Golwalkar’s release from prison in 1949.

Over the decades after Gandhi’s death, in the fallow years of the hardline Hindutva movement, Kalyan and Gita Press remained a voice of Hindus, zealously propagating Hindu nationalism that would later take the shape of a large political movement, raising slogans that Kalyan continued to raise during the period when the likes of Hindu Mahasabha and Vishva Hindu Parishad remained on the fringes of Indian politics. ‘Through the power of print, Gita Press sought to influence the policies and politics of free India, supporting various movements, ideologies and organisations that promoted Hindu identity and culture, and opposing those seen as a threat to Sanatan Dharma,’ writes Mukul. Kalyan was among the first publications to have religiously attacked Christian missionaries and their work in the country. Sensing the danger of communism early on, Gita Press unleashed an attack through the 1960s and 70s on the ideology and teachings of Karl Marx, using the Gita as a counter text.

Mukul narrates several other incidents, from cow- protection protests in the late 1960s to the Ram and Krishna Janmabhoomi movements later, to substantiate his assertion that Gita Press had acquired a position as the single most important voice of Hindu nationalism. Besides, he dwells on the link between money and religion and how Hindu business houses aided the running of what is seen as a mega-political project, a subject that has been explored by the likes of scholars such as Meera Nanda and Mario Gómez- Zimmerman.

The great significance of Gita Press is that unlike others, it continues to survive and flourish, after having sold, as Mukul notes, 72 million copies of the Gita, 70 million copies of Tulsidas’ works and 19 million copies of scriptures like the Upanishads and Puranas. Kalyan, the magazine, still has a circulation of more than 200,000 copies. Beyond doubt, it has had enormous impact on the lives of people, especially in northern India, where each railway station had outlets that sold its publications.

The author puts the spotlight on how Kalyan continues to wield tremendous influence, directly or indirectly, on the people of the country. He also reviews the ‘moral universe’ of Gita Press and its condescending attitude towards women. Writes Mukul: ‘…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, (current editor) Radheshyam 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 remarriage is not sanctioned in the shastras. The reason is that a woman becomes a widow due to sins in a 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’.’

Having scoured the archives of Gita Press laboriously, Mukul’s book brings to the fore the part that is often played by such publishers in political campaigns. While those that championed the cause of moderates and the Left have fizzled out, Gita Press has literally stood the test of time. The story that Mukul tells in this highly original work is that of the dogged perseverance of a man who was committed to a political goal. It is also the story of how an institution shaped the political thought and consciousness of Hindu nationalist leaders and Hindus as a pressure group. Mukul regrets that his father, who gave him the original idea of the book, and his mother aren’t there to read his stellar work. And he ends with a warning that with the country’s politics having seen even greater polarisation along religious lines, organisations like Gita Press may get ‘their second wind’.

Mukul will definitely face the wrath of right-wing pundits for the critical portrayal of a history that was crucial to the making of political Hinduism, but then he deserves their thanks for having probed a largely forgotten tale of the endurance of an individual and an organisation through the most trying times.

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Ullekh NP

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