Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India

557 Pages·2016·10.49 MB·English

by  Akshaya Mukul

f
Ainh ms
e trove
d original work’ - ft.
AKSHAYA MUKUL
In the early 1920s, Jaydayal Goyandka and
Hanuman Prasad Poddar, two Marwari
businessmen-turned-spiritualists, set up the
Gita Press and KaLyan magazine. As of early
2014, Gita Press had sold close to 72 million
copies of the Gita, 70 million copies of Tulsidas’s
works and 19 million copies of scriptures like
the Puranas and Upanishads. And while most
other journals of the period, whether religious,
literary or political, survive only in press
archives, Kalyon now has a circulation of over
200,000, and its English counterpart,
Kalyana-Kalpataru. of over 100,000.
Gita Press created an empire that spoke in a
militant Hindu nationalist voice and imagined a
quantifiable, reward-based piety. Almost every
notable leader and prominent voice, including
Mahatma Gandhi, was roped in to speak for the
cause. Cow slaughter, Hindi as the national
language and the rejection of Hindustani, the
Hindu Code Bill, the creation of Pakistan, India’s
secular Constitution. KaLyan and
Kalyana-Kalpataru were the spokespersons of
the Hindu position on these and other matters.
The ideas articulated by Gita Press and its
publications played a critical role in the
formation of a Hindu political consciousness,
indeed a Hindu public sphere. This history
provides new insights into the complicated and
contested rise to political pre-eminence of the
Hindu Right.
Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India is an
original, eminently readable and deeply
researched account of one of the most
influential publishing enterprises in the history
of modern India. Featuring an extraordinary cast
of characters— buccaneering entrepreneurs
and hustling editors, nationalist ideologues and
religious fanatics—this is essential (and exciting)
reading for our times.

AKSHAYA MUKUL
id*
IltMiilniiia
HarperCollins Publishers India
First published in hardback in India in 2015 by
HarperCollins Publishers India
Copyright © Akshaya Mukul 2015
P-ISBN: 978-93-5177-230-9
E-ISBN: 978-93-5177-231-6
2468109753 1
Akshaya Mukul asserts the moral right to be identified
as the author of this work.
The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the
facts are as reported by him, and the publishers are not
in any way liable for the same.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publishers.
HarperCollins Publishers
A-75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India
1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF, United Kingdom
Hazelton Lanes, 55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900, Toronto, Ontario M5R 3L2
and 1995 Markham Road, Scarborough, Ontario M1B 5M8, Canada
25 Ryde Road, Pymble, Sydney, NSW 2073, Australia
195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, USA
Typeset in 11/14 Adobe Jenson Pro at
SURYA
Printed and bound at
Thomson Press (India) Ltd
To
My parents
Manorama and Madhusudan