‘Today our country is independent; it is a republic. There is no Hindu-Muslim question. In this situation it is the job of our Muslim brothers to cordially return temples that were taken away through brutal force. We respect mosques. But wherever they built mosques on temples reminds us of a destructive past and comes in the way of Hindu-Muslim amity. Muslims should return these religious places to Hindus. The welfare of Hindus, Muslims and the nation rests on this. I do not know if today they will do it on their own or time (kaal) and god will teach them, make them acquiesce.’¹

 

ON a sunny winter morning of 11 February 1965, when Hanuman Prasad Poddar, the founding editor of Gita Press and its monthly journal Kalyan, gave this apparent threat to Muslims at the inauguration of Bhagwat Bhavan in the Krishna Janmabhoomi complex in Mathura, the country had been independent for eighteen years and a republic for fifteen. Hindu nationalists had undergone multiple metamorphosis: the Hindu Mahasabha had become politically irrelevant, the Ram Rajya Parishad had turned out to be a disaster and the Jana Sangh, till then an also-ran political party with pockets of influence like in central India, was two years away from its first electoral success achieved through a ragtag coalition with communists, socialists and whoever was in the opposition.

Despite the political redundancy of the Hindu right in the early years of the republic, they had kept themselves busy in the cultural and religious arena, mobilizing people and building a narrative of how the wheel of history had wronged or been unkind, if one may say so, to the majority Hindu community. This rubric was built brick by brick through a strict division of labour, in which the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh sat at the head of the table as the paterfamilias and organizations like the Gita Press, with a mammoth reach to Hindu homes of all kinds through its Hindi religious journal Kalyan and English monthly Kalyana-Kalpataru, had the crucial job of a filigree artist. Each knot mattered to create a pattern that finally emerged in 2014, when a Hindu party romped home with a majority on its own.

But somehow the story of the complicated and contested rise to political eminence of the Hindu right has been drowned in the histrionics of the lead actors – the RSS, Hindu Mahasabha, Jana Sangh, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and now BJP – leaving out the role of their invaluable allies like the Gita Press.

Coming back to Poddar’s 1965 speech, it had an uncanny resemblance to the editorial he wrote 39 years earlier in the inaugural issue of Kalyan of August 1926. A sweeping historical narrative with grand designs to save Hindu society, Poddar’s editorial referred to destruction of temples, attack on abala (defenceless) Hindu women and slaughter of cows as the most important concerns. And again, in what read like an apparent threat to Muslims, he said, ‘We should remember ahimsa (non-violence) is not cowardice. Non-violence and absolution are the qualities of the fearless and brave, and not of cowards and fainthearted who hide in their homes.’² In the same editorial, he had exhorted Hindus about the need for sangh bal (unity of strength). To this Hindu list of angst, Gita Press also added purity of the varna system as the raison d’ etre of sanatan Hindu identity, a non-negotiable principle that turned the press against a well-wisher like Gandhi whose position on caste was itself full of ambivalence. Untouchable B.R. Ambedkar was always a suspect in the eyes of Gita Press: ‘Himself of hinvarna (low caste) who has married a Brahmin in old age and introduced Hindu Code Bill.’³

 

For the first quarter of the 20th century – the period of frequent Hindu-Muslim riots, of competitive communalism – the editorial was a fairly expansive template to spread sanatan Hindu dharma and bring India to its ancient glory, something that has remained nearly unchanged. What has also not changed is the Hindu inferiority complex about ‘libidinous, sexually dissipated and voluptuously lustful’⁴ Muslim men that Gita Press repeatedly articulated and turned into a pretext for prescribing a highly misogynist moral universe where everything about the woman – education, sexuality, dress, food, participation in public sphere – was a man’s business. Since May 2014, the same puerile arguments have been advanced by Hindu organizations, now occupying centre stage, while justifying their anger against Hindu girls marrying Muslim boys, now fashionably christened love-jihad, or in the case of ghar wapsi (reconversion) or beef eating. These issues have been part of the Hindu public sphere for more than a century but it is only now that setting them right has become a guilt-free, above-law project. A close scrutiny of the Gita Press publications (journals, monographs) reveals with astonishing details how the publishing house from Gorakhpur was at the centre of manufacturing ideology on all that agitates the Hindu right now as it did then.

 

But what is it about Gita Press, based in a small U.P. town that gave it so much heft, made it a stupendous success and an important cog in the wheel of Hindu nationalism. Apart from the obvious fact that it had a religion based genre journal like Kalyan reaching Hindu homes of all persuasions, there were other factors too. Its promoter Jayadayal Goyandka and editor Poddar did not remain impervious to the larger political changes taking place in the colonial period. The propagation of sanatan dharma, with all its emphasis on texts, rituals, social practice and institutions was perfectly blended with the ideals of Hindu nationalism. The Gita Press, right from the beginning, was also conscious of the deep differences among various Hindu sects. Instead of accentuating these differences, it resolved the conflict between ‘reformist organizations like the Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj and traditionalist organizations based on sanatan dharma principles for the larger project of Hindu nationalism promoted by organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha and Bharat Dharma Mahamandal.’⁵ The pages of Kalyan were open to everyone.

 

As a result this strategy came in handy for Gita Press to become the spokesperson of the Hindus. Even though it desisted attacking reformist organizations, it also remained firm in its rigid stance on the validity of the caste system. There has been no change in its belief that ‘those who do noble deeds are born as Brahmins or Kshatriyas and those who indulged in bad deeds are born as chandals.’⁶ To add to this, Gita Press presented a new model of faith and devotion that promised instant results. It was a bania model of profit from bhakti. Steeped in the Vaishnava bhakti traditions initiatives like bhagwan naam jap called on readers to recite God’s name to accumulate punya (moral or spiritual merit) that could translate into the benefits of good health, wealth and mental peace.

With this framework, Gita Press set out on its task of ‘educating the nation’ about India’s golden past as a point of reference for the current dark age. Taking the nation as its classroom, Gita Press used its journals, texts, and monographs as the tools of pedagogy whose ultimate goal was the reinstatement of that hoary Hindu past. The press found immediate currency among the far right, the conservative section of Congress, leading writers of the Hindi world, philosophers, intellectuals, artists, academics, journalists, foreigners, progressives and even some Muslims and Christians.

But the diversity of contributors put together through a great deal of persuasion and cajoling by Poddar did not mean that diverse or divergent opinions were welcome. The narrative had to run parallel to the central theme or strictly adhere to the topic suggested by Poddar. He did not mix his networking with the expected net outcome of the larger project for which he had given up the life of a Marwari businessman. Out of sheer courtesy many who inhabited another ideological plane also fell for Poddar’s charm. Therefore, one finds someone like Premchand, a friend of Poddar, struggling to find a topic to write about and reluctantly agreeing to pen something on Shiva, or someone like C.F. Andrews or writer Shivpujan Sahay politely taking refuge in illness or a busy schedule.

 

But Gita Press’s ideological vision and singularity of purpose had to serve the larger cause; the circulation of Kalyan had to enlarge the circle of reason of Hindu nationalism. Gita Press lived up to its promise, becoming the ‘leading purveyor of print Hinduism in the twentieth century’.⁷ Therefore, we find that since 1926, at all flashpoints of history – a majority of them communal in nature – Gita Press became the vehicle for the RSS, Hindu Mahasabha and others. This choreography went about unabated post-1947 and continues even now.

This essay briefly goes into a few of them: the temple entry movement of the 1930s, partition and independence of the ’40s, the Hindu Code Bill agitation of the ’50s and the cow protection movement of the ’60s. Most of these contentious issues that kept the Hindu right agog then, now frustrate them as they refuse to settle – even under BJP majority rule – the way they had always envisaged.

 

For Gita Press, the Poona Pact of 1932 and Gandhi’s endorsement of temple entry by inter-dining with Harijans was the first big threat to the sanatan Hindu order Poddar’s Gita Press wanted to recreate. It caused a schism in his almost father-son relationship with Gandhi. Initially, he personally engaged with Gandhi through a series of letters reminding the Mahatma about his ambivalence on caste by citing his old writings that justified the varna system. As both failed to convince each other, Gita Press in alliance with obscurantist organizations like the Varnashram Swarajya Sangh launched a fusillade against Gandhi, the Temple Entry Bill of 1933 and all those speaking in favour of opening the temple gates.

From attacking Gandhi as a ‘saint’ more influenced by ‘western saints and reformers’ and expressing fear that his followers would emulate him in such ‘un-shastric acts’, Gita Press invoked science to justify the practice of untouchability: ‘Through their sharp eyes the Maharishis had come to the conclusion that doing the job of a bhangi (a low caste associated with cleaning toilets) for generations leaves germs in their body and, therefore, there is a need to persist with the system of untouchability.’⁸ And, when nothing worked, the past was invoked: ‘Untouchables should acknowledge that the ban on temple entry for them is the result of their past misdeeds. Regretting those misdeeds would purify them more than entry into temples.’⁹ In September 1953, when Bihar Chief Minister Sri Krishna Sinha led a group of 800 Harijans into the Baidyanath temple in Deoghar, Poddar lost all hope from independent India, terming the forceful entry into temples as being equivalent to ‘rape, violence and misuse of power’ and asked what kind of democracy allows an individual, a political party or ruling establishment to interfere and forcibly enter a place of worship of one particular faith.’

 

If the opposition to temple entry for Harijans reflected the deep-seated crisis within Hinduism and the avowed refusal of sanatanis to yield even an inch to Harijans, the years leading to partition and independence were so fast-paced that a journal like Kalyan gave up its stated mission of spreading bhakti (devotion), gyan (knowledge) and vairagya (renunciation) and started using the language of violence, intimidation, reprisal, remarkably similar to that being spouted by the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS. It was a period of intense collaboration that could someday be a subject of scholarly inquiry into how the hydra-headed Hindu right can transmogrify into one. To cut a long story short, Gita Press and Poddar were in a tearing hurry to ensure that Hindu Mahasabha’s slogan Jinnah chahe de de jaan, nahi milega Pakistan (Jinnah can give his life, He will not get Pakistan) did not get out-shouted by the Muslim League’s Lad ke lenge Pakistan, Maar ke lenge Pakistan (We will fight for Pakistan, We will kill for Pakistan).

As communal violence spread through Bengal, Bihar and other parts of India, and Pakistan became a foregone conclusion, Poddar exhorted the youth to participate in RSS programmes in order to protect the supremacy of Hinduism, even proposing formation of a Rakshak Dal, a Hindu militia of five million youth. On the other hand, his journal Kalyan was publishing a slightly reworked template of Hindu India proposed by the Hindu Mahasabha. It included goals that still inspire the Hindu right: India should be called Aryavrata or Hindustan; the country should be organized on the basis of Hindu culture; military training should be made compulsory; the army should only consist of Hindus; Muslims should be barred from top government jobs; cow slaughter should be banned completely; and many more, each more outrageous than the other.

 

But the highlight of the collaboration was the publication of a pamphlet – ‘Banga Kanya ki Marmasparshi Appeal’ – a first-person account of a Hindu woman from Noakhali who had been raped. Within months of it appearing in Kalyan’s Malaviya Ank, Hindu Mahasabha functionaries across the United Provinces and Bombay Presidency were distributing the pamphlet about the woman’s horrific experience, throwing police and CID in the two provinces into a complete tizzy.

As feared by the Hindu right, the new India had very little of the Aryavrata they had envisaged. If at all, they were saddled with a progressive legislation like the Hindu Code Bill that aimed at modernizing the laws of Hindu marriage and inheritance. What particularly worried them about the Hindu Code Bill was its proposal to give daughters equal right in parents’ property. All sorts of arguments were advanced – from claims that expenditure incurred on a daughter’s wedding equals her right to property to invoking the shastras. When this did not work a smear campaign was launched against Sir Sultan Ahmed, who had introduced the bill in the Constituent Assembly, and Ambedkar for conspiring against Hindu religion. To add to it, the legality of the Constituent Assembly itself was challenged.

 

When all these attempts failed, came the time-tested Hindu-Muslim prism. And arguments similar to what one has heard in recent times against love-jihad were advanced. Kalyan argued that the principle of giving inheritance rights to daughters was a straight lift from Muslim law and therefore an assault on the internal affairs of Hindus. It said giving girls of sixteen and above the freedom to marry anyone of their choice could lead to their tying the knot with Muslim boys. ‘In one corner of the house Bhagwan would be worshipped and in the other end would be recitation of Quran and beef would be cooked.’¹⁰ When even tacit support to Hindu nationalists from President Rajendra Prasad and a section of Congress could not deter Nehru from pursuing the Hindu Code Bill, though in a different form, Poddar and his fellow-travellers took their anger to the election arena by openly supporting the candidature of Prabhudatt Brahmachari against Nehru from Phulpur (U.P.) in the first general election of 1951-52. Brahmachari’s defeat silenced them for a while but did not dishearten them as they found another bone to pick in the name of cow slaughter.

The Hindu battle against cow slaughter preceded the formal birth of organizations espousing the Hindu cause. A trigger for innumerable riots that played out, and still does, in the political arena, cow protection became the cause célèbre for Gita Press right from the beginning. It dismissed the works of scholars like Rajendra Lal Mitra, L.L. Sundara Ram, P.V. Kane, H.D. Sankalia and Laxman Shastri Joshi, all of whom had cited the shastras to prove that cow sacrifice and beef eating was common among Hindus. Apart from two mammoth issues of Kalyan on the cow – Gau Ank (1945) and Gau Seva Ank (1995) – for which contributors belonged to all sorts of ideological affiliations, Gita Press also realized that its engagement with the cow should be outside the realm of ritual, devotion and economics. This entailed the cobbling of a grand alliance with disparate groups working against cow slaughter.

 

Poddar set aside his earlier reticence about making public his political opposition to the Hindu Code Bill, formally joining the Bharat Gosevak Samaj (BGS) in 1963. The Hindu right’s anger with the Constituent Assembly for failing to completely ban cow slaughter had already shown that they were not alone in protecting the gau mata as a section of Congress leaders like Seth Govind Das, Thakurdas Bhargava, Nihal Singh Takshak, Shibban Lal Saksena, Sardar Jaydev Singh and Purushottamdas Tandon were also with them. To the chagrin of Nehru, who was ‘prepared to stake his prime ministership on this issue’,¹¹ his party-ruled states like U.P., Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh banned cow slaughter. Tandon and Bhargava had already defied the Congress party whip and voted in favour of a private member’s bill – the Indian Cattle Preservation bill – of Seth Govind Das in 1955.

To top it all, pro-cow groups ran a smear campaign against Nehru that he himself ate beef, something that annoyed him no end. Pro-cow groups realized that better consolidation could fetch them the desired result. By the time the Sarvadaliya Goraksha Maha Abhiyan Samiti was formed in September 1966, Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi was at the helm. SGMS had everyone from Golwalkar to Govind Das, Mahant Digvijaynath to Shankaracharya of Puri and Karpatri Maharaj in its supreme council. Poddar was the treasurer. The formidable SGMS that looked at a striking distance of bringing down Indira’s government on the issue, could not succeed as lakhs of volunteers it had gathered outside Parliament indulged in wanton violence, the kind the capital had not witnessed till then. The movement died and Home Minister Gulzarilal Nanda was axed. Nanda later joined the cow protectionist group but the synergy that the Hindu nationalists had created across groups remained intact. Today, while Gita Press’s Kalyan still remains the voice of cow protectionists and celebrates the ban on its slaughter in states like Haryana and Maharashtra, the Congress persists with its ambivalence on the cow by speaking in contradictory voices.

At the best political juncture of its long journey, the Hindu right still needs the Gita Press not only because of its wide reach and the ability of its journals to exchange the sobriety of a religious publishing house with the language of hate and religious identity, but for the task of Hindu solidarity which continues. Many goals it has sought to achieve from the 1920s still remain elusive and rankles the Hindu right.

More importantly, the Bharat Ratna that Congress’ G.B. Pant had offered to Poddar despite the fact that he was among the thousands apprehended after Gandhi’s assassination and had publically felicitated M.S. Golwalkar, after the RSS chief returned from jail in the same case, can still be bestowed.

 

* Akshaya Mukul is the author of Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India. Harper Collins, Delhi, 2015.

Footnotes:

1. Compiled by Shyamsundar Dujari, Bhaiji Charitamrit. Gita Vatika Prakashan, Gorakhpur, 2004, pp. 222-229.

2. Kalyan, 1(1), August 1926, pp. 30-33.

3. ‘Hindu Code: Hindu Sanskriti Ke Vinash Ka Ayojan (Hindu Code: A Plan for the Destruction of Hindu Culture)’, Kalyan, June 1948, pp.1110-13.

4. Charu Gupta, ‘Articulating Hindu Masculinity and Femininity: "Shuddhi" and "Sangathan" Movements in United Provinces in the 1920s’, Economic and Political Weekly 33(13), 26 March-3 April 1998, pp. 727-35.

5. Monika Freier, ‘Cultivating Emotions: The Gita Press and its Agenda of Social and Spiritual Reform’, South Asian History and Culture 3(3), July 2012, pp.397-418.

6. Varnashram Swarajya Sangh, ‘Antyajan Ke Liye Mandir Pravesh Ka Nishedh Kyon (Why Temple Entry be Banned for Lower Castes)’, Kalyan, Hindu Sanskriti Ank, January 1950, pp. 214-17.

7. Paul Arney, ‘Gita Press and the Magazine Kalyan: the Hindu Imperative of Dharmapracar.’ Paper Presented at the 24th Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 1995.

8. Madangopal Singhal, ‘Harijan Mandir Pravesh (Harijan Temple Entry)’, Kalyan, January 1947, pp. 715-22.

9. Varnashram Swarajya Sangh, op. cit., fn. 6, pp. 214-17.

10. ‘Hindu Code: Hindu Sanskriti Ke Vinash Ka Ayojan (Hindu Code: Plan to Destroy Hindu Culture)’, Kalyan, June 1948.

11. Donald Eugene Smith, India As a Secular State. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1963, p. 486.