Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India Quotes

“The Marwaris with their economic might were at the forefront of bankrolling gaurakshini sabhas (cow protection associations) while the Yadavs took on the mantle of foot soldiers at the time of riots. Cow protection was also one of the pronounced goals of Gita Press, for which Kalyan was used as a vehicle with two special issues, Gau Ank(Issue on Cows) and Gau Seva Ank (Issue on Service to Cows), besides innumerable articles on cows in various issues of the journal. Poddar, along with Prabhudatt Brahmachari and Karpatri Maharaj, was instrumental in getting many slaughterhouses closed post 1947.”
― Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India

“Passionate and acerbic, Gupt would spare no one, not even his own community. On learning that the Calcutta Marwaris had opened a school that would impart education in English, Hindi and Sanskrit to their boys, Gupt, writing under the pseudonym Shiv Sambhu Sharma in Bharatmitra, the Calcutta journal he edited, hit out at the community telling them not to ‘dare come near knowledge’. Instead, he said, it would be better if they worshipped the camel that had brought them to Calcutta, and if possible bring a camel to the city zoo since it did not have one. He wrote, ‘Your wealth has been acquired through hard work and mental machinations. Whatever you have is yours and not related to knowledge. People who cannot digest your prosperity are whispering “vidya, vidya” (knowledge, knowledge) in your ears. Of what use is vidya? You cannot wear or eat it. If you have money hundreds of knowledgeable persons bow before you even if you are a fool. They praise your sad face . . . without education you have become Raja and Rai Bahadur and the future only knows what more is in store.’18”
― Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India

“(LajjaRakhne Ko Hindu Ki, Hindu Naam Bachane Ko, Aaya Hindu PanchHind Mein, Hindu Jati Jagane Ko).”
― Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India

“Dwivedi—a one-time railway clerk, signaller and later clerk in the transport department—was mostly self-taught. His seventeen-year stint as editor of Saraswati is called the Dwivedi Yug (Dwivedi era) during which the Hindi language was successfully refined and beautified.11 A votary of Hindi as the national language, Dwivedi was in favour of letting regional languages flourish locally, and translating literary works in these languages into Hindi.12”
― Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India

“The Nagari Pracharini Sabha sought to popularize the Nagari script through its magazine Nagari Pracharini Patrika and the literary journal Saraswati founded in 1900. In 1897, when Madan Mohan Malaviya presented Sir Antony MacDonnell, lieutenant governor of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, with the Nagari Pracharini Sabha’s petition Court Character and Primary Education in N-W P. and Oudh accompanied by 60,000 signatures, the response was non-committal.6 Therefore, MacDonnell’s order in 1900 on the use of Nagari as a court script came as a surprise. It was a battle very smoothly won, from which a bruised Urdu would never recover. The division—Hindi for Hindus, Urdu for Muslims7—had more or less been completed, exemplifying”
― Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India

“Bharatendu’s ninety-eight-verse speech ‘Hindi Ki Unnati Par Vyakhyan’ (Lecture on the Progress of Hindi) at the inaugural meeting of the Hindi Vardhini Sabha in Allahabad established his standing as leader of the Hindi movement. More diatribes against Urdu would follow from Bharatendu, but he did not live to see the result of his efforts. He died in 1885 at the age of thirty-five. The year 1893 saw the establishment of the Nagari Pracharini Sabha in Banaras, the most influential body for advocating use of the Hindi language and the Devanagari script.”
― Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India

“Over the years Malaviya had a deep impact on Gita Press, providing it ample fodder during the communally rife period between 1940 and 1947. The birth of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1925 in Nagpur, with which Gita Press would later forge a close alliance, completed the overall scenario in which Kalyan got a firm footing and became a success story unlike any other journal”
― Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India

“Gita Press/Kalyan was a Marwari enterprise with a difference, where profit took the back seat.”
― Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India

“Bajaj, like Birla, a convert to Gandhian principles, raised social issues that most members of the community found unpalatable: inter-caste marriage, expressing concern over the extravagance of marriage celebrations, arguing against the practice of financial speculation, condemning child marriage and asking Marwari women to give up their traditional dress and jewellery.”
― Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India