Reacting to Congress leader Jairam Ramesh’s criticism of the Union awarding the Gandhi Peace Prize to Gita Press, trustee of the publisher Devidayal Agarwal said on June 20 that Gita Press does not comment on political matters.
Devidayal Agarwal said that Gita Press follows the suggestions made by Mahatma Gandhi in the year 1926 that the publication should avoid expressing political statements and should not carry advertisements in its issues. “Gandhi Ji had great affection for Gita Press. We have completed 97 years of our journey. He had advised us never to place advertisements and to refrain from expressing political views,” Devidayal Agarwal told ANI.
“Whosoever wants to speak they are allowed to do so, but we will not comment on such matter as we have always followed suggestions given by Gandhi Ji,” Devidayal Agarwal added.
Earlier today, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh slammed the Union over its decision to award the Gandhi Peace Award for 2021 to Gita Press and said “It is really a travesty and is like awarding Savarkar and Godse.”
“The Gandhi Peace Prize for 2021 has been conferred on the Gita Press at Gorakhpur, which is celebrating its centenary this year. There is a very fine biography from 2015 of this organisation by Akshaya Mukul in which he unearths the stormy relations it had with the Mahatma and the running battles it carried on with him on his political, religious & social agenda. The decision is really a travesty and is like awarding Savarkar and Godse,” Jairam Ramesh, a Congress general secretary, said in a tweet.
The Culture Ministry on June 18 said that Gandhi Peace Prize for the year 2021 is being conferred on Gita Press, Gorakhpur.
Gandhi Peace Prize is an annual award instituted by the Government of India in 1995 on the occasion of the 125th Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi as a tribute to the ideals espoused by Mahatma Gandhi.
Gita Press was founded in 1923 by Jaya Dayal Goyanka and Ghanshyam Das Jalan for promoting the principles of Sanatana Dharma and started publishing in 1927. T archives contain over 3,500 manuscripts, including over 100 interpretations of the Bhagwad Gita.
The Gorakhpur-based publishing house is the world’s largest publisher of Hindu religious texts. It has declined the Rs 1 crore cash award for the Gandhi Peace Prize amid a political row over its selection for the prestigious honour.
Today, Gita Press is the only indigenous publishing enterprise of colonial India that continues to thrive in the 21st century. Its books are published in 15 languages, including English, Urdu and Nepali, with 20 retail outlets and over 2500 booksellers in India and abroad selling them. And it is growing like never before.
In 100 years of its existence, it has published a total of 41.7 crore books, according to the data on its website. That’s one Gita Press book for approximately every third Indian. Of course, it doesn’t mean every third Indian has bought one. But Gita Press books did become a household phenomenon over time, with most Hindi-speaking people having one or the other Gita Press book at home.
Of the 41.7 crore books Gita Press has sold so far, 16.21 crore copies are of the Bhagavad Gita, the inspiration behind the emergence of the publishing house. 11.73 crore books are of Goswami Tulsidas, the Ramayana in Awadhi dialect, and Hanuman Chalisa, the lowest-priced edition of which is sold for Rs 2. Gita Press has published nearly 11 crore books for children too. It now also sells books online. It has a collection of more than 3,000 books on its website.
The trustee board of the press, which met in Gorakhpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh late on June 18 after the award was announced, said on June 19 that it was a matter of great honour to be conferred the award for 2021 but would not accept the Rs 1 crore cash component that comes with the prize keeping with its tradition of not receiving any kind of “donations”.
The publisher thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Union Culture Ministry for conferring the award on Gita Press.
(with inputs from ANI)
