Akshaya Mukul
Akshaya Mukul is a writer and journalist. In a two-decade political journalism career, he has made a mark at the Times of India, Hindustan Times, Pioneer, and the Asian Age. His book, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya (2022) received Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize. Mukul is also the recipient of fellowships from the New India Foundation, Homi Bhabha, and Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund.
NIF Books
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, Kalyan now has a circulation of over 200,000 and its English counterpart, Kaylana-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 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.
Purchase: Amazon
Reviews:
'Mukul tells us the fascinating story of how the Hindutva project was seeded and consolidated in the public imagination, and of how, at the core of it lay the complex, intimate, collaborative though not always cordial relationship between the Brahminical Hindu Orthodoxy and the leading lights of the Marwari, Aggarwal and Bania community—Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, M.K. Gandhi, the Birlas and the Gita Press.' —ARUNDHATI ROY
'Mukul's research is breath-taking in its spread … The result of his work is this once-in-a-lifetime book, a must for those who want to understand the Hindu revival movement.'—Bhupesh Bhandari, Business Standard
'[Akshaya Mukul] 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.'—Ullekh N.P., Open Magazine
'Among the several achievements of Akshaya Mukul's new book, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India, the most significant is its below-the-hood scrutiny of Hindutva—the design of its engine, the kind of fuel it runs on, and the levers controlling its movement and acceleration … Mukul transforms his historical chronicle of a single religious press into a magisterial account of the socio-cultural, economic and human forces at play in the politics of Hindutva.'—G. Sampath, The Hindu
'Akshaya Mukul tells a textured story of … heady ideological cross currents. The book brilliantly situates the press at the intersection of several far-reaching social and political currents, and uses it as a window to illuminate notable social transformations in north India.'—Pratap Bhanu Mehta, The Indian Express
'This lucid and well-researched book is at once the biography of a remarkable individual, and the history of an extraordinary institution.' —RAMACHANDRA GUHA
'A first-rate piece of scholarship which will be one of the standard works on the subject for a long time.' —AAKAR PATEL, India Today
'This remarkable book is the result of Mukul's wonderful discovery of Poddar's papers and his admirable persistence in gradually gaining access to and trawling through them.' —FRANCESCA ORSINI, Economic & Political Weekly
Book Awards:
Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award (Books - Non-fiction category), 2016
Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize, 2016
Tata Literature Live! Book of the Year Award, 2016
Atta Galatta–Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize (Best Non-fiction), 2016
Crossword Book Award, 2016