NEW DELHI: It’s the story of a journey — from the risk of extinction to unprecedented expansion. Gorakhpur-based Gita Press, which stood on the brink of closure nine years ago, is now out of stock of its popular edition of Ramcharitmanas; in fact, most of its publications dealing with Hindu scriptures and deities are running out ahead of the consecration ceremony in Ayodhya.
The iconic institution, which has been credited by many as protecting and sustaining the Hindu faith at a time when it was being disparaged by the colonial regime and aggressive proselytisers by churning out its low-priced publications, has not been able to meet the mammoth number of print orders in the run-up to the consecration, and has uploaded the entire Ramcharitmanas on its website for downloads for the next 15 days to help Shri Ram devotees perform the rituals they have planned ahead of and on the day of the ceremony.
The surge in demand has led those running the Press, whose importance was acknowledged by the Modi government last year by conferring the Gandhi Peace Prize on it, to seriously consider expansion of its facility to cope with the demand, with there being sufficient pointers that the religious groundswell is not going to go away anytime soon.
“Currently, we are uploading Ramcharitmanas on the Gita Press website and from Tuesday, it will be available for free download and the service will be available for 15 days, allowing up to 50,000 people to download and search simultaneously. If the load and demand increase, we will scale up the capacity, enabling up to 1,00,000 downloads at a time, and the service period may also be extended,” Lalmani Tripathi, manager of the publishing house, said.
Tripathi regretted that they didn’t have the logistics to print around 4 lakh copies of Ramcharitmanas at such short notice. “When a huge number of people visit Ayodhya after the ‘pran pratishtha’, they might think of taking Ramcharitmanas as ‘prasad’ back home. We publish books in 15 languages and have over 2,500 book distributors associated with us and we need to take into account their demands as their livelihoods depend on it. We are exploring various options to expand our capacity so that we can meet the increasing demand for books,” he said.
“Since last month, we have managed to supply 1 lakh copies, but are nowhere near meeting the demand which keeps swelling across the country. Recently, we received a demand from Jaipur for 50,000 Ramcharitmanas copies and a demand for 10,000 copies came from Bhagalpur, which we had to regretfully decline,” Tripathi said.
Production manager of the publishing house Ashutosh Upadhyay said the management has decided to install another printing press worth Rs 9 crore, which will increase capacity by over 20%.
He said Gita Press has published over 95 crore copies of various books since its establishment. PM Modi had on July 7 last year, while attending the closing ceremony of the centenary celebrations of the publishing house in Gorakhpur, described it as “not less than any temple”, adding the publisher was “guiding humanity” through its work.
All this, the expansion plan and the glow of appreciation look a far cry from the situation it faced in 2015 when it appeared to be staring at closure after protracted tensions between the management and workers. But the tide turned because of the religiosity which has accompanied BJP’s rise, with its turnover per annum reaching Rs 100 crore two years consecutively.
The iconic institution, which has been credited by many as protecting and sustaining the Hindu faith at a time when it was being disparaged by the colonial regime and aggressive proselytisers by churning out its low-priced publications, has not been able to meet the mammoth number of print orders in the run-up to the consecration, and has uploaded the entire Ramcharitmanas on its website for downloads for the next 15 days to help Shri Ram devotees perform the rituals they have planned ahead of and on the day of the ceremony.
The surge in demand has led those running the Press, whose importance was acknowledged by the Modi government last year by conferring the Gandhi Peace Prize on it, to seriously consider expansion of its facility to cope with the demand, with there being sufficient pointers that the religious groundswell is not going to go away anytime soon.
“Currently, we are uploading Ramcharitmanas on the Gita Press website and from Tuesday, it will be available for free download and the service will be available for 15 days, allowing up to 50,000 people to download and search simultaneously. If the load and demand increase, we will scale up the capacity, enabling up to 1,00,000 downloads at a time, and the service period may also be extended,” Lalmani Tripathi, manager of the publishing house, said.
Tripathi regretted that they didn’t have the logistics to print around 4 lakh copies of Ramcharitmanas at such short notice. “When a huge number of people visit Ayodhya after the ‘pran pratishtha’, they might think of taking Ramcharitmanas as ‘prasad’ back home. We publish books in 15 languages and have over 2,500 book distributors associated with us and we need to take into account their demands as their livelihoods depend on it. We are exploring various options to expand our capacity so that we can meet the increasing demand for books,” he said.
“Since last month, we have managed to supply 1 lakh copies, but are nowhere near meeting the demand which keeps swelling across the country. Recently, we received a demand from Jaipur for 50,000 Ramcharitmanas copies and a demand for 10,000 copies came from Bhagalpur, which we had to regretfully decline,” Tripathi said.
Production manager of the publishing house Ashutosh Upadhyay said the management has decided to install another printing press worth Rs 9 crore, which will increase capacity by over 20%.
He said Gita Press has published over 95 crore copies of various books since its establishment. PM Modi had on July 7 last year, while attending the closing ceremony of the centenary celebrations of the publishing house in Gorakhpur, described it as “not less than any temple”, adding the publisher was “guiding humanity” through its work.
All this, the expansion plan and the glow of appreciation look a far cry from the situation it faced in 2015 when it appeared to be staring at closure after protracted tensions between the management and workers. But the tide turned because of the religiosity which has accompanied BJP’s rise, with its turnover per annum reaching Rs 100 crore two years consecutively.
