Hanuman Prasad Poddar

The Story

Poddar came to his life's work through the freedom movement. As a young man he was an active independence activist, wrote prose and poetry, and believed that a country fighting for swaraj also needed to know its own scriptures and values, free of distortion and free of exorbitant price.

In 1926, together with Jaydayal Goyandka, he set up the Gita Press at Gorakhpur, and in 1927 launched Kalyan, the monthly journal that would become one of the most widely read religious magazines in the world. Poddar edited it for the rest of his life, combining scriptural learning with simple language that a farmer could follow.

The institution's method was radical in its plainness: no profit motive, obsessive textual accuracy, and prices low enough for ordinary households. Millions of Bhāratiya families owned their first Gita, Ramayana or Mahabharata because the Gita Press printed copies cheaper than the market believed possible.

He died in 1971, leaving an institution that has printed hundreds of millions of books. Poddar's experiment proved that publishing could be a form of public service — that the cheapest possible good book is a legitimate national ambition.