Demand soars for Ramcharitmanas after temple inauguration
The house publishing has uploaded nearly 500 books, including Ramcharitmanas, on its website for download and free reading, yet it is hard-pressed to cope with the high demand
Gita Press, the Gorakhpur-based largest publisher of Hindu religious texts, is virtually burning the midnight oil. The 100-year-old company is deluged with demand for Ramcharitmanas, the venerated epic dedicated to Lord Ram authored by medieval poet Goswami Tulsidas, following the Ram Mandir inauguration.
After the construction of the Ram temple started in August 2020, the demand for the holy tome began to rise. It skyrocketed when the date of the “pran pratishtha” (consecration) was announced. The consecration ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 22.
Gita Press prints 1,800 books in several genres in 15 Indian languages apart from English. Annually, it prints nearly 22.5 mil- lion religious and spir- itual books.
“Currently, we print roughly a lakh copies of Ramcharit- manas a month, yet we are unable to meet the rising market demand for the text,” Gita Press manager Lalmani Tewari told Business Standard.
“There is a renewed interest among the people, especially youth, for religious and ancient texts. Our uploaded content has clocked more than 1.7 million searches, about 225,000 reads and 68,000 downloads. Yet, Gita Press is facing an uphill task to meet the demand from booksellers,” he added.
Interestingly, the publishing house has uploaded nearly 500 books, including Ramcharitmanas, on its website for download and free reading, yet it is hard-pressed to cope with the high demand.
The uptick in demand is translating into good revenues. Gita Press, which saw a workers’ strike in 2015, is looking at revenues of ~130 crore this financial year, a 25 per cent increase over last year’s top line of ~108 crore.
“Since 2015, we have installed new printing machines costing ~30 crore at our Gorakhpur plant,” Tewari said, strongly refuting reports that the publisher ever faced any financial troubles and was close to shutting down in 2015 following the strike.