Amid criticism by the Congress, the prestigious Gita Press in Gorakhpur, which has been conferred the Gandhi Peace Prize for 2021, has declined the cash award of Rs one crore which is given with the Prize saying that it does not accept 'donations'.
The manager of the Gita Press Dr Lal Mani Tewari told reporters in Gorakhpur that the Gita Press did not accept any honour conferred upon it nor any donation. ''The Trustees have however decided to accept the Gandhi Peace Prize but not the cash award of Rs one crore,'' Tewari said.
''We accept the honour but not the cash award,'' he added.
The Gandhi Peace Prize, which had been instituted by the centre in 1995 on the occasion of 125th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, is conferred annually. A jury headed by prime minister Narendra Modi has unanimously decided to confer the Prize for 2021 on Gita Press.
Modi, in a Twitter post, hailed the contribution of Gita Press towards ''furthering social and cultural transformations among the people''. ''They have done commendable work over the last 100 years,'' the prime minister said.
Established in 1923, Gita Press, which was celebrating its centenary, published religious books pertaining to the ''Sanatan Dharma'' and Indian ancient culture.
Its website claimed that it had published 41.7 crore books in 15 languages. It has so far published 16.21 crore Shrimad Bhagwat Gita and 2.68 crore 'puranas' and 'upanishads' besides 11.09 crore books for the children.
Its main objectives were to ''promote and spread the principles of Sanatan Dharma, the Hindu religion among the general public by publishing Gita, Ramayana, Upanishads, Puranas, discourses of eminent saints and other character-building books and magazines and marketing them at highly subsidised prices''.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh slammed the decision to confer the Gandhi Peace Prize on Gita Press and said that the latter had ''stormy relations'' with Mahatma Gandhi. ''The decision really is a travesty and is like awarding Savarkar and Godse,'' Ramesh said in a post on Twitter.
Gita Press officials, however, claimed that Mahatma Gandhi had written the preface to the 'Gita Praveshika'' in October 1933.