Ever since the date of Pran Pratishtha ceremony of Ram Lalla at the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya was announced, the country has witnessed huge surge in materials and scriptures related to Lord Ram and Ramayana. The demand for Ram-related scriptures has gone so high that Gita Press in Gorakhpur, the premier publisher of Hindu scriptures, have now run out of copies and finding it difficult to meet demands.
Lalmani Tripathi, Manager of Gita Press, said that after the Ram Mandir inauguration was announced, demands for Ramcharitmanas, along with Sundar Kand and Hanuman Chalisa have gone up substantially. He said that press has no stock left for Ramcharitmanas. Tripathi said that as soon as copies are printed, they are shipped immediately due to the demands, and have no inventory of the copies of the Ramayana version by Tulsidas.
VIDEO | "Ever since the date of Ram Lalla's Pran Pratishtha has been announced, the demand for Ramcharitmanas, along with Sundar Kand and Hanuman Chalisa, has increased. In the previous years, we were publishing around 75,000 copies of Ramcharitmanas every month. This year, we… pic.twitter.com/w0jniGjoWl
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) January 12, 2024
He said that generally Gita Press prints 75,000 copies of the scripture, this year they published 1 lakh copies, and still all stock were exhausted. He said that apart from Ramcharitmanas, demands for Sundar Kand and Hanuman Chalisa have also increased.
As per PTI, this is the first time that Gita Press is facing a shortage of Ramcharitmanas in its stock.
Lalmani Tripathi said that there was a demand for 50,000 copies of Ramcharitmanas from Jaipur, and 10,000 copies were ordered from Bhagalpur, but they could not fulfil the orders. Gita Press is also getting orders from its branches to distribute the scriptures, which the press is unable to fulfil.
He said that when there will be a massive crowd in Ayodhya after 22 January, the demand for the scripture will also go up. He added that when people will visit the Ram Mandir Ayodhya, they will want to buy a copy of Ramcharitmanas to bring home as prasad. Tripathi also added that the press is facing a shortage of places given the increased volume of printed books.
Ramcharitmanas is an epic poem in Awadhi language composed by bhakti poet Tulsidas based on Valmiki’s Ramayana. It made the story of Ramayana available to the common men as most people didn’t know Sanskrit. Sundar Kand is the fifth book in Ramayana, which tells the story of Hanuman. Hanuman Chalisa is a devotional hymn dedicated to Lord Hanuman.
