CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, PATNA

PROJECT ON:

FICTIONAL WORLD OF

PREMCHAND WITH SPECIAL

REFERENCE TO THE SUPPRESSION

OF DOWNTRODDENS

SUBJECT:

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Submitted By:

Anwesha Tripathy, Roll No.724, Section-A, 1st Year(2nd Semester)

Submitted To:

Dr. Pratyush Kaushik, Assistant Professor of English

TABLE OF CONTENTS1

TITLES…………………………………………………………………………………PAGE NO.

1. Acknowledgement………………………………………………………………………3

2. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..4

3. Premchand: A short sketch……………………………………………………………...5

4. Works Of Premchand…………………………………………………………………...8

5. Fictions of Premchand on Downtroddens……………………………………………...11

6. Social Reactions to Premchand’s works on suppression of Downtroddens…………....14

7. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………16

8. Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………….18

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

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It is my greatest pleasure to be able to present this project of English. I found it very interesting

to work on this project. I would like to thank Dr.Pratyush Kaushik, Asst.Prof., English for

providing me with such an interesting project topic and for his constant support and guidance.

I would also like to thank my librarian for helping me in gathering data for the project. Above

all, I would like to thank my parents, elder sister and paternal aunt,who from such a great

distance have extended all possible moral and motivative support for me.

I hope the project is upto the mark and is worthy of appreciation.

Anwesha Tripathy

Patna

INTRODUCTION

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Premchand has been accorded the title of one of the most successful and powerful writers of all

times. His works on the noticeable social aspects and evils have proved to be educative and

enlightening for members of all age groups. His works on downtrodden and the suppression of

the downtrodden classes by the upper classes have gained all round popularity. He has

adequately sympathized for the plight of the oppressed with his wonderfully crafted literary

masterpieces and through the portrayal of the true colors of social evils with his wonderful

protagonists of his creations. The project gives a brief account of Premchand’s works, with

special reference to the works on suppression of downtrodden.

PREMCHAND: A BRIEF SKETCH

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Munshi Premchand (July 31, 1880 – October 8, 1936) was an Indian writer famous for his

modern Hindustani literature. He is one of the most celebrated writers of the Indian

subcontinent, and is regarded as one of the foremost Hindustani writers of the early twentieth

century.

Born Dhanpat Rai Srivastav, he began writing under the pen name "Nawab Rai", but

subsequently switched to "Premchand", while he is also known as "Munshi

Premchand", Munshi being an honorary prefix. A novel writer, story writer and dramatist, he has

been referred to as the "Upanyas Samrat" ("Emperor among Novelists") by some Hindi writers.

His works include more than a dozen novels, around 250 short stories, several essays and

translations of a number of foreign literary works into Hindi.

Premchand is considered the first Hindi author whose writings prominently featured realism. His

novels describe the problems of the poor and the urban middle-class. His works depict a

rationalistic outlook, which views religious values as something that allows the powerful

hypocrites to exploit the weak. He used literature for the purpose of arousing public awareness

about national and social issues and often wrote about topics related to corruption, child

widowhood, prostitution, feudal system, poverty, colonialism and on the India's freedom

movement.

Premchand started taking an interest in political affairs while at Kanpur during the late 1900s,

and this is reflected in his early works, which have patriotic overtones. His political thoughts

were initially influenced by the moderate Indian National Congress leader Gopal Krishna

Gokhale, but later, he moved towards the more extremist Bal Gangadhar Tilak. He considered

the Minto-Morley Reforms and the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms as inadequate, and supported

greater political freedom. Several of his early works, such as A Little Trick and A Moral Victory,

satirized the Indians who cooperated with the British Government. He did not specifically

mention the British in his some of his stories, due to strong government censorship, but disguised

his opposition in settings from the medieval era and the foreign history. He was also influenced

by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda.

In the 1920s, he was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's non-cooperation movement and the

accompanying struggle for social reform. During this period, his works dealt with the social

issues such as poverty, zamindari exploitation (Premashram, 1922), dowry system (Nirmala,

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1925), educational reform and political oppression (Karmabhumi, 1931). Premchand was

focused on the economic liberalization of the peasantry and the working class, and was opposed

to the rapid industrialization, which he felt would hurt the interests of the peasants and

oppression of the workers. This can be seen in works like Rangabhumi (1924).

In his last days, he focused on village life as a stage for complex drama, as seen in the

novel Godan (1936) and the short-story collection Kafan (1936). Premchand believed that social

realism was the way for Hindi literature, as opposed to the "feminine quality", tenderness and

emotion of the contemporary Bengali literature.

Satyajit Ray filmed two of Premchand's works– Sadgati and Shatranj Ke

Khiladi. Sadgati (Salvation) is a short story revolving around poor Dukhi, who dies of

exhaustion while hewing wood for a paltry favor. Shatranj ke Khiladi (The Chess Players)

revolved around the decadence of nawabi Lucknow, where the obsession with a game consumes

the players, making them oblivious of their responsibilities in the midst of a crisis.

Sevasadan (first published in 1918) was made into a film with M.S. Subbulakshmi in the lead

role. The novel is set in Varanasi, the holy city of Hindus. Sevasadan("House of Service") is an

institute built for the daughters of courtesans. The lead of the novel is a beautiful, intelligent and

talented girl called Suman. She belongs to a high caste. She is married to a much older,

tyrannical man. She realizes that a loveless marriage is just like prostitution except that there is

only one client. Bholi, a courtesan, lives opposite Suman. Suman realizes that Bholi is

"outside purdah", while she is "inside it". Suman leaves her husband and becomes a successful

entertainer of gentlemen. But after a brief period of success, she ends up as a victim of a political

drama played out by self-righteous Hindu social reformers and moralists.

Premchand also worked with the film director Himanshu Rai of Bombay Talkies, one of the

founders of Bollywood.

The Actor Factor Theatre Company, a young Delhi based theatre group, staged Kafan in 2010 in

New Delhi. It is an original stage adaptation of Premchand's short story. Kafan is a dark comedy.

In the play, puppetry is explored to depict the tussle between two classes and the plight of

Budhia, who is caught in the crossfire. Bleakness of hope in the story and awfulness of the

father-son duo find a delicate balance. At times the situations break into morbid humor. In the

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end a wine-house becomes the stage for Ghisu (father) and Madhav's (son) rebellious dance,

defying not only the laws of the land but also that of the Gods.

Oka Oori Katha is a 1977 Telugu film directed by Mrinal Sen. It is based on the story Kafan by

Munshi Premchand. It is one of the few Art films made in Telugu language.

Dramatech, a 28-year old amateur theatre group in Delhi, staged Premchand: Three Comedies

for Families and Children, at Sri Ram Centre, Delhi in August, September and October 2012.

The stories by Premchand included Do bailon ki katha; Shatranj ke khiladi; Nimantran. The

stories were dramatised and directed by Ravi Raj Sagar.

With a successful record of hundreds of short stories, around fourteen novels, many essays,

letters, plays and translations, Premchand has set a milestone in the field of realistic literature

and through his powerful writings, has reflected the darker shades of the society we all live in.

The next chapter shall give an account of the famous works by Premchand.

WORKS OF PREMCHAND

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Premchand’s revolutionary works include almost three hundred short stories, and some fourteen

novels, plays and children’s stories. Following is a list of his works:

His novels include:

Devasthana rahasya

Prema

Kishna

Roothi rani

Soz-e-watan

Vardaan

Sevasadan

Premashram

Rangbhoomi

Nirmala

Kaayakalp

Pratigya

Gaban

Karmabhomi

Godaan

Mangalsutra

Some of his famous short stories are:

Adeeb ki izzat

Bade bhai sahib

Duniya ke sabse anmol rattan

Beti ka dhan

Saut

Panch parmeshwar

Balidaan

Shatranj ke khiladi

Idgah

Nashaa

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Kafan

His works for children include:

Jungle ki kahaniyan

Ram charcha

Manmodak

His plays that have made a mark are:

Karbala

Tajurba

Prem ki bedi

Roohani shaadi

Sangram

His popular essays include:

Kuch vichar

Kalam tyag aur talwar

The movie script written by Premchand was MAZDOOR in 1934.

And other stories written by Premchand that have remained an all time favourite among people

include:

Atmaram

Chori

Daroga sahib

Do bailon ki katha

Grihaneeti

Khudai

Mukti marg

Sadgati

Sauteli maa

Nizat, etc,.

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In the next chapter we shall see how Premchand’s literary works have pertained to the world and

suppression of the downtrodden.

FICTIONS OF PREMCHAND ON DOWNTRODDEN

Downtrodden or Subaltern in literature has been treated in various ways by different writers.

Even Premchand has treated different sections of people as downtrodden in different stories.

Following is a discussion on his works pertaining to the atrocities faced by the deprived sections

of the society.

Munshi Premchand (1880-1936) is one such writer we can rely upon for showcasing the whole

gamut of subaltern experiences. Writing in the first three decades of the 20th Century he exposes

the socio-economic deprivation of the dispossessed sections of colonial India, not by the colonial

rulers but by feudal India itself. Yet his condemnation of the feudal and caste system of Indian

society is not explicit or interventionist. His social realistic mode recreates the lived reality of the

subalterns exposing pretensions and complacencies of dominant, feudal and patriarchal social

mores. The story discussed here is The Shroud, originally Kafaan, which was also made into a

film by Mrinal Sen. Ghisu and his son Madhav belong to the chammar community, ‘the lowest

among the untouchable castes’. They sat at the door of their hut, beside a dead fire, digging out

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laboured in pain. Ghisu’s wife had died long time back while Madhav married only the previous

year. They could hear Budhia screaming and thrashing, yet refused to go inside, lest the other

finished off the potatoes. The father and son were “probably waiting for her to die, so that they

could go to sleep in peace and quiet.’ Potatoes finished, they went off to sleep in the same place

leaving Budhia still moaning. As expected Budhia was found dead in the morning. Budhia’s

death stirred them to action. Old Ghisu was wise enough to know the inverted logic of civility.

He says to Madhav, “The same people who now refuse to give us even one paisa, will call us

tomorrow to give us rupees. I had none sons and there was never anything in the house, but each

time God saw us through somehow or the other”. So they went begging around to arrange for a

decent cremation of Budhia. Within an hour, they succeeded to collect five rupees and went to

the market to buy a shroud (kafaan) for the deceased. Inside the market, they ditched the idea of

buying a shroud, deeming it a useless luxury. They rather indulged themselves in a rare feast of

choicest foods and drinks. Soon after, they broke into a dancing and singing bout, falling down

eventually in a drunken stupor.

Premchand begins his story in a depreciatory tone castigating the father and son for their slothful

nature. They are described from the upper caste point of view and branded as useless fellows.

The upper caste is wont to extract free or cheap labour out of the lower castes. If someone from

the lower caste is slothful or shirker of work or show defiance to authority, he is labelled as a

useless or crooked fellow. His value in the society is measured in terms of his utility to the

dominant lass. As Premchand puts it, ‘And these two had earned a particularly bad name for

themselves in the entire village. Ghisu was notorious for working for one day and taking off for

three days. Madhav was such a shirker that if he worked for half an hour, he would stop and

smoke his pipe for an hour. So the two of them seldom found work. If they had even a handful of

grain in the house, they would swear off work. A couple of days’ starvation would induce Ghisu

to climb a tree and break some twigs for firewood, which Madhav would sell in the market. After

this the two would loiter about for as long as the money would last’. Looking at them from

another point of view, Ghisu and his son were more intelligent than the rest of their kind.

Another such work is Rangbhoomi.

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Rangbhoomi as a novel is complex -- it has many layers to it which take time to unfold and come

to the surface. The title itself means, "The arena of life" -- which is so apt to the entire book. It is

life playing itself in its arena and in many shapes, forms and emotions. In this novel of epic

proportion set in pre-Independence India, Premchand treads the tricky ground of tensions

between the rulers and the ruled. Capturing the travails and traumas of peasant

society,Rangbhumi celebrates the unassailable spirit of the common man. The novel revolves

around the blind Surdas, who begs for a living, but is also the owner of a much-coveted piece of

land. The land is used as a kind of commons by the fractious villagers of Pandepur; but it is also

actively sought by a local industrialist, Sevak, who wants to set up a cigarette factory. Thus

Surdas's land becomes a symbolic stage on which are fought issues of different routes to

development. The novel depicts most graphically the devastation of peasant society and

agriculture under colonial rule. Premchand treads the very tricky ground of tensions between the

rulers and the ruled in this novel. Here, the ruled are the Indians and the rulers are an amalgam of

the whites, the Indian landowners, and the Indian Christians. Rangbhumi spans the time between

the 1920s and 1930s in pre-Independence India. It captures and celebrates the unassailable spirit

of the common man, especially the farming community, which knows no defeat or submission,

as its spirit is always on the mend, even as it is perceived to be finally crushed.

Finally the popular work Sadgati, meaning salvation was also a major contribution to the field of

subaltern literature by Premchand.

This is one of the best known stories by Premchand (1880 - 1936) and a classic example of

Progressive writers’ concern with the lives of people from oppressed classes. The main

character, Dukhi, is from the untouchable Chamar caste, and his meager life is made difficult by

social forces he does not understand. The action of the story revolves around his attempt to get

the village Brahmin to cast his daughter's wedding horoscope. The ironic title, which is a Hindu

theological term literally meaning “the right path,” has often been rendered into English as

“Deliverance.”

The work is a satire on Indian caste system; when a poor and out-caste, village shoemaker,

Dukhi, goes to village Brahmin (Hindu priest) to get the date of his daughter's marriage fixed,

the Brahmin in turn asks for labour without pay in exchange, the ensuing events however turn

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the table against the priest, who in the end has to fore-go all the lofty tradition, including that

of untouchability, he held so dearly, all this life, in his life as village priest.

Premchand through his works has extensively worked on the poor, deprived, downtrodden,

suppressed, oppressed, and ostracized sections of the society who have to tolerate the atrocities

inflicted upon them by the upper classes.

SOCIAL REACTIONS TO PREMCHAND’S WORKS ON DOWNTRODDEN

Premchand's status as social chronicler extraordinaire is in focus in the titular story "The Temple

& The Mosque" as well as "Salvation". In the former, Chaudhry Itrat Ali, a devout man who

observes the Sharia strictly and takes a dip in the Ganga every morning, feels compelled to take

matters into his own hands when he sees his tolerance and inclusiveness are in vain in a town of

fanatics. When he goes out of his way to protect Thakur Bhajan Singh, his "Rajput Man Friday",

his actions have familiar, escalating consequences.

"The Muslims said to themselves that Chaudhry sahib had by now lost all the vestiges of the faith

he had been born into. The Hindus saw it as the ripe moment for performing Chaudhry saheb's

shuddhi - the purification rite that would cleanse him of any remaining impurities. The mullahs

increased the volume of their preachings and the Hindus, too, raised the flag of Hindu

solidarity."

This sort of scathing, bleakly funny commentary on the vagaries of social existence in early 20th

century India (particularly in rural settings) is, of course, what we've all come to associate

Premchand with. While the titular story and "Intoxicants, Both!" bring out religious conflicts of

very different kinds, "The Thakur's Well" and "Salvation" prominently feature the plight of the

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untouchables. "Salvation" (Sadgati), one of Premchand's most frequently anthologised stories,

features as protagonist Dukhi, a tanner or chamar, an "untouchable" caste, who is forced to chop

an obstinate tree that has grown on the property of Pandit Ghasiram, the village priest. Reason:

so that the priest can pick out an auspicious date for the wedding of the poor tanner's daughter.

The innate hypocrisies and lack of empathy in the caste system are laid bare in this gem of a tale.

In an unforgettable scene, when a tired Dukhi asks for fire to light a pipe, the Pandit's wife,

anxious not to touch him, inadvertently drops a spark on his head.

"With her face covered by a veil, she threw the coals at Dukhi from a distance. One large spark

fell on his head. He drew back in alarm and starting tearing at his hair in sudden pain. He

thought to himself, this is the result of polluting a Brahmin's sacred home. God is so quick to

mete out punishment. No wonder then that the entire world so rightly fears pandits. You hear all

the time of people being robbed and cheated; let someone try and rob a pandit of his money, then

he would know! The thief's entire clan would be destroyed and his limbs would rot and fall

away."

The injustices of the caste system, the vicious circle of poverty, social ostracism, usury and the

evil moneylender; these motifs became synonymous with Premchand's works, especially with

younger readers. These generations were not as attuned as their parents to the still-wide chasm

between the haves and the have-nots in India. Moreover, they were also assaulted by an

avalanche of Premchand stories (and always this particular kind of story) in textbooks, and on

the TV or the silver screen. Uninspiring translations of his stories also did not help matters. (The

late, rather underrated author Shama Futehally wrote a charming little piece about this, collected

in "The Right Words" a posthumous anthology published by Penguin in 2006) As a result, two

things happened. One, Premchand was perceived as a bit of a one-trick pony, even among people

who were well-versed in literary matters. Two, Premchand's stories were sometimes criticised for

being hackneyed and repetitive, which is ironical for someone who's a pioneer of the modern

Hindi short story, and has spawned scores of imitators.

This phenomenon is a bit like pegging Satyajit Ray down as a glorified balladeer for "the naked

and the hungry", based purely on the Apu trilogy. Skeptics taking this line of argument would

typically ignore works which do not fall within this perceived category of sorts; the wicked

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urban jungle of Jana Aranya and Seemabaddha, the irreverently comic, fable-like Parash

Patthar or the decadence of bleeding, fading aristocracy in Shatranj Ke Khiladi, which was

based on a Premchand story (longtime Premchand readers will be a touch disappointed to

discover its absence in this collection).

This is something translator Rakhshanda Jalil understands well; in an illuminating essay at the

end of the book, she acknowledges as much, "The world of Premchand, at first glance, is a

seemingly black and white one peopled by villains and martyrs, a bleak world of unending

poverty, unbreakable caste barriers and an unyielding social order." The real genius of this

book lies in the fact that it sheds light on the many different kinds of authorial voices Premchand

could and did take on. "Intoxication" (Nasha) tells, in a sharp-as-nails first person narrative, the

story of a young man of modest means who discovers the ego-massaging effects of perceived

affluence. "The Secret of Civilisation" (Sabhyata Ka Rahasya) burns with all the humanistic

fervour and the indignation of Maxim Gorky, another stalwart who believed in bringing literature

back to the Everyman, so to speak.

CONCLUSION

A pioneer among the upper-caste Hindu writers is Munshi Premchand who identifies

untouchability as one of the worst evils of the exiting Indian society dominated by the Hindus. In

his very first short story, he expresses his strong condemnation against the insensitivity and

heartlessness of the upper caste educated people against the Dalits. The story `The Lone Voice'

(Sirf Ek Aawaz) shows a syanasi makes a fervent appeal to the audience to love those subjugated

people who are in their present state of affairs because of their exploitation by the upper caste

people. At the end of his lecture, he asks ". . . Are we really so cruel? I know I can depend on

you. You are our brave young men. Stand up on your seats all of you who promise me today that

you will be tolerant and kind to the outcastes." Only one man, Thakur Darshan Singh, a

conservative old man, rises up when he finds nobody standing up and accepts the challenge.What

Premchand wanted to convey was that the very eyes that turn bloody, shot with passionate

patriotism, remained silent on the question of tolerance towards the Dalits as their brothers and to

lend a hand to them to have the benefits of their human rights.The predicament of the Dalits and

the extent of violation of their human rights by the upper caste people form the theme of many

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short stories of Premchand during the 1920s especially after the end of the Non-Cooperation

Movement when nationalist movement was at its low ebb. Thus, "Shudra" is a tale of an

untouchable woman who is transported as a part of a racket involvingtrafficking in women.

These poor underdogs of the society often become easy prey to the cunningtraffickers. "Mandir"

is a pathetic tale of a wretched Dalit mother who is desperate to take her sick child to the temple

to pray for his recovery. But the priest will, by no means, allow her to enter the temple and defile

it. "Salvation" gives a picture of inhuman torture by a Brahmin on a poor illiterate chamar who is

innocent enough to honour the Brahmins as the representatives of God on earth even after their

ruthless inhuman torture on the poor Dalits.

Dukhi, the chamar, died out of starvation and exhaustion while trying to cut a log of wood for the

thakur. A contrastive picture of the leisurely life led by the thakur intensifies the inhumanness of

the upper caste people. The account becomes all the more gruesome when the thakur is found

dragging the body of Dukhi outside the village into the field for the jackals and vultures to feed

on showing no sign of repentance for his callous action. The Dalits deserve hardly any

sympathetic behaviour even after their death.

Premchand thus has very creatively portrayed the dark sides of the society we take pride residing

in. His works have always been appealing and accepted because of the truthfulness and realities

engraved in them.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS:

Schulz, Siegfried A. (1981). Premchand: a Western appraisal. Indian Council for Cultural

Relations. 

Gupta, Prakash Chandra (1998). Makers of Indian Literature: Premchand

Sigi, Rekha (2006). Munshi Prem Chand. Diamond Publications

Amrit Rai; Harish Trivedi (1991). Premchand: his life and times. Oxford University Press.

Francesca Orsini (2004). The Oxford India Premchand. Oxford University Press.

WEBSITES:

www.google.co.in

www.wikipedia.org

www.languageinindia.in

Premchand.kahaani.org

www.timesofindia.com

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