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Unit 21: Premchand: Godan: Detailed Study of the Text

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conservative Hindu interests. Alternatively, those who advocated revolutionary violence had much Notes
to offer in terms of fiery and sloganistic rhetoric but little to offer in terms of constructive, positive,
and material results. Even those we conventionally think of as society’s ‘subalterns’—the toiling
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peasant, the agricultural labourers, the industrial wage-earners, increasingly came across to
Premchand as active perpetrators of injustice rather than merely its innocent victims. 6
However the disillusionment that permeated the 1930s should not be confused with hopelessness
or apathy. Many individuals, movements, and organisations continued to devote themselves to
building a more progressive and egalitarian society in advance of the coming independence.
Premchand may have become disillusioned, but he never stopped writing; and in that sense never
gave up hope that a better world and a better India were still possible. Indeed, the Hindi literary
world was generally one of the major sites in this period for attempts to recreate the electricity of
early nationalist politics, making it a vibrant component of what Francesca Orsini has called the
‘Hindi public sphere’. Yet even here, disillusionment was never quite expunged. As the new
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Hindi literature became more and more a vehicle for Hindi-region nationalism, other cultural,
religious, and linguistic nationalisms (most notably Tamil) were moved to protest this perceived
bid for ‘Hindi hegemony’.

4. The ideas of the cultural nationalists, which in many ways dominated the Hindi literary market in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, had an influence on Premchand’s earlier writings. The roots of this
‘school’ of thought can be found, for instance, in the writings of Bharatendu Hariscandra, on whom see
Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization Of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu Harischandra and Nineteenth-
Century Banaras (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Sudhir Chandra, The Oppressive Present:
Literature and Social Consciousness in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp.117–42. At
the time that Premchand began his literary career, many writers still espoused the ideas of cultural nationalism,
for instance Lajjaram Sharma Mehta (1863–1931), in works such as Hindu Grhasth (A Hindu Household)
(1901), Adarsh Hindu (The Invisible Hindu) (1914) and Swatantra Rambha aur Partantra Lakshmi (Independent
Rambha and Dependent Lakshmi) (1915).
5. Premchand’s novel Premashram (Sanctuary Of Love) (1922), Prem. Rac. 2, combines turgid Marxist ideological
rhetoric—at times even the peasants talk like committed Bolsheviks—with Gandhian plans of action. Similarly,
Rangabhumi (The Battlefield) (1925), Prem. Rac. 3, details the plight of the exploited labouring masses, in
this case through the tale of a blind beggar who is literally killed by the march of industrial ‘progress’. In
general, although radical Leftist politics had only a marginal influence on formal politics, it had immense
influence in the literary world—Hindi literature was no exception. Jainendra Kumar, for instance, who was
a contemporary and friend of Premchand, had explored revolutionary themes in his famous novel Sunita
(Sunita) (1935), but the revolutionary aspects of the novel are at times awkward and forced, as if they were
merely part of a passing and somewhat contrived fad. More committed to the project of literature and
revolutionary propaganda was Yashpal (1903–1976), especially in his controversial novel Dada-Kamred
(Comrade Dada) (1941), which in essence re-works and rewrites Jainendra Kumar’s character Sunita into a
more hardcore revolutionary figure (the main female character here is Shaila). Ajneya’s (Sachchidanand
Hiranand Vatsyayan) novel Shekhar: Ek Jivani (Shekhar: A Life) (1941), is written in (auto)biographical style
and puts the revolutionary terrorist character at centre stage as a somewhat ambivalent ‘hero’.
6. The term ‘subaltern’ is drawn, of course, from the writings of what has been termed the ‘subaltern school’,
whose views found collective expression in the series of volumes published as Subaltern Studies, originally
under the editorship of Ranajit Guha. For early theoretical underpinnings, see Ranajit Guha, Elementary
Aspects Of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983). For critical reactions,
see Vinayak Chaturvedi (ed.), Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial (London: Verso, 2000); and
David Ludden (ed.), Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization
Of South Asia (London: Anthem Press, 2002).
7. Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age Of Nationalism
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002).

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