Page 176 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Indian Writings in Literature

Notes 21.2 Economic Injustice

By the time he wrote Godan, Premchand had already established a sizeable archive of trenchant
writings about various forms of economic injustice and exploitation. At times, the influence of
Marxism seemed to compel him to denounce capitalism as a viable economic system and to
embrace the rise of the Soviet Union, then under Stalinist rule. Apparently blind to the horrible
injustices being inflicted on the Soviet people during Stalin’s rule, Premchand often wrote that the
Soviet system, and not ‘capitalist civilization’, would be the best future for India. But Premchand
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by the 1930s was no longer prepared to embrace any one particular explanation or ideology,
preferring instead to find a path that allowed for individual exceptions or for some type of
understanding in the grey area between extremes. In an editorial article of 1933, for example, on
relations between capitalists and farmers, Premchand had this to say: ‘We are not saying that the
capitalist has no place in our social life, nor that society does not obtain some benefit from him; but
it is of utmost importance that the legal protections which the capitalists have procured for the
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tyranny over their own tenants be somewhat reduced’. The same approach can be seen in Godan,
where capitalism as a system is often criticised in part but never dismissed as an absolute evil.
Hori’s son Gobar, for instance, goes to the city as a poor peasant and ends up doing quite well for
himself—economically and socially—through his entrepreneurial skills.
One of the many merits of Premchand’s fiction is his ability to portray the lives of ordinary or
marginalised Indians with a realism that is both sensitive and stark. Premchand remained
sympathetic to the plight of India’s poor throughout his life, and his empathy with the ways in
which economic deprivation and chronic poverty erode the essence of human dignity is omnipresent
in his fiction and nonfiction writings. Thus in Godan, we see that Hori’s actions are driven by the
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‘impulsiveness that comes from poverty’ (13/18) while his wife Dhaniya is made prematurely old
by the ‘anxieties of hunger’ and by living a life that ‘never finds joy’—only an ‘ongoing infirmity
that remains cruelly indifferent to her sense of self-respect’ (11/16). Hori’s sister-in-law Punni,
who is married to Hira, is described as someone for whom ‘deprivation and powerlessness have
dried up any character she once had’ (33/44), leaving only a hardened shell.
Yet Premchand has also distanced himself from his earlier works where ‘the poor’ were nothing
but innocent victims. In Godan, Premchand refuses to accept poverty as a convenient justification
for committing acts of injustice, nor does he portray marginalised and impoverished individuals

9. See, among many others, Premchand’s articles ‘Mahajani Sabhyata’ (Capitalist Civilisation), in Hans (Sept.
1936); ‘Soviyat Rus ki Unnati’ (The Progress Of Soviet Russia) (1932), Prem. Rac. 8: 192; ‘Rus ka Naitik
Utthan’ (Russia’s Political Awakening) (1934), Prem. Rac. 9: 59–60; and ‘Rus Men bhi Punjivad’ (Capitalism
in Russia Too) (1934), Prem. Rac. 9: 97–8.
10. ‘Mahajan aur Kisan’ (The Capitalist and the Peasant) (1933), Prem. Rac. 8: 365.
11. In Premchand’s short story ‘Vidhvans’ (Destruction) (1921), Prem. Rac. 12: 302–5, for example, a poor Gond
woman named Bhungi manages to subsist by parching grains in her oven for other villagers. The Brahmin
who runs the village, however, Pandit Udaybhan, continually exploits her by demanding free labour and
service, and one day, when she is ‘blessed’ with enough business to have food security for a week, Pandit
Udaybhan sends two servants with large amounts of grain which must be parched immediately—for free—
causing her to lose her other business. She cannot finish the task in time and so Pandit Udaybhan comes and
smashes her oven to pieces as punishment for being ‘lazy’. An argument ensues, after which Pandit Udaybhan
has his servants set fire to the broken oven to ensure it cannot be rebuilt; Bhungi, in despair, throws herself
on the flames—an economic sati of sorts. The fire rages out of control and ultimately consumes Pandit
Udaybhan’s house. See also ‘Sadgati’ (Deliverance) (1930), Prem. Rac. 14: 404–10, in which the character
Dukhi literally works himself to death (cf. Hori in Godan), after which his body is dragged away and left
to be devoured by animals.

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