Page 179 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

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

As with economics, there seems to be an abstract ‘system’ or machine in Premchand’s world that Notes
generates political injustice, but for which no one is prepared to claim or accept responsibility.
Institutions to fight injustice are there—the British government has set up a court system—but
local ‘resistance’ has corrupted the ability of the courts to render justice or for marginalised
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individuals and communities to seek it (226–7/300–1). Within the law enforcement system ‘looting
is rampant [carom taraf lut hai]’ (319/424). Similarly, when it is suggested that the British
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administration set up a loan program for poor farmers to get out of debt, village leaders begin to
plot various ways to ensure that the program does not succeed—all in the name of some abstract
and vague understanding of tradition and custom. Political injustice seems to occur in the world
of Godan because, with very few exceptions, everyone is pursuing acts of self-interest at the
expense of others’ well-being; there is a total absence of civic spirit. As Rai Sahib points out: ‘We
give gifts and perform acts of charity. . .only to make our fellow citizens [barabar] appear lower
than ourselves. Our gifts and acts of charity are simply selfish, purely selfish’ (18/24).
21.4 Village Injustice

There are at least three levels of interaction within the village where Premchand explores the roots
of injustice: within the family; within the caste community; and within the village itself. Contrary
to the domestic bliss of traditional values being promoted by cultural nationalists at the time,
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Premchand portrays the family as a zone of nearly continual conflict and unjust action. The members
of Rai Sahib’s extended family are forever trying to steal each other’s lands and possessions; at one
point even Rai Sahib’s own son double-crosses him. When Bhola’s daughter Jhuniya goes off with
Gobar, Bhola denounces his own daughter as a ‘witch’ and adds: ‘if I saw her begging and sifting
through refuse, it would soothe my heart’ (144/190). As for Gobar, at one point he comes close to
renouncing his mother for her behaviour, creating a scene in which the ‘the mother in her was like
a house that had been torched and reduced to ashes’ (211/280). And of course, the cow is the
poisoned by Hori’s own brother, Hira. Moreover domestic violence is rampant in the novel: at one
point Hori beats Dhaniya in front of the whole village, and even Gobar, the defiant, ethically-
awakened rebel, decsends to beating Jhuniya. ‘At home, there is a Mahabharata war continually
raging’, complains Bhola (28/38). The romanticised, culturally-nationalist image of the Indian
domestic household as a haven of familial warmth is here effectively demolished by Premchand.
Caste politics fare no better. Just as the extortionate landlords keep the peasants and tenants in a
precarious situation, so too, in the world of Godan, do members of the same caste find ways to
extort, punish, or oppress one another. When Dhaniya decides to take pity on Jhuniya and accept
her into the household, Hori reminds her that ‘our salvation lies entirely in the hands of our caste
community’ (121/159)—and in the event Hori’s biradari behaves with predictable malice and
excommunicates his entire family. Gobar, too, must face the wrath of his caste for his liason with

17. In Premchand’s story ‘Nasha’ (Intoxication) (1934), Prem. Rac. 15: 232–37, the narrator, an elite nationalist
reformer who criticises, among other things, the exploitation of the zamindari system, finds himself at one
point in the third class section of a train, crammed in with ‘the rest of India’ (the non-elite). Between the
‘boorish’ behaviour of the non-elites, and the fact that other educated nationalists in the compartment are
praising the merits of British judicial equality, the narrator explodes and begins to beat a villager whose bag
keeps bumping his face. He is denounced by the ‘educated’ and by the villagers in the compartment, and
in that moment he realises he has been ‘intoxicated’ with traditional ideas of status and power (instead of
the true equality of civil interaction).
18. The corruption and incompetence of local police is another common target of attack in Premchand’s fiction.
See, among other stories, ‘Darogaji’ (The Police Inspector) (1928), Prem. Rac. 14: 113–19.
19. Premchand has explored the needless violence and injustice that often stems from marriage and the subsequent
forced dislocation of family members in India in other works as well (perhaps inspired by his own personal
experience with a disastrous first marriage). His novel Nirmala is particularly important here. See also the
short stories ‘Bade Ghar ki Beti’ (The Daughter-in-Law) (1910), Prem. Rac. 11: 106–13; and ‘Ghar Jamai’
(‘The Son-in-Law) (1929), Prem. Rac. 14: 281–9.

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