Page 182 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Indian Writings in Literature

Notes the decline of the spirit of devotion, self-sacrifice, and submission that have ‘traditionally’ made
Indian women ‘superior’ to their Western counterparts. Khanna, too, blames ‘slavish attachment
to the West’ (219/290) for the ruin of the traditional Indian household.
But unlike in earlier works, where the authorial Premchand might have agreed with such opinions,
here the attempt to blame the West for the ruin of Indian women is rendered hollow; both Khanna
and Mehta are portrayed as using the West as a convenient target to cover up their own
shortcomings and weaknesses. Nor is Malati championed as an emblem of India’s modern future.
Khanna’s wife Govindi, who reviles Malati for bewitching men and leading them astray, says of
Malati: ‘In my opinion she is even worse than the prostitutes, since she does her hunting under
cover’ (178/236). And when Malati thinks she is being treated with less than appropriate deference
by one of Rai Sahib’s servants, she hotly rebukes the girl, adding:
Men take such pleasure in these slutty servant-girls [laumdi], who, whether they have any skills
or not, run around here and there tending to their every desire and praising their fate that they
have a man to order them to do some task or other. They are goddesses—powerful and glorious
ones. I thought at least you lacked this one male quality [to Mehta], but inside, aside from all your
culture, you’re a barbarian like all the rest (84/108–9). 25
Mehta attributes Malati’s reaction to feminine ‘jealousy’, but the reality is that this is another
example of Premchand’s portrayal of the lack of consistency among practitioners of all grand
ideologies: for Malati, gender equality is meant for the upper classes and respectable castes, not
for servants.
A further example of Premchand’s wry take on the gender issue is provided by Bhola’s wife
Nohri, who has been scheming to find ways to aggrandise her power in the village. As her
schemes and alliances yield success, she starts to insult Bhola’s lack of ‘manliness’, and pour
shame on other village leaders who cross her path. For a time, at least, as Premchand describes
her, she becomes ‘queen of the village’ (246/327).
Bhola did not want to be dependent on her. There was no greater humiliation than to live off the
earnings of a woman. He earned all of three rupees a month, but he couldn’t even lay his hands
on that sum—Nohri would take it and squander it. He couldn’t even get a half-paise of tobacco to
smoke, while Nohri chewed two annas worth of pan a day (246/328).
Note the interesting role reversal here: as Bhola’s fortunes dwindle and his masculinity is
disempowered, and as Nohri’s fortunes rise and she is newly empowered, her attitude towards
Bhola becomes not one of equality but of dominance.
Although there is a considerable amount of satire and irony involved here, and eventually Nohri
‘falls’ from her exalted position, the implication is that a matriarchal household would probably
be no more just and free from conflict than a patriarchal one. And just as Indian men (such as
Mehta and Khanna) are often depicted as harbouring expectations that Indian women will fulfil
their proper ‘womanly’ roles, it is also clear that the women of Belari village expect their men to
fulfil their proper ‘manly’ roles—and are prepared to humiliate them publicly, as Nohri does to Bhola,
when they fail. Premchand has masterfully undermined the simplistic view that gender justice of
any sort can be found in any one grand ideological scheme— Feminism, traditionalism, culturalism,
and modernism are all here found lacking.

21.6 Religious Injustice

Premchand’s various expositions in Godan on the ways in which religion is often used to mask or
compound various acts of injustice all share a common desire to separate religion as it is from

25. There is a double meaning here that is hard to capture in English. The Hindi word ‘laumdi’ can mean both
a servant-girl and/or a (sexually) promiscuous woman.

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