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Indian Writings in Literature

Notes Yet in spite of his disillusionment, Premchand struggled, to the end, not only to propose possible
solutions to his country’s problems, but also to put them into action in his own life. Premchand’s
struggle to find a unified language shared by both Hindus and Muslims, for instance, and to resist
the communalisation of Hindi and Urdu, remained a central part of his literary craft right to the
end of his life. Premchand also endeavoured to make Hindi more accessible to the ordinary, non-
elite reader by bringing together the inspiration of socialist realism with the reforms of the Hindi
language (through its de-Sanskritisation). Though Premchand himself after about 1910 switched
from Urdu to Hindi as his main public medium of expression, he continued to write in the first
instance in Urdu, afterwards translating his own first drafts into Hindi or at times striving for a
means of expression that borrowed from both. The project for a unified ‘Hindustani’ language
failed in the end, but Premchand clung stubbornly to his belief in its potential, and unlike so many
others, he practised what he preached, consistently and productively —even in the face of
38
outspoken criticism from his fellow Hindi writers (who mistrusted his praise of Urdu) and from
Urdu writers who continued to treat him as an outsider. 39
Of course, Premchand was certainly not the first author to become first enamoured with, and then
disillusioned by, utopian ideologies and specifically by the failure of nationalism. In fact, in its
tone, import, and intent, Godan is very reminiscent of Rabindranath Tagore’s The Home and the
World (Ghare-Baire) of 1915, which is constructed around the nationalist upsurge generated by
the partition of Bengal in 1905, and the ensuing Swadeshi Movement. But Tagore’s nationalist
‘hero’, Sandip, is shown to be hypocrite, a fraud, and an opportunist who leads individuals and
communities to ruin and to violence, and Tagore’s decision to keep that action focused on Indian
characters and not on the British colonial administration forces the reader to the conclusion—as
does Premchand’s Godan—that much of the violence and injustice that emerged out of the
nationalist agitation in India in the early twentieth century was generated from within. 40
Also like Tagore, Premchand was too gifted a writer and too passionate an activist merely to write
a novel of persistent complaint; he could never resist the temptation to provide answers, and at
least in Godan, his efforts are put to impressively good and complex ends. Ideologies may have
failed, Premchand suggests, but that merely shifts the burden onto the individual self. Premchand
shows a keen interest in the (re)construction of the self in Godan, and yet, again like Tagore, he is
no longer able to embrace the Gandhian project of the reconstructed moral self, a project that
seems too deeply embedded in the rituals and trappings of conservative elitist traditions. In
Godan, Premchand offers a glimpse of the reconstructed awakened self in a form that puts the
burden of responsibility on the individual; it is a humanist project, but one that does not, as ‘classical’

38. Harish Trivedi, ‘The Progress Of Hindi, Part 2: Hindi and the Nation’, in Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary
Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp.967–
71.
39. Muhammad Sadiq, A History Of Urdu Literature (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 1995),
p.439.Premchand’s experience can be compared with that of the main character, Pravin, in his short story
‘Lekhak’ (The Writer) (1931), Prem. Rac. 14: 538–45. Pravin is a poor struggling writer, surrounded by
various characters who do not understand the power and beauty of the literary craft. Premchand is careful
to find a non-communal balance: there are unflattering portrayals of Hindus and Muslims in equal measure.
In the end, Pravin realises that he is a lamp (dipak) and that ‘literary service is complete sacrifice [sahitya-
seva puri tapasya hai]’—carefully chosen words that imply that the principled writer is like an ethical ascetic.
On the Hindustani issue, see Premchand’s essay ‘Urdu, Hindi, aur Hindustani’ (Urdu, Hindi, and Hindustani)
(1935), Prem. Rac. 7: 447–54.
40. On Tagore’s critique of nationalism, see Manju Radhakrishnan and Debasmita Roychowdhury, ‘“Nationalism
is a Great Menace”: Tagore and Nationalism’, in Patrick Colm Hogan and Lalita Pandit (eds), Rabindranath
Tagore: Universality and Tradition (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003): pp.29–40; and
Ashis Nandy, The Illegitimacy Of Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics Of Self (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1994).

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