Chapter VII

THE MASSES
 Chapter VII

THE MASSES

The plight of the masses had caught the consciousness

of the nationalist intelligentsia even during the 19th century

when the nationalist critique of British rule was beginning

to take shape. The induction of the masses in the national

movement following the assumption of leadership by Gandhi

furthered this concern. The Congress sent out workers in the

countryside, extended the network of local committees, and

made efforts to mobilize the masses as participants in the

struggle for freedom.

Premchand amply reflected this concern. In fact, he was

the first writer of Urdu and Hindi to make the cause of the

common man his primary concern. Indeed, his self-image was

■that of a mazdoor. a spokesman of the poor, a writer devoted to

the reflection and amelioration of the lot of the wretched of

his society. A very large proportion of his writings, fictional

and non-fictional alike, reflects this focal concern. The

strengths and weaknesses of his thought aid craft, as also the

ambivalence we have time and again perceived, are best exhibited

in his treatment of the masses.

The masses for Premchand meant primarily the large body

of peasantry. Once in a while he wrote also about the urban
 248

workers in the industrial establishments and about domestic

servants. Usually, however, even the latter had their roots
in the countryside and continuing links with the peasantry.
Moreover, in his treatment of the industrial proletariat, as
is demonstrated so well in Go dan., he tended to tuna nostalgi­
cally to the village which, despUbt being an arena of
oppression and injustice, remained to him the only haven of
humanity.
A major and continuing concern of his, the village, in
fact, drew Premchand irresistibly. And it did so in a way
that was characterized by an unresolved duality. At times
the village appeared to him, as the sole bastion of humanity
in the face of industrialization and consequent erosion of
social norms, and at times as the scene of unrelieved
exploitation and consequent dehumanization. ¥hile this tension
in the perception of the village continued till the very end,
his work showed a general shift from romenticization to
confrontation with reality.
Along with this occurred an analogous development.
¥ith the passage of time grew a tendency to look for less
wishful and more realistic solutions to the ills of rural
society, in the pattern of this shift and its underlying
tension may be seen a touching reflection of the dilemma of
one who, bom in a colonial society, aspired for a Juster
social order in accordance with his intellectual aims and in
 249

spite of his instinctive class affiliations. But, it needs

to he emphasized, Premchand was not alone in daring this
transcendence aid in failing to carry it through even at the
level of ideation.
Sevasadan (1917) is the earliest novel to indicate
Premchand1 s2 3attitude towards the village. ’Rural life1, we
are told, ’has an endearing affect ion at on ess that is lacking
in urban life. It has a bond of attachment that ties all the
1
inhabitants together irrespective of their status.’ Though
appearing in increasingly less unadulterated forms, this
idealization of the essaitial dignity end humaneness of the
2
villager never deserted Premchand completely. These idealized
vignettes of rural life - the ’free* peasant of this enslaved
country standing almost angelic in his unreality - were,
however, incidental to the main story of Sevasadan. In Pretn-
ashrama (1920) Premchand describes the scenic beauty of the
village and concludes: *.®. it was a pure scene of simple,
peaceful life. In front of the noise end traffic and hurry of
the city, this peace appeared extremely elating.’ In Karmabhumi
(1932) he wrote of Amar, the hero, being fascinated by the
simplicity, generosity, love, and contsrtment of the village

1 Sevasadan. p. 50.
2 Ibid, p. 178; Premashram, pp. 86-7; Gupta Than, vol. I,
p. 135; Kairaabhumi.p. 121. etc.
3 Premashram. p.^139.

\
 250

folks, and lam eating sentimentally that atrocities were

4
perpetrated on such guileless people.
Pull of concern, sympathy and sentimentalism for the
peasant, Premchand devotes most of his best works to his
plight. The villages of Oudh and eastern U.P. fora the
setting for his depictions. The general picture that he
paints of the village scene is thus provided by the zamindari
system with its parasitical landlords and their numerous aides
preying upon the peasant. Absentee landlordism also is
mentioned. The traditional forces of the village are the
zamindars, the biradari. the panchayat, and the village headmen,
etc. They are feared and respected by the poor villagers.
The colonial authorities, be they the law courts or the district
officials or petty policemen, also impinge in a big way on the
rural society. They are feared but not respected. The two
forces, however, are linked together in an exploitative system
that sustains and is sustained by the colonial dispensation.
The peasantry Premchand depicts as existing largely at
Simple subsistence level. He does recognize differentiation
among the peasantry. This differentiation runs along both
caste and economic lines* Very often there is a convergence
of caste and economic differentiation. The richer peasants thus
belong usually to the Rajput and Thakur castes whereas the
poorer ones, constituting the bulk of the peasantry, are

4 Karmabhumi. p. 121.
 251

Mahtos, Kurmis, Bhars, Gadariyas, Ahirs, Bhang is, and

Chamars.
The wretched plight of the rural poor, in Premchand's
view, is mainly ascribabie to three factors. First, the hold
of tradition and superstition makes the poor villagers
i

fatalist. They squander away savings as well as borrowings

in fulfilling ritual and customary obligations centring around
birth, marriage and death. Intimately associated with these
obligations is the notion of honour. Secondly, the elements
and world market trends operate on the poor peasant as
imponderables over which he has no control. In the absence of
awareness and news of the outside world on the one hand, and
of better techniques of farming on the other hand, he remains
exposed to both these forces. Thirdly, the entire extractive
colonial system, in which the traditional social superiors are
hand in glove Wtbh the exploitative colonial masters, so
operates as to perpetuate the poverty of the peasantry.
Working against such heavy odds, some of the peasants,
not surprisingly, are constrained to seek employment as wage
agricultural labourers or as urban workers. The pain and
humiliation ensuing from this forced weaning away from their
beloved land is most movingly captured by Premchand.
This, then, is the general backdrop of Premchand *s
portrayal of rural society. Commuiity life is the norm and
the hold of tradition is strong. But the penetration of the
 252

colonial system, by making Inroads into the relatively

isolated village community, has begun eroding its internal
structure and, canseqiaently, damaging the beauty and viability
of its social relationships.
Turning again and again to the sombre village reality,
Premchand documents at considerable length the multi-level
victimization of the peasantry. He is particul&rlyvSonscious
of the difficulties posed by the vicissitudes of the market
as a result of larger national and international developments.
For example, when he writes Premashrama following the end of
the first world war, lend is expensive and labour plentiful.
After the war grain prices have shot up and the authorities are
planning enhancement of rent. Apparently this is an unexception­
able move. But its unfairness stems from the fact -that the
peasants* gains from the increased prices of grains are
neutralized by the rise in the cost of bullocks, labour,
agricultural implements, etc. With the government determined
5
to enhance rents, the peasant was bound to lose on two fronts.
Agriculture, at least for the small cultivator, tends to become
unprofitable. If the kisans still stick on to land, they do
so mainly for the sake of maryada. their hereditary dignity
which is associated with the possession of land. However, such
is the pressure of circumstances that in spite of the general

5 Premash ram, pp® 50«51«

 253

hold of this maryada. many peasants are rushing off to

6
cities like Calcutta and Rangoon where labour is in demand.
Mot losing sight of the general state of the market,
in Karambhuai Premchand notes that there are few buyers for
land and, as a result, the exploiters do not see in eviction
the most effective way of squeezing the peasantry. Altema-
7
tive measures are, therefore, resorted to. This was clearly
a function of the Great Depression when Karmabhumi was written.
While writing Go dan (1934-36) Premchand dwelt at great length
in his narrative on the effect on rural economy, particularly
on the destiny of the peasant, of the emergence of sugar
factories and the con sequent clamour for producing sugarLoane
8
as against traditional crops like maize and barley. He also
notices the fact that the price of agricultural estates had
9
fallen by as much as 50?6.
As for the exploiters, Premchand shows the British
Indian sarkar implicitly at the apex of the elaborate exploita­
tive system. Only occasionally are direct references made to
it, as in Premash ram a where its role as the opponent of Indian
nationalism is spoken of. The government’s policy of squeezing
the peasants dry through the instrumentality of heavy taxation

6 Ibid, p. 51, 185.

7 Karmabhumi. p. 285.
8 Go dan, p® 144*
9 Ibid, p® 136.
 254

10
is also mentioned. As we have already seen in the first
and second chapters, Rangbhumi and innumerable articles also
highlight this exploitative role of the Raj.
The Raj effects this exploitation through a network of
agents including those who man the district administration
and those who constitute the fabric of traditional rural
authority. For the sake of convenience, and without losing
sight of the fact that both of them constitute the whole of
the exploitative colonial framework, we may call these two
constituents the colonial and the internal exploiters. Also,
these categories are not always neatly divided? they often
overlap®
Even the rural-town authority divide is not a neat one.
For example, district officials like Jwala Singh in Franashrama
are also landlords. A different kind of overlap is exemplified,
by Khanna in Go dan. Besides being an entrepreneur, he is also
a moneylender who, by controlling a chain of small sahukars.
completes his stranglehold over the peasants. Within the
village itself, neat functional divisions do not always obtain®
The zamindar may smell profit in lending money and so decide to
supplement his income thereby. The same could be true of the
village purohit or mukhia. In fact, even a petty peasant who
could set aside ten or twenty rupees for the purpose was only

10 Premashram. pp© 343-44®

 255

too keen to try his luck at raoneyl ending. Hori, the tragic
protagonist of Go dan, himself had lent money in his better
days. If, in such a situation, the moneylender developed the
ambition of, and saw profit in, becoming a landowner and
landlord, that was by no means surprising.
Premchand looks upon the zamindars as the relics of a
bygone age who nonetheless continue to perform an exploitative
function in the modem set-up. He talks, for the most part,
of the old and new types of zamindars, reserving a degree of
empathy and admiration for the old type. Zamindars of the old
type, according to Premchand, still cherish the older values
of maintainingtfeheir honour and treating their praja as their
children. They are as jealous of their privileges as they are
zealous about their obligations, prabhaShankar in Premashrama.
for instance, is a representative of this type. It is indica­
tive of Premchand* s attitude towards the zamindari system that
he shows the older type of zamindars as losing out to the new
type in the struggle for survival. In Press a shram a itself,
Prabha Shankar’s decline is complete and irrevocable while his
newphew, Gyanshankar, representing the new type of ruthless
and acquisitive zamindars, moves from strength to strength.
The old type zamindars are averse to involving the police and
law courts in their dealings with their ryots for that would
stain their honour. They are, moreover, indifferent to the
11
principle that money produces more money.

11 Ibid, p. 365
 256

Premchand discerns benevolence in the dealings of the

older kind of zemindars with the peasants. They give money,
wood and fodder to their needy ryots, and as a matter of -
course at the time of marriage in a peasant's family. They
are never ke@i on evicting the farmers for non-payment of
12 .
dues. In Rangbhuiai Premchand goes to the extent of saying
that these benevolent zamindars could even lay down their
12
lives for the sake of their 'subjects'. Even in Goto, which
is free from the utopianism of Premchand's preceding fiction,
it is because of his concern for the traditional sense of
honour that the zamindar lets the grazing ground be used by
14
the villagers free of charge.
As against this, maybe idealized, picture of the
fatherly zamindar of old, Premchand sketches the new one as
being crassly exploitative. The latter does not believe in
wasting any time sympathizing and softening towards the
peasantry. In Premashrama Gyanshankar is the new landlord and
the peasants bemoan with regard to him: '... since the chhotey
sarkar has become the master, see what chaos there has been.
15
Day and night we have had enhancement, eviction and cesses....'

12 Ibid, p® 18®
13 Ranghbumi. p® 244.
14 Godan. p. 9*
15 Premashram. p. 10.
 257

It is, however, Go dan that makes the most perceptive

comment about the zamindars, old and new. Prof. Mehta, who
is easily the most positive of Premchand's characters in his
masterpiece, tells Rai Saheb, the rather kind zamindar, that
essentially all the zamindars are alike, be they kind or cruel.
One kills with kindness and the other with cruelty. But both,
without any distinction and in equal measure, want to rob the
16
peasant. That even Rai Saheb would be, in the ultimate
analysis, in agreement with Mehta can be inferred from his
admission that the real solution of the problem does not lie
in improving the character of the zamindars and making them
kinder and more benevolent. They are themselves victims of a
system. They cannot hut he oblige* to exploit the peasant so
long as this system continues. The real solution, logically,
lies in doing away with the system.
The abolition of the system, however, is left implicit in
Go dan. Uhl ike Premashrama. which overtly argued for the
abolition of the zamindari system and, in keeping with Premchand's
early technique of change of heart, showed young Mayashankar
giving up his in just and immoral rights of ownership as a
zamindar, Go dan represented a more sophisticated stage of
Premchand's craft sman ship in that it relied, at least in that
part of it that dealt with rural society, on pregnant suggestions

16 Go dan, p® 52.
17 Ibid, p. 53.
 258

rather than unequivocal statements.

In his depiction of landlords Premchand also mentions
the growth of absenteeism among them. Rai Kama! an an da, in
Fremashrama. lives in Lucknow. So does Rai Saheb of Go dan.
This completes the span of virtually two decades within which
he wrote his major novels. In between, in Rangbhumi and
Karmabhumi and a number of short stories, absentee zamindars
appeared regularly in his fiction. This was, in a sense,
natural. The kind of affluence that the bigger zamindars
enjoyed and the kind of luxurious living for which they used
their affluence could not but take them away from the village.
Living in the city, moreover, held out the additional advantage
of proximity to the lav/ courts aid the district, or even higher,
officials. Political ambitions,, too, were likely to be better
promoted from the cities. As in the case of Godan*s Rai
Bahadur, the support of the ryots could be taken for granted
at election time,without having to live among them; but the
requisite preliminary manoeuvres, without which nobody could
hope to enter the council, could hardly be organized from the
village. Vliatever the zamindars* motivation or advantages in
living away from their ryots, Premchand was severely critical
of absenteeism which he saw as productive of many of the ills
18
to which the peasants were exposed.

18 See Upadesh in Mansarovar. vol. VIII, pp® 276-96.

 259

Not only the riches of the zemindars but also the

luxuriousiess to which they are prone rest demonstrably on
the exploitation of the peasantry. Besides rack-renting the
ryots, the zamindars also realised a variety of dues from
them. Some of these dues had, with the passage of time, been
sanctioned by custom. But some of these were utterly
arbitrary and rested on nothing more solid than some capricious
need of a particular zamindar. Whether customary or capricious,
these dues were illegal. Though that did not affect the
impunity with which they were realized.
These additional extract ion s could be in cash as well
as in kind. For example. Manohar in Premashrama always gave
t —------------- 19
a fourth of the mangoes from his grove to the zamindar. In
Godan. on the other hand, all the peasants give a shagun -
auspicious offering - of about a rupee each to Rai Saheb on
festivals such as Bussehara. In the very early stages of the
narrative, as a matter of fact, Rai Saheb is shown telling Hori
that this year he expects at least Rs 500 from the entire
20
village.
Apart from the dues demanded by the zamindar, at times
peasants give gifts voluntarily in order to get into their
master’s good books. For instance, now that he has realized
his ambition of possessing a cow, Hori decides that every now

19 Premashram. p* 49.
20 Godan. p. 17, 24.
 260

and again he would offer two to four seers of milk to

21
Eai Sahebo
A modified version of these illegal dues was the
practice of making the ryots supply provisions at rates that
were considerably lower than those obtaining in the market®
Thus on the cccasion of the feast to be given on the first
death anniversary of Jatashankar in Premashrama. the villagers
have to supply ghee at the rate of a seer for a rupee while
the prevailing market rate is only ten chfaataks for a rupee.
It may not be very oppressive for tho se who have milk enough
to make ghee on their own. But many villagers have to buy it
from the market in order to make their contribution to the
22
zamindar‘s feast.
In addition to these forced or voluntary payments, the
villagers are further obliged to perform begar. The zamindar
has little difficulty in getting what he wants from his ryots.
Premchand employs a telling phrase to describe the extent of
23
this hold. The zamindar, he says, has fifty-two arms.
With these fifty-two arms the zamindar seeks in particular
to usurp the land of the hereditary cultivator who is slightly
better off than the other peasants with regard to the legal

21 Ibid, p. 27. See also ‘Banka Zamindar** (1913) and

*Neki* (1910) in Gupta Than, vol. I, pp. 156-66, and
pp. 149-57©
22 Premashram. pp« 11-12©
23 Ibid, p. 163.
 261

24
protection of rights over lend. His other major concern
is to increases under one pretext or another,, the rent on all
kinds of landholdings# He may, for example, have a kuchcha
well needlessly constructed to justify enhancement in the
25
eyes of the law# The death of a peasant is especially used
as an opportunity to claim enhanced rent from his successor.
Should the latter fail to meet the additional dan and** as does
26
Giridhar in 'Balidan* (1918), he has to forego the succession.
Besides the constant threat of being dragged to the law court
or the police station, the peasant has to live under the dread
of having such essential amenities as the right to use the
grazing ground denied to him by the zamindar. ' There is also
27
the Damocles’ sword of distraint# Fines, moreover, can be
imposed for a whole host of reasons. Rai Saheb of Godan. for
example, confesses that he makes between five to ten thousand
28
rupees a year by means of fines. Physical violence is freely
resorted to as a means of exploiting the peasantry. Clearly
extra legal, though causing no legal problems for the zamindars,

24 Ibid, p* 178.
25 Ibid, p. 66. Besides the distinct advantage of money,
the zamindars also had an upper hand in matters of litiga­
tion because of their ability to produce false witnesses.
* Pachtawa * in Mansarovar. vol. VI, pp. 227-40*
26 Mansarovar. vol. VIII, pp. 63-71*
27 Premasfaram. p. 47; Karmabhuni. p. 27. See also stories,
^eki* in Gupta Ihan. vol. 1. pp. 149-57; 'Pacchtawa* and
8Beti ka man' in Mansarovar, vol. VI* no. 227-40 and
vol. VIII, pp. 29-371
28 Godan. p# 166.
 262

the use of violence includes such drastic means as burning

29
the erring peasants* huts.
As an organized interest, too, the zemindars operate
systematically and effectively. Apart from keeping the
officials in good humour, they manage to have their represen­
tatives in the local boards and the legislative councils.
With the Indian National Congress emerging as a force to be
reckoned with, some of them take care to be associated with
the major movements launched by it. Rai Saheb, for escample, •
gives up his raaabership of the council in response to the
Congress call for civil disobedience, and re-enters the council
30
after the movement is withdrawn. The zamindars have also
organized an association to protect their profits and promote
31
their interests.
The fifty-two anas with which the zamindar preys upon
the ryot include a whole train of employees ranging from his
factotum, the karinda. to mukhtar-e-am and peons. These
servants carry out his orders ruthlessly and, in the process,
reap some benefits for then selves too. They are'the ones who
deal directly with the ryots aid so may even do what has not
been ordered by the zamindar. This is especially so if the

29 Premash ram» p® 174.

30 Ibid, pp. 16, 134, 165, 253, 265® In Rangbhuml both
Kunwar Bharat Singh and Raja Chstari are keen to maintain
their loyal ism to the Raj and also maintain a nationalistic
facade. Also Godan, p® 14.
31 Premashram. ps 121.
latter is not a careful administrator or is an absentee
32
zamindar placing total reliance in his factotum. These
servants of the zamindar receive meagre salaries. But,
particularly the karindas. they live well and lord it over
the helpless villagers. The foil owing passage in Ghaban
33 ----------
describes their position with obvious ircnys
They were not kisans but did agriculture. They v/ere
not landlords but did landlordism. They were not
thanedars but did thanedari. They were the zamindar’s
aukhtars.
Many of these men are elaborately sketched in Premchand's
fictive construction of rural society. In Fremashrama. his
first major attempt in this direction, we encounter Ghaus Khan,
the zamindar*s factotum, who believes, as a typical karinda.
in keeping the villagers completely clawed. He gives no
receipts to peasants for the payments made by them, thus keeping
the path clear for further extraction. For ever so slight an
34
arrear of payment he does not mind taking recourse to distraint.
No wonder the villagers see the wisdom of showing deference to
Ghaus Khan, and in spite of a measly salary the karinda does
35 ———
well for himself. Though he is murdered, his violent end has

32 For example in ’Upadesh’, Mansarovar, vol. VIII, pp.276-96,

begar is taken contrary to”the zamindar8s orders.
33 Ghaban. p. 2.
34 Premashram. p. 185a
35 Ibid.
 264

no deterrent effect on his successor, Faizullah, who

36
persists in the characteristic cruelty of a typical karjnda.
He does not shrink from physically torturing the peasants?
he hits them and makes them stand for hem's under the scorching
sun? he even has the audacity to break women8s bangles and
pull their hair. He further intimidates peasants with threats
of litigation. He knows that in such an eventuality he would
himself be exposed. But the risk is not real. The threat
alone suffices to frighten the peasants into submission«
37
Acting upon it is not necessary.
In Go dan, the last and the most realistic of Premchand* s
portrayals of rural society, Hokherara is a petty karkun with a
salary of not more than ten rupees a month. But he makes more
than a thousand and maintains his own men to carry out his
nefarious operations. His favourite means of keeping the
peasants in check is dand. a fine that is imposed by the
village psnehayet. Using his wits and influence, he so manages
the Patches as to make them do his bidding. This mode of dealing
v/ith the peasants offers him the added advantage of avoiding,
so far as possible, a confrontation directly with the person
who is to be brought to heels? for it is the panchavet that is
inflicting the punishment. Like Ghaus Khan in Premashrama.
Nokheram, too, tries to avoid giving receipts for payments

36 Ibid, p» 239„
37 Ibid, pp. 240-42.
 265

actually made, to keep constantly available the option, or

5®
at least the threat, of eviction for non-payment.
The mukhia, village headman, also occupies a place in
this systan of exploitation. 3h Pr era ashram a, for example,
StakkhM, the richest peasant of the village, is the mukhia. His
is the only house in the entire village where food is cooked
twice a day. As the recognised leader of the village community,

he is supposed to be a mediator between the villagers and those

above them, the latter including government officials and the
zamindar along with his men* But hi realitySnkkbda is no less
adept in preying upon those whose interests he is expected to
protect • With Ghaus Khan on his right and patwari Maujilal on
his left, he forms the trimurfci that decides, in a fair measure,
the destiny of the poor villagers. In the bargain he does not
mind plotting against the innocent members of his own village
39
community. Godan has no less than four mukhias. With her
characteristic sharpness, Hiania, Horifs wife, describes them
as loot mars. This expression shows the effectiveness of
colloquial ingenuity in that a particular activity of the
* dirty four9 is used as a collective noun for them. These
mukhias virtually constitute the ’community9 and set the norms
that its members are expected to observe. The novel shows how
ruthlessly they deal with poor peasants like Hori for what they

38 Godan. p® 122*
39 Premashram. p. 176, 94.
 266

40
construe as violation of norms.
In keeping with Premchand's general picture, in which
there are no pure exploiters except the Ra^, these men, the
scourge of poor peasants, are in turn terrorised and exploited
by those above them, j.e®. petty police officials like
daroghas. Thus it happens that Sukkhp,the scheming mukhia
in Premashrama. is himself falsely implicated in a case.
Like the village headman, the patwari. too, forms part
of the exploitation nexus. With his intimate knowledge of
land rights in the village, virtual monopoly of access to the
relevant records, and consequent ability to manipulate things,
the patwari is possessed, by virtue of his office, with a
potential for mischief aid a power that is almost esoteric,
given the technical nature of the village records and the
illiteracy of the villagers. The patwari in Godan is also a
panch and an elder of the biradari. a fact that invests him
«

with multiple authority. Uh abase dly he refers to his business

42
of cheating the ryots as his kheti. cultivation.
Yet another category of rural exploiters is that of
pandits. Pandit Umanath, in Sevasadan, is a powerful man. He
owns no cattle. But milk and ghee flow freely in his house.

40 Godan. p* 121«
41 Premashram. p® 176®
42 Godans pp® 256-57®
 267

Possessing not a patch of land, he never experiences the

slightest shortage of grains. A part of the feast is set
aside for him; women have jewellery made through him; all
kinds of documents are executed under his advice; and court
cases are instituted through him. All this he does in addition
to his normal functions as a pandit, which include making fore­
casts, suggesting auspicious days, offering mantras, and
officiating at worships and ceremonies. Pandit Lekhraj, in
Preaashrama. dresses in silk and is respected even by the
zamindar. He is a 'cultivator without cultivation, zemindar
without zamindari and mahajan without mahajanl*. He fleeces
. . 43 '
his .ia,1mans without scruples or mercy.
The most rounded picture, however, is that of Pandit
Batadin in Godan. Here is a pen-portrait of the village
44
'Narada* who is also a part-time mahajan;
He always reached where stolen goods were to be
divided...® He never gave a pie of rent to the zamindar
and if distraint was threatened he would set out to jump
into the well...* but he gave peasants money on interest.
Any woman wants to have jewellery made, Batadin lands up
in her service. He particularly enjoys marital match­
making, for that brings him fame as wail as offerings®
fo the ill he prescribes medicines, and also acts the
exorcist.... He is a friend to the thief and the rich
alike.

43 Presnashram. p® 133*
44 Godan. p® 120®
 268

Pandit Batadin treats the lower orders with utter contempt

and believes that they behave *best if kicked*. He uses his
influence with the panchavefc and the biradari to exploit the
45 .
ryot. Part of his immunity he obtains from his Brahmanhood.
Even the karinda considers it best to keep him happy, and so
does not attempt to recover the five hundred rupees that the
46
Pandit owes the zamindar. By the later half of the novel,
47
it is Batadin who exploits the ruined Hori as wage labourer.
But even the pandits
----- have to submit to -----~£C“““48
daroghas and such like
and acknowledge the superiority of the headmen.
Among the various layers of rural exploiters who come
between the ryot and the zamindar, the mahajan is about the
most vicious, m Premashrama Bisesar Sah, the village bania
who ostensibly runs an innocuous little provision shop,
49
•squeezes the hecks of the entire village*. Go dan discusses
in greater detail the role and position of the moneylender In
rural society. The novel has three regular mahajans: Bulari,
Jhinguri and Mangaru Sah; although anyone in the village who
can manage a little surplus cash toads to lend on interest*
Jhinguri is the most substantial of the three. He is the agent
of Khanna, the town-based capitalist who is both a big mahajan

45 Ibid, pp. 121-22•

46 Ibid, p© 234©
47 Ibid, p. 170, 175, 194.
48 Go dan, pp. 107, 111.
49 Premashram. p. 55.
 269

and an entrepreneur. Jhinguri gets the villagers to enter

into an agreement on stamped paper before advancing a loan.
In the bargain he deducts from the principal advanced not
only stamp money and a year’s interest but also nazrana and
dasturi. Thus, on an average, the poor debtor gets in hand a
“ 50
sum of rupees seventeen on a loan of rupees twenty-five.
Mortgage is a common practice in these transactions. Jhinguri
is confident in himself. He knows that until the government
provides an alternative source of agricultural loans, no
legislation can weaken the hold of those like him. Government
51
offices and law courts, after all, are for the moneyed.
The plight of the typical peasant vis-a-vis the >
mahajans, as also others, is movingly told by Premchand in
the tragic tale of Hori’s life in Godan. For buying bullocks
he has borrowed from Man gar u, for sowing potatoes from Bat ad in,
and for giving his brothers their share of the family property
from Dulari. Far from clearing the principal amounts, he is
not even able to keep paying the interest on the three loans.
The inevitable result, though protracted in its painful
unfolding over the whole of Hori’s working life, is the loss of
he
everything, movable or irremovable, that^/could call his own.
So crushing and efficient is the system of exploitation.

50 Godan. p. 17.
51 Ibid, p. 234.
 270

There is little that is individual or specific about

Hori's tale. The death of the protagonist may bring a Godan
to an end. But the system goes on grinding with its usual
efficiency. After Hori his son. It is a different matter
that this particular Hori*s son, Go bar, had decided quite
early to opt out of, this system end migrate to the city. In
any ease, the system is not yet exposed to the risk of dearth
of human victims. In spite of Gobar's example, and he does
inspire the young in the village with visions of an exodus,
migration to cities is still no more than a trickle.
The point about the long temporal scale of the effect
of the exploitative system is made by Premchand in *Sava Ser
Gehun* (1924). For borrowing a seer and a quarter of wheat,
poor Shankar eventually loses not only his own freedom but
also that of his opp spring to his mahajan, a wily old Brahman
in this case. The transaction is frightaiing in its simplicity.
Having borrowed the wheat - ironically enough he does so to
feed a mendicant sadhu - Shankar gives the mahajan, who as the
village Brahman is entitled to a portion of the rabi and kharif
harvests, more than his usual share and thinks that the loan of
wheat has bem paid off. But the mahajan thinks differently.
Over the years, according to the mahajan's computation, the
original one and a quarter seers has piled up to five and a half
maunds or. sixty rupees. Shankar is obliged to work like a dog.
But the interest keeps mounting. Eventually he despairs of
 271

ever ridding himself of this load. He begins to slave

for the mahajan. But the principal keeps increasing. In
twenty years it amounts to one hundred and twenty rupees.
Shankar*s son replaces the father as the mahajan’s serf.
Premchand ends the story with the statement that it is a true
reflection of the state of affaire in our society which is
52
full of Shankars and such mahajan s.
This, then, is the exploitative system constituted by
thie internal exploiters of rural society. But there exists
the official counterpart of it also. And the two parts of
the overall exploitation nexus operate in a relationship of
mutual collaboration and tension. As it impinges upon the
peasantry, the official exploitative apparatus consists of the
hakim at the top followed by his subordinate officials from
tehsildars. thanedars, and kanungoes down the line to the peons.
While the internal exploiters use their social status and
authority over a largely illiterate and poor peasantry, the
local representatives of the Raj possess the distinct advantage
of the awe that sarkar inspires generally in the people. Police
lock-up, jail and the law courts are the instruments of
oppression available to than in the discharge of their
functions.
The hakim comes on periodic visits ostensibly with a view
to supervising conditions in the pargana. He forces begar on

52 Mansarovar. vol. IV, pp. 138-95.

 272

the poor villagers and also acquires provisions at

concessional rates, if not gratis. His lashkar, camp, may
include as many as a hundred, or even more, men, besides
horses. Premchand describes the manifold harassment that the
hakim’s tour held in store for the villagers. His descriptions
are not devoid of attempted resistance from the rural people
53
to such harassment.
Tehsildars and kanungoes also do their bit to get begar.
Buring the distribution of taqavi loans, moreover, the former
make money by accepting bribes. The kanungoes are no less
corrupt. They even resort to such petty practices as siphoning
54-
off part of the salaries of the patwaris serving under then.
During times of natural calamities they understate the damage
to the peasants' crops in order that the government may not
lose much revenue and they may earn the approbation of their
55
superiors.
While the revenue officials having direct dealings with
the peasants are corrupt enough and enjoy a life-style that far
exceeds their meagre emoluments, the local police officials are
simply rapacious. It is impossible for them to visit a village
and come back without making soma illicit money. Prom the

53 Premashram, p* 182; Kayakalpa. p. Ill; Karmabhumi.

ppY 243-44.
54 Premashram, p. 10©
55 Ibid, p. 132.
 275

poorest peasant to the village mulchia nobody can be safe

from their oppression and extraction. In Godan. for example,
the death of Hori's cow as a resULt of poisoning brings the
thanedar to the village. When he fails to get money from
56
Hori, he realises it from the village headman instead.
Though normally these petty police officials act in collusion
with the mukhias. karindas and the like.
How do the ryots fare in this corrupt and exploitative
system? Premchand does not categorize his peasants as poor,
middle and rich in any systematic manner. Consequently one
could talk of the ryots as an undifferentiated whole. But
incidental references do indicate differentiation among the
peasants. The majority of the peasants he chooses for his
novels and short stories are, however, poor; the very poor,
indeed. His works also show the extra interest of the
exploiters in somehow getting rid of the hereditary ryots with,
relatively speaking, the most secure rights in land. About
Ghaus Khan's desire to enslave the entire village, Pr erne hand
writes in Preraashrama: 'Many men still remained among the
hereditary peasants.... They were the thorns of this garden.
u 58
Unless they were removed, where was any joy in idle roaming?'

56 Godan. p. 261.
57 Premashram; 'Shankhnad* in Mansarovar, vol. VII, pp,165-72;
' An dh er1. in Gupta Dhan. vol. I. dp. 'l'35-Ao: 'Upadesh* 3n
Mansarovar. vol. VXIT7 pp. 276-96.
58 Premashram. pp. 177-73<,
 274

If only these hereditary t si ants with secure occupancy

rights could be replaced by tenants-at-will paying higher,
rents, wandering in this garden would become such a pleasure.
For it was so much easier to deal with and, if necessary,
59
evict tenants-at-will and share-croppers.
The point Premchand seems to be making is that even
though there is a clear differentiation within the peasantry,
in terms of the rigour with which the exploitative system
oppresses them, relative material security or a state of penury
makes little difference to the peasants* vulnerability. So
fluid and unstable is this different iation - and the message
is writ large in Go dan - that within the same generation a
peasant is likely to move up and down the different levels
within the peasantry.
Practically all peasants, consequently, are constantly
exploited and live poorly. Manohar, in Premashrama. has
To
twenty bi&has of hereditary land. But he is poor. Most
peasants in his village live in want of metal utensils, beds
and adequate living space. One coarse meal a day Is the norm;
the house of Sukkhu, the headman, alone having the cooking fire
lit twice in a day. The possession of twaity bighas offers him
no relief from the usual run of troubles. His sikmi land is

59 Ibid, p. 47, 94.

60 Ibid, pp. 53-54.
 275

61
usurped; he is in debt; the rent is in arrears. The
picture is no different in Karmabhumi.
It is, however, to Go dan that we have to turn for the
most realistic account by Premchand of what he saw as the
typical destiny of a peasant. In tracing the life of his ,
protagonist from a well-to-do maurusi peasant to a landless
labourer, the novelist lays bare the entire exploitative
system. Hori begins as a peasant of reasonable standing in
the village. He has five big,has of hereditary land and a
pair of bullocks; the latter being no mean possession for it
means that he is self-dependent for ploughing his fields. His
personal belongings like a blanket and mir.jai (jacket),
62
although only a few, reflect his respectable status. Yet, he
is already a victim of indebtedness and can have no savings
either in money or in grain. For the bullocks he has borrowed
sixty rupees from Mangaru Sah. Of this he has paid back rupees
sixty by way of interest and the principal still remains to be
cleared. From Pandit Datadin he had borrowed thirty rupees
for sowing potatoes. The principal has risen to one hundred
rupees. As for the potatoes, some miscreant had dug these out.
A third loan of forty rupees he was obliged to take from DUlari
for settling the distribution of property with his brothers.
The amount of this loan has swelled to a hundred rupees. The

61 Ibid, p. 396, 51, pp. 94-95.

62 G°dan. p® 9, 101, 112, 113.
 276

load of these debts apart, Hori has also to worry about

the periodic payment of raat and customary dues to the
zamindar. He has, moreover, to arrange for at least three
63
hundred rupees to get his daughters married.
Premchand weaves into his portrayal the normative frame­
work of the peasant which drags him further into the throes
of destitution. The longing for some punya - virtuous act -
induces him, in the face of his many material liabilities, to
buy a cow for eighty rupees. Maybe the auspicious presence of
the cow would help him tide over his difficulties. From here
a tragic tale unfolds. Eoqjloiters of many varieties fling
out their nets simultaneously. Hori wriggles out of one only
to get entangled in another. His property, his honour -
mar,jad - and, ultimately, his life are ruthlessly wrested
from him.
Premchand shows disastrous events following upon one
another just as seasons do. It is the month of Ashadh. the
time just before the rains. Hori must prepare the fields for
sowing. But, like a vulture, the karinda swoops upon him to
demand rent before he would permit Hori to work in his field.
Perforce Hori - and the other peasants - turn to the mahajans.
He decides to mortgage his cow, the source and symbol of punya.
But before he can raise the required loan, his jealous brother
poisons the cow. This brings anew scourge. The darogha

63 Ibid, p. 36
 277

decides to descend on the village to conduct an enquiry,

knowing full well that the villagers would grease his palm
64
to hush up the case.
An already difficult situation is worsened by Gobar,
Hori's son, whose liaison with a young widow, Jhunia, gives
the internal exploiters yet another weapon to beat Hori with.
For violating the moral code of society in having sheltered
pregnant Jhunia, the panchayet imposes upon him a fine of one
hundred rupees and thirty maunds of grain. Hori's doom becomes
inevitable. His entire crop is snatched by the panches and
65
his house mortgaged for eighty rupees.
But Hori refuses to give up. He takes money from Punia,
the wife of his younger brother, to sow sugarcane. But at the
crucial moment Bhola turns up to walk away with Hori's bullock
in lieu of the ill-fated cow that he had sold to Hori on promise
66
of payment later. Thus paralyzed, Hori is obliged to look for
work on others' fields. Wily old Datadin takes advantage of
the situation. Playing upon the peasant's attachment to his
land, he offers Hori money and implements on condition of
67
getting half the produce. The cane crop, when it is ready,
does nothing to mend matters. The mahajans and the millovner's

64 Ibid, p. 112.
65 Ibid, p. 122®
66 Ibid, p. 148.
67 Ibid, p® 170.
 278

agent rush in. The former would not let the cane be cut
until their payments are made. The latter, quick to take
advantage of the peasants' discomfiture, buys the standing
crops at a ridiculouaLy low rate. Hori gets in the bargain
one hundred and twenty rupees, and comes home penniless after
68
meeting the mahajans' demands.
This was a familiar sceae at every harvest and sowing.
The exploiters knew that the peasants, having no cash balances
to fall back upon, were in no position to bargain for a
69
reasonable price for their crops.
The odds are simply insuperable for Hori. His struggle
seems more pathetic than heroic. In any case it is utterly
tragic. Perhaps worse. It is futile. Finally, the patwari
Mangaru Sah gets a decree against Hori. He loses his crop and
70
house in distraint. But the sad tale of Hori has sadder
details to disclose. Forced by lokheram's false allegation
that for three years Hori has not paid the rent - something
he could easily do because he was not in the habit of giving
receipts - poor Hori practically sells his young daughter,
Rupa, in marriage to old, but rich, Ram Sewak who will now
clear his dues.

68 Ibid, p. 176.
69 Ibid, p. 194, pp. 232-33.
70 Ibid, p. 242, pp. 256-57.
71 Ibid,pp. 332-38.
 279

At each step it seems that things could not he worse.

But the Impression is constantly belied. Worse and still worse
follows, battering an already battered soul. Gobar comes
back from the city, and a cow must, be got for his child. Ram
Sevak, too, must be repaid. Stripped of his land, status,
honour, and contentment, Hori is now a wage worker picking
72
stones for road making. Only death releases the broken man
from the web of traps which have robbed him even of his sense
of dignity.
Similar ruin attends peasant protagonists in ’Sava Ser
Gehun*, ’Khun Safed*, ’Balldan’, ’PuskiRaat*, and ‘Kafan’,
showing the irreversible lapse from a perilous point of hope
73
into resignation, despair and even cynicism.
The peasant thus fell a prey to a variety of perceptible
and imperceptible hardships. In their oppressive combination,
the blood-sucking system, the resultant indebtedness, an
obsolescent normative framework, internal dissensions, and
natural calamities seemed to create a vicious circle from
which the peasant could hope for no scope of relief, let alone
liberation. The poor could only be crushed. Despair dominated
their cheerless world®
But Premchand saw signs of hope also. As in the case of
zamindars, he made a distinction between the old and the new

72 Ibid, p. 340*
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 280

types of peasants. Peasants of the old variety show

greater resignation to their lot. They are fatalists who
unquestioningly accept the relationship of master and slave.
They respect and fear authority. They are also more suscep­
tible to the traditional value system. If at all they protest,
and they do, their protests are mild and invariably invoke
the traditional network of relationships. Thus Manohar, in
Premashrama. is calmer than his son and has faith in the
goodwill of the sarkar and the zamindar. The belief in sarkar
appears in Kaamabhumi also. Hori epitomizes the old type
kisan in contradistinction to his son, Gobar.
The new peasant is younger, less deeply rooted in the
conventional normative framework, and aware of new national
and international forces. Thus Balraj, Manohar*s son, has
heard of the revolutionary upheavals in Russia and Bulgaria?
he is also, already in 1920, talking of Gandhi as a national
74
hero. He is able to talk of the authorities, governmental as
well as zamindari, in a tone suggestive of defiance. Similarly,
Payag, the son of Chautdhary, the headman of the Chamar village
in Karmabhumi. considers agriculture a nuisance and is not
75
scared of officials. Of course, Gobar in Go dan is the most
convincing specimen of the new generation. He realizes the
importance of unity among villagers for fighting the system.

74 Preen a shram, pp* 51-52, 16.

75 Karmabhiani. p. 129, p. 287.
 281

It is a different matter that having left the village he

is able to achieve nothing in practical terns; although during

!

one of his visits to the village, he does organise a farce

76
that is intaided to awakei the exploited people in the village.

He looks upon all landlords as robbers and opposes his father's

77
flattery of Rai Saheb. Once he leaves the village to seek

livelihood in the city, his general awareness increases. He

even begins to understand something of the nation and class.

He opposes the psnohayet and threatens it with a criminal case

for cheating his father. Nor would he be fooled into making

79
any payment without a proper receipt.

Premchand seems generally happy with the beginnings of a

new mood and temper among at least some of the new generation.

It is a different matter, though, that he finds the trend of

migration from the village to the city productive of social evil.

His treatmait of Gobar's career in the city amply demonstrates

this. We have already seen this aspect of Premchand's views

in an earlier chapter while discussing his attitude towards

industrialism.

76 Go dan, ppc 206-07.

77 Ibid, p® 20e
78 Ibid, p® 191.
79 Ibid, p. 199, p® 212.
 282

II

The foregoing accouat outlines the forces and the

process of exploitation within rural society as seal by

Premchsnd in his various literary constructions of the village

reality. But the creator of this vast carpus of fiction, we

have seen, was no passive or neutral spectator. He had his

sympathies and affiliations clearly defined. He was, therefore,

quite often intruding in his fiction either plainly by bringing

in the authorial voice or through thinly veiled devices like

having his positive characters, such as Premshankar in Preaa-

ashrama and Prof. Mehta in Go dan, making statements and

delivering speeches that coULd well have beei lifted from his

own journalistic writings. It is in the analysis of Premchand's

own attitudes, as reflected in his work, that we discover,

here too, his familiar ambivaleneej seeing hope in the

exploiters he has despaired of, and mistrusting the wisdom and

ability for self-reliance of the very masses he feels for and

hopes from. This formulation, of course, states rather i&arply

the two extrane points of the contradiction between which his

ambivalence moved. In its actual operation it got reflected

in subtler shades and nuances.

The two positions with regard to the masses suggested

two different solutions. The hope that, even though in response

to enlightened self-interest, the exploiters could, maybe had,

to be relied upon for necessary action, called for reform. But

the logic of hope from the masses themselves, and upto a point
 283

he does entertain this hope, seems to imply nothing short

of a total restructuring of society. The first ejects
Initiative from above, the other a movement from below. Thfcs
fluctuation between tinkering with the existing exploitative
system and its transformation forms an interesting pattern In
which tinkering aid transformation seem to contradictorily
complement each other. It is with a view to understanding
Premchand*s attitude towards the masses that this section
attempts a second look at his writings.
Premashrama, the first novel in which Prerne hand deals
with the rural set-up, identifies several layers of rural and
urban society in their direct/in direct relation to the peasantry.
The story unfolds along two levels - of peasants and zamindars -
tracing their respective lives with all their independent as
well as intertwined problems. But the protagonist, the ideal
hero, is a member of the zamindar class. In his self-abnegating
altruism is placed the ultimate solution.
The novel exposes a multi-level pyramid of corruption
with the government constituting its apex and the ryot the
base. A chain runs through these levels in which the one below
is exploited and the one above exploits. Consequently, barring
the two extreme points of this relationship, there are no pure
exploiters and no pure exploited; the exploiters of a lower
level, as we have seen in the preceding section, are themselves
exploited higher up. Condemned to this web of exploitation
and corruption, it is not the fault of individuals that they
 284

are exploitative and corrupt. It is the system, says

Premchand, that is to blame.
The base of this pyramid, the peasant, naturally bears
the greater part of the weight of the system. As Pr era shankar,
the hero, muses on the wretched plight of peasants, he realizes
the impossibility.of agreeing with other economists who saw
in' the sloth, ignorance, thriftlessness and technical
obsolescence of the peasant the explanation for his ills.
Continuing the national critique of British rule that had begun
in the later 19th century, premchand gave the following summary
80
of his protagonist's diagnosis?
It is the circumstances of their existence that
account for the poverty of peasants. What are these
circumstances? Mutual discord, selfishness and the
volution of an institution that has fettered them. But
a little more deliberation will dhow that all the three
stories spring from the same source; and the source of
these circumstances is the very institution that rests
on the peasants' blood. Why is there discord among them?
Because of the evil conditions produced by the present
administration, Why is there the absence of mutual love
and trust? Because this administration views these
qualities as fatal to itself and does not let them

80 Premashram. pp« 199-200•

 285

flourish. What is the saddest result of this

discord? Progressive division of land into very
small holdings and unlimited enhancement of revenue.

In the clarity of the attribution to the colonial rule of the

basic ills of rural society, this passage was never to be
surpassed in the vast corpus that followed Rremashrama.
If the system was intrinsically at fault, as Pranchand
was so lucidly able to perceive, the solution logically lay
in overhauling it. But he failed to follow the logic of his
perception with a degree of consistency. He kept moving back
and forth between the vision of a social transformation and
the advocacy of minimum necessary reforms. He vacillated all
along between the need for political change as an essential
prior condition and the possibility of suitably modifying the
existing social arrangements.
The radical thrust of Preroashrama is not confined to the
diagnosis of Premshankar who is a trained economist with a
utopian orientation, of m&id. It is shorn as beginning to shape
the aspirations of stray peasants belonging to the younger
generation; the assumption being that the trend would be
strengthened with the passage of time. BalraJ embodies this
nascent radicalism among the peasants. He is aware of the
dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia and of the replacement
of the king in Bulgaria by a panchavet of peasants and workers.
It is in consonance with this radical thrust that
Premchand talks, in Premashrama, of the need for the eradication
 286

of zamindars. He describes their dilapidated homes as

symbols of their anachronism, and finds no justification
for the existence of these brokers. For, the land belongs
either to those who cultivate it or to one upon whom lies the
responsibility of its defaace. Reminiscent of the rather
abstract concern for the poor that Rremchand's literary
precursors had shown since the days of Harishchandra (1850-85)
31
and Pratapnarayan Misra (1856-94), this position is slightly
altered when Mayashankar, another ideal character, says that
the land belongs either to God or to the kisan who tills it
in accordance with divine will; the king, as defender of the
country, can realize tax either directly or through some less
objectionable mechanism. If an intermediary class is permitted
the freedom to devour the kisan under any pretext, the
practice should be considered a blot on the existing social
organisation. The ills of the system are recognized even by
82
Rai Kamalananda, a rich and worldly-wise zamindar.
Exercising the artist's prerogative of wishing away the
inevitable, and, painful, stages of conflict for the realization

81 See Pratapnarain Misra's poems and essays for expression

of strong feelings for the poor peasants and labourers
and against the zamindars and the government. Eratap
Lahari. .Kanpur. 1949, pp. 42, 133 , 248-50; and Pratap­
narain Granthavali. Kashi Samvat 2014, vol. I, pp* 255,
596-400.'" Hadhacharan Go swam i (1859-1923), too, expressed
similar sentiments in his journal. Bharat sndu: see vol. I.
Nos. 5 and 8 (1883), pp. 74-75, 1157“--------—
82 Premashram. pp. 265-66.
 287

of a desired end, Premchand brings about, in keeping with

the underlying logic of Pranashrama, the abolition of zamindari
through a magnanimous act of voluntary renunciation by Maya-
shankar. Though the story is over, he carries forward the
narrative to ^iow the Ramrai that comes in the wake of
zamindari abolition. The erstwhile poor, indebted and rack-
rented ryots become, within no time, prosperous and enjoy the
fruits of peace and industry, A new society, based on
83
relationships of equality, comes into being.
Despite its utopian capriciousiess, this Kid has the
merit of being in harmony with the logic of the novel. But a
snag remains. The proper sequel to this logic should have been
zamindari abolition plus change of government. Without the
latter, the former was inconceivable. And even if by some
literary stratasgem it i*as effected, it could not have ushered
in Ram raj so long as a rule lasted that drew its raison d’etre
from, among other things, exploitation of the peasantry. There
could at best have been minor changes for the better in the
case of the ’kisan zemindars’ created by Mayashankar. It is
significant that Premchand circumvents this part of the logic
of the novel almost altogether, mentioning it only in passing.
Along with the level of the peasant - a level that
introduces a radical perspective - the narrative in Premashrama
also proceeds at the level of zamindars. At this level it

83 Ibid, pp8 408-11

\
 288

seems to accept, on condition of some reforms, the existing

arrangement by positing faith in and appealing to the kindness

of zamindars. Ho longer is the misery of peasantry due to

an essentially corrupt and exploitative system, a system in

which individuals possess little initiative. What needs to

be done, now, is for the zemindar to forsake his cruelty and

shortsighted acquisitiveness. Plausibility is lost to this

position by suggesting an inter-generatisaaal contrast between

zamindars. As against the traditional zamindar who, as a kind

patron, looked after the welfare of his ryots, the new

zamindar is more concerned with assertion of rights unmellowed

by regard for obligations. The paternalism of a hierarchical

traditional community is giving way to aggressive individualism.

84
Manohar, Balraj's father, reminisces about oldsa'times:

There could then be arrears for a year or two. But

the maallk would never take recourse to eviction or

distraint. Whenever there was a ceremony we were

invited. At the time of a girl *s wedding we were given

wood, fodder and twaity-five rupees...® When they looked

after us like their own children, the ryot also did

begar for them willingly.

There are, in Premashrama. numerous instances of the kind

maalik winning with enviable ease the goodwill and cooperation

of his ryot. Even at Premshankar*s ashrama the peasants

84 Ibid, p. 18
 289

happily perform all kinds of chores for him. Gy an shankar,

the cruel zamindar representing the new generation, gets
converted towards the end. When that happens, he discovers
to his pleasant surprise that kindness is more effective than
his old imperious ways, lot that he does not realize dues
in addition to rent. But now the peasants are willing to pay
even these without much ado.
Thus the two levels show Premchand suggesting simul­
taneously that the problems facing the peasantry are integral
to the existing politico-administrative structure; and also
that, since all human beings are endowed with an essential
core of goodness, individually villainous zamindars can be
transformed into benevolent patrons of the ryot. This double­
thrust of Premashrama characterizes, in fact, most of Prem­
chand* s work.
Ak manifestations of this ma^or contradiction, in the
course of the narrative, occur other irreconcilable strands.
Premshankar, for example, is elected to the legislative comcil.
He has a chance now to propose the abolition of zamindari.
Indeed, he does toy with the idea of doing so. But solicitude
for his zamindar relatives hol^him back. Even a resolution
prohibiting the eviction of tenants by zamindars is more than
he can move.
Premchand's uncertainty, significantly enough, relates
only to the goals to be achieved. He keeps oscillating between
 290

social restructuring and social correction. Irrespective

of what he is advocating at a particular point in time, he
is nonetheless clear about the required instrumentality. It
is a two-fold clarity. It demands that violence be shinned;
and it presumes that the deliverers of peasants would come
from outside their own ranks. First exhibited in Fremashrama.
this clarity was to run through almost the entire corpps of
Premchand during the following decade and a half. Such
consistency was quite extraordinary for a mind that, in spite
of the growing lucidity of its perception of the social reality,
could never get over its ambiguity regarding ends. This was,
perhaps, Premchand1 s most tragic failure as a creative writer.
The failure could be seen as a tribute to the effectiveness of
the ideologically determined processes of socialization.
Regarding observance of non-violence, Premashrama
contains a nianber of situations in which poor villagers, no
longer able to contain their anger at some palpable humiliation
or injustice, are at the point of embarking on a violent course
of action. Invariably they are restrained by the moral
authority of the man they revere.. There is, for instance, a
confrontation during an official camp in the village. Passions
riai high when some villagers are ordered to do, as begar. some
chores in violation of their caste status. Reaching the scene
and realizing the explosiveness of the moment, Premshankar yells
out the order that they should do as bid, and adds the assurance
that adequate paynent would be made for the work done by them.
 291

He intervaies, again successfully, when the villagers are

about to assault the man who had betrayed them to an important
legal case. In words that were soon to acquire a familiar
ring, he threatens! ’Beware, let not even a hand be raised
85
lest you should see my corpse here.'
As for the peasants* capacity for initiative and
independent action, Premchand invests than with submissive
patience occasionally disturbed by ineffectual impetuosity.
Social and political issues are discussed regularly at Prem-
shankar *s ashrama with a view to awakening the villagers. But
not one of than emerges as a leader. Some of them do demonstrate
strength of character and awareness of their wretched lot. Yet,
like Manohar and €adir, they remain resigned to their fate.
86
Allah, as ©adir says, will provide a solution when He wills.
Or else someone like Balraj, conscious of revolutionary changes
to Russia and Bulgaria, is driven to do something foolhardy
87
that lands the entire village into trouble.
' What such incidents imply is corroborated by direct
observations which could with some reason be seen as meeting
with the writer’s approval; more so as they occur as
parenthetical commentaries not integrally wovoi into the text

85 Ibid, p. 281, See also p. 182®

87 Balra^’s aggressivity leads to Manohar murdering

Gaus Khan with Balrad as an accomplice and this lands
the whole village into trouble.
 292

of the narrative. When young Mayashankar asks his mentor

and uncle, Premshankar, about the causes of peasant poverty,
the latter attributes it to the peasants' 'foolishness,
88
lethargy and other bad traits'. This is towards the end of
the novel. One wonders at this. For, Premchand was crediting
Premshankar with faith in the very colonial stereotype of
peasant poverty which, earlier in the novel, he had so
convincingly exposed in his version of the nationalist critique
of British rule.
Perhaps Premchand was not aware of this obvious
implication. His intention was not to lend credence to a
colonial stereotype. The reference to the backward pull of
peasant temperament seems to have been related to his senti­
mental approach towards villagers. As yet he has not seen the
starkness of the rural reality. His concern is more emotional
than an outcome of grim understanding. This leads him to
attribute to the villager of his imagination - who is partly
real and partly mythical - such traits, both positive and
negative, as would facilitate and justify identification with
his lot. Naturally, this attribution is not a deliberate
exercise which stops the moment the model villager is created.
It is a continuing process that is influenced by the specific
situations in which Premchand is responding to the villagers.

88 Ibid, p. 397,
 293

An Illustration may be offered. After the humiliation

during the official camp in the village, Bukharan Bhagat is
so shattered that he gives vent to his impotent rage by
breaking the idol of god Shaligram. Premshankar, who has
morally coerced the belligerent villagers into obeying the
official!’!?; unjust orders, is surprised by this reaction. His
interpretation is: 'God/ Such self-respect is an illiterate,
uncivilized and poor man! So hurt is he by this insult!
89
Sfho says self-respect is a dead feeling among the rustics?*
This is all that the novelist has to offer by way of comment
on this poignant incident. His distance from the villagers
can only see in the incident their humanity and dignity.
Even their helplessness is romanticized. The starkness of
their life remains unfelt.
It is in keeping with this sentimental idealization
that Premashrama shows zamindars as the deliverers of the
peasants. These deliverers, Premshankar and Mayashankar,
brandish the shibboleth of equality. But the picture of the
peasantry never corresponds to this ideal. It sLips all too
easily into the zamindar-ryot model of master and servant,
even after Ramra.1 has bean ushered in by Mayashankar*s
renunciation of zamindari. This applies to Premshankar‘s
a shram a also. The ashrama Is described in stirring terms as
a place where there are no masters and no servants. Everybody

89 Ibid, p. 185*
 294

is everybody else's servant and well-wisher. Wealth is

not worshipped here. The poor are not trampled upon. No
one waits in obsequious attendance. But when actual human
interaction in the ashrama is shown, Premshankar remains the
master whose writ reignsi unquestioned and whose frown sends
90
a chill of fear down the spines of his rustic followers.
It is, then, at the sweet discretion of the zamindar
that the ^solution is offered. The peasants cry in pain. But
they do not demand a cure. They continue to view the zamindar
as their lord. A desire for or notion of a different future
is not for them to articulate.
Premchand’s short stories upto the period ending with
the publication of Premashrama - which coincided with the
launching of the Non-co-operation movement - reveal the same
nearly discrete couple of approaches to the rural society.
They reflect also the same faith in non-peasant leaders and
non-violent methods. An interesting, even though partial,
contrast is provided by a short story of 1913* It may, however,
be stressed that the contrast is never repeated during the
following two deeades and more of Premchand's creativity.
Sat it led ‘Banka Zamindar*, this story anticipates in a way
the solution offered in Premashrama. An eccentrically
altruistic zamindar voluntarily transfers his ownership rights
to individual cultivators. But unlike Maya shankar in Prem-

90 Ibid, pp. 212-13, 217, 293

 295

ashrama. this man does so only after the cultivators have

stood up in resistance against his feigned oppression and
demonstrated their will to safeguard their rights. The
message is unequivocal. The ryot must rise in defence of
their interests and dignity. Without that even their well-
wishers from outside their class cannot be of help. Unless
suitably moderated, this message was never again addressed to
91
the ryot so forcefully.
A year later Premchand wrote 'Pachhatava* which dealt
with rural society from the zamindar*s level. This short story
provides intimations of the solution to the ills of rural
society which was to recur constantly in Premchand* s work, a
solution that was closest to his heart. It lay in the
enlightened charity of the zamindar. The story, through the
painless device of change of heart that Premchand in later
years would resort to with monotonous regularity, shows the
conversion of a cruel zamindar. The point to be noted about
the conversion is that it is to the zamindar*s benefit; there
is no appreciable change for the better in terns of the
surplus and the services taken from the ryot by the zamindar.
Status quo is maintained so far as the zamindar-peasant
relationship is concerned. The peasant remains the chakar
(servant) he was, and he must fulfil the zamindar*s demands.

91 Gupta Than. vol. I, pp. 158-66.

 296

The zamindar may reduce his demands upon the peasant.

92
But the latter must do as the former wills.
The most favoured of Eremchand’s solutions, this was
hardly a solution inasmuch as it sought to grapple with the
problem simply by curbing its vilest manifestations. The kind
zam in dar, too, in effect did what his cruel counterpart did.
The problem was .to free the peasant of his shackles.
‘Pachhatava*, to put it harshly, further strengthened the grip
of these shackles by legitimizing, and endearing, his role as
chakar through the zamindar *s kindness of manner. The harsh­
ness of this formulation does violence to Premchand’s motivation
by seeming to suggest that he was wedded to the status quo sans
its excesses. What, in fact, it is intended to suggest is
that even creative writers possessing, and inspired by,
visions of a new social order were held back by forces that
they barely recognized and in a way that they were barely
aware of.
•Upadesh* (1917) is written in the same vein. It is
the kind zamindar who can bring about humane relations with
the ryot and make the latter happy. He has, however, to be in
close contact with the ryot. Absentee landlords, even if
benevolently disposed, cannot but be a source of oppression.
The story also stresses the absence in villages of committed
and sensible people who might work for the regeneration of

92 Mansarovar. vol. VI, pp. 227-40®

 /
297

93
rural society.
In 1918 appeared 'Balidan', the first short story
having a peasant as its central character. It is the first
portrayal by Premchand of the pervasive misery of the
countryside. It describes also the disastrous effect of
foreign sugar on the destiny of poor peasants; an effect
compounded by the fact that land is not only a means of
sustenance - howsoever meagre - but also the symbol of his
izzat (honour)® Death, to the deracinated peasant, is
preferable to wage earning. Premchand was to return to this
theme again and again until it found, in the last year of his
life, a shatt eringly austere expression in Go dan .
It is in keeping with a pattern that "Balidan* does not
offer a solution. There is no change of heart here. Presaging
the tragic saga of Hori in Go dan. Premchand brings out in
♦Balidan* the pain and poignance of Girdhari’s tragedy.
Deprived of his land and reduced to utter despair, Girdhari
dies a broken man. Hovering over his erstwhile plot of land.
94
his ghost sobs disconsolately. There the story ends. In
sharp contrast to stories written from the level of zamindars -
though not without concern for the wretched kisan - stories
like 'Balidan*, written from the level of peasants, were
invariably without a solution. They either depicted despair -

93 Ibid, vol • VIII, pp® 276-96.

94 Ibid, pp. 63-71®
 298

as to ’Balidan*, ’Sava Ser Gehun’, ’Poos kiRaat', ’Thakur

ka Kuan* and ’Kafan' - or provided justice through divine
retribution, as to ’Gharib ki Haay* (1911) and 'Vidhwansa'
95
(1921)* In the post-1920 phase, however, the short stories
of peasant life concentrated more on conveying despair without
offering the sop of posthumous divine retribution.
These attitudes are further reflected to Rangbhumi and
Kayakalpa. In Rangbhumi is imagined, nostalgically, a bygone
age when rajas, jagirdars and zamtodars could lay down their
96
lives for the sake of their prana. Since the novel does not
deal at length with peasantry, it is not clear whether any
hope was reposed to the possibility of the existing zamtodhrs
becoming like their pra.ja-loving forebears. Kayakalpa deals
more directly with the submerged humanity to the countryside.
It re-echoes Balraj's invocation of the rule of workers and
peasants. Describing the pent-up frustration and anger of the
exploited chamars of a village, it makes their chaudhary say:
97
’Mien we bore kicks we did; now we would not.' But it is
outside leadership that has instilled this awareness among the
chamars and galvanized them into a group prepared to fight for
its rights. These rights, though, are seai within the context
of existing social arrangements, and the fight for their

95 See Man sarovar. vol. VIII, pp. 16-28 and 179-83®

96 Rangbhumi. p. 244.
^7 Kayakalpa. p. 113.
 299

realization is kept scrupulously non-violent. That this

should he so in Kayakalna is remarkable because the narrative
here brings out clearly the tendency of the oppressed to
break out into violence in the hope of prompt redressal of
98
their grievances.
In 1929 and 1930 appeared two short stories that merit
mention in this context. The first, entitled 'Ghaswali*, had
a zamindar as its hero. It ended with Premchand1 s familiar
solution. The other was 'Poos ki Raat'. One of Fremchand's
most moving short stories, it describes the desperate struggle
and eventual defeat of a peasant. This story tails off into
99
despair offering no solution.
After Pranashrama. Premchand returns to a full length
portrayal of the peasantry more than a decade later in
Karmabhumi. The novel is replete with uncompromisingly
revolutionary assertions. Religion and charity, we are told,
have failed and the time is past when people could depend on
the good sense of the officials and others to get reforms. The
twentieth century has ushered hi a historical phase when the
rich and the poor, the propertied and the hungry would coalesce
into opposing ranks. The conflict of classes would ultimately
pave the way for a world without distinctions of the ruler and
the ruled. This conflict in some places would be more bloody

98 Ibid, pp. 119-21.

99 Mansarovar, vol. I, pp, 157-63.
 300

and bigoted than in others. Directing his radical rhetoric

to this classless utopia, Premchand further skates that
justice lies in equality and it has to be achieved ruthlessly:
'When the organization of society comes in the hands of
selfishly oriented intelligence, the intelligence governed by
justice is dethroned. This is a sure sign of an imminent
- explosion in society.Himanity cannot be crushed forever.
Equality is the essence of life. This alone is the condition
100
that can keep society stable. ’
This general radical temper informs some of the comments
chi the relationship between the ryot and zamindars. Atmananda,
a radical sadhu-tumed-peasant leader, who seems cast in the
mould of Baba Ramchandra and other peasant leaders, employs a
colloquial metaphor to bring home to the kisans the absurdity
of depending for their welfare on the goodaess of zamindars.
Addressing the.villagers, he says: 'If the roti on your plate
asks you not to eat it, would you agree? ... How' can, then,
101
they agree the rot is of whose plates you are? '.
Revolution seems the only way out in an explosive
situation like this. Even a character like Shanti Kumar, who
inspires his- students to become activists but also impresses
upon them the need for circuaspection, is constrained to remark:
'The officials would continue to behave like this unless

100 Karmabhumi. ppe 318-19®

101 Ibid, p. 243. '
 301

authority is exercised by the people.1 And that, he adds,

calls for revolution, ‘complete revolution*. There is fire
all around. Reliance on a few pitcherfuls of water to control
it would only inflame it further. So let it bum as much as
it can. When nothing is left to be burnt, the fire would
102
subside on its own.
But the expectations raised by radical rhetoric are
betrayed by the unfolding of events and attitudes in the
novel. This happens not in terns of the ultimate goal but in
terms of compromises with the existing systemj hopefully, the
compromises would be temporary. The final triumph' - after the
din of revolution and the prospect of an all-consuming fire -
belongs, however, to a pragmatism that is willing to make its
peace with charity. The peasants* struggle is called off in
the hope that in consultation with its educated urban leaders
the government would mete out justice to the poor oppressed.
In contrast to the earlier calls to the poor to take
103
the initiative in their own hands, whai it comes to deciding
things they are asked to follow their leaders. The justification
for this would seem to be that the illiterate masses are not
as self-sacrificing as the leaders. They do not even possess
the prudaice that induces people to accept temporary difficulties

102 Ibid, p® 190®

103 Amarkant, the educated leader, aigaged in organizing
the villagers says: "The rlaya now know their rights.
My duty is done. Now they have to act on their own.*
Ibid, p. 267.
 302

for the sake of permanent gains later on* For them, in fact,
there can be nothing but humiliat ion and sorrow in this world
because of their unwillingness to make necessary sacrifices
104
in the present.
At one level, thus, the ryots are painted as passive,
scared and unaware of their true interests. At another level -
the level of radical rhetoric - they are shown as an increasingly
awakening lot that woi£Ld no longer submit to injustice.
Judging by the manner in which Premchand attempts to resolve
the contradiction inherent in the two ways of looking at the
ryot, it would seem that he was unprepared psychologically to
accept the consequences of this growing awakening even in the
world of his fiction. He visited upon the rural poor the
inadequacies of the educated leadership. For, in spite of his
105
criticism of individual leaders like Amarkant for their egoism,
nowhere did he so much as indicate the possibility of the poor
masses having been put back on the leash by a leadership that
was afraid of the consequences, beyond a point, of mass awakening
and direct people's action®
It is significant, in this context, that Karmabhumi shows
the rivalry of two leaders of peasants, Amarkant and Atman an da.
The former takes a moderate and the latter an extremist stance
with regard to the peasants' struggle. In view of Premchand's

104 Ibid, p. 220*

105 Ibid, pp* 308-09.
 303

practice of drawing, his characters from real life, it could

be a reasonable speculation that,these two protagonists
represented the Congress and the Kisan Sabha positions
respectively. That Atmananda, the fictional representation
of peasant leaders, had eventually to accept the dominance of
Amarkant would suggest a literary replication of the actual
dominance of the Congress over the Kisan Sabhas. In the
portrayal of the rivalry between the two leaders, Premchand
did tend to make Amarkant cunning and selfish. But when the
final outcome of the peasants* movement - the withdrawal of it
in accordance with Amarkant *s way of thinking - came to be
described, Premchand treated it in terms that indicated nothing
106
but approval.
Viewed from the more radical perspective of the Kisan
Sabhas, Karmabhumi would seen to have been written by a man who,
perhaps unconsciously, had his sympathies for the peasants
moderated by the dominant ideology of the national movement as
represented by the Indian National Congress. Viewed thus, it
would forestall the argument that the demands of realisn
prevented Premchand from presenting a picture of the peasants'
struggle that would have been less inconsistent with the

106 Having earlier said that the riaya having realised'

their rights, had to act on tHeir own, Amarkant now
tells thems *0ur leaders are trying to solve the
question. We have to follow them.' Ibid, p. 244.
 304

rhetoric of the novel. He could not have, indeed, arbitrarily

changed its end and show* a triumphant peasantry. But, in
consonance with realism, he could have adopted a differ ait
tone in the treatment of the end; a tone that would have
agreed well with his ova realistic understanding of the nature
of educated leadership, if not also with his appraisal of the
peasants’ potential for initiative and action.
The fact that realism continues to be invoked to explain
away this glaring contradiction in Prenchand’s work offers
evidence of the continuing hold of the nationalistically
oriented modem Indian historiography. The recent attempt to
develop a ’subaltern* alternative to this historiography might
suggest a different understanding of realisn with reference to
107
the 1920s and 1930s. The important point, however, is that
the insights of a later historiographic development are not
required to acquire an alternative understanding of realisn.
Premchand’s own fiction reflects it amply.
A close reading of Karmabhumi reveals the working of a
mind that was, in the final analysis, averse to social upheaval.
There is talk of ’complete revolution*. But when it comes to
the actual movement, the peasants are not cnly asked to be non­
violent but also directed to respect the law. They are asked

107 See Ranajit Guha (ed.), "Subaltern Studies I1*. New

Delhi, 1981; Kapil Kumar. Anti-Feudal and Anti-Colonial
Struggles of the Indian Peasantry. 0udiaTT9I^-527
 305

by Amarkant to pay the land revenue irrespective of the

nature of the harvest because that is what the law lays
108
down. Pranchand does not even care to explain away the
inconsistency between the call for complete revolution and
the reverence for laws imposed by the very system that needs
to be overthrown.
Having begun with a bang, Kanaabhumi ends with a whisper.
Through its many contradictions and inconsistencies Premchand
struggles to find a solution. All that he manages to do is to
have a chastoaed Amarkant - chastened by severe introspection
in jail - hold forth on the need and possibility of a moral
revolution at the level of individual human beings. 'The price
of freedom', he realises, 'is the strength to, adhere to right
and truth.* In the depths of every human heart lies a chord
109
that sooner or later resonates to the sacrifice of others.

108 Kanaabhumi. p. 130o A close reading of the struggle-

eve appeai"s to the authorities would suggest, on the part
of the educated leaders, a desperate desire for a last-
minute compromise and avoidance of a conflagration the
shape and consequences of which seem ominously uncertain.
The authorities are simultaneously cajoled by considera­
tions of a pragmatism that would bring them glory, and
scared with the 'least of rebellion' who, once awakened,
would not be held back. The least may or may not have
frightaied the authorities. But the leaders who appealed
in its name, did appear afraid of it. Ibid, p. 321.
109 Ibid, p« 311. Its radical pronouncements notwithstand­
ing, the impression Karmabhumi conveys is one of glorifying
compromise, of almosfc elevating it to the level of ideal­
ism. Condemned by Amarkant for accepting compromises that
were inconsistent with his principles, Shanti Kumar, his

contd. on next page.o.

 306

In the resonance of these chords - in. the myth of human

goodness - lies the hope.
Writtea during 1934-36, Godan marked a clear departure
in Premchand’s thinking. It showed that the earlier idealistic
faith in charity and basic human goodness as a solution was a
mere sop} and that men would not change unless the system
changed. This is revolutionary logic. Through the inexorable
unfolding, as it were, of Hori's tragedy, Godan provides an
unmitigated indictment of a system that holds the poor peasant
in moral and material bondage. Wedded to his land with body,
heart and mind, Hori dies a landless labourer, and his son
seeks livelihood away from the tentacles of those equipped
only too well to squeeze the peasant. The need for a solution
indeed for an end to this inhuman system - is writ large on
the pages of Godan, without having once been explicated. No
more the Karmabhumi kind of reiteration of radical rhetoric
and climatic reversion into sentimental reformism. The phase
of idealism is clearly over. Faith is not wasted here in the
eventual moral.regeneration of individual human beings and in
the awakaaing of the submerged conscieice of the villainous

contd. from previous pages

mentor, sayss ®The real is not a bit less important in
life than the ideal.® And: *My idealism leaves room
for the practical.® The position is idealized by Sukhada
Am ark ant *s wife, who says about Shanti Kumar; *He can
even sacrifice his conscience. Such a man, I think, is
more worthy of respect.® Ibid, pp® 91-3.
 307

oppressor. The critics of the system, as also its

beneficiaries, can now see with consistent clarity that
the exploitation of peasantry is independent of the wicked­
ness or kindness of the individuals meaning it. As Mehta,
the leading positive character in the novel, says to Rai
110
Saheb, an affluent zamindar;
I accept that you behave well with your tenants.
But the question is whether there is selfishness in
it. Could it not be that food cooked on slow fire is
delicious? Compared to him who kills with poison, one
who kills with gur (jaggery) can be more successful.

Though feeling insulted by such outspokenness, Rai Saheb

admits that concessions given to the ryot on the basis of
goodwill and not as a matter of right would prove ineffectual.
’With all my goodwill*, he adds, ’I cannot forsake selfishness.
I want that through the power of the government and morality,
111
my class should be forced to give up selfishness. *
Go dan refuses to repose faith in the good intentions of
and consequent remedial measures adopted by the appropriating
classes, be they zamindars or the educated middle classes.

110 Go dan, p® 52. In another context, Mehta dismisses the

TdesTof reform and argues for ^altering the social sysbem
from the top to the bottom.'* Ibid, p. 3U®
111 Ibid, p® 53®
 308

'Wolves*, says Mehta with a touch of rhetoric, have always

answered the innocence of lambs with claws and teeth. 1 The
simple innocence of the kisans has reached the point of
passivity. They seem to have lost the very awareness of their
112
being. The same point is more directly made by Gobar when
he tells his father, Hori: *1 could never tolerate that my
earnings should fill others* houses while my own family
113
starved.'
The problem is that although deep down he may be weighed
down by it, the kisan normally does not let the realization of
exploitation come to the surface and disturb the docility of
his acquiescence. And if there is a stray kisan like Gobar,
who refuses to accept the givens of the system, his sense of
outrage at what is happening is accompanied by the realization
of his own ineffectuality. All his rebelliousness, then, is
directed towards ensuring that he as a person is not exploited.
Having secured for himself a tiny niche within the larger frame­
work of injustice, he is not unduly worried about what happens
to those without their niches. A more real representative,
perhaps, than Balraj of the rebellious kisans who were beginning
to emerge, Gobar inspires little confidence in terms of the
efficacy of the new awareness. His desertion of the scene of
exploitation apart, as a city-dweller with some consciousness

H2 Go dan, p. 294 •
113 Ibid, p* 339o
 309

of the social and political problems of his society, he

un quest ioningly accepts the social relationships of inequality
114
simply because his employer is a kind person.
The pessimism of Go dan is extended further in 'Kafan'
which provides a finale to the trend that had begun with
*Balidan* and continued through such short stories as 'Poos ki
Raat'. Both Godan and !Kafan *, written as they are from the ^
level of poor villagers, suggest little gromd for hope in the
midst of despair. In ‘Kafan*, especially, the implicit
assumption seems to be that the victims of the existing system
have been so utterly diverted of their humanity as to be
rendered incapable of working out their own salvation. Nothing
short of a total social restructuring could offer them a decent
deal. But these dregs of humanity are hardly the stuff from
which revolution is forged. Even more than Gobar, for different
reasons though, Ghisu and Madho would not be the ones to over­
throw the system. Unlike Gobar, however, these wretched
protagonists of 'Kafan' might unwittingly erode the system by
their refusal to be exploited by it. They dodge it with their
wicked servility which makes them morally callous and enables
them to beg, borrow or steal in order to survive somehow.
In a sense, Premchand has travelled a long way between
the rom^itic utopia of Prema'shrama to the unrelieved cynicism
of Godan and 'Kafan'. The word 'cynicism' is used here

114 Ibid, p. 320.

 310

deliberately as a substitute for the commonly employed

terra ♦realian* to designate this phase of Eremchand. The
crucial question to be asked in this context isj Why does
Premchand, having seen through the unreliability of basic
human goodness as the spring of social justice, find it
impossible to even hint at the ever so slender possibility of
the oppressed — some sections of them at least - organizing
some fora of resistance? As a sensitive observer of his
society, we know, he was not unaware of the active stirrings
within the rural society. But he could not trust the non-
urban leaders of rural society - peasant leaders as against
leaders of peasants - to struggle towards a better future®
In another sense, therefore, in spite of the ground
traversed between Premash ram a and Godan, Premchand still stood
at the same point. His reluctance to credit even some sections
• of the rural mass with sufficient awareness and ability to
struggle on their own seems to have been an outcome of the
imperceptible influence of his class affiliations. This
supposition is strengthened by the position he took in his
non-fictional writings. The thrust of Godan and *Kafanf, after
all, could not have been acquired abruptly; Godan was written
over a long period during 1934 and 1936. The shift in his
thinking should have found expression in the many journalistic
pronouncements he made during this phase on questions relating
to the peasantry. That does not seem to have been the case.
 311

The only time Premchand, in his non-fiction, wrote in

a vein that did .iustice to the thrust of Go dan was in
115
'Mahajani Sabhyata* (1936) which appeared posthumously. It
is problematic of just one article - even if it is considered
his testament - can be seen as representing the position of a
writer whose work in imaginative literature as well as journalism
continued for thirty years. In the rest of his non-fiction
he keeps vacillating between appeals and threats to the
zamindars in the name of their own long-term interests without
seriously demanding the abolition of the zaraindari system as
such. Besides, he keeps hoping that not only the Congress but
the government, too, would see the wisdom of ameliorating the
lot of the peasantry. Premchand, in his articles, shows aware­
ness of the interplay of material f actors'which often combined,
even within the Congress, in such a manner as to minimize the
efficacy of the intellectually or morally felt concern for the
poor. The farthest he goes is to advocate and welcome the
organization of peasants* cooperatives. For the rest, with all
his solicitude for the poor and realization of the selfishness
of the better off sections, he can only turn to the political
316
leaders, the government and the zamindars. He could never -
conceive of the masses as shaping their own destiny. Even when

115 Mangalsutra evarn Anya Rachnayen. Ilahabad, not dated,

pp. 365-6$. ’
116 Vividh Prasang. vol. II, pp. 23-4, 41-5, 216-21,
vt9 481-520*
 312

he said that they would, he invariably turned to one or

the other sections of the middle and upper class society and
the government. Even as he despaired of the latter, he
continued to plead with than. The despair never made him
turn to the masses in any sustained, conclusive way.
Premchand's inability, despite his radical rhetoric,
to accept the dynamic potential of sections within the rural
society was related to the circumstances and nature of his
relationship with the village. He came from the countryside
and all his life maintained regular ties with it. He had a
house built in his ancestral village, Lamahi, to which, as we
have noted before, he retired from time to time. It was for
him a-kind of refuge from the competitive and increasingly
impersonal life of the city. The village held for him a
fascination that impaired his vision of it; a fact that, as
we have seen, influenced his attitude towards industrialism
also. Moreover, the need to have a place to counter the
cultural offensive of the alien ruler pointed to' the village
as the surviving preserve of indigenous superiority. Of this
the most elaborate illustration is provided in Rangbhumi.
What emerged was a genuine attachment for the village
with a tendency to romanticize it. This produced a distance
from the rural reality. The bridging of this distance was
made difficult by the very need to remain attached to the
village. Premchand’s class and caste position also must have
contributed to this distance®
 313

Premchand’s love for the rural poor had something

unreal about it. He was always concerned about them. But
he could rarely enter their skins to get a live feel of than
as humans. Often, to satisfy his own psychological needs,
they appeared as angelic. Even in an austere work like Godan.
Mehta could talk of the need for the kisan to died off some
of his divinity and become more of a human if .he was ever to
117
become a free person. With his sentimentality Premchand i

could treat the village folk only as vulnerable miserable

souls who needed sympathy and active help from those who,
like him,, cared for them®
While category definitions of class outlook tend to be
simplistic,* Premchand^ middle class background seems to
account in a large measure for the kind of perception he had
of rural society and of its problems. To this was related the
hold on him of the Congress. If his journalistic writings -
as also his fiction till Godan - offer ai index of his political
alignment, he seems to have faithfully articulated the Congress
position. His general attitude with regard to the national
movement has already been discussed, and we have seen how he
continued to look upto the Congress. With regard to his
attitude towards the rural poor, in particular, the same hold
of the Congress can be clearly seen. In fact, many of his

117 Godan. p© 294 0

 314

inconsistencies in the pre-Go dan fiction reflected the

shifting position of the Congress vis-a-vis peasants and
zamindars* This was a position that could not leave the
rural poor alone and yet was willing to make concessions for
the sake of zamindars« What sustained these inconsist me ies
without necessitating a resolution thereof was the fact that
Premchand was speaking instinctively for one class and with
deliberation for anotther. It would, however, be wrong to see
in the frequent retreats from a radical position proof of his
cowardice or of the phoney character of his radicalism. He
could compromise because his inadequate understanding of the
/

social reality, especially of its rural segment, sustained his

romantic idealism and induced a belief in the therapeutic
value of pragmatism.