(1880-1936) novelist, short-story writer
Premchand was born outside the city of Benares, India. His family was very poor. The plight of the poor and the downtrodden is one of the prevalent themes in Premchand’s literature. He is perhaps the most famous Hindi-Urdu novelist of Indian literature and is considered to be the father of the Urdu short story. One of the strongest influences in Premchand’s earlier work was Gandhian politics. His later novels are a blend of his own faith in marxism and his growing disillusionment with gandhi’s brand of grassroots activism.
In 1899, Premchand became a schoolteacher and continued this profession for 20 years. Copies of his first collection of short stories Passion for the Fatherland (1908), written in his first penname Navab Rai, were burned by British officials because of their strong patriotic (anti-British) message. After this event, he wrote by the penname, Premc-hand. In 1915, Premchand stopped writing in Urdu completely and switched to writing in Hindi. This further increased his popularity because the Hindi language is spoken by a larger population in India.
By the time he wrote Godan (Gift of the Cow, 1936), published the year he died, Premchand had broken from his earlier optimistic portrayals of village life. Instead, he saw more clearly the dismal economic situation of India’s rural poor. Godan offers a stark look at the lack of social and economic reform in villages, while metropolitan India is busy with modernization. Hori, the main character, and the village setting are realistic portraits that reveal the growing chasm between urban and rural India.
Because Premchand had his own publishing house, he encountered little difficulty in publishing his more controversial works. These works, such as Nirmala (1928), address the social and psychological problems imposed on women by society’s norms. In particular, Premchand challenges the standard treatment of widows and prostitutes; at the time, widows were forced into financially dependent relationships with their family members because they were not given employment and were not allowed to remarry.
While serving as editor of the literary magazine Hans in the 1930s, Premchand used his position to create a mutual ground for literature and progressive politics. In 1936, he briefly served as president of the All India Progressive Writers’ Association (AIPWA). This group was one of India’s first attempts to form a collective of leftist, socialist writers. Premchand’s novels were also an international success. His novel Godan has been translated into almost every Western language.
Other Works by Munshi Premchand
Gaban: The Stolen Jewels. Translated by Christopher R. King. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Nirmala. Translated by Alok Rai. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
A Work about Munshi Premchand
Rai, Amrit. Premchand: His Life and Times. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
