While dusting the book shelf a week ago, I stumbled upon a collection of short stories of Munshi Premchand, which I had bought and read a decade ago. I decided to read it once again and remained occupied with it through the week. I am a big fan of Munshi Premchand since very young age when we used to read his stories as part our school curriculum. Every time I read his story a new meaning of it unfolds in my mind, but this time it dawned upon me that how his stories are perfectly relevant to our times, though written almost a century ago.
Munshi ji has written about permanent and universal human virtues and behaviors; be it charity, love, compassion, patriotism, jealousy, hypocrisy, sycophancy, bribery, exploitation or sacrifice to name few. And since these are what human psyche is made of, his stories will always remain contemporary. In his famous story “Namak Ka Daroga” (Inspector of Salt - a post introduced by British rulers to control the production and consumption of edible salt in India), the father of the protagonist who had been appointed as inspector of salt, sermons his son on the 1st day of job that salary is like full moon which comes once in a month and then withers away while bribe would be his income. 100 years later we find that the mentality of the people are still the same only the amounts of bribes and graft has grown to such mammoth proportions even Munshi ji could not imagine.
Born in a middle class kayasth family in an eastern UP village near Varanasi in 1880, Munshi ji lived life within the modest means of a school teacher. By heart he remained simple, naïve villager all his life whether he lived in Lucknow, Varanasi, Kanpur or Mumbai and this simplicity is abundantly present in all his stories. This is what touches the heart. This is why he paints the sufferings of downtrodden so vividly; this is why he voices the concerns of poor so vociferously; this is why he becomes the words of illiterate.
His protagonists are mainly simple village folks, downtrodden, naïve and illiterate who are exploited and manipulated by those in power. How sad it is that 100 years later our society is still the same. Still the poor could not afford proper medical treatment for their children and instead depend on prayer (the plight of a penny-less, illiterate widow whose only child dies of sickness on the steps of a temple is vividly captured in a story titled “Mandir”, the temple), still the poor and illiterate are exploited with same impunity, and the chasm between two main religions of our country is growing bigger by the day, despite Munshi ji heavily advocating the virtues of religious harmony and camaraderie as practiced by ordinary village folks. In a story sarcastically captioned “Hinsa Parmo Dharma” (violence as supreme religion) Munshi ji has beautifully narrated the game these caretakers of religion plays to exploit simple villagers and spread hatred for their petty political gain. Isn’t the plot remains the same till date?
In another of his story titled Ram-Leela, he has given an insider account of a scheming Ram leela organizer who sees this event as an opportunity to monetarily enrich him and does not see any harm in employing prostitutes for this purpose and at the same time does not bother to pay the artists who acted in Ram leela. Every day we come across many such hypocrites.
The one aspect which distinctly stands apart in most of his writing is that he was dead against the hypocrisy and incongruence in all walks of life. Munshi Premchand has written extensively on the social order and division of society of his time. Though belonging to the upper caste, he had been the staunchest of the supporters of upliftment of the people of lower strata, specifically the untouchables. In “Mandir”, the pleading of an untouchable widow, whose only child was dying, to be allowed to enter the temple and touch the feet of idol, are so striking that it would make you cry.
That’s another dimension of Munshi ji’s writing. He was the master craftsman of human emotions. Invariably, his stories are meant to evoke and stir emotions, though set in simple contexts and with uncomplicated characters. Before your mind, it’s your heart that understands the story. This is why he will remain contemporary till the time humans are an emotional creature. Why only humans? In story “Do bailon (bulls) ki Kahani” his protagonist are not humans but two bullocks! Yet the way he captures the dilemma and thought process of these two animals is amazing, as if he can read their minds.
These are not exclusive examples. His entire treatise of some 300 odd stories and 14 novels are all full of such true to life examples. Just for the sake of it these stories are fiction, in essence these are the true picture of world around him and the values he felt strongly about. He wrote what he saw and felt in very simple language, without any exaggeration.
Perhaps the saddest part of it is that it highlights our failure as a society to evolve in last 100 years that his stories are still the mirror of the socio-political state of our society as it were a century ago.
Munshi ji has written about permanent and universal human virtues and behaviors; be it charity, love, compassion, patriotism, jealousy, hypocrisy, sycophancy, bribery, exploitation or sacrifice to name few. And since these are what human psyche is made of, his stories will always remain contemporary. In his famous story “Namak Ka Daroga” (Inspector of Salt - a post introduced by British rulers to control the production and consumption of edible salt in India), the father of the protagonist who had been appointed as inspector of salt, sermons his son on the 1st day of job that salary is like full moon which comes once in a month and then withers away while bribe would be his income. 100 years later we find that the mentality of the people are still the same only the amounts of bribes and graft has grown to such mammoth proportions even Munshi ji could not imagine.
Born in a middle class kayasth family in an eastern UP village near Varanasi in 1880, Munshi ji lived life within the modest means of a school teacher. By heart he remained simple, naïve villager all his life whether he lived in Lucknow, Varanasi, Kanpur or Mumbai and this simplicity is abundantly present in all his stories. This is what touches the heart. This is why he paints the sufferings of downtrodden so vividly; this is why he voices the concerns of poor so vociferously; this is why he becomes the words of illiterate.
His protagonists are mainly simple village folks, downtrodden, naïve and illiterate who are exploited and manipulated by those in power. How sad it is that 100 years later our society is still the same. Still the poor could not afford proper medical treatment for their children and instead depend on prayer (the plight of a penny-less, illiterate widow whose only child dies of sickness on the steps of a temple is vividly captured in a story titled “Mandir”, the temple), still the poor and illiterate are exploited with same impunity, and the chasm between two main religions of our country is growing bigger by the day, despite Munshi ji heavily advocating the virtues of religious harmony and camaraderie as practiced by ordinary village folks. In a story sarcastically captioned “Hinsa Parmo Dharma” (violence as supreme religion) Munshi ji has beautifully narrated the game these caretakers of religion plays to exploit simple villagers and spread hatred for their petty political gain. Isn’t the plot remains the same till date?
In another of his story titled Ram-Leela, he has given an insider account of a scheming Ram leela organizer who sees this event as an opportunity to monetarily enrich him and does not see any harm in employing prostitutes for this purpose and at the same time does not bother to pay the artists who acted in Ram leela. Every day we come across many such hypocrites.
The one aspect which distinctly stands apart in most of his writing is that he was dead against the hypocrisy and incongruence in all walks of life. Munshi Premchand has written extensively on the social order and division of society of his time. Though belonging to the upper caste, he had been the staunchest of the supporters of upliftment of the people of lower strata, specifically the untouchables. In “Mandir”, the pleading of an untouchable widow, whose only child was dying, to be allowed to enter the temple and touch the feet of idol, are so striking that it would make you cry.
That’s another dimension of Munshi ji’s writing. He was the master craftsman of human emotions. Invariably, his stories are meant to evoke and stir emotions, though set in simple contexts and with uncomplicated characters. Before your mind, it’s your heart that understands the story. This is why he will remain contemporary till the time humans are an emotional creature. Why only humans? In story “Do bailon (bulls) ki Kahani” his protagonist are not humans but two bullocks! Yet the way he captures the dilemma and thought process of these two animals is amazing, as if he can read their minds.
These are not exclusive examples. His entire treatise of some 300 odd stories and 14 novels are all full of such true to life examples. Just for the sake of it these stories are fiction, in essence these are the true picture of world around him and the values he felt strongly about. He wrote what he saw and felt in very simple language, without any exaggeration.
Perhaps the saddest part of it is that it highlights our failure as a society to evolve in last 100 years that his stories are still the mirror of the socio-political state of our society as it were a century ago.
