Role of munsi premchandra in Hindi Nobel?
Answers
Munshi Premchand was one of the greatest literary figures of the modern Hindi and Urdu literature. It was with the writings of him that the Hindi novel matured into greatness.
He began writing in Urdu and then shifted to Hindi and remained an immensely influential writer in both languages. He drew on the traditional art of Kissa-goi (story telling).
Before Premchand, the Hindi literature was confined to the tales, the stories of magical power, fantasy, etc. His novel Sewasadan (The Abode of Service) published in 1916, first depicted the lives of ordinary people and social issues. Sewasadan dealt with the poor condition of women in society.
Premchand’s novels discussed the realistic issues like child marriage, dowry system, communalism, corruption, zamindari system, debt, poverty, colonialism, etc.
Premchand believed that social realism was the ultimate way for Hindi literature.
Bust of Premchand in Lamhi
Premchand is considered the first Hindi author whose writings prominently featured realism.[9] His novels describe the problems of the poor and the urban middle-class.[9] His works depict a rationalistic outlook, which views religious values as something that allows the powerful hypocrites to exploit the weak.[30] He used literature for the purpose of arousing public awareness about national and social issues and often wrote about topics related to corruption, child widowhood, prostitution, feudal system, poverty, colonialism and on the India's freedom movement.[43]
Premchand started taking an interest in political affairs while at Kanpur during the late 1900s, and this is reflected in his early works, which have patriotic overtones. His political thoughts were initially influenced by the moderate Indian National Congress leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale, but later, he moved towards the more extremist Bal Gangadhar Tilak.[19] He considered the Minto-Morley Reforms and the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms as inadequate, and supported greater political freedom.[19] Several of his early works, such as A Little Trick and A Moral Victory, satirised the Indians who cooperated with the British Government. He did not specifically mention the British in some of his stories, because of strong government censorship, but disguised his opposition in settings from the medieval era and the foreign history.[30] He was also influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda.[22]
In the 1920s, he was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's non-co-operation movement and the accompanying struggle for social reform. During this period, his works dealt with the social issues such as poverty, zamindari exploitation (Premashram, 1922), dowry system (Nirmala, 1925), educational reform and political oppression (Karmabhumi, 1931).[30] Premchand was focused on the economic liberalisation of the peasantry and the working class, and was opposed to the rapid industrialisation, which he felt would hurt the interests of the peasants and lead to oppression of the workers.[44] This can be seen in works like Rangabhumi (1924).
Premchand's influence on Indian literature cannot be overstated. As the late scholar David Rubin wrote in The World of Premchand (Oxford, 2001), "To Premchand belongs the distinction of creating the genre of the serious short story—and the serious novel as well—in both Hindi and Urdu. Virtually single-handed he lifted fiction in these languages from a quagmire of aimless romantic chronicles to a high level of realistic narrative comparable to European fiction of the time; and in both languages, he has, in addition, remained an unsurpassed master."[45]
In his last days, he focused on village life as a stage for complex drama, as seen in the novel Godan (1936) and the short-story collection Kafan (1936).[30] Premchand believed that social realism was the way for Hindi literature, as opposed to the "feminine quality", tenderness and emotion of the contemporary Bengali literature.[46]