write a short story based on the struggle to stop caste discrimination.
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Can someone who has not experienced exploitation articulate it? This is a question literary theorists have asked time and again. Marxist scholar Antonio Gramsci held the opinion that two kinds of intellectuals exist in society — traditional and organic. Traditional intellectuals, as Premchand is likely to be categorised, are distanced from the economic structure and derive their information from the records of the past and often legitimise power structures. Organic intellectuals, such as B.R. Ambedkar, are deeply entrenched in the economic structure, and thus, are more likely to overthrow the existing structure.
Premchand, however, deviates from the norm to challenge these structures. His depiction of upper castes, landlords and priests is a scathing indictment of an unequal society that works to keep certain classes deprived of access to basic human resources such as water.
“Premchand could have written from the point of view of a Brahmin, but he chose the Dalit point of view,” says G.S. Meena, professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and a scholar on the works of Premchand.
“He made people realise the follies of the caste system and the oppression it inflicts on those who are relegated to the periphery. That is what makes him a successful author.”
On the other hand, if one views characters like Dukhi and Shankar, the protagonist of Sawa Ser Gehun (One and A Quarter Ser of Wheat, ‘ser’ being an Indian weight measure that’s slightly less than a kilogram), that sense of complete resignation to Dalit oppression is hard to escape. Both men inevitably cede the ability to challenge the system, letting it exploit them.
“The stories demonstrate that the Dalits were subjected to daily humiliation by members of the upper castes and this humiliation stemmed from the fact that Dalit inferiority had become embedded in the psyche of the members of the Hindu upper castes, who had developed a vast repertoire of idioms, symbols and gestures of verbal and physical denigration of the Dalits over centuries,” writes M. Asaduddin in his introduction to Premchand’s Stories on Caste, published by Penguin.
But Premchand’s most interesting interjection comes with his female characters. In Thakur ka Kuan (Thakur’s Well), Gangi is the rebellious Dalit woman who is willing to brave the landlord’s ire only to get clean drinking water for her sick husband. She is defiant and has the ability to question, if not overthrow, the pervading order.
In Mandir, Sukhiya asks a question whose reverberations can be heard even today — why can’t Dalits enter the temple, is he only “their” God? She dies at foot of the temple, nursing her sick child, denied the right to pray but defiant to the end.
“Every work of literature should be evaluated according to times in which it was written,” said Meena. “Premchand wrote before the many movements for Dalit assertion took shape in India. In a certain sense, he did for literature what Ambedkar did for politics; it’s just the way they did it had to be different, because the fields are different.”