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Monday, July 30, 2018

31 July, 1880: Prem Chand Birth Anniversary

Munshi Prem Chand’s role in the struggle for progressive literature
                                by Shivdan Singh Chauhan

It is a matter of gratification and pride to see such eminent Soviet writers and scholars assembled here in this beautiful Hall to celebrate the 80th birth anniversary of our beloved Indian writer – Prem Chand. I must congratulate the Society for Indo-Soviet Cultural Relations for organising this great function. Let me assure you that the Indian people are genuinely happy about the fact that the Soviet people have always showed such warm affection and appreciation for our eminent writers and artists. We too have always held in great esteem your foremost writers. In fact, the giants of the Russian literature – Pushkin, Gogal, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov and Gorky have been the teachers and inspirers of almost all the Indian writers, including Prem Chand. The great October Revolution and the young Soviet literature had also been a constant source of inspiration to all the progressive minded Indian writers and readers.

The great Tolstoy insisted that literature must unify the people. Our Bankim, Tagore, Sharat, Iqbal, Bharati, Vallathol and Prem Chand – these great writers of the period of our national resurgence believed in this and the literature they created has helped  to unify not only the various sections of the Indian people but has also gained us the affection and appreciation of other people of the world – particularly of the Soviet Union. You have translated many works of Prem Chand, so he is no longer a stranger to you. You hold him in high esteem is evident from the fact that you are celebrating his 80th birth-anniversary with such enthusiasm.

But the real reason why Prem Chand has endeared himself to you, as indeed he has done to our Indian people, is that he was a great and tireless fighter for progressive ideals and aspirations of our people. Like all those great Indian writers, whose names I have mentioned before, Prem Chand, too, had dedicated his life and his mighty pen in the service of our people, for raising their cultural standard, for fighting against moribund traditions and age-old backwardness, for fighting against political and economic tutelage of the British colonialists and for ushering in a new era of freedom and progress. It is because his literary works artistically reflect these progressive urges of the Indian people that Prem Chand has taken his place among the immortals, his memory has become hallowed, and his works are loved and widely read and discussed.

Prem Chand is one of the maker of modern Hindi literature, particularly of our prose. Perhaps you are aware that prose literature in Hindi is a recent development. About a century ago there was no pros writing worth the name, and therefore there could not be any fiction either. Before Prem Chand a few novels had been written and translated, but the language of the prose was poor, shabby and even vulgar. It had not developed into a handy instrument for the communication of great and powerful ideas or subtle and deep emotions. Therefore Prem Chand and other prose writers of his generation had this formidable handicap to overcome. They had to forge a popular language capable of literary and artistic communication. Under the circumstances, it could inevitably be a long process as can be seen from Prem Chand’s own writings.

          Prem Chand had the great advantage of being well-versed in Persian and Urdu languages, a fact which helped him in giving Hindi prose a modern and popular character. Yet the language of his earlier novels like Vardan and Pratigya is too elementary and over- simplified when compared with his later works like Premashram and Godan which are artistically more mature and deal with more subtle and complex ideas and emotions. This proves that Prem Chand was a conscious artist.
            
           His life-long struggle for creating a suitable language of literature forms an integral part of his general struggle for the creation of a powerful progressive literature in Hindi. The  so-called ‘purists’ and communal die-hards vehemently attacked him for making popular speech as the basis of his literary language as it contained many Urdu or Persian words and phrases, which had become current as a  result of the century- old impact of Islamic culture and great Urdu poets and writers. They wanted him to discard the popular speech and resort to an esoteric and artificial language forged purely out of uncommon Sanskrit words. Prem Chand did not bow down before this onslaught of the reactionaries and his ultimate triumph in the matter of literary language represents the triumph of progressive forces over reaction.
            
               Today Prem Chand’s language is considered to be an ideal, and although communal reaction is trying to impose an artificial and abstract language on our people, every conscious writer who inspires to reflect life truthfully and realistically and wants to be read and understood by the common people, tries to emulate the language used by Prem Chand with such artistic power and clarity.
            
           Prem Chand started writing in 1905 but did not gain maturity and a broader world-view till 1921 when he came out with his first great novel Premashram. During the interim sixteen years he had published three novels and several volumes of short- stories, but though  they have the imprint of great talent and sincerity, yet his approach to social problems is purely reformist, his solutions of social conflicts are idealistic and his conception of human relations is governed by backward traditions and customs. Even his famous novel Sewa-Sadan written in 1918, dealing with the problem of fallen women, suffers from these draw backs. But, as I have said before, Prem Chand  was a conscious artist, and he consciously fought to overcome his ideological backwardness and to enlarge his world out look. He was a born realist and the three great events, which had in close succession shaken our people out of their narrow existence – the first imperialist World War, the Great October Revolution and the Civil Disobedience Movement for national freedom launched by Mahatma Gandhi in 1921, broadened Prem Chand’s mental horizon, and he succeeded, to a large extent in shaking off the crippling influences of moribund traditions. And although the solution of the peasant problem that he offered in his great novel Premasharam was purely idealistic, yet he gave us for the first time a true and powerful portrayal of the class conflict raging in our country side between the poor, landless peasantry and the feudal landlords.

Thus Prem Chand turned his handicap into an advantage, for no one else had such intimate knowledge of the suffering and longings of our peasantry as he had and he made full use of his genius to portray this artistically and truthfully. In his second great novel Rang-Bhumi he depicted in great detail the rapacious advance of capitalism in India, encroaching mercilessly into the villages and uprooting peasant and petty landlords alike, as well as the grim and heroic struggle of the peasantry against this encroachment. Later in his last great novel Godan  Prem Chand again took up the peasant problem just before his untimely death in 1936. By this time he had shed off his idealistic illusions and was earnestly searching for more revolutionary solutions.

To fight reactionary tendencies in Indian literature and to accelerate the process of national unity among different nationalities of India, Prem Chand founded a liteary magazine Hans, which I had also the previlege of editing for a few years after his death. Prem Chand made Hans a great public organ of unity and progressive thought. He hated Fascism and Nazism which had by then plunged the world into fear of the Second World War. He wrote against war and for world peace.

Thus Prem Chand’s great liteary works and his passionate fight for progressive ideals began to cast its influence on the modern Indian literatures even during his life time. This influence has been growing ever since his death. Particularly in Hindi, no young writer dare go back on his ideology. He is today at the head of a powerful and progressive literary tradition – its maker and its inspirer.

Source: Shivdan Singh Chauhan Papers, MSS, NMML

1 comment:

  1. He was a very great author. He very much deserved Nobel Prize in literature. His stories are integral constituents of my childhood.
    So sad, such a great author did not find his right place during his life-time.

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