MUNSHI IN POLICY

Literature is more relevant now than ever, as the world gets alienated and isolated because of machinated realities

- SWASTI PACHAURI

Munshi Premchand was a prolific storyteller and author, steeped in the realism of everyday life. He wrote in Hindi and Urdu and painted vivid images of colonial India and its rurality with an unrelenting willpower, often including a glimmer of romance for better times. His remarkable writing career spanned 300 stories, 14 novels, and other anecdotes and works.

Premchand narrated the social ills prevalent in pre-independent India with a succinct clarity that has characterised the longevity of his craft. Short stories such as “Sawa Ser Gehu”, “Poos Ki Raat”, and the novel Godan, among others, depict exploitative conditions in society, many of which tragically persist. From the importance of livestock to rural communities to the vicious trap of debt affecting farmers and agricultural labourers to present-day policy concerns on crop insurance emanating from a farmer's struggle to protect his fields from wildlife and natural disasters, gruelling agricultural conditions and caste discrimination—his body of work implores us to look deep within our value system.

An all-encompassing search for sensitivity and compassion in human interactions dominates the essence of his writings. It makes them even more relevant in a world alienated and isolated because of machinated realities. With a focus on kinship amid economic hardship and social discrimination, there is an underlying search for idealism and humanitarian ethos. For instance, he empathetically demonstrates the social conditions of widowed women and their status within families in “Boodhi Kaaki” and “Jyoti”. Similarly, in the classic “Sadgati”, which was also made into a movie by Satyajit Ray in 1981, and in “Thakur ka Kuan”, his narrative is centred around public utilities, caste-based discrimination and consequent ostracisation in the society.