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Literary Review
Translation
Wide canvas
SONYA DUTTA CHOUDHURY
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The novel reflects Premchand's belief in the strength of literature to grapple with social and economic evils. Karmbhumi, Premchand, translated by Lalit Srivastava, OUP, p.358, Rs. 395.
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POOR peasants. Uncaring chess players. A small boy who gives up the joy of toys to buy a chimta for his grandmother. Premchand's protagonists are classic figures that we've all grown with, in short stories scattered across school curriculae.
Unforgettable in the man-madeness of their tragedies. Shankar who becomes a bonded labourer, all for the loan of a handful of wheat. Hori, in Godaan, who dies for the gift of a cow. And Madhav, in "Kafan" who will drink himself to oblivion with the five rupees for his wife's funeral, money he could have used to save her, if only it had come earlier.
Stories of the subaltern
In his short stories (300 or more) and novels, Premchand tells the story of agrarian India. To read him today is like reading Shakespeare. Or Charles Dickens. Here's a man who transformed literature — both in terms of form and content. Premchand wrote in Urdu and Hindi, in the process developing the nascent Hindi, using a language that was simple but highly expressive. His are the stories of the subaltern — the poor peasant , the Chamar , the fallen woman. Story after story throws up his engagement with the social and political evils of the day; caste and debt in Godaan, unhappy women in Nirmala, in Sevasadan the travails of a courtesan who tries to reform.
Karmbhumi, a full length novel written in the 1930s, echoes many of these concerns. The coming of age story of Amarkant, it is set in a colonial Oudh slowly awakening to Gandhian protest. Amarkant, like many of Premchand's heroes (and indeed Premchand himself), is a motherless boy. He is increasingly distant from his prosperous moneylender father, the Lala Samarkant. He, nevertheless, must defer to him, dropping out of school to run Lala's business, marrying the self-assured Sukhada, daughter of a rich family. Sukhada's haughtiness puts him off, and he finds himself attracted to the humble and hero-worshipping Sakina, a poor Muslim girl, whose father had once worked for Lala Samarkant. Matters come to a head and Amarkant leaves town, wandering through the countryside till he finds peace in a village of Chamars. Here he meets Munni, a young Brahmin woman who had been acquitted of the murder charge of English soldiers who had raped her, but had run away from her family, fearing ostracism.
Clever use of conflict
Times are troubled and the lead characters are swept up in cataclysmic events. Sukhada finds herself the head of Chamars and other lower castes unfairly denied entry to the local temple. In a valiant effort reminiscent of the fearless female energy associated with Durga or Kali, Sukhada turns firebrand activist, storming the temple and leading a strike against upper castes sabotaging a public housing project. Amarkant, who is in the countryside, spearheads the protest against an unfair land tax. Their efforts convert all the other characters — there is much conversation and discussion of conflicting philosophies — all very contemporary (the virtues of staying in the establishment, ascetism versus activism and religion versus ritual). Premchand, like a good dialectic materialist, uses conflict cleverly — the action and reaction in Karmbhumi points to a resolution on how life is to be lived, detailing the duties of a married man and a householder, of a human being and a citizen.
Lalit Srivastava's translation reads smoothly. If the novel is didactic, it reflects Premchand's belief in the strength of literature to grapple with social and economic evils. And if Karmbhumi, like Premchand's other novels, does get ponderous in parts (unlike his short stories that stay brilliantly taut up to the end), it more than makes up with the philosophical depth of its very wide canvas.
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