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Main The Complete Short Stories
The Complete Short Stories
Premchand, M. Asaduddin (ed.)
Munshi Premchand, widely lauded as the greatest Hindi fiction writer of the twentieth century, wrote close to 300 short stories over the course of a prolific career spanning three decades. His range and diversity were limitless as he tackled themes of romance and satire, gender politics and social inequality, with unmatched skill and compassion. By turns poignant, acerbic, comical and tragic, many of his stories powerfully invoke the countryside-its pastoral simplicity as well as its harsh realities-while others capture the hopes and anxieties that accompany life in a teeming city where the underdog and the exploiter are caught in an age-old conflict. For the first time ever, Penguin Classics brings together Premchand's entire short-fiction oeuvre for the delight of the English-speaking world. Along with M. Asaduddin's illuminating Introduction, this pathbreaking anthologyfeatures several stories not hitherto available either in Hindi or Urdu. Also included are comprehensive...
singh486
sahib364
urdu302
premchand234
kunwar196
sword172
rupees164
honour158
panditji147
kunwar sahib139
thakur114
babu113
prince110
soldiers106
raja105
prabha95
translated95
prem91
happiness89
maharaja86
till83
pandit83
hearts82
rani76
sharmaji73
temple73
jewellery71
godavari70
lal70
published in urdu69
devi68
thakur sahib68
villagers68
gopal64
palace64
translation63
sethji61
farmers61
ganga61
girdhari61
tara60
munshi59
thousand rupees59
ram raksha58
lamp57
rana57
beloved56
sacrifice56
asaduddin56
jaigarh56
goddess55
PREMCHAND
the complete short stories VOLUME 1
Edited with an Introduction by M. Asaduddin
Translated from the Hindi and Urdu by M. Asaduddin and others
Foreword by Harish Trivedi
1. Love for the World and Patriotism
2. The Rarest Pearl in the World
3. Sheikh Makhmoor
4. Sorrow's Reward
5. This Is My Homeland
6. Dara Shikoh's Durbar
7. The Pyre of Sin
8. The Travels of a Dervish
9. A Hunt
10. Rani Sarandha
11. Selfless Benefactor
12. A Well-bred Daughter
13. The Sword of Vikramaditya
14. A Strange Revenge
15. From Both Sides
16. Raja Hardaul
17. The Elder Sister
18. The Fear of Dishonour
19. The Desired Destination
20. A Poor Woman's Cry
21. Alha
22. Mother's Love
23. An Example Is Better than Precepts
24. Making Up
25. Nemesis
26. Royal Arrogance
27. Appearances Are Deceptive
28. A Woman's Character
29. Life and Death
30. The Night of the New Moon
31. A Glance of Love
32. Union
33. A New Dawn
34. Injustice
35. A Bitter Pill
36. Only One Voice
37. The Dandy Landowner
38. The Salt Inspector
39. The Orphaned Girl
40. When Blood Turns White
41. The Hunter Prince
42. The Funny Tale of a Jailbreak
43. Retribution
44. Remorse
45. An Appropriate Choice
46. The Balm
47. The Sword of Honour
48. The Consequences of Karma
49. A Daughter's Possessions
50. Godavari's Suicide
51. Two Brothers
52. A Punishment for Honesty
53. Holy Judges
54. An Embodiment of Pride
55. The Lustre of the Firefly
56. Deception
57. The Door: A Fragment
58. The Code of Honour
59. The Volcano
60. Counsel
61. Divine Justice
62. Separation and Union
63. The Greater Pilgrimage
64. The Durga Temple
65. The Captain
66. Victory
67. The Sacrifice
68. The Return
69. The Path of Devotion
70. The Chains of Passion
71. The Dagger of Loyalty
72. The Gift of Truth
73. Wisdom
74. Entanglements
75. The Bankruptcy of the Bank
76. Stepmother
2. The ; Rarest Pearl in the World
Note on Translators
Popular Editions
THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES: VOLUME 1
Premchand (1880–1936), considered one of the greatest fiction writers in Hindi, was born Dhanpat Rai in Lamahi, a small village near Benares. He wrote in Urdu under the name Nawab Rai and changed it to Premchand when his collection of short stories, Soz-e Watan, was seized for sedition in 1909. In a prolific career spanning three decades, Premchand wrote fourteen novels, two plays, almost 300 short stories and several articles, reviews and editorials. He edited four journals, and also set up his own printing press. Though best known for his stories exposing the horrors of poverty and social injustice, he wrote on a variety of themes with equal felicity—romance, satire, social dramas, nationalist tales, and yarns steeped in folklore.
M. Asaduddin is an author, critic and translator in several languages. His books include Premchand in World Languages: Translation, Reception and Cinematic Representations; Filming Fiction: Tagore, Premchand and Ray; A Life in Words; The Penguin Book of Classic Urdu Stories; Lifting the Veil: Selected Writings of Ismat Chughtai; For Freedom's Sake: Manto; and (with Mushirul Hasan) Image and Representation: Stories of Muslim Lives in India. He has been a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA, and a Charles Wallace Trust Fellow at the British Centre for Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. He is a regular speaker at literary festivals, and his translations have been recognized with the Sahitya Akademi Award, and the Katha and A.K. Ramanujan awards for translation, as well as the Crossword Book Award.
Advance Praise for the Volumes
'Not having access to all of Premchand's stories has always been a cause of frustration to his readers. The publication now of the entire, admittedly huge, corpus of his short stories is very welcome. Premchand—in spite of occasional challenges—remains a true colossus of Indian literature. The sheer variety, with its hypnotic power, and the vastness of his output is staggering. It is impossible to arrive at any kind of assessment of modern Indian literature without taking full account of Premchand. Then, his fiction as a living source and commentary on the social, political and rural India of the early part of the twentieth century is valuable and relevant even today. These four volumes deserve a place on the bookshelf of every lover of modern fiction, in India or elsewhere'
SHAMSUR RAHMAN FARUQI
well-known critic, poet and novelist in Urdu
'Premchand's fiction draws from his vast experience of the conflicts of village life, of caste tensions, of excessive revenue demands and the never-ending chain of debts entailed by these. If these are grim tales, they are both deepened and lightened by his psychological insight, his irony and humour, and the broad canvas on which they are drawn, which links country and city in a manner unknown in Hindi–Urdu fiction writing before him. To present this rich corpus, drawn exhaustively from both Urdu and Hindi originals, the vast majority made available in English for the first time, is a pioneering feat for which the translators are to be congratulated'
VASUDHA DALMIA
professor emerita of Hindi and Modern South Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
'At once an extraordinary feat of scholarship and an immense labour of love, this collection gives us the complete corpus of Premchand's short stories in English translation for the first time. It thus allows readers without access to either or both of Premchand's languages of composition, Urdu and Hindi, insight into one of the greatest writers of India's modernity—indeed, into the making of modern India. Most importantly, as the rich and informative Introduction to this translation states, the stories bear witness to Premchand's "secular and inclusive" view of the Indian nation. Premchand's socialism, his realism, his role in the fashioning of a modern prose style in two languages, his searing insights into caste and gender politics, his sympathy for the oppressed, for the labouring poor, even for working animals, make him a writer from whom we still have much to learn. If this remarkable collaborative enterprise brilliantly led by M. Asaduddin helps us to do so, its purpose will be served'
SUPRIYA CHAUDHURI
professor emerita, Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata
'It is a valuable work, especially for foreign readers who cannot read the original text in Hindi or Urdu. This complete translation of Premchand's short stories must be welcomed as a major contribution to the accessibility to modern Indian literature. Being considered one of the foundational figures of modern Indian literature, Premchand deserves this kind of ambitious work on him, which will find him his rightful place in world literature'
PHILIPPE BENOÎT
Sanskritist and professor of Bengali, National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations, Paris
'Premchand is one of the most famous—perhaps the most famous—Hindi authors. Many of his short stories have been translated into a wide array of languages. And yet, when one looks at these selections it appears that the translators tended to choose a particular set of stories regarded as Premchand's masterpieces, ignoring the rest. The present collection aims to present the full picture, displaying Premchand at different stages of his life, in different moods, displaying changing attitudes with regard to the functionality of literature. For the first time, readers of English will be able to appreciate Premchand's story-telling in all its facets and fullness'
CHRISTINA OESTERHELD
professor of Urdu, University of Heidelberg, Germany
'Premchand was greatly popular with an earlier generation of Russian readers. This anthology will certainly enhance his visibility to an international audience and make him popular with the new generation of Russian readers and scholars of Indian literature'
GUZEL STRELKOVA
professor of Hindi, Moscow State University, Moscow
a university that has nurtured composite culture,
secular nationalism and pluralism for 100 years
During the birth centenary celebrations of Premchand (1880–1936), he was described as one of the panch devata, that is, one of the five gods, or (to put it more plausibly in English and also perhaps a bit more secularly!) one of the five iconic figures of modern Indian literature.1 This was high praise indeed, for each one of the twenty-four languages of India which are recognized and honoured by the Sahitya Akademi can boast of several outstanding writers in the modern period. The foremost of these probably still is Rabindranath Tagore, best known for his lyrical and transcendentally spiritual poetical works and, of course, for being the first, and so far the only, Indian to win the Nobel Prize for literature. But of those following behind him, Premchand stands as tall as any other writer.
Premchand wrote in both Urdu and Hindi, which made him an inheritor of two distinct literary traditions and also gave him a far wider readership than writers in other languages could aspire to. He wrote in the popular genres of the novel and the short story, and he practised a simple and candid style which had a direct emotive effect. He set his fiction in both cities and villages, often bringing the two Indias into poignant juxtaposition, most pointedly in his last novel, Godaan (1936), and in other novels and numerous short stories too throughout his career. After experimenting early in his career with a few short stories set in the historical past (which he used allegorically for a present patriotic purpose), he wrote as a rule on contemporary themes of immediate social and political relevance. He marched with the times, responding to successive waves of public events and movements with a creative openness that wasn't bound by blind allegiance to any ideology. The scope of his understanding and the range of his sympathies were wide enough to encompass each aspect of the impact of colonial rule and of the nationalist movement for freedom in its many dimensions. His heart beat with the heart of the nation. As the Marxist Hindi critic Namwar Singh says:
Premchand was the unique epic-chronicler [maha-gathakar] of our struggle for freedom and it will be no exaggeration to say that he occupies in this regard an unrivalled place in the whole of Indian literature. If one wanted to find in any one Indian writer the very pulse of Indian life, its struggles and its setbacks, its sorrows and its anguish, in all their depth and all their wide scope, over a period of three decades right from the Partition of Bengal in 1905–06 up to 1936, when he passed away, then, notwithstanding the fact that we have Rabindranath Tagore, we have Sarat Chandra, we have Subrahmanya Bharati, we have V.S. Khandelkar, we have Kanhaiyalal Maniklal Munshi, and we have as well Dr Mohammad Iqbal, I would like to name Premchand, for he is the one writer we have in whose works the immortal saga of our struggle for independence has been narrated in all its fullness.2
And yet, it would be to underestimate Premchand to think of him only, or even primarily, as a chronicler of what was perhaps the most vitally transformative phase in the history of modern India. For he was, like a true artist, concerned first and foremost with human beings and the daily, ordinary lives they led. If these lives were impacted by larger historical forces, as indeed they inescapably were, Premchand's focus remained on the human characters rather more than on the forces shaping them, and it was in this indirectness that the greatness of his achievement lies. His eventful narratives of the nation were above all else compassionate tales of humanity.
Life and Times: Sedition and 'Premchand'
Premchand was born in Lamahi, a village which now stands virtually on the outskirts of Benares, of Kayastha parents, which meant that he would culturally be more inclined to Urdu than Hindi. His mother died when he was eight, his father remarried shortly afterwards, and Premchand first went to school in Gorakhpur where his father, a postal clerk, was then posted. Premchand's real name was Dhanpat Rai Shrivastav, but he was fondly called Nawab, a prince, and he published his early writings under the name 'Nawab Rai'. In his early teens he read voraciously Tilism Hoshruba (in Urdu, published from 1883 onwards in numerous volumes amounting to thousands of pages) and similar dastaan tales of what may now be called the old school of Arabian magic realism.
Premchand passed his matriculation examination (class 10) in 1898, and began a long career as a teacher and school administrator, during which he passed as a 'private' or non-formal candidate the Intermediate examination (class 12) in 1916 and the BA in 1919, with English literature, Persian and history as his subjects. In 1921, he resigned government service at the call of Gandhi during the Non-Cooperation Movement. He had, between 1915 and 1924, moved away from Urdu to begin writing in Hindi which Gandhi had in 1918 declared to be the rashtra bhasha, the national language. During the salt satyagraha called by Gandhi in 1930, his (second) wife, Shivrani Devi, courted arrest and spent two months in jail. In 1923 Premchand had bought a press and started the publishing house Saraswati Press but in the absence of a regular income, he served two stints as the editor of the Hindi journal Madhuri in Lucknow, in 1924–25 and again from 1927 to 1932. Meanwhile, he started a journal of his own, Hans (The Swan, vehicle of Saraswati, the muse of literature), in 1930, and then taken over another journal, Jagaran (Awakening), in 1932. Premchand returned to Benares to spend the last four years of his life back in Lamahi where he had built a bigger pukka house which still stands, and from where he commuted to his press in Benares. On 8 October 1936, at the age of fifty-six, he died of a stomach ailment that had long afflicted him. He had published in Urdu and Hindi thirteen novels, including one left unfinished, and what are now reckoned to be close to 300 short stories.3
At least four novels by Premchand are counted as being among the greatest written in Hindi: Sevasadan (1919; The Abode of Service), Rangbhumi (1925; tr. as The Playground), Karmabhumi (1932; Field of Action), and Godaan (1936; tr. as Godaan and also as The Gift of a Cow). It has long been a matter of debate whether Premchand was a greater novelist than a short story writer and, though scholars may prefer the weightier and more complex novels, popular opinion has favoured the more accessible and immediately affective short stories. A brief account is given below of a few highlights and turning points in Premchand's career as a short story writer.
Premchand published his first collection of five short stories in 1908, Soz-e Watan (in Urdu: The Dirge of the Nation), and it met with an unexpectedly hot reception. The stories were all patriotic, which the British government promptly interpreted to be seditious, and Premchand, who was then serving as a sub-deputy inspector of schools, was summoned to appear before the district magistrate who asked him to confirm that he was the author of the book which had been published under his pen name 'Nawab Rai', told him to burn all the copies and never to write anything like that again. He then added, 'Thank your stars that you are a servant of the British Empire. Had these been Mughal times, both your hands would have been chopped off.'4 What was chopped off, however, was the name 'Nawab Rai', and it was then that the new pen name 'Premchand' was born, under the oppressive shadow of British censorship and as a subterfuge against its vigilance. This was only the first of Premchand's many brushes with authority, for in the 1930s he was required time and again to deposit a security of Rs 1000 at the slightest whiff of sedition in anything that he published in his two journals.
Urdu and Hindi
A more significant turning point came when Premchand decided to change his linguistic horses in midstream and cross over from writing in Urdu to writing in Hindi. This profound makeover began in 1914 and, through a long and assiduous process, culminated in 1924, when Premchand revised and rewrote his Urdu novel Chaugan-e Hasti (Life as a Game) in Hindi as Rangbhumi (1925; The Playground). He gave two reasons for making this transformation. Publishers were hard to find in Urdu, while they were plentiful in Hindi and paid substantially more. Besides, Premchand felt out of place in the Urdu cultural milieu; as he asked in a moment of despondency in a letter to an Urdu editor in 1918, 'Has any Hindu ever made a success of writing in Urdu that I will?'5 The facts seem to support him, for in one count by a British literary historian in 1928, of about 250 writers he treated in his work, only eight were Hindus and none of them was regarded as being of the first rank.
Be that as it may, Premchand, by beginning to write in Hindi, entered a wider and apparently more congenial cultural ambience in which even the semantic resonances seemed to conform more closely to his vision of the world. The very titles of several works from this transitional period bear this out. The novel titled Bazar-e Husn (written in 1917 in Urdu; The Market-Place of Beauty) was published first in Hindi as Sevasadan (1919; The Abode of Service). The short story published in Urdu as 'Panchayat' (May–June 1916; The Jury of Five Elders) was published in Hindi as 'Panch Parameshwar' (June 1916; The Five Elders as [the voice of] God), and 'Brahm ka Swang' in Hindi (1920; Pretending to be Brahm or God) was toned down in Urdu to become 'Nok-Jhonk' (1923; Banter).6 It must be added that Premchand never wholly abandoned Urdu, for till the end he wrote in it a few of his short stories, most notably 'Kafan' (1935), and also lectures and essays, including his presidential address to the first conference of the All-India Progressive Writers Association (1936), in which he quoted verse four times, each time in Persian. When his host Sajjad Zaheer remarked that the Urdu in his speech had become a little ponderous (saqeel), Premchand laughed his loud laugh and said he thought he would show everyone that he was a 'Kayastha ka bachcha' (son of a Kayastha), implying that his Urdu could be as high-flown as any Muslim's!
Realism and Idealism
Another important development in Premchand's career is believed to have taken place in the last few years of his life, when he wrote some stories in which his realism was not irradiated by his usual optimistic outlook. Throughout his career, in both his novels and his short stories, his protagonists had been inspired by the abiding values of truth, mutual trust, goodwill, cooperation and service to others. In moments of adversity and crisis, they were motivated by an idealism which led them to acts of selfless sacrifice, or to a change of heart involving an admission of past errors and deep repentance in which all conflict and dissonance were dissolved into a compassionate harmony. Premchand seemed to have been a firm believer in what the English poet John Keats, in a memorable phrase, called 'the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination'.7
Premchand similarly said that a good short story offered 'a vivid and heart-touching depiction of an episode, a glimpse of the soul'. In another essay, he described his own mode of writing fiction, or indeed his whole vision of life, as adarshonmukh yatharthvad,8 that is, idealistic realism or, more accurately, ideal-oriented realism. Some of his best-known and best-loved short stories are shining examples of this possibly naive-seeming and sentimental but in fact resolutely principled view of life in which goodness, virtue and self-realization are ultimately bound to prevail over all misunderstanding and temporary ill will.
Yet, in his last few years, Premchand wrote some stories which seem devoid of such a hopeful tenor and are instead inconclusive or even bleak. To cite just the best known of them, in 'Poos ki Raat' (1930; A Winter Night), a farmer falls asleep on his night-long watch over his ripening harvest, wakes up in the morning to find it devoured and destroyed by a herd of nilgai, but as he walks back home, he tells himself that he would at least not have to freeze any more by passing night after night out in the open. In 'Sadgati' (1930; Gone to Heaven, made into a film by Satyajit Ray), a poor low-caste man is cruelly worked to death by a Brahmin priest, with the latter excusing himself in the end by saying that after death in a Brahmin's service, the wretched man would surely go to heaven. And in 'Kafan' (1935; The Shroud), a father and son end up in a drinking house in a city, carousing in an only-too-rare carnivalesque moment, quite oblivious of the son's young wife who has died in childbirth the night before and still lies unmourned and uncremated back in the village.
These are deeply unsettling works, and commentators on Premchand have been at a loss as to what to make of them. Some have suggested that Premchand was here at last moving out of the shadow of Gandhi and of traditional values to a kind of radical progressive position. As there is not a trace of resistance or rebellion against the system or even the particular oppressor in any of these stories (as there is not in Premchand's last novel, Godaan, either), some others have suggested that Premchand had in the end grown weary of his own idealism and become a little cynical. Another way of looking at these few stories, which are so striking partly because they go against the grain of the rest of Premchand's career, may be to suggest that in them, Premchand was experimenting with something new and beginning to develop a 'late style' (in Edward Said's formulation in his late and indeed posthumous book)9 as many other masters had done as they advanced in years. Premchand died at the age of fifty-six, and one can only speculate on what and how he would have gone on to write had he been granted, say, ten more years. We may anyhow note that the last two short stories Premchand published in his lifetime, 'Do Bahnen' (August 1936; Two Sisters) and 'Rahasya' (September 1936; The Secret), are both as full of Premchand's signature vocabulary of seva, tyag and daya (service to others, sacrifice and compassion) as anything he wrote at any time in his career.10
Translating Premchand: The Two Originals
Premchand's short stories began to be translated in his own lifetime into other Indian languages, including Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi and Tamil, as well as into English, German and Japanese. The first volume of a selection of his short stories in English translation was published in 1946 by Gurdial Malik and, as M. Asaduddin has shown, about a dozen other selections have been published since then by translators both Indian and American. As most of the translators have gone in for the same 'best' stories, the total number of short stories translated into English remains a small fraction of the oeuvre.11
Translation is sometimes slandered as being a losing game by those who do not pause to reflect on what is gained, for without translation, however inadequate, we would not have access to an alien author or work at all. What comes across especially well in English in the case of Premchand is his irreducibly humane content and his gripping, even enchanting, narrative voice. With the very first sentence of a novel or a story by him, we enter a parallel universe of his creation, which compels utter credibility and full engagement. His diction is simple, especially in the frequent dialogues, his sentences are short—sometimes too short to sound natural in English—and even in those of his tales which have a parable-like ending, the specificity of realistic notation remains undiminished. On the other hand, his authorial passages of both a narrative and discursive kind exploit fully the expressive resources of the language he uses and are so felicitously modulated as to stretch the capabilities of the best translators. Premchand's penchant for using idiomatic phrases presents a difficulty and so do culture-specific terms, as with translating any writer.
But a difficulty that may be unique to Premchand arises from the fact that whether one translates him from Hindi or Urdu, the original text may well turn out to be always already translated—from the other language! It is now possible to say with certainty which of the two versions of a story was first published, and in the great majority of the cases it is clear that the version first published was also the first to be written. But this priority may not always indicate primacy, for if the second, translated version turns out to be different in significant respects, it would be inept to reject it altogether. Though the early translations from Urdu into Hindi were mostly done by Premchand himself, we have firm evidence, for example, that the final manuscript of the Hindi Rangbhumi was translated into Urdu by another person who demanded a rate that Premchand thought to be exorbitant. In any case, all his works throughout his life in both Hindi and Urdu were published under Premchand's own name with no mention of a translator and are treated by the common reader as being equally original.
A good English translation then must take both the Hindi and the Urdu versions into account and in the case of each notable variation, reconcile them if possible or at least opt for whichever seems more apt. As I have argued elsewhere, it must be one translation rendered out of two originals. The issues involved here may be quickly illustrated through the one story that I have myself contributed to these volumes, 'A Special Holi' (Volume 2). Its title in Hindi is 'Vichitra Holi' (published in 1921) and in Urdu 'Ajeeb Holi' (1928), which may look quite similar but have different connotations, especially when we read the story. It depicts all the servants of a British sahib staging a rebellion against him on the carnivalesque day of Holi when he is out hunting, and they indulge in riotous merriment by drinking his wine, dancing on his dining table and singing lusty Holi songs. They are punished and slink away when Mr Hunter returns, but they have had their day of glorious liberation. Now this, as Premchand narrates, is more a special Holi, in a positive sense, than a strange Holi, in a quizzical or suspicious sense, and the Hindi title is closer to the mark. Elsewhere in the story, Hindi words seem more apt in some places but Urdu words in some other places, and in this transitional phase of his career from Urdu to Hindi, Premchand even seems to waver here and there between Hindi usage and Urdu usage, mixing up, for example, the verbs that would go with arpan (dedication) and qurbani (sacrifice).12
The Present Volumes
In this respect, a major new beginning is made with the translations in these four volumes, for the translators had access to both the Hindi and the Urdu versions. Besides, the notes at the end indicate the major variations between the two texts and provide the publishing details of both the versions. The Introduction by M. Asaduddin, a multilingual scholar, provides an erudite and comprehensive overview of Premchand's career, and his thematic and stylistic range. His archival researches have resulted in the discovery of two whole stories which were so far known to have been published but could not be traced, and also of sections 2 and 3 of a third story of which only the first section was available. This edition of translations of Premchand thus goes a bit beyond even the most comprehensive editions of his works so far published in either Hindi or Urdu and gives a new meaning to the phrase 'Found in Translation'!
But the outstanding feature of these volumes is, of course, the fact that they present in English translation close to 300 stories that Premchand wrote. Such an enormous project must have initially seemed audacious, and then been full of difficulties, problems and heartaches during its long gestation. But a team of sixty translators, occasionally interacting together in workshops, finally realized the plan with Professor Asaduddin himself leading from the front by translating, I am given to understand, no less than 100 stories all by himself.
So far as I know, this is an unprecedented project of its kind and scale in the history of translations into English in India, for not even the great Rabindranath Tagore has had all his short stories (which number seventy-nine, as collected in the three volumes of his Galpa-Guchchha, that is, 'Bunch of Stories') translated into English, much less in a uniform edition like this one. As this fleet of four ships, this argosy laden with some of the best writing produced in India in the modern period and now made available in a global language, is launched by a major international publisher upon the seven seas, one hopes that it will succeed in flying the flag of Indian literature far and wide and win for it a new and wider circulation.
Harish Trivedi
'Premchand stands supreme as the iconic fiction writer of Urdu and Hindi, and to read and re-read him over and over again is to understand better ourselves and our society'1—Harish Trivedi
Premchand is generally regarded as the greatest writer in Urdu and Hindi, both in terms of his popularity and the range and depth of his corpus. His enduring appeal cuts across class, caste and social groups. He was not only a creative writer in Urdu and Hindi, but he also fashioned modern prose in both languages and influenced several generations of writers. The fact that his works were published in more than two dozen Hindi and Urdu journals2 simultaneously attests to his extraordinary reach to the wide audience that formed his readership. Many of his readers encountered modern Urdu and Hindi novels and short stories, and indeed any literary forms, for the first time through his writings. Premchand's unique contribution to the formation of a readership—and, in turn, to shaping the taste of that readership—has yet to be assessed fully. Few or none of his contemporaries in Urdu–Hindi have remained as relevant today as he is in the contexts of the Woman Question (Stree Vimarsh), Dalit Discourse (Dalit Vimarsh), Gandhian Nationalism, Hindu–Muslim relations and the current debates about the idea of India that is inclusive of all groups and denominations, irrespective of caste and creed. Francesca Orsini, who has worked on the Hindi public sphere, says pertinently: 'His strong social conscience and radical politics, which brought him closer and closer to socialism, were rooted in an utterly secular and inclusive view of the Indian nation, which makes him a particularly valuable and rare role model these days.' (Orsini 2003, xxvi)
However, despite his pioneering and iconic status, studies on Premchand have remained woefully inadequate because his entire corpus was or is still not available in either Hindi or Urdu, not to speak of English. Researchers had to remain content with only one of the corpuses (either Urdu or Hindi) accessible to them. This is also true of his short stories. Till today, the entire corpus of his short stories is not to be found in any of the versions. Fortunately, it is now being made available in English by combining and assimilating both the archives. Moreover, some new materials not accessible so far either in Hindi or Urdu are being made available for the first time in English. These twin advantages—in addition to the fact that the entire corpus is now being made available in English in a reliable chronological order3—should make the reading of Premchand more fruitful, exciting and enjoyable and give a new fillip to Premchand studies. There is a need to revisit Premchand in the light of the new materials that have been discovered, mainly, though not exclusively, through the efforts of Kamal Kishore Goyanka, and some more new materials that are presented in this anthology.
Premchand as a Short Story Writer: Beginnings
Premchand pioneered modern short story writing in Urdu and Hindi. The Urdu short story, or afsana (sometimes called mukhtasar afsana to distinguish it from longer fictional works), can be seen as a continuity of the fictional tradition that existed in Urdu for several centuries—that is, literature consisting of qissa, hikayah, dastaan, and so on, which drew upon the Perso-Arabic narrative tradition on the one hand and the Indian tradition of storytelling as one finds in works like the Panchatantra, Hitopadesha and the Jataka tales on the other. The short story proper in Urdu, however, emerged only in the opening decade of the twentieth century. By that time, novels and short stories were familiar conventions, having already been established in Bengali at the hands of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chatterjee. These Bengali writers are being invoked here because Premchand had read all of them in translation and drew inspiration from them. In fact, he began his writing career by translating Tagore. Of course, his staple readings were the medieval-style romances in Urdu and Persian popular at the time, particularly the writings of Ratan Nath Dhar Sarshar and Abdul Halim Sharar.
The atmosphere of dastaan and historical romances hangs heavy on Premchand's early stories. But he soon grew out of that phase and made his work more socially relevant by giving it the hard, gritty texture of realism. His art of storytelling became a vehicle for his socially engaged agenda of social reform and ameliorating the condition of the deprived and oppressed sections of society. However, that does not mean he was mainly concerned with the content and external circumstances of his characters and not with their inner worlds. Like all great writers, he took interest in unravelling the mental processes of his characters and the psychological motivations of their actions. As he says:
My stories are usually based on some observations or personal experience. I try to introduce some dramatic elements in them. I do not write stories merely to describe an event. I try to express some philosophical/emotional reality through them. As long as I do not find any such basis I cannot put my pen to paper. When this is settled, I conceive characters. Sometimes, studying history brings some plots to mind. An event does not form a story, as long as it does not express a psychological view of reality.4 (My translation)
In the stories he has written—which number close to 300—one finds different modes and points of view, which he adopted by employing an array of narrative devices. An overwhelming number of his stories are written in the third person or omniscient narrative mode and a far lesser number in the first person. He makes extensive use of dialogue, using different registers of Urdu and Hindi in addition to dialects, colloquialisms, idioms and speech patterns specific to a caste, class or community. He also uses the technique of interior monologue and multiple points of view in quite a few stories. The salient point is that even though Premchand was mainly concerned with the content of his stories, to the extent of sometimes making them formulaic and predictable, he certainly did engage with the stylistic aspects too. And in this respect, he was influenced by both Indian—specifically Bengali—and foreign writers.
The subject matter of Premchand's stories has been taken from Indian history and mythology, Indo-Muslim cultural history, contemporary society, and his own wide readings of literature from across the world, particularly English, Russian and French literature, from which he translated into Urdu and Hindi. The early decades of the twentieth century in India were exciting times, marked by the stirrings of change in society, particularly in its transition from a predominantly feudal and patriarchal society to a more democratic and modern one. From the third decade, the movement for independence gained momentum. Premchand had a journalist's curiosity of the quotidian and the contemporary. He was extraordinarily alive to the goings-on around him and made the events and issues the subject matter of his stories.5 There is hardly any issue relevant to the India of that time that he did not touch in his fiction. From a reading of his short stories it is quite possible to recreate the society of that time, with all its quirks, contradictions and superstitions, as well as the prevalent reformist and intellectual climate, particularly in the northern part of the country.
Premchand began his career as a short story writer with the publication of Soz-e Watan (The Dirge of the Nation, 1908), written under his pen name, Nawab Rai. It is a collection of five stories wherein he wrote on patriotism in a mode that can be called revivalist or revisionist, much in the vein of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, whom he imitated in matters of style as well.6 The patriotism and the hatred against invaders displayed in these stories made the colonial government ban the book, and Premchand barely escaped with a sharp reprimand from the magistrate. This was his first encounter with colonial censorship but not his last. He had to battle with censorship that tried to cripple him both as a writer and an editor of magazines later in life, without much help from anyone. What is pertinent to note here is that a strain of patriotism ran through stories such as 'The Rarest Pearl in the World' ('Duniya ka Sab se Anmol Ratan'), 'Sheikh Makhmoor', 'Rani Sarandha', and 'Raja Hardaul', which were written either in the dastaanesque mode or in the mode of historical romances, sometimes both. He continued to write in this vein for some time before he moved gradually to the realist mode, which was preferred by writers in many other Indian languages.
'A Well-bred Daughter' ('Bade Ghar ki Beti') is the first story to depict the family drama of an average, middle-class Indian family written in the realistic mode. He wrote a large number of stories throughout his career in this mode and on this theme. This and 'Family Break-up' ('Algojhya') are two classic stories about the Indian joint family that is held together by the ideal of sacrifice, where individual aspirations are subordinated to what is good for the family. A joint family in a village provides an ideal for Premchand whereby peasants can avoid dividing their landholding into smaller units. The breaking up of a family is an immensely painful affair in Premchand's stories, bringing social disgrace and opprobrium to those involved. However, between the two stories mentioned above, Premchand wrote a large number of stories about the daily life of smaller families in villages and small towns where he dealt with different aspects of family life: conjugal tiffs and strife, domestic cruelty, struggle for survival amidst limited means and penury, polygamy, rivalry between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law for domination in the house, the phenomenon of co-wives and the plight of stepchildren, conflict between legitimate aspirations and meanness of opportunities, the cycle of debt that ruins families, and so on.
Premchand felt a deep affinity with the common man and his natural sympathy was towards the oppressed and deprived sections of society. No writer before him in Urdu or Hindi, and possibly other Indian languages, had depicted the lives of underdogs, untouchables and marginalized sections with such depth and empathy. Throughout his life, 'Premchand did not let go of his unsentimental awareness of the grim realities of rural life, of life at the bottom of the economic scale' (Amrit Rai 1982, ix). The oppressors and oppression came in many forms—they may be priests or zamindars, lawyers or policemen, or even doctors, all of whom held society in their stranglehold. Rituals pertaining to Hindu marriages and deaths were so exploitative and oppressive that these events were often robbed of their dignity and joy and spelt the ruin of families. Premchand began his career by exposing the corruption of the Hindu priestly class in his novel Asraar-e Muavid (Mysteries of the House of Worship, 1903–05), and then continued the tirade in many of his stories. In the story 'Babaji's Feast' ('Babaji ka Bhog') he depicts the greed of a Brahmin who has no compunction in robbing a poor family of its meagre means, and in 'The Funeral Feast' ('Mritak Bhoj') he showed how the predatory and parasitical Brahmins drive another Brahmin woman to destitution and her daughter to suicide. In a series of stories where the central character is Moteram, a Brahmin priest, Premchand exposes with rare courage the rapacity, hollowness and hypocrisy of the Hindu priestly class, which earned him the ire and venom of a section of high-caste Hindus, even culminating in a lawsuit for defamation. But he remained undaunted and went on exposing the many oppressive customs prevalent in society.
But his most trenchant critique was reserved for caste injustice, whereby people on the lowest rung of the Hindu caste system, and beyond the pale of the caste system, were considered untouchable and were compelled to live a life of indignity and humiliation. The upper-caste Hindus treated them worse than animals and this injustice was institutionalized through the social sanction of the caste system. Stories such as 'Thakur's Well' ('Thakur ka Kuan'), 'Salvation' ('Sadgati'), 'The Shroud' ('Kafan'), 'Temple' ('Mandir'), 'The Woman Who Sold Grass' ('Ghaaswali') and 'One and a Quarter Ser of Wheat' ('Sawa Ser Gehun') constitute a devastating indictment of the way upper-caste Hindus have treated Dalits for generations. They demonstrate that Dalits were subjected to daily humiliation 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 have developed a vast repertoire of idioms, symbols and gestures of the verbal and physical denigration of Dalits over centuries. Grave injustice and the inhuman treatment of Dalits have become normalized, and cause no revulsion in society. Despite criticism from a few Dalit ideologues who level some rather irresponsible charges against Premchand for depicting Dalits in a certain way, the stories above—some of which have been rendered into films—have contributed significantly in raising awareness about the injustice perpetrated against the most vulnerable section of society. In this respect, as Vasudha Dalmia suggests, Premchand was much ahead of his time: 'In his fiction, written over the three decades in the early century, Premchand presented what academic scholarship was to face squarely only towards the close of that century.'7
A considerable number of his stories deals with the plight of women. Premchand was deeply sensitive to the suffering of women in a patriarchal society where they had no agency and lived their lives according to the whims and fancies of the men on whom they were dependent—husbands, fathers, brothers or even close or distant male relatives. Women were expected to be docile, submissive and self-effacing, sacrificing their lives for the well-being of the family. Girls were treated as a curse on the family and the parents of girls were subjected to all kinds of humiliation and indignities while their marriages were arranged. Parents were sometimes compelled to marry off their nubile and very young daughters to old men just to unburden themselves of the responsibility and shame of being saddled with an unmarried daughter. The practices of kanya vikray (sale of a daughter in marriage), even kanya vadh (killing of a girl child), were prevalent. In his essays and editorials, Premchand made a strong plea for the abolition of the evil practices that made the life of women unbearable. He advocated divorce in extreme circumstances, and supported the wife's claim to own half the husband's property in case of divorce and inherit the property in case of the husband's death.8 He also wrote in favour of the Sarda Bill which aimed at raising the minimum marriage age for girls. In a large number of stories, such as 'Tuliya' ('Devi'), 'Sati', 'The Goddess from Heaven' ('Swarg ki Devi'), 'Return' ('Shanti'), 'Godavari's Suicide' ('Saut'), 'The Thread of Love' ('Prem Sutra'), 'Two Friends' ('Do Sakhiyaan'), 'The Lunatic Lover' ('Unmaad'), and so on, he sheds light on the plight of women in an oppressive, patriarchal system. Through the immortal characters of old women like Chachi in 'Holy Judges', the old aunt in the eponymous story, and Bhungi in 'A Positive Change' ('Vidhwans'), he shows how difficult life was for old women in a society that was known to respect its elderly members. The fate of widows, who were considered inauspicious and were expected to renounce all joys of life, was even worse, as shown in 'Compulsion' ('Nairashya Leela'), 'The Condemned' ('Dhikkar') and 'A Widow with Sons' ('Betonwali Vidhva').
However, there is a certain ambivalence in his depiction of women and their status as equal partners in marriage.9 Some of the stories were radical for his time, yet he was unable to imagine a fully independent and empowered woman with her own agency and subjectivity, as Tagore did, for example, in 'Wife's Letter' or 'Chitra'.10 In the entire Premchand oeuvre of short stories there are only three single women—Miss Padma of the eponymous story, Miss Khurshed of 'Disgrace' ('Laanchan') and Miss Joshi of 'Faith' ('Vishwas'). While Miss Padma, despite her education and economic independence, seems inadequate as a woman, deprived of a family life and bereft and regretful after a failed live-in relationship, Miss Khurshed is depicted as enjoying to the hilt her single status as a woman, and even sharing a deeply emotional relationship with another woman, Dr Leela. Miss Joshi starts off as a social butterfly, with the high and mighty kowtowing to her, but after several years of a live-in relationship with Mr Johri, pines for the bliss of domestic life with Mr Apte. However, there are so many female characters in Premchand's stories, portrayed from different points of view, that any kind of generalization will be undesirable. The labels 'pro-feminist' and 'anti-feminist' are not very helpful in understanding Premchand's stories either, as these labels inevitably carry the elements of reductionism inherent in them. To some, the very fact that Premchand could imagine women outside the marriage bond and as capable of finding fulfilment in a career was radical enough, if not too radical, for his time. Similarly, despite his sympathy with widows and his support for widow remarriage, there is a certain uneasiness in depicting a widow who has an equal claim to bodily pleasures and comforts. Widows in Premchand's stories seem to find fulfilment only in the ideals of service, devotion and self-effacement. Indeed, in the entire corpus of his short fiction there are no more than two widow marriages11 and both of them end disastrously.
As stated earlier, Premchand began his career as a short story writer by writing stories of patriotism in a somewhat revivalist mode. Later in life when he came under Gandhi's influence and showed deep involvement in India's struggle for independence, to the extent of giving up his government job, he wrote a string of nationalist stories dealing with the adoption of indigenous or swadeshi products, the boycott or even burning of foreign goods, picketing outside alcohol shops, giving up government jobs and embracing a life of social service, among other things. Some of them, like 'A Strange Holi' ('Ajeeb Holi') and 'Resignation' ('Isteefa'), show the discomfiture of British colonial officials at the hands of Indians and the sudden conversion of Indian loyalists or servants of the British Raj into patriotic Indians who jealously protect their honour and are devoted to the cause of Independence. Some of these stories, as also some others, have been criticized for a kind of contrived and easy plot resolution through the 'change of heart' device. Apart from the above two, there are stories like 'The Wine Shop' ('Sharab ki Dukaan'), 'Maiku and the Congress Volunteer' ('Maiku'), 'An Audacious Act' ('Dussahas'), 'Role Reversal' ('Patni se Pati'), 'The Night of the New Moon' ('Amavas ki Raat'), 'A Daughter's Possessions' ('Beti ka Dhan'), 'The Call of Dawn' ('Baang-e Sahar'), 'The Bankruptcy of the Bank' ('Bank ka Diwala') and 'The Salt Inspector' ('Namak ka Daroga') where this device has been used to drive a point home, or as an easy way out of various tricky situations. This is true of some of his peasant stories as well where the writer finds it 'safer' to use the 'change of heart' of the oppressive zamindar as the convenient device for plot resolution rather than showing the oppressed peasants finding solidarity among themselves and ranging against the zamindars for collective radical action.12 He also uses suicide as a device for plot resolution for women faced with social opprobrium, something which might seem melodramatic and an easy way to arrive at a denouement but on closer analysis seems to be historically accurate. In Indian society, this kind of honour suicide is quite rampant even now, as newspapers and television channels will testify.
Premchand's love for the countryside is evident in his fictional and non-fictional writings. He has written several extremely evocative stories such as 'Holy Judges', 'The Story of Two Bullocks' ('Do Bailon ki Katha'), 'Idgah' and 'Atmaram', which depict the pristine village life of simplicity, honesty and quiet contentment. In fact, his fictional corpus, if read uncritically, would lend itself to an easy binary between country life and city life, one good and the other almost irredeemably evil. Yet, we have to recognize that he does not depict country life as an idyll shorn of all evils. There are stories such as 'A Positive Change' ('Vidhwans'), 'A Home for an Orphan' ('Grihdaah') and 'Road to Salvation' ('Mukti Marg') that de-romanticize and demystify village life and depict the author's awareness of the imperfections and blind spots in the supposed idyll.13 Thus, the apparent binary that seems to work in the case of some novels and stories cannot be stretched beyond a point.
Premchand's deep interest in the simple life of peasants extended to his love for animals, particularly draught animals, treated most cruelly in India. Very few writers have depicted such an intimate bond between animals and human beings. Premchand depicts animals as endowed with emotions just as human beings are, responding to love and affection just as human beings do, and are fully deserving of human compassion. Often, the duplicity, cruelty and betrayal in the human world is contrasted with the unconditional love and loyalty displayed by animals towards their masters and those who care for them. It is a heart-wrenching moment, as shown in 'Money for Deliverance' ('Muktidhan') and 'Sacrifice' ('Qurbani'), when a peasant has to part with his animals because of want and destitution. The deep compassion with which animal life has been depicted in 'Holy Judges' ('Panchayat'), 'Reincarnation' ('Purva Sanskar'), 'The Story of Two Bullocks' ('Do Bailon ki Katha') and 'The Roaming Monkey' ('Salilani Bandar') are treasures of world literature. Stories such as 'Turf War' ('Adhikar Chinta') and 'Defending One's Liberty' ('Swatva Raksha'), written in a humorous and symbolic vein, show how a dog fiercely protects his turf and how a horse defeats all the machinations of human beings to make him work on a Sunday, which is his day of rest, rightfully earned after working for six days of the week! In 'The Roaming Monkey' the author shows how a monkey earns money by performing tricks of different kinds and thus looks after the wife of his owner, nurturing her and bringing her back from the brink of lunacy. In 'The Price of Milk' ('Doodh ki Qeemat') we have the spectacle of goats feeding a baby with milk from their own udders, thereby saving its life. The baby has been denied milk by its own mother because she considers it a tentar, an 'evil' child destined to be the cause of death of one of her parents or another member of the family, and wishes it dead. In 'A Daughter's Possessions' ('Beti ka Dhan') Sakkhu Choudhury finds tears streaming down the eyes of his oxen in his moments of grief when the zamindar is going to evict him from his home, and when his own sons are totally indifferent to his plight. In the story 'Two Brothers' ('Do Bhai') the narrator contrasts the greed and lack of empathy of the elder brother, Krishna, for his younger brother, Balaram, whose property he wants to grab, with the deep bond between two bullocks, one of whom refuses to touch any food for three days when the other is separated from it.
Several very popular stories of Premchand deal with Hindu–Muslim relations. He was deeply interested and invested in a cordial relationship between Hindus and Muslims, a fact which is evident in both his fictional and non-fictional writings. He had no doubt that the independence and progress of the country depended substantially on the harmonious relationship between these two dominant religious groups in India. Early in his life he was introduced to Muslim culture and Islam through his study of Persian and Urdu and the maulvi who taught him. He was also familiar with the ideals of Hinduism, the orthodox variety as well as the reformist trend of the Arya Samaj to which his family owed allegiance. This, coupled with his inherently secular temperament, provided him a unique vantage point from which he could write fairly and fearlessly about both communities in an even-handed way. In fact, he was the only writer of his generation in any Indian language, not excepting Tagore, to write about the external and internal lives of the members of both communities with an insight, empathy and intimacy that have not been matched since. I cannot think of any other Indian writer who possessed that kind of vision. During his lifetime, the relationship between Hindus and Muslims went through particularly volatile and turbulent phases, but he was always unwavering in his belief in pluralism and kept the faith. Stories like 'Holy Judges', 'Idgah', 'The Greater Pilgrimage' ('Hajj-e Akbar'), 'Temple and Mosque' ('Mandir aur Masjid'), 'The Prophet's Justice' ('Nabi ka Niti Nirvaah'), 'Forgiveness' ('Kshama') and essays such as 'Islamic Civilization' ('Islami Sabhyata'14) demonstrate his deep knowledge of Islamic culture and the intimate lives of Muslim families, and how the daily lives of Hindus and Muslims were intertwined, particularly in the countryside. Towards the end of the second decade of the twentieth century when Hindu–Muslim relations were at their lowest ebb, Premchand wrote the play Karbala, on a deeply emotional subject for Muslims, to cement the bonds of Hindu–Muslim unity.
Premchand seems immensely relevant in today's India when history is being sought to be rewritten and Muslims are constantly cast in the role of the 'other' and held accountable for all the real and imagined atrocities of Muslim rulers of the past. In his own time, he saw with bewilderment how 'Whenever a Muslim king is remembered, we evoke Aurangzeb' (Premchand 1985:5), a remark that reverberates with contemporary resonance, indicating the agenda of some people who always sought to frustrate any attempt at a broader understanding and reconciliation between these two communities. He was opposed to religious sectarianism and orthodoxy in any form. This will be evident if one reads his stories in the Moteram series and a story like 'Holy War' ('Jihad') where he anticipates what goes today by the misleading and erroneous name of 'Islamic' terror. In this context, Syed Akbar Hyder's comments seem particularly apt:
Premchand archives Hindu–Muslim relationship in mutually respectable terms that move beyond Aurangzeb and his times into a temporal zone reflecting a more pluralistic Islam . . . By ideologically fracturing religious communities, he undermines the antagonistic communal bifurcation within the colonial milieu that posited Hindu and Muslim as age-old enemies whose scriptures determined their mode of thinking and living. (Hansen and Lelyveld, 2005, 276)
Evolution in Premchand's Art of Storytelling
Premchand's art of storytelling evolved through his career encompassing three full decades, as did his language and vocabulary. As he evolved from a dastaanesque to a realistic mode, his language also changed in register and vocabulary, and the patches of purple prose likewise dwindled. Moreover, as he slowly moved from Urdu to Hindi, but still continued to write or translate in both languages (or forms or shaili, as some would characterize it), his language underwent visible changes. And later in life, when he became a strong advocate of Hindustani, his endeavour was to craft a language that would be equally intelligible to the votaries of both Hindi and Urdu. He also moved from the earlier dense, lush narrative style incorporating multiple registers and a variety of characters as in 'Holy Judges', 'The Sword of Loyalty' ('Khanjar-e Wafa'), 'Atmaram', 'Idgah', and so on, to a leaner, pared down narrative style focusing on one or two events and involving fewer characters. The earlier expansiveness was replaced by intensity of experience. The idealistic, sometimes even prescriptive, nature of his work evolved into a more robust and mature understanding of life's pitiless ironies and unpredictability that did not always conform to poetic justice. Amrit Rai's remark in this context seems the most pertinent:
In the year 1933–34, Premchand wrote several stories such as 'Manovritti', 'Doodh ka Dam', 'Balak', 'Naya Vivah' . . . which are entirely new from the point of view of both content and form . . . there isn't in these later stories . . . a dense and tightly woven web of events as in the stories of an earlier phase. They have, instead, just a single focus of interest, just one little point to make, an unremarkable enough state of mind to describe, the author's own way of observing a fleeting glimpse of truth or beauty—and this is presented in an informal and conversational manner . . . (Amrit Rai 1982, 311)
Language Issues: Urdu versus Hindi
As indicated in the opening paragraph of this Introduction, a comprehensive understanding of Premchand's stature as a writer demands that the reader is able to access his stories in both versions. One great advantage of this anthology is that it points to differences in the two versions of a story. These differences are sometimes trivial, at other times substantial, and provide added insights into the stories and expand their textuality.15 Premchand began his career writing in Urdu and he produced a substantial volume of work in his first twelve years as a writer (1903–15)—five novels and close to four dozen stories to be precise—before he thought of writing in Hindi. His transition from Urdu to Hindi was gradual, though irreversible, given the social and political circumstances and the publishing scenario of the time.
Now, the question is, are the Hindi and Urdu versions of his stories exact replicas of each other? Not always and not necessarily. Premchand knew this too well, as he was aware of the changes that he made along the way. In a letter to Imtiaz Ali Taj, the dramatist, translator and editor in Urdu, he mentioned that he changed entire scenes while translating the text from one version to the other. As usually happens with writer-translators, whenever they translate their own work, the creative impulse often takes over so that translation often turns into rewriting. In Premchand's stories one finds many minor changes that were done either for stylistic embellishments, or for the difference in perceived readership, or, quite probably, for the space constraints in the journal in which the stories were going to be published.
There is another dimension to this issue. It was not always Premchand himself who translated his work between Urdu and Hindi. Often, he took help from others, which might have meant he had the time to look over it only cursorily. Several translators, most notably Iqbal Bahadur Verma 'Saher', are known to have helped Premchand in preparing versions of stories both in Hindi and Urdu. Their style now passes off as Premchand's style. His younger son, Amrit Rai, excavated several stories in Urdu of which there were no Hindi versions. Amrit Rai published such stories in a two-volume anthology with the appropriate title Gupt Dhan (Hidden Treasure). In its Introduction he writes about the kind of changes he has effected while transferring the stories from one version to the other:
I thought it unfair to Hindi readers to publish these stories in their original form. So I clothed them in Hindi, in the style of Munshiji, as far as it was possible for me. How far I have succeeded in this effort to not only preserve the soul of the story but the language and style as well will be judged by you. As for me, I feel satisfaction in the thought that I have pulled all my resources in this endeavour.16 (My translation)
It is both significant and debatable why Amrit Rai felt it necessary for the stories to undergo changes for the sake of intelligibility and readability in Hindi. Had the two languages changed so much within twenty-five years of Premchand's death that they needed to be interfered with? This also brings up the questions of ethics and authorship. Does anyone, be it even the writer's own son, have the right to tamper with the original works of a writer to make them suitable for a particular readership?
How radical these changes sometimes were can be illustrated through the two versions of his famous story 'A Night in the Month of Poos' ('Poos ki Raat'). The story is about a poor, destitute peasant, Halku, who is in permanent debt to the village moneylender. Halku spends the severe winter nights in the field to save the harvest from marauding beasts. But ultimately, he is unable to save the crop when a horde of wild beasts descends on the field one night and despoils the harvest. In the Hindi version, which was first published in the journal Madhuri (May 1930), the story ends on a note of apparent relief for Halku, who decides to move away from the life of a peasant by becoming a worker in a factory. However, in the Urdu version, which was published later in Prem Chaleesi 2 (1930), Premchand has added a section at the end where Halku ponders over the travails of peasant life but nevertheless decides to stay a peasant. Taking on the job of a day labourer, he thinks, would mean an insult to the land and to his forefathers who were peasants. So he resolves to stay a peasant whatever the challenges. Thus, the two endings of the story admit two radically different interpretations. It is clear that the Urdu version is not simply an expanded version of the Hindi, but it radically alters the perspective of the protagonist. In the Hindi version of the story Halku comes across as yielding to the pressures of being a peasant and surrendering to the fate of a wage-earner, whereas the Urdu version stresses his strong resistance to any such shift in his career. He confronts the challenges of a peasant's life, standing face-to-face with total ruin as the marauding animals destroy his harvest, but none of it can destroy his spirit. He is convinced that he should continue to be a peasant to carry on the legacy of his forefathers. Thus, while the Urdu version maintains the status quo in Halku's life, the Hindi version envisages his transformation into a factory worker. Changes of the kind signalled above, with variations and different degrees of emphasis, can be found in a number of Premchand's short stories.
'Atmaram' is a story that presented Premchand with the problem of cultural untranslatability. It was built on the Hindu philosophical concept of maya and moha,17 and Premchand must have found that these concepts were not easily translatable in Urdu. The story is about a devout village goldsmith, Mahadev, who, disenchanted by his own children, becomes attached to a parrot which he symbolically named Atmaram. The story plays on the popular belief that atma, or the soul, is like a bird which flies out at the time of death. Mahadev's religious and spiritual inclinations are demonstrated by his constant chanting of two lines of a popular bhajan: Sat gurudutt Shivdutt daata/Ram ke charan mein chitt laaga. The villagers could identify him from a distance hearing the sound of the bhajan. It so happens that one of his sons accidentally opens the cage one day and the parrot flies out. When Mahadev finds the cage empty, his heartbeat stops for a moment. All his attempts to tempt the parrot back into the cage bear no fruit. The parrot sits on the cage and flies about it, but cannot be made to enter the cage. Mahadev continues his effort. The climax of the story shows this tug of war between Mahadev and the parrot effectively:
[The parrot] would come and sit on the top of the cage and now sit at the door of the cage and look at the bowls for food and water, and then fly off. If the old man was moha incarnate, the parrot was incarnate maya. This went on till evening descended. The struggle between maya and moha was lost in darkness.
Hindi: [Tota] kabhi pinjre par aa baithta, kabhi pinjre ke dwar par baith apne daanapani ke piyalion ko dekhta, aur phir urh jata. Buddha agar murtiman moha tha, tau tota murtimayi maya. Yahan tak ki shaam ho gayi. Maya aur moh ka ye sangram andhakar mein vilin ho gaya.
Urdu: [Tota] kabhi pinjre par aata, kabhi pinjre ke darwazey par baith kar apne daanapani ki piyalion ko dekhta, aur phir urh jata, magar joonhi Mahadev uski taraf aata woh phir urh jata. Buddha agar paykar-e hawas tha, tau tota daayre aarzoo. Yahan tak ke shaam-e siyah ne hawas aur arzoo ki is kashmakash par parda dhal diya.
One would understand that Urdu words like hawas and aarzoo cannot adequately represent the philosophical concepts of maya and moha and Premchand must have realized this fact of cultural untranslatability. Similarly, the constant chanting of the bhajan Sat gurudutt Shivdutt daata/Ram ke charan mein chitt laaga would befit the genius of the Hindi language more than Urdu and appeal to someone brought up in the tradition of Hindu religion more than anyone else. That Premchand himself was conscious of this is evidenced by the fact that the story was originally intended for the journal Kahkashan published from Lahore. But as the story got written Premchand realized that it was probably not suitable for the predominantly Muslim readership of Kahkashan. He wrote to the editor, Imtiaz Ali Taj:
I have recently written another story, 'Atmaram'. I am sending it to Zamana. It has turned out to be so utterly Hindu that it is not suitable for Kahkashan. You may call yourself a Hindu but your readers certainly are not Hindu.18
This statement, however, appears to be at odds with the entire version of the Urdu story which Premchand seems to have written with far greater relish than the Hindi version. The Urdu version is longer by two dense pages—ten pages compared to the Hindi version's eight. The rhetorical flourishes, the deployment of metaphor and simile, the idiomatic turns of phrase—all these make the Urdu version more urbane, supple and enjoyable than the Hindi one which seems somewhat stark and dull in comparison. Thus, reading the short stories in both Hindi and Urdu reveals several interesting facts.
In many cases, the Urdu version is longer than the Hindi version, showing the use of traditional rhetorical embellishments. This would encourage us to speculate that: (a) Urdu was Premchand's first love and, as he professes in his essay 'Sahitya ka Uddeshya', it came more naturally to him than Hindi. (b) As a language, Urdu lends itself to finer and more intimate shades of feelings and emotions in Premchand's hand in a way that Hindi does not; in comparison, Hindi is somewhat bare and unadorned. (c) In the Urdu versions one can find virtuoso passages, passages of purple prose designed to dazzle readers into an admission of the author's full control and command over the language. It is interesting to think about whether there is an organic relationship between theme and language form, whether language determines subject matter and styles or, at least, whether language and themes are intimately connected. Alok Rai says, 'It seems as though some utterances can be made most felicitously in Hindi and some in Urdu. What lies behind this—history, social and cultural predisposition or literary traditions? This can be a subject for research'19 (Alok Rai and Mushtaq Ali, 2002: ii; my translation). He further says that the communalization of these two languages is evident, as one can see that in Hindi if the characters are given Hindu names, in Urdu they are given Muslim names.20 I would argue that the reasons for the differing versions should be traced in the different readerships that Premchand was addressing. And these two readerships were different not only in their religious practices and cultural traditions and cultural symbols, but also in their class differences, in their reading habits, and the literary traditions they inherited. To quote Alok Rai again: 'Only a deeper study will reveal what was thought to deserve utterance in what tradition and what was considered redundant. One can see the emerging mental disposition of that period hidden in these differing utterances.'21 (Alok Rai and Mushtaq Ali, op cit., my translation)
Premchand in English
In an article, 'Nirmala Translated: Premchand's Heroine in English Dress', Rupert Snell raises the question, 'Is Premchand translatable?' and then answers quickly, 'In a word—no: the subtext of purity borne by the very title "Nirmala" is denied to those who access this novel only through English' (Snell 2001, 307). Snell rightly underlines the fact that all the linguistic and cultural resonances evoked by a word or phrase cannot be transferred to the target language. But this is the translator's challenge—not to produce a 'perfect' translation, which is an impossibility, but to gesture towards a universe of possibilities, of cultural nuances invested in the original text. Snell further surmises that few readers would be moved by Premchand if they were to read him only in English, a proposition that one finds contestable. After all, the most widely read fiction writers in contemporary times—Orhan Pamuk, Milan Kundera, Haruki Murakami—are read overwhelmingly in their English translations rather than the original languages, and readers are still profoundly moved by them.22
Snell's proposition will not hold good for a multilingual country like India, where the richness of literature in many languages is accessed through English. The question one really needs to address concerns the kind of English that is employed to ensure that the voice of the original author is not drowned in what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak characterizes as '. . . a sort of with-it translatese, so that literature by a woman in Palestine begins to resemble, in the feel of its prose, something by a man in Taiwan.'23 Any apparent unevenness and angularity should be retained, and cultural nuances must be preserved and not flattened out. In contemporary India, where the largest archive on Indian literatures and their interrelationships are being created not in any Indian language but in English, the importance of translation in this language cannot be overemphasized. In the multilingual classrooms and literary meets and festivals in India, English often acts as an ice-breaker and a catalyst for entry into the multilingual world, which is the Indian reality. English is also being moulded for this purpose by writers who are writing originally in English and translators who are translating works from Indian languages into English.24
Premchand has been translated by a number of translators with differing degrees of competence and success. Elsewhere, I have dealt comprehensively with the history of Premchand translations in English and the challenges thereof.25 Most of the challenges articulated in the essay—like the varying registers of the original, irregular punctuation, instability of the meaning of words and phrases in the original, and allusiveness—are valid for this anthology too. Premchand's world is culturally so rich that any translator will have to grapple with the phenomenon of cultural untranslatability. Not to speak of English, sometimes one finds that the cultural resonances of the phrases even in Hindi and Urdu are not the same. Gregory Rabassa, the famed translator from Spanish, has pointed to this phenomenon succinctly as follows: A 'language will load a word down with all manner of cultural barnacles . . . bearing it off on a different tangent from a word in another tongue meant to describe the same thing.' (Rabassa 2005, 6). Attempts have been made to preserve these 'cultural barnacles' rather than eliminate them, even if it means straining the idiom in English. Inevitably, it has involved a series of particular, contingent judgements and ad hoc decisions that could not always be anticipated. These decisions have also differed from story to story. And that is why there are sentence structures and turns of phrases which might seem infelicitous in English but will give the reader some clue to the linguistic varieties and speech patterns of the characters in the original and the ways in which some ideas are expressed in it. Rather than assimilating the foreignness and cultural specificity of the original in a universalist idiom, attempts have been made to preserve both linguistic and cultural nuances, allowing the English to attain a certain measure of both readability and 'bi-culturality'.
Premchand was writing at a time when the protocols of style, including punctuation, in both Urdu and Hindi were not yet settled. The editorial endeavour here has been to bring the text in line with the modern conventions of prose writing in English. That involved changes in the format of dialogue writing, the appropriate use of quotation marks, the use of italics for both interior monologue where characters internalize their thoughts, and emphasis, and splitting or joining paragraphs. Short, choppy sentences that come in a string without subjects or subordinating clauses in Hindi or Urdu have sometimes been joined together to make coherent, intelligible sentences in English. The Roman script has the advantage of having letters in both lower and upper cases and modern computer technology has made it easier to write the script in bold or italics for varying purposes that have been used discreetly. Translators are, after all, interpreters of the text they are translating, and if a certain device of the Roman script was helpful in expressing the intended meaning of the original, they were encouraged to use this device to bring the text in line with modern prose. However, such instances are minimal and have been resorted to only after careful reflection.
A Plea for Humility
Premchand scholarship is very much a work in progress. Textual research on him has remained bogged down by the lack of availability of original manuscripts. Scholars have tried to gather works from journals and magazines in Urdu and Hindi, and in the process committed errors because of logistical or linguistic inadequacy.26 These journals and magazines often operated on a shaky and tight budget and had very little or no editing rigour. Mistakes of the calligrapher, compositor or proofreader often went unchecked and undetected, and thus became part of the text. All this makes it difficult to arrive at a definitive version of the text. On our part, too, there is no claim to finality, only an assertion that all efforts have been made to collate texts from different sources to arrive at the final version. We request discerning scholars and readers to bring any errors and inadequacies in our versions to our notice, however grave or trivial they may be, so that they can be corrected in later editions.
M. Asaduddin
Asaduddin, M. (ed). Premchand in World Languages: Translation, Reception and Cinematic Representations. New Delhi: Routledge, 2016.
Gopal, Madan. Munshi Premchand: A Literary Biography. Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1964.
Hansen, Kathryn and David Lelyveld (eds). A Wilderness of Possibilities: Urdu Studies in Transnational Perspective. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Orsini, Francesca (ed). The Oxford India Premchand. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Rabassa, Gregory. If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents, a Memoir. New York: New Directions, 2005.
Rai, Alok and Mushtaq Ali (eds). Samaksh: Premchand ki Bees Urdu–Hindi Kahaniyon ka Samantar Paath. Allahabad: Hans Prakashan, 2002.
Rai, Amrit. Premchand: A Life. Translated from the Hindi by Harish Trivedi. Bombay: People's Publishing House, 1982.
Rai, Amrit (ed). Vividh Prasang, Allahabad, 1978.
Roadarmel, Gordon C. The Gift of a Cow: A Translation of the Classic Novel Godaan. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
Venuti, Lawrence (ed). The Translation Studies Reader. Second edition, New York & London: Routledge, 2002.
Love for the World and Patriotism
Mazzini, the legendary Italian patriot, is sitting silently in an old and decrepit hotel situated in a seedy part of London. No sooner does dusk fall than the hotel is plunged in darkness. Noticeably, the members of the scrupulous gentry keep themselves away from this area, a place infamous for gambling, drunken revelries and other hideously evil activities. His attractive face looks pale and drawn, and eyes deeply thoughtful. His lips dry and clothes crumpled and dirty, he looks dishevelled, as if without having showered and shaved for months. Anybody not acquainted with Mazzini would certainly believe him to be from among those frustrated, unfortunate men who, slave to their desires, come to the hotel to drown their sorrows and indulge in morally repugnant pastimes.
Lost in deep thought, Mazzini contemplates the pathetic plight of his fellow countrymen. 'O unfortunate and oppressed nation! Won't you ever see prosperous days? Won't the sacrifices of your beloved sons be crowned with success? Will the cries and sufferings of thousands of your sons living in forced exile go in vain? O beloved country! Have you been condemned forever to live in humiliation, slavery and subjugation while putting up with oppression? You still haven't been able to generate the power and ability to achieve freedom and stand independent. It seems that you are destined to suffer more humiliation. O freedom! I lost many of my devoted and dedicated friends for you. Countless mothers and wives not only mourn the loss of their young promising sons and husbands who laid down their lives while upholding the self-respect and dignity of their country, but also spout heaps of curses on Mazzini, himself afflicted with torments. Won't the sacrifices of the lion-hearted, brave and heroic sons of the country who never took to their heels, be enough to win the freedom? O freedom! Are you such an elusive precious gem? Then why do I continue to live? Am I fated to live and see my country be crushed and trampled under the feet of the ruthlessly treacherous and tyrannical enemies? I am not able to live any longer to see afflictions and tyrannies preying on my brothers, my fellow country people who have fallen to the might of the enemies.'
Mazzini is jolted out of his thoughts by the entry of Raffeti, his friend, who is also suffering in exile. He enters the cell with a piece of biscuit. A few years younger than Mazzini, Raffeti looks a fine gentleman, perhaps of a noble stock. He shakes Mazzini by the shoulder and says, 'Joseph, take. Eat it.' Mazzini raises his head with a start and says, 'From where did you get it? You had no money.'
'First, eat it and then ask questions. You haven't had anything since yesterday evening.'
'First, tell me from where you got it. I can also see a packet of tobacco in your pocket. Where did you get this money from?'
'What is the use of asking these questions? I mortgaged the new coat my mother had sent me.'
Mazzini heaves a deep sigh amid tears trickling down his cheeks. Then sucking in his breath, he says with tears in his eyes, 'Why did you do it? Christmas is at hand. What will you wear? Will the only son of a millionaire Italian father be dressed in the same tattered coat on that occasion as well?'
'Won't we be able to make some money by the time Christmas comes? We will surely have new suits and wear them to celebrate the occasion of the much cherished independence of our motherland.'
'There is no means of earning any money. The articles sent for publication in the monthly journals have already been returned. The money we receive from our homes has already run out. What other source is there?'
'Christmas is still a week away. Why bother now? After all, it won't make any difference if we have to wear the same old coats. Remember, you had also sold the ring gifted to you by Magdalene in order to pay the doctor's fee during my illness. I am going to write about it to her soon. She will deal with you strictly.'
It is Christmas Day. Everyone, young and old, poor and rich, is enjoying the warmth and gaiety of the festival. The people, suitably clad for the occasion, are heading towards churches. No one looks dejected or forlorn. But Mazzini and Raffeti are confined to their narrow and gloomy dungeon, their heads hung low. A sigh of anguish escapes Mazzini's lips, while Raffeti gets fidgety. He paces from the corner of the cell to the door. To obliterate the depressing thoughts of his poverty-stricken days, he looks out of the window, staring fixedly at the boozers staggering drunkenly to their feet and indulging in mindless activities. Alas! The chief of Italy whose call was once readily responded to by thousands of people willing to lay down their lives was now consigned to chilling penury. He has nothing to eat, not even a cigar to puff on. Though tobacco was the only thing which he could not deny himself, unfortunately, it is not available to him. Actually, he is least bothered about himself now. His deepest worries are for Raffeti, a young handsome and promising man who comes from a prosperous family. He asks himself, 'What right do I have to force Raffeti to undergo these hardships while he can buy himself the world's luxuries and comforts?'
At that point of time, the postman arrives and asks loudly whether Joseph Mazzini lives somewhere there, announcing that there is a letter for him. Raffeti takes the letter and jumps for joy before he hands it to Mazzini, telling him that his beloved Magdalene has sent it.
Mazzini grabs hold of the letter and opens it with great eagerness. A strand of loose hair, sent as a Christmas gift to him, drops on the ground. He picks it, kisses keenly and thrusts it into his pocket patched on the breast of the shirt. The letter says:
My dear Joseph,
Accept this poor gift from me. May God grant you such a long life that you may be blessed to celebrate a hundred Christmases! Hold my memento dear to you. Do not ever forget your poor Magdalene. It is quite difficult for me to write something more. Overwhelming emotions well up in my heart leaping to my mouth. Joseph, my darling master, tell me how long you will go on making me suffer the pangs of separation. I can no longer persevere with these trials. I am fighting back my tears that have already welled up. Believe me, I am prepared to undergo every type of suffering in your company. But I am not able to put up with the tortures inflicted on me by your separation. You are sworn by your faith, by the love of your country and also by me. Come to me. I am dying for you. Tell me when I will be able to meet you. Christmas is very near. But it is useless for me. I am yours till my last breath.
Switzerland is Magdalene's home. The daughter of a prosperous merchant, she is comely and extremely beautiful; and her inner beauty is equally radiant. Several nobles and rich men wished to woo and win her but she does not give anyone the time of day. Mazzini had taken asylum in Switzerland where he met Magdalene, the innocent, young maiden. She had already heard the stories of daring and resolute courage of Mazzini. Later she began visiting him off and on with her mother. Her visits provided her with opportunities to be well acquainted with his impressive qualities. With the passage of time, she fell for him. One day, as if losing her inhibitions, she pleaded with Mazzini to accept her.
Then Mazzini was in the prime of his youth and his patriotic fervour had still not subdued his youthful emotions. He could also feel the surge of youthful passion in his heart. But, at the same time, he had sincerely vowed to sacrifice his life for the sake of his country and his compatriots. He tenaciously stuck to his guns. In fact, none but Mazzini, a man of solemn commitment, could decline a proposal from Magdalene, an epitome of beauty, who entreated him so dearly with her captivating charms and graces.
She emerged from this encounter with her eyes moist. Mazzini's cold response could not dampen her heart; rather it stoked the fire of her love for him. Several years have passed since Mazzini left Switzerland but Magdalene's love for him remains etched in her memory. In fact, it deepens into a more faithful love with the passing of every year.
A sigh escapes Mazzini's lips as he finishes the letter. 'Do you know what Magdalene says?' Mazzini asks.
'I know the pangs of parting will kill her,' replies Raffeti.
Engrossed in his thoughts, Mazzini mutters under his breath, 'Magdalene, you are young, beautiful and rich. Why should you ruin your life after a poor wretch like me? How could a man like me, who is so deeply frustrated and whose life is fraught with hardships and difficulties, be able to keep you happy? No, I am not going to be that selfish, for there are so many happy and prosperous men in this world who may not only keep you happy but also adore and worship you. Why don't you choose someone from among them as your life partner? I value your selfless love so much but I have dedicated myself solely to the service of my country and its people. Now I can have no soft spot for you as your lover. But I can accept you as my beloved and empathizing sister. Would you like to tell me what is so special about me that an epitome of beauty like you has been undergoing so much hardship for me? O Mazzini, the hapless one! You belong to none and to nowhere. Those for whom you made sacrifices have grown apathetic to you. And those who are sympathetic with you think you are lost in a reverie, on a wild goose chase.' Prostrate with these vexing thoughts, Mazzini took up a pen and paper and began writing his reply to Magdalene.
Dear Magdalene,
I received your letter along with the priceless gift. I must express my sincere thanks to you for your priceless gift. I owe you a special gratitude that you hold a helpless and hapless man like me to be worthy of this honour. I will treasure your gift as a memento of our true and imperishable love. I will make a will before I am laid to rest that it should also be buried with my mortal remains. It is hard for me to gauge the depth of your belief in me and in the honesty and sincerity of my intention, that too when so many ungrounded and baseless rumours about me have been circulated and charges levelled against me. What a great consolation that there is at least an angel-like woman who still reposes faith in me and regards me free of everything that is morally and ethically vile. It is probably this faith that has helped me persevere through the adversities and tribulations of life. However, my dear sister, rest assured that I am assailed by no sorrows. Do not let your solicitude for me sadden your heart. I am quite fine here. I have your everlasting love and affection to soothe my heart in troubled hours. It would be ungrateful of me if I still complain about my physical discomfort.
I have learnt that your health is deteriorating day by day. I eagerly wish to meet you. If only I were free! Would that I had a lively heart and I had been vivacious! This distraught and forlorn heart of mine is of no use to you. Magdalene, for God's sake, take care of your health. Nothing will pain me more than to hear that you are making yourself unhappy because of your concern for me. Your innocent face stares right into my eyes now. Do not get cross with me. I do not deserve you. I am no match for you. It is Christmas today. I do not know what to send you as a gift. May God always favour you with His choicest blessings! Remember me to your mother. I dearly crave to see you all. Let us see when this wish of mine is fulfilled.
Joseph Mazzini
Several years pass since all this happened. Joseph Mazzini returns to Italy. Rome is declared a republic for the first time. A three-member presidium, including Mazzini as a member, is set up. Due to heavy debt and the betrayal of the king of Piedmont the republic is dissolved and the administration dismissed. The members and advisors flee. Thus, Mazzini is once again back on the streets in Rome. All the dreams and ambitions of making Rome the centre of democracy vanishes into thin air due to the betrayal of his trusted friends and confidants.
One noon Mazzini was taking shelter from the scorching sun under a tree. He saw a lady coming towards him. Apparently in her early thirties, she looked pale and drawn and was dressed in simple white clothes. Mazzini was in a ruminative mood when the woman rushed up to him and folded him in her embrace.
Mazzini woke up with a start blurting out: 'Ah, it is you dear Magdalene!'
He spoke these words with moist eyes.
Sucking in her choked breath and gulping back her tears, she uttered a word, 'Joseph' and fell silent.
Both of them sat silently, tears trickling down their faces. Mazzini asked her, 'When did you come here?'
Magdalene replied, 'I have been here for several months but I failed to find a lucky way to meet you. Seeing you deeply immersed in the affairs of the state, I thought that you would hardly need the sympathy of a poor woman like me. Hence, I saw little point in meeting. Tell me, Joseph, why most people speak ill of you. Are they benighted?'
'Maga, perhaps they are right. I do not possess those virtues which I claim to have just for the reasons of pride and arrogance. You see these virtues in me because you are an innocent and deeply honest person. I learn a new failing of mine every day.'
'Mazzini, this is precisely the reason why I adore and worship you. Blessed is a self-effacing man! Joseph, for God's sake do not make me suffer the pangs of separation. I am yours. I believe you are innocent and as flawlessly perfect as Jesus. This has been my strong conviction. I know I faltered a bit but your conversation with me has dispelled all lingering doubts. You are an angel. I wonder why people are so myopic and prejudiced. It pains me to think that even those whom I held in high esteem and believed to be above human failings are no exceptions. Raffeti, Remarie, Barnabas are your friends. You regard them as your friends but they are inimical to you. They are all ill-disposed towards you and have told me hundreds of things about you which I will never believe in my life. They talk nonsense. My dear Joseph is as I believe him to be or rather much better than I can imagine him to be. Isn't it your especial merit that you regard your enemies as your friends?'
Joseph could no longer control his strong emotions. He kissed her pale hands and replied, 'My dear Maga, my friends are not to blame. I am to blame.'
He narrated amid sobs, 'They have been saying those things that I asked them to say. I played a deception on you. I did it purposely. My darling sister, I wanted you to consign me to oblivion so that you could enjoy your youthful days. I feel ashamed that I failed to fathom and appreciate the depth of your emotions, attachment and love for me. But this has backfired on me. I beg your pardon.'
Apologetically, Magdalene said, 'No, Joseph, do not apologize to me. You are the finest, the most righteous, the most truthful and worthiest man in the world. Of course, you were mistaken as you always misunderstood me. I wonder how you could turn so stone-hearted.'
'Maga, only God knows how much heart-wrenching pain I experienced when I tutored Raffeti to say all those things about me to you. I have always valued good reputation above all in this world and have duly refuted every attack of my rivals, allowing none of their personal attacks on me to go unanswered. Now imagine how constricted I must have felt while urging my friends to spread all sorts of bad things about me. I did it all for your sake, for your well-being so that you could consign me to oblivion.'
In fact, Mazzini had recoursed to it in view of Magdalene's obsession and infatuation with him. He knew it very well that there were more handsome, richer and much better men courting her. But she did not give a damn about them, for she was enamoured with his virtues, high ideals and the values he upheld. He thought that she would forget him if his friends spoke ill of him as it would demolish her belief in him as well as in his friends. Initially, his friends had flatly refused to obey him. At last, they agreed, though reluctantly. They agreed, lest Maga kill herself due to her obsession with Mazzini. God forbid, if it happened Mazzini would never forgive them. So they went to Switzerland. They floated several shameful stories about their friend, scandalizing most of the people there. But they failed to convince Maga who was strongly infatuated with Mazzini.
Restless as she had grown, Magdalene left for Rome and hired a room in a local inn. She began to follow Joseph every day, scrupulously avoiding his gaze. Seeing him content with his success she did not want to distract him. It was only when he again met failures and was left stranded that Magdalene came to stand by him.
Mazzini again went to England from Rome and stayed there for a long time. He received the news of the popular revolt in Sicily, and also came to know that the people of Sicily desperately needed someone to lead them. Immediately, he left for Sicily. But by the time he reached, the royal forces had already squashed the uprising. On landing there, Mazzini was immediately put under arrest and whisked off to a prison cell. Since he was old and decrepit, he was let off. The authorities feared blame lest he should die in prison. Crestfallen, Mazzini left for Switzerland. His hopes were shattered to pieces.
Doubtlessly, Italy now stood on the threshold of unification but its condition was no better than it had been under the reign of Austria or Naples—the only difference was that earlier the country groaned under foreign occupation and now under the oppression of its own rulers.
In view of the consecutive failures, Mazzini had reached the conclusion that the people of Italy were not trained and educated enough to lay the foundation stone of a democratic republic. He, thus, planned to move to Switzerland and launch a newspaper to carry out his campaign of propagating the concept of nationalism. This kind of propaganda campaign was strictly prohibited in his own country. Mazzini spent a night in Rome under a false name. Then he went to Genoa, his hometown. Before leaving for Switzerland, he laid a wreath at the grave of his virtuous mother. In Switzerland he launched his newspaper with the help of some of his confidants. But the life of constant stress, strain and worry preyed on him and sapped him of his physical strength, reducing him to a skeleton. In view of his deteriorating health, he left for England in 1870. On his way, he fell ill with pneumonia somewhere in the tranquil surroundings of the Alps. He breathed his last with his heart full of longing and with the word 'Italy' on his lips. Thousands of mourners attended his funeral. He was laid to rest at a serene corner on the banks of a freshwater stream.
It had been three days since Mazzini's burial. It was evening time, the setting sun shedding its pale parting rays on his grave. A middle-aged woman, attired in a beautiful dress, came to the area. This was Magdalene, looking distraught and forlorn. It looked as if she was listless and a pall of despair had descended on her. Sitting at the head of the grave, she took out flowers and laid them down. She knelt in prayer for the peace of his soul in solemn earnestness. When the area was enveloped in deep darkness and it began to snow, she rose to her feet silently and headed for a nearby village to pass the night there. Early in the morning she left for home.
After the death of her mother a long time ago, she became the owner of the house. She founded a convent in memory of Mazzini and lived there like a nun. The name Mazzini sounded to her like a strain of soulful and poignant music. Her house was home to all admirers and supporters. For her, Mazzini's letters were as holy as the Gospel and his name the object of her worship. Many poor children and women could eke out a living because of the name Mazzini.
Magdalene survived for three years. In accordance with her last will, she was buried in her monastery. Her love was not ordinary infatuation. Selfless and sacred, it was reminiscent of the lovelorn gopis who roamed the streets of Vrindavan in love of Krishna and who suffered the pangs of separation even in the company of their beloved. Mazzini's monastery still stands there. The poor visit and leave with their minds filled with peace and tranquility, comfort and solace.
Translated from the Urdu by A. Naseeb Khan
The Rarest Pearl in the World
A distraught Dilfigar was sitting and shedding copious tears under a thorny tree. He was the passionate and faithful lover of the beautiful queen, Dilfareb, for whom he could lay down his life. He was not one of those lovers who wore perfumes and oils or put on flashy clothes in order to impress their beloved. On the contrary, he was just one of those plain and simple, yet passionate, admirers who wandered in thick forests and scaled high mountains to succeed in love.
Dilfareb, his beloved, had challenged him, 'If you love me truly and faithfully, then go and travel the world, and bring me the most priceless jewel. Only then will I think that you are truly devoted to me. However, should you fail in your endeavour, don't dare return to this realm, for I shall have you hanged from the gallows.' Dilfigar was not given any opportunity to express his emotions, nor was he allowed a glimpse of her beauty for a few moments. As soon as Dilfareb made this declaration, the palace guards threw Dilfigar out of the court.
For the past three days, he had been sitting under the thorny tree in a desolate field and wondering about his future course of action. He thought, 'Shall I ever be able to find the world's most priceless treasure? Impossible! And, what can it be? Korah's treasure, the elixir of life, the crown of Khusrau, Jam-e Jam,1 the Peacock Throne or the wealth of Parvez?2 No, it's definitely none of these. There must be more precious things in the world than all these, but what are they? Oh God! How can I find a way out of this impasse?'
Dilfigar was at his wits' end. He couldn't think of a way out of the dilemma. 'Muneer Shami had got Hatim Tai to help him. How I wish I too had someone to help me! I wish someone was there to tell me what the most priceless jewel in the world is. I might not have been able to obtain it but I would have at least known what it is.
'I can set out for a jewel as large as a pitcher. I can venture out to trace the songs of the ocean, the heart of the stone, the voice of death and such other ineffable entities. But, the world's most priceless jewel! This is beyond the pale of my imagination.'
The stars showed up in the sky. Dilfigar stood up abruptly and, taking the name of God, set off on his journey. He spent years wandering in exile, facing hunger, thirst, extreme physical exhaustion and wearing threadbare garments while searching for the world's most priceless thing. Thorns made his feet bleed, his body was transformed into a bag of bones, yet he was not able to find the world's most precious jewel, nor did he have any clue as to what it was.
Wandering aimlessly, one day he reached a vast field where thousands of people had assembled. Right in the centre of the assembly sat some venerable gentlemen with beards who seemed to be qazis or magistrates. Dressed in huge turbans and flowing gowns, they seemed to be confabulating over some matter of grave import. At some distance from the crowd stood the gallows. A sense of exhaustion, as well as curiosity about what was happening made Dilfigar stop there for a while. Suddenly he saw several men, wielding naked swords, leading a prisoner in chains. They stopped near the gallows and the prisoner was released from the shackles.
This unfortunate fellow had the blood of hundreds of innocent people on his hands. His heart had never been moved by any feeling of kindn

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl