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Alok Rai's essay on Dalit Critics and Premchand
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1K views12 pagesAlok Rai Poetic and Social Justice 20082
Alok Rai's essay on Dalit Critics and Premchand
Uploaded by
Chandrakant MeenaCopyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF or read online on Scribd
/ 12
JUSTICE
POLITICAL,
SOCIAL, JURIDICAL
Edited by
RAJEEV BHARGAVA
‘MICHAEL DUSCHE
HELMUT REIFELD
QSAGE Winisssessseteatee anh © Kone ene if, 2008
“igh rece No pr is book my ered wll af
af i orca nding POOPING
evar ny mee
fro cn see PT
‘Sun ce pba. Contents
pte 208
ox pi 2108 vie .
SAGE Publications India Ps Lak es
SAE en Cope nl Ar “Helmut Ref
Bin ce be 1700s if
enon
SAGE Pbleaton Ine
Storer oss
2S Cy Cla 138, USA
SAGE Puleaons tid
eres 1 Naturl Inequality: Concepmalising Justice
cio Rost in Brahmanieal Discourses,
BSUICIy ise Used net Kina Chakrabort ”
‘SAGE Picton: aaa Pook
eee 2, Justice and Political Authority in
eee ‘Medieval Indian Islam.
ce ‘Nj Haider %
aaa ve Me SAGE sna la 2
aah eh chee oe aD in 3. Traditional Conceptions of Justice in Christianity 94
Ss Ensen New Dt (Gerhard Kruip iy
_iary of Congress Cxtalogngin-Pblcton Dstt peared
Foes po nce yao Bh, Mii! Das A Cosmopolitan Perspective i
—— Midhal Dushe
oct iogapicl reference an inde,
a 5 Sc jue ere Pan, Rerecnous or Juence m
i ha HL Ra He Ronco Fe
ears fansa ac eee eee 5 rocand ue {urenany Tra
tic and Socal Justice: Some Reflections on
won 73.0710.360-3¢0) _ MOLT the Premcund-alt Controversy a
Fe Saat Trem Sop Goth, Vis Jan Ajo Soma “lok Rai 1
‘Tk anes 5
Poetic and Social Justice: Some
Reflections on the Premchand-
Dalit Controversy
‘vox Ra
Tri const of pot ast’ i bee have ben
invented by Thomas Rymer in 1678, im Tragedies of the
‘Last Age Considered, This isthe idea, broadly speaking, that
‘the poet or artist has not only the freedom but even a duty to
invent his imaginary worlds in such a fashion that, init,
the wrongs of the everyday world are redressed. There, the
guilty do not go unpunished and villains do not prosper.
Legitimate lovers are united, and illegitimate ones meet their
Jjust deserts, The underlying assumption, of course is thatan
‘unjust world is also unaesthetic. Consequenty, in the domain
‘of aesthetic representation, the injustices of mere life can and
should be corrected,
‘Not surprisingly, the concept soon became a subject of |
mockery and disdain, Thus, in Alexander Pope’s Dunciad,
“Poetic Justice’ is one of the ‘four guardian Vireues' of the
‘Majesty of Dullness:
Poetic Justice, with her lied scale,
‘Where, in nice balance, ruth with gold she weighs,
‘And solid pudding against empry praise.
—(Duncad, Book 1, ll. 52-54) 182 Alok Rai
But while de concept igh wll ave len no di
sep, th dering ero imagined eons we
being somehow compensatory anf conceon ters
found nother wai s: Ad ithe ed ent
‘exer nines ona practic in sesso
far removed, Thus, even overly realistic ficion-—such ain
she Engish 1th conta. under press oer ae
iss adr ese temper represen ce
woe sh, tone tren snes, ee
masogingot heoid ics (The seed ingeroons
Gre Exton rots ample) Wie ta he a
fot ofthe sudden rasornatons tat one as
ich ash fevon, "The ma miraton aden a
tion tobe fit ote known worl of mjuntce andy
Bec, ter all ly gary univene sed ae,
no lance the weal mode perso ne
ety haven comoltony poner Thecanrcnea
‘Just’ transformations can only be tacked on. ee
Sim unde the dopmeon of nin ress, he
rier asunder olson no eno show ane
‘therein heed sore word buss ei
Laine te he shaper sll forming ote
Inds ost in the sopng a tae ae ea
whatmighbe and couldbe and ought betas rine ae
away from Rymer’s 17th century world, we can still see the
Serotec ercning eee
The concept of Soci jute’ has a very specifi Indian
infkedon The Preambto the Cnsataton ent ines
Kinds of jose: pole, economic and socal The
"esto poll eedom and won; tesco porns
Povery andthe inequities of cas. The ls sed es
‘is and is undetstod to fer specially ee pe,
ie and adress ses of parton and recogni
the vic of svama Hinds cocey. Alindofor
Some Reflections on the Premchand-Dalt Controversy 158
“uncompromising insistence on priority, i built into the very
origins of the Indian concept. Thus, Ambedkar whois its
proximate progenitor, differed crucially with Gandhi over
the question of timing, Iam sure that there are many ways of
reading the Gandhi-Ambedkar controversy that was ultim=
ately resolved, after a fashion, through the Poona Pact. But
the part hat eleva fr my ange ee cuter
ng social justice and poetic justice, is simply the impli-
Eton thar the needs of scale, which can hardly wat
even forthe attainment of independence from colonial rule,
‘eannot be met by the fantasy resolutions of imagined worlds.
In this sense, poetic justice and social justice are polar
‘opposites. While the former provides consolation and cour-
‘age in an imaginary realm, the latter seeks tangible gains in
the immediate political and historical context. Normally,
fone would expect these to be non-intersecting discourses,
‘operating as they do on entirely different planes. However, as
the Dalit culgural upsurge of the last few decades shows,
there isan aesthetic corollary of the claim of social justice.
‘And itis at chat level that one may see some infection by the
notion of poetic justice, that i, in the demand for represen
tations in which that which is yet to become actual in the
‘material-historical world, is represented as already-achieved.
‘This i the familiar ‘is-ought’ slippage that signals the long
reach of the notion of poetic justice. Thus, Kanwal Bharati
(2000) writes,
tay Pa aR eT Be Ho ae ate TTA
sang the ot FS [N?] 1 AE gai te eter A
3st armen et eM ao wah ane, we ae at
ee) EPA nd aN oe a Are a
Gen) Saket 9H a ef ay ge a oT oe
sara & a, A @ eA | (Gangi’s revolt is praiseworthy,
bbut Premchand does not make any atack on caste and
community through her, Ifonly Gangi had fought some
battle of liberation, though she may well have lost her i “lene
is would have become a story of the Dalit fight for,
recognition, and Jokhu would not have had to drink that.
dirty polluted water. Dr Ambedkar also created stores,
But he did not create these by his pen, he created them by
his actions)
This prescriptive militancy is to be distinguished from
that coldly matter-of-fact writing in which the quiet repre
sentation of actuality is itself subversive, The aesthetic that
«demands more, that demands sentimental excess and imag
inary amelioration—whether in the form ofimprobable goo!
ness or improbable militancy—is what Ihave classed under
the rubric of ‘poetic justice’. Here, one demands of are that
it compensates forthe sluggishness and defect of reality.
‘There is one further distinction that one needs to make
with respect tothe concept of social justice. Basically, it seems
tome that the notion needs to be disaggregated. There isan
important part of it that pertains to the world of rules and
laws. There is another not less important part that pertains
to attitudes and feelings, to the persistence of the past in
-ways that, while they may be insubstantial, ae fr from being,
inconsequential. I speak of prejudice and predisposition;
and this is the part that is identified by keywords stich as
dignity and self-respect, but also—and there is an import-
ant difference here—with the need for recognition. And,
‘whereas the former component of the notion of socal just-
ice can and should be legislated into unambiguous reality,
there is no immediate way in which the latter—dignity and
recognition—can be brought into existence by fiat. Obvi-
ously, there are ways in which action on the first level has
consequences, over time, atthe second level of attitudes and
feelings also. But the latter is, willy-nilly, aslow and nevesarily
‘consensual process—and thatis why the culeral-asthetie ques-
tion becomes one of paramount importance. Ie takes 60 t0
play the game of recognition.
‘Some Reflections on the Premchand-Dabt Controversy 188
‘There is an inherently conservative, trans-historical pre
tence that is part and parcel of traditional aesthetics. This is
the idealist claim that the aesthetic domain is autonomous
‘ofthe claims ofhistoryand other contingencies. Itis,on this ac~
couint, a kind of utopian space in which the hierarchies of |
the real historical world are held in abeyance, because the
aesthetic realm is subject to its own, mysterious rules. This
js an untenable claim—but I hope to argue later that the
notion of aesthetic autonomy fulfils an important func~
tion, and therefore still needs tobe defended, albeitina modi-
fied form, Still, the ict of the matter is that notions of the
aesthetic—notions of what is or is not acceptable, ‘a
“beatiful and the like—do change overtime. Inthe historical
snapshots that we can getof this process, there often appears
to be a mysterious consonance between the interests and
predispositions of socially dominant groups and the ruling
aesthetic ideas of a particular time. By the same token, any
new ‘content’—the experiences and perceptions of hitherto
‘excluded groups—is resisted by retreating behind the notion
of aesthetic autonomy.
‘The social and historical contingency of the idea of the
‘aesthetic’ hardly needs strenuous demonstration. Pierre
Bourdieu's work on the workings ofthe notion of ‘este
and of the ways in which cultural capital is unevenly dis-
tributed, rather like the other kind, except that the two
distributions do not overlap exactly-—has complicated the
idealist-aesthetic defence significantly. However, apart
from the gross ‘power’ considerations—like who gets toman
the institutions and establish the pecking order—there isa
subtler level at which inertial resistance might account more
for the glacial pace at which aesthetic ideas change. This is
the operation of those often unarticulated views and be-
lief regarding plausibility, viability, likelihood and so on,
‘on which judgements of aesthetic quality rest. These views evar nor in themselves aesthetic, but
Profound ssthetc consequences oa
refered earlier to thor historical snapshots that evel
¢hemyseriogs consonance erwecn notion ofthe aesticte
and the socal configuration ins parciclar time. And ie
Took at such ‘snapshot’ over period of time, we notice
that what appear in each snapshot as ozen, cecal and
beyond the reach of mere time infact changes over dime
Butte poner pres hag neers see ae
snaps of prea, andevenamovie won fastsuccesion
of nape
‘We know something abou the diachronic movement of
there hori work andwe have sceouns of te vere
synchrony between particular moments ofthis teal histor
ical world andthe coresponding aestheie formations to
Puc it eruely, we know something about the emergence
tnd consoldation ofthe urban mide cs in he Th and
19th centuries in European we know somethingaboue the
ways inwhich hie and ther worldviews yotansated
int the forms of are Bue we know very ite about the ne-
cessary diachronic movement at the sestet level without
‘hich, ll we are let with are jer snapshots spurts and
ruptures. And et, if we wish understand the process by
vihich new coment aft ested hen accommodated and
tsimilted in anew aesthete configuration is prs
thiseusve ‘change’ that we need oundersends
Ilr ves abl tha are non themes
aesthete, though they underline ur aesthetic judgement
These view and bells ae produced ins wide vey of
sways and Tocons—in fais fn csstooms, on ply
rounds and so on. Bu they ae also generated nthe
twilight zone Deween ie and art thats mri buts su
fcicely informed by iro reflect tansformed and eas
forming ligt upon ie Anyone who has experienced the
povwer a herattre—its aby to fake ws oa of ounces
tions on the Pramchend-DalitContoversy 187
and into other unlikely selves and experiences, only to bring
us back enriched and transformed—will understand readily
the commonplace everyday experience that Iam trying to
describe here, Its this power thatall those who endeavour
to use literature in the service of social transformation and
attitudinal change must seek to understand and to yoke.
‘When one looks atthe Hindi literature that emerged in the
last quarter ofthe 19th century and inthe early 20th century,
the silence with regard to the life-experience ofthe so-called
Hindu lower castes is neatly total. Itshould perhaps be said
that this silence is pretty much there in the Urdu literature
of the time as well Indeed, the pressure ofthe elite, uban
literary culture sits rather more heavily on the Urdu writer,
and is indeed part of the reason why Premchand, looking
around at the unregarded life of his time, ‘switched’ from
Urdu to Hindi, The literary culeure of the latter was still
forming, and Premehand had an important formative
influence upon it.
‘But the strongest influence by far was that of the Hindu
savama clases that were, indeed, inventing themselves as
8 class-for-iself ehrough the process of inventing the lan-
‘guage that Hindi was soon to become. What is more, these
classes (or groups, or castes) saw themselves as excluded—
‘with some justification, As such—and forall the traditional
reasons of caste prejudice and the like—they could hardly
be expected to pay much attention to groups (or castes)
thae were even more completely excluded than they were—
excluded, crucially, by the Hindu savarna themselves. The
tmergent Brahmin of the pot-1857 Hindi hearland was particularly
ill-positioned tobe sympathticto the ani-Bralmanicaleitigue that
wus gathering strength elewhere
For complex historical reasons, these early-Hindi ideo-
logues were not even particularly sympathetic to the anti
Brahmanical voices of past centuries. Thus, even a figure iat xeee
We Kabir and radon like Bhakti, had o wait for ecb
smn es root oes br co
assimilated into—and then home —the glorious past
toler Hind Thay, Remchande Sls dea ot
Kabiras mere sdlubhar well-known, However, the naps
totalsilence with regard to whan ltr idion, we cll de
Dalitesperience isan essential background for understand:
ing the Pemchand-Daliecontroversy, The age ofthe Dav
ideologue is insanly understandable—the choice ofthe
target, Premchand, wl ake somewhat longer. ;
Jn many respects, Munshi Premchand has become a hoary
icon, sometime sentimental from a bygone age, fem
Crablabed nthe dabowsimmoraly cfveuncatrle
He has become part of our clr shorshand, he fig
and ribbeddown cartency of ou socal mapaation. 1
requires something ofan efor to focus on his apparent
“cgay themunne in which Munshi Prenchan cme,
through what was remarkable personal sory of sl
invention, to entlse and synbolise also a one of soa
Conscious Premchand watboh a ceatr and asjmpeom
of dat gest movement of consciousness whose erent
Can be heard trooghowt India inthe decades around 1900,
‘When Stephen Dedalis sais forth int the Faure in
James Joyecs A Porat ft Ara @ Yong Man, hein
tends famously, to Frg, inthe smithy of my oul, the
tmcreated eonscience of my race Simiar young men dom:
inate dhe modem tions of many of Ins Lngoges
encyclopaedic Renaissance men (aot many wom a,
fr te elknown ress), towering and formate
individuals whose cultural naence goes Ea beyond et
considerable achisements and ompetnces, The manner
inwhich these rea oiginaty figures works by picking up
disparate aspects of the feof ther times, and endowing
Some Reflections on the Premchand-Dalt Contoversy 189
those with an unprecedented coherence. In that precise
‘moment, a new cultural subject is born. New continents of |
experience open up suddenly and become available both for
Social action and cultural appropriation. What unites these
past masters of conscience—Tagore, Karanth, Senapati,
Bharati—is the fact tha they significantly enlarged the range
and reach of the social imagination by making a greater
proportion of the marginalised life of their times available
to the imagination for being given narrative shape, and so
form the basis for a moral order. There isa very rel sense in
‘which, even without ot consent or knowledge, we inhabit
the naratives that were invented by these master fabulists,
these masters of ‘conscience’: we live in the worlds that these
vwriters have imagined for us—imagined, and so rendered
thinkable, capable of being experienced and acted upon.
It follows from this that Premchand—unlike any other
“writer of his time, across a wide swathe of north India—was
eeply concerned withthe inhumanities ofthe caste system,
‘with the kinds of social experience that the conception of
social justice seeks to address. As a journalist, he wrote fear~
Iessly and trenchanely about che injustice that was, for him,
constitutive feature ofthe Brahmanical order. The accents
are sharp—sharp enough, I would have thought, to satisfy
‘even the Dalit ideologues of today who have attacked him,
Kanti Mohan (2003: 85) cites Premchand.
Be, Ee Se A ON EET, TOA ET
cay Rae Hea HY? we Sete, UIeAE wr He AG,
heey sts A ees wh ar G1, eH TRAM @, ht aT
ee Tee ka TEA TST AY he WE aA YP
rm (Will we continue to boas loudly about our greamess,
about on our being high-born All ths business of high and
Iowofbig and small, his has penetrated every fibre of Hind
life... Our humanity means litle, what matters is chat we 9880 ok a>
‘re Chaubays or Tiwari... The deep roots of such attitudes:
‘ill have to be dug up and removed fom society)
‘They were certainly sharp enough to have invited the
‘wrath ofthe Brahmins, who accused him of having used his
‘writing in order to generate ‘loathing’ for Brahmins. Thus,
‘one Jyoti Prasad Nirmal called him, with some justification,
_shrna ke prachaara, thats, preacher of disgust. Premchand’s
only regret expressed as such was that he was unable odo
more along those lines, unable to do more to bring di
the Brahmanical social order, the wma-ryanstan
Kanti Mohan again citing Premchand in Udhbhavna
{G86 Som Jon, 194 ee Hee "(Are we
fationaliss?)
fees # fF em eo st wee A mot
See a Pare eh ed rors Pe bc
pet fe soe eo fy BHM ew sna er
fe soft a gti one, eat fe coke her
3 wa oy we 201 fg oon wee BOT
gt sours act ae ch We fo Fee
(the complaints that in
thuce-fourths of my stories, hve showy pres by
ining Brains in dark colours. What sy is that
Thad enough strength, would dovte my woe ie to
feng the ind community Fom the pris the panies
‘who eed off religion The grestet dig, th leprow seb
oth Hin community specs such ety groupe ho
elle apn ech hing vey ee Sod
community
Tia hy pray nigga Dae
ideologue accusing him of betraying. fly ingei
affection for that same varma-vyavastha, rd
awl hart, 200: 7-88) ces Om Pralash Baliki-
ore 4 afte dear ah a Eh wee fe fA
afte ate ower wor aw antart we Tene ance,
‘Some Reflections on the Premetiand-Dat Controversy 161
‘ar et efor ce FR ws 1 ees
“ore eae ee 8 mer, EE fe ere
{Frere (remchand has writen several mportanestorcs
that show Dalit conscousnes.. but by the me he ges ©
the last story Kafan, he appears to bein favour of Gandhian
eas, values and the caste sytem. There ia deep
struggle in his writings —on the one side, heres syapathy
for Dalits, om the other, hin the caste sytem.)
‘These journalist writings, however, forall their trenchant
vivacity, their forthright condemnation of savama Hindu
society—leeches and parasites, he called them—are still
restatement of opinions that were available in the politcal
discourse ofthe time, albeit not very current in Brahmanical
Ustar Pradesh, What is really remarkable in his achievement
is the extension of imaginative citizenship to the hitherto out
‘caste and the downtrodden. In insinuating the figures into
the cultural discourse of the literate and overwhelmingly
savama Hiindu society ofhis time—particularly in the Hindi
register—Premchand was bringing about a fundamental
and far-reaching change in the moral economy of his so
ciety. He was altering the established moral equilibrium,
in which there was arough coincidence between desert and
destiny, between what is and what ought tobe.
‘This destabilizing manocuvre is at the heart of what might,
be called the literature of conscience. This is essentially 2
19th century mode in which the writer endeavours to widen
the circle of sympathy by including hitherto excluded
categories of persons within it. Key to the phenomenon
Of this literature of conscience is the guilty reader, except
‘of course, that the challenge for a pioneer of this kind of
literature such as Premchand unarguably wasin the Hindi
hheartland—is actually to invent the guilty reader, to exten the
stigma of ‘wrong’ to yet more categories of hitherto accept-
able or at least tolerated behaviour. This is recognised by
some dalt critics. Thus, Sheoraj Bechain (2000) refers to Ha aioe
‘the ‘Dali literature produced by the ibera/progressive
savaa writers as ae gay mr HB which may be
translated roughly asthe lnerature of embatrassment of
one’s own caste
However, such an invention requires not only an ad-
vanced awareness of social injustice but aso, crucially, a
Sensitivity to the tides and limits of contemporary socal
consciousness, The reader canbe pushed —andif isis done
with sensitivity and creative vivacity, might aier atime
ven desire tobe pushed—butithe is pushed too fr or too
fas, a5 Dalitideologues may well discover, he soon ceases to
bea reader ata Itis nota question of esthetic autonomy,
35 conservatives might sgt Bt ater a goeton of
Thealtered moral economy that resuls—notonlybut also
because ofthe operations ofthis kind of iteratire—ischar-
actersed by a generalised sense of moral debt that is owed
to those whom caste society has brutalised, It is dificult
