Politics of Sculpting the ‘New’ Indian Woman in Premchand’s Stories

Abstract

This article focuses on two short stories by Munshi Premchand (1880–1936), a stalwart in modern Hindi literature. The aim is to counter the growing amnesia among the general readership about Premchand’s phenomenal contribution to India’s nationalist literature and to challenge the prevailing over-simplistic analysis of his depiction of Indian and Western womanhood. It is widely understood that Premchand, as a traditionalist and nationalist, eulogised Indian womanhood, often by denigrating Western women and their ideals. Re-examining the binary between the memsahib stereotype and the Indian woman (Bharatiya nari) image, this article takes an untrodden route. Casting new light on the text, it attempts to overturn the binary model that almost all critics so far have created about Premchand’s depiction of memsahibs versus Indian women.