Boycott of Foreign Goods in Premchand’s Stories

Abstract

This article showcases that studies on Hindi and Urdu literature are also being conducted outside South Asia and that elsewhere, too, such literary studies and socio-political analyses are being combined in quite specific ways. Boycott of foreign goods was one of the most important parts of colonial India’s freedom struggle and many intellectuals from the literary and art worlds expressed their views on it. In his Hindi and Urdu stories, Munshi Premchand used his unique narrative technique, critical perspective on social events, and deep understanding of Indian society also to comment on the boycott of foreign goods. The article examines how such reflections of India’s struggle for independence manifest in two of Premchand’s lesser-known stories in which he argued for boycotting foreign goods. Our analysis portrays Premchand as an activist writer, who chose common people’s language to present gendered social documents, in a form akin to oral history, as his specific contribution to India’s freedom from foreign rule.