CASTE
CONFIGURATION AND SOCIAL EQUATIONS
IN PREMCHAND’S GODAN
(THE GIFT OF A COW)
The word ‘caste’ comes from the Portuguese word ‘casta’ meaning ‘breed or race.’ The Portuguese who came to India in 1498 found to their surprise a perplexing system of social stratification and discrimination. Finding it difficult to explain this social phenomenon to the people at home these seafarers called it ‘casta.’ Caste as it obtains today in India seeks to stratify and hierarchise society in socio-economic terms and varying degrees of prestige or the lack of it. Caste is inherited at birth and clings on to a person lifelong. It may be possible to convert to a different religion but not to a different caste. Another manifestation of caste is that shades of it can be found among people who got converted to other religions long ago. For example, it is practised among the Roman Catholics of Goa and Mangalore centuries after their conversion to Catholicism. It may be said therefore that caste is a cultural phenomenon to some extent. In fact at the micro level each caste has a distinct sub-culture and practices of its own and thus constitutes a religious formulation.
However,
caste is a pernicious system since it seeks to build artificial walls among the
people belonging to the same religion and race. Furthermore it is blatantly
prejudiced in favour of the upper castes and against the lower castes thus
curbing their legitimate rights. The mainstream dalits are the worst sufferers
of this hated system. In the Varna system they are supposed to belong to
none of the four Varnas. In the words of Oliver Mendelsolm and Marika
Vicziany, “There is [...] something of a ‘hard bar’ separating [the so called]
untouchables from the rest of Indian society.”1 For ages they have
been ritually segregated, denied basic amenities of life and meted out inhuman
treatment. Even to this day the upper caste people seem to socialize more
readily with the people of other religions rather than with their
co-religionists belonging to the lower castes.
In
spite of tremendous advancements on the philosophical, political and
technological fronts that the caste system should survive in India defies all
logic. The Hindus, who showed a remarkable alacrity to adapt to the new
conditions of life and took to changes with a ready willingness, show the
aberration of their psyche by holding on to this system.
Social
maladies often get reflected in literature. Premchand was one of the few
writers who artistically responded to the vexed question of caste and its evil
manifestations in the Indian society. He is the most prominent of the Hindi
novelists of the 20th century. It was mainly due to his efforts that a new
social awareness and a sense of purpose entered Hindi fiction. He wrote against
social injustice and hypocrisy and against the ill treatment routinely meted
out to the people belonging to the lower castes, especially the dalits, in the
rural areas. His novels Premashram, Seva-Sadan, Sapt-Saroj, Sangram, Rang
Bhoomi, Gahan, Nirmala and especially Godan testify to his
commitment to the common man and to the depiction of his many woes, that too in
a language easily understood by common readers. In away, Premchand was a
utopian idealist and is often accused of suggesting idealistic solutions to
problems requiring drastic social and legislative measures. But he never
carried his idealism to its limits. He knew how to wed ideology to actual life.
In
this article however I will confine myself to how Premchand portrays the caste
configuration and social equations in his most famous and last published novel Godan2,
translated into English as Godan by Jai Ratan and P. Lal and as The Gift
of a Cow by Gordon Roadarmel. The rural society depicted in this novel is
vertically divided along caste lines. Standing at the top of the social ladder
are the upper castes represented by the Zamindar Raisahib, the Brahmin pandit
Datadin, his son Matadin, Patwari Lala Pateshwari, money- lender Jhinguri Singh
and pandit Nokheram who is the representative of the Raisahib. Next to them are
the farming and artisan castes represented mainly by the hero of the novel, the
quintessential Indian farmer Hori Ram and his family of two brothers, wife
Dhania, son Gobar and two young daughters. And at the bottom of the ladder are
the Chamars, the dalits represented in the novel mainly by Silia. These people
are governed by the philosophy of the caste they belong to, the first set
blatantly exploiting the latter two in various forms—economic, social and even
sexual.
The
social structure of the village is so rigid that it is almost impossible to
break the caste barriers by, for example, forging marital alliances with people
of different castes. This principle applies equally forcefully even if it is
Raisahib’s son. This young man is rebellious by nature, albeit not necessarily
inspired by any idealistic motives but idiosyncratically so. He runs away with
Dr. Malti’s younger sister Saroj and marries her. Raisahib is greatly disturbed
at this development and contemplates murder but only to be eventually prevailed
upon by good sense. Hori’s son Gobar falls in love with Jhunia of the
neighbouring village. Jhunia does not belong to his caste and she is a widow on
top of it. However, Gobar has no strength of will to stand his ground and face
the consequences by living with her in the village. He leaves Jhunia in the
care of his parents and runs away to Lucknow. Hori and Dhania initially
hesitate to admit Jhunia into their home but their goodness wins over the
social prejudice and they begin to treat her as their own daughter. For this
act of kindness—which is interpreted by the villagers as an outrage and by her
father Bhola as a blot on his honour—they are terribly ostracized and
excommunicated by the village panchayat. He finally gets readmitted to the
caste fold after paying heavily for it.
However
this same panchayat which has excommunicated the defenceless Hori and reduced
him to a pauper by obliging him to part with all his possessions, does not find
fault with the Brahmin Matadin who carries on an affair with the Chamari girl
Silia. It finally takes Silia’s people to teach him a lesson. In a rare show of
dalit power they force a bone down the throat of the pandit and his Brahmanical
purity is permanently defiled. It is interesting to note here that in case of
this Brahmin the caste purity is dependent wholly on the food habits and
external marks of appearance rather than on any inner samskaras. Having lost
his caste as a result of eating beef Matadin is treated like an untouchable in
his own house. He spends enormous amounts of money on purification rites and
even eats cow dung to gain readmission to the priestly caste but all to no
avail. This experience in addition to a bout of malaria forces him to overhaul
his outlook on life. Suffering ennobles him and he gains much in stature and
accepts Silia as his wife. He goes to live with her in her hut. The priestly
profession is no more attractive to him. He prefers to be a farmer or even a
cobbler to enjoy the love of the people who really matter to him than to live
like a Brahmin being despised every minute by his own people. His
self-centredness and caste pride yield place to self-sacrifice and love.
The
question, which arises here, is: isn’t it too much to expect an orthodox
Brahmin to have such a radical change of heart? In answer to this it may be
said that Premchand believed in the redeeming power of love and in the
transformative faculty of the young people. He seeks to reinforce basic human
values such as love in this novel. He does not view premarital or extramarital
sexual relations as immoral if they are sanctified by love. Silia loves Matadin
deeply and by the power of her love she brings about a change for the better in
him. Matadin is a young man, and unlike his father and other older people, he
does not seem to hold rigid views. Premchand thus suggests through the various
inter-caste marital/sexual alliances in The Gift of a Cow that the
solution to the caste problem lies in inter-caste marriages and the harbingers
of this change are the young people.
Notes
1. Oliver
Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany, The Untouchables: Subordination, Poverty and
the State in Modern India (Cambridge UP, 1998).
2. Premchand,
The Gift of a Cow, trans. Gordon Roadannel (1968). This text has been
used throughout.