MODERN HINDI NOVEL
DR. DEVRAJ UPADHYAYA
Any
review of Hindi fiction cannot fail to take into account the achievements and
contribution of Premchand in this field. If one
looks at the vast panorama and the progressive march of Hindi
fiction one finds Premchand standing in all his glory
like a majestic tower in the middle of the road which all the previous forces
culminate to and the future takes a start from. He was the first novelist to
bring Hindi fiction into close contact with life and forge through its medium a
form capable enough to give adequate expression to life’s hopes and
aspirations. Above all, he was a beauty expert of Hindi fiction which achieved
a structural unity in his hands. We use the term structure to mean the
arrangement and interrelation of all the elements in the book governed by the
general character of the whole. Premchand’s novels
may be populous and extensive in spatial designs, they may contain a number of
episodes but they are well knit as intimate cause and effect into a single action
in obedience to a single impulse from start to finish. Godan,
Sevasadan and Gaban,
besides bringing down fiction from the blood-curdling height of horrors and
mystery to the ordinary flow of life, have positively established the reign of
structure and negatively raised a strong barrier against a repetition
of the loose-structured novels of the pre-Premchand
era.
Modern
Hindi fiction has developed mostly as a reaction, to Premchand’s
art, for or against. Premchand had adopted in his
fiction, the point of view of an ominiscient author
who enters into the mind and thoughts of his characters, having a full control
over his narrative, commenting and interpreting in his own person as it suits
him. If we look to the core of the novels published year after year, not in
Hindi only but in European literature also, we will conclude that the
convention of the author’s omniscience has remained predominant, clear down to
the present day. There might have been some minor variations, the authors might
have tried to corporate in their plots certain special phenomena, cropping up
with the evolution of society and unknown during Premchand’s
day; but they are not entitled, on this slender basis, to any claim as
contributors to the art of Hindi fiction. We do talk in terms of post-Premchand era, but the fact is that Premchand’s
influence is still very predominant and most of our novelists take inspiration
from him and thus pay a high compliment to Premchand,
the father of the Hindi novel.
But,
the Hindi writers have not remained mere dummies, passively exposed to any
outward influence, foreign or indigenous; they are vitally alive, ready to make
a creative use of anything which suits their end or needs. The reaction against
Premchand’s method set in sooner
than later. There grew up a band of a young novelists who,
though sitting at the master’s feet and getting mental nourishment from him,
refused to be bullied into the belief that Premchand’s
was the last word in the art of fiction and the ‘orderly unfolding of plot’ was
the only form for fiction to assume. Jainendra,
through his novels Tyagpatra and Kalyani
weakened the myth of plot to a great extent, if he did not actually
demolish it. He showed the way how a brilliant novel can be constructed with a
negligible amount of story element in it. The story qua story was relegated to
a subordinate position.
This
does not amount to saying that Jainendra completely
ignores the structure-value of fiction. Premchand has
made this position impossible to be taken. With all the ingenuity and force of
originality at one’s command, it was not possible to revert to the ‘Chinese-box
days’ of fiction. But there came a change in the very conception of structure. Premchand conceived of plot in terms of logical
continuities, in terms of relations of cause and effect, in terms of a
particular consequent under a given set of antecedents. Chronology dominates Premchand with action or plot as an organising
factor in it. But Jainendra models his novel on the
operative character of consciousness as such. Not action but psychology and the
subjective aspect of experience controls form and maintains
unity in the novels of Jainendra. The novelty of Jainendra’s method will be clear by reading the plot-ridden
novels of Premchand side by side with his novels with
the relative unimportance of Plot in them.
But
Jainendra has done one thing more. He has tried his
best to convince his readers that he is telling nothing but the truth and thus
he falls here in line with the school of English novelists beginning with Defoe who employ ‘documents, memorandums’, letters
etc., in order to create a sense of verisimilitude and increase the illusion of
verifiable fact. Nothing definite can be said of where Jainendra
got his clue from but two of his novels Tyagpatra
and Kalyani (and Jaivardhan, the
latest one) have been imposed upon readers as nothing but a reproduction of
documents fallen, by chance, into the hands of the author. In Banbhatt ki atma katha, one of the most
successful novels in Hindi, its author Hazari Prasad Dwivedi has tried to trick readers into the belief that it
is a transcript of an old document unearthed by an old Austrian Indologist and it has worked so successfully as to lead
some historians of Sanskrit literature to say that a new light was being thrown
upon the life of Bana. However, modern criticism does
not appreciate this factual orientation of novels so much. It is a relic of the
past when fiction enjoyed no rights of its own and could bask only in the
reflected glory of facts. Now the situation has completely changed. Creation
has risen so much in critical esteem that facts
themselves are being fictionally oriented.
Agneya is another novelist
to take Hindi fiction out of the beaten track of simple narrative and bring
about a freshness of vision and approach to bear upon it. It is in his novels,
and those of Jainendra’s, that the influence of
modern psychology has begun to be appreciably felt. Words like ‘projection’,
‘transference’, ‘inferiority complex’ become of
frequent occurrence in the body of the novels. Sisters begin playing an
important part in shaping the life of brothers and the father becomes a rival
of his son in winning the mother’s love. This tendency has become very
predominant in Ilachand Joshi’s novels like Pret aur Chhaya and Parde ki Rani which appear to have
been written with a copy of a book of psycho-analysis in his pocket. The merit
of Agneya’s fictional art lies in the fact that he
has depicted the progress of his story from a limited point of view, a single
point of view i.e., of Shekhar’s in Shekhar ek Jivani and a multiple point of view in Nadi ke dweep i.e., of the four characters whose life drama has
provided the material for the novel. The space at our disposal forbids
discussion of the comparative merits of the two points of view i.e., those of
author’s omniscience, and limitedness of viewpoint, but there is no denying the
fact that the latter has a peculiar charm of its own. Here the author has full
control over the tempo of the story and is in a privileged position to dole out
each part of the story at a properly rationed rate.
Yashpal, though adding
but little to the art of narration, has enriched Hindi fiction by bringing more
and more of Marxian themes, problems of class struggle and the progressive
march of the proletariat to its final victory. At times he has been outspoken
and frank in the discussion of sex, but here also Hindi fiction has been wisely
cautious and is behind the limit to which authors like Sartre and Faulkner have
reached. His two novels Divya and Manusya ke roop can take a proud position by the side of
successful fiction in
Bhagwai Charan Verma (Sahitya Akadami Prize Winner) has written about half a dozen
novels; but his laurels rest mainly on Chitra
lekha where the problem of evil and good has been
discussed with an artist’s touch. Amrit Lal Nagar is another outstanding
fiction writer. Then comes Brindavan
Lal Verma a successful
historical novelist. Among other new writers working in the field of Hindi
fiction Rajendra Yadav and Mohan Rakesh
deserve mention. Cumulatively the efforts of all these writers have gone a
great length in limbering the stiff machinery of novels. But no review of
modern Hindi fiction will be complete without taking into account its regional
trend.
Indian
soil is particularly suited for the regional novels to thrive on, because it is
here that so many different cultures, races, religions, with their diversities,
corresponding to geographical division, are living side by side under the aegis
of a national culture. With the achievement of independence and the consequent
release of genius, this side of the novel could not have been neglected for
long. Many factors might have combined to bring about a sudden flowering of
regional novels at present in Hindi but one reason, paradoxical though it may
appear, is that regionalism is becoming less regional and is being reoriented
to nationalism, thus making one more conscious of one’s own region. A fuller
consciousness of individuality dawns upon a man when he comes in contact with
others. Every inch of English soil has received the illuminating touch of its
genius and has been celebrated in English literature. Why should Indian genius
be found wanting in this respect?
All
the four novels namely Rathinath ki Chachi, Balchanama,
Nai Paudh and Baba Bateswarnath of Nagarjuna, that budding literary
genius, are of regional nature and have portrayed the life and culture of Darbhanga district of Bihar. Phanishwarnath
Renu’s Maila anchal
depicting the life of
Thus
we find, casting our mind’s eye over the whole of Hindi fiction,
that many powerful talents are diligently engaged in enriching it both
quantitatively and qualitatively and it is sure to receive its due recognition
if proper steps are taken to bring it, through translation, to the notice of
the world.