The Hero in Modern Indian Fiction
BY Prof. I. N. MADAN
A poet’s images or a novelist’s characters are not
created out of pure mind-stuff; they are always suggested to him by the world
in which he lives. It is impossible, therefore, to isolate literature and the
development of the hero in literature from the rest of the historical process
and social environment. In order to form a proper perspective of the hero in
modern Indian fiction (Bengali, Hindi, Urdu and Marathi), it is necessary to
acquire a nodding acquaintance with the hero in the Epic, Bauddhic, Classical
and Rajasthani literatures. In the Epic literature the hero is essentially a
warrior, an adventurer, a man of action, a conqueror, because he is born in an
age of war and conquest. Ram, Lakshman, Arjun, Bhim are all men of action. They
are single-minded supermen revelling in struggle and heroism. They mirror a
society which is yet virile and young. The Bauddhic hero is a devoted ascetic,
a man of compassion who represents the pacifist and the humanitarian phase of
Indian society. The Pauranic hero or the hero in Classical literature has a
more diversified and complex character. He is essentially romantic in his
outlook and is nearer human beings than the Epic hero. In the plays of Kalidas
and his contemporaries the hero is portrayed chiefly as a lover who
subordinates all his actions to the consuming passion of love. Dushyanta,
Agnimitra, and Madhava are some of the typical heroes who represent a settled
phase of the feudal order in which it is possible for the people of the upper
classes to indulge in love as a luxury. The Rajput hero later on, is again a
valiant lord, the flowering of an age of chivalry. This is because he belongs
to a period of invasions and social conflict in which there was a revival of
heroism.
The hero in modern Indian fiction is essentially a
product of a bourgeois civilisation. The novel is the Epic art-form of our
bourgeois society. “The bourgeoisie has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal,
idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that
bound man to his ‘natural superiors’ and has left no other bond between man and
man than naked self-interest, than callous cash-payment”. The bourgeoisie has
stripped every occupation of its halo. It has converted the physician, the
lawyer, the priest, the professor and even the poet and artist into its paid
wage labourers. The novel is the most typical creation of the bourgeois society
and the modern hero is pitted against society, against nature. Impoverished yet
unable to adapt himself to the new bourgeois conditions, he is bound to feel isolated
and superfluous, out of joint with the epoch in which he lives. The hero in
modern Indian fiction is a very highly complex character. He is a superfluous
man, a disillusioned member of the intelligentsia, a repentant nobleman, a
thief or a gentleman-burglar, a peasant and a progressive hero. The actual
social and psychological causes which have moulded the personality of the
modern hero are to be sought in the breaking up of the feudal order.
Fasanai Azad embodies the motley world which symbolises the
decaying feudal order of society. Ratan Nath Sarshar describes very vividly the
motley throng consisting of quail fighters, kite flyers; opium eaters,
superfluous ‘nawabs’, dancing girls exchanging amorous glances with old rakes,
beggars running after carriages, ugly and pretty women of all ages, thieves and ‘babus’. This is the motley world seething
and surging round the hero who is equally superfluous. Azad, who is the hero of
the story, is a young man of fortune, very handsome, very enlightened: He is a
poet and a lover, a charming talker, falling in love with several women.
Accidentally he falls in love with a beautiful lady of fortune, obeys her
commands fights in the battle-field and wins her love. Azad is a typical product of the decaying feudal order of society
and a fine specimen of the ‘superfluous man’.
In the novels of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee we meet
with another variety of the ‘superfluous man’ in conflict with society and
finally disillusioned and vanquished by it. He is an individualist who cannot
fit into a society which accepts egoism for a religion. He seeks to find
harmony and fullness in his personal and domestic life. Is home life necessary?
If not, how can it be replaced? If it is, how can it be made ideal, for it is
far from being ideal. What should be the relations between parents and
children? These are questions which he asks, besides trying to come to some
conclusion about problems of caste, marriage, sex, or friendship. This groping
for a faith has added to the frustration of the modern hero. The reasons for
his frustration are many. His thought is not allied to action; perhaps
circumstances prevent him from acting or he lacks the heroism to act. The
result is the same–frustration. The superfluous hero of the early period is
enlarged into a superfluous member of the intelligentsia.
Devdas is a representative of this class of the
superfluous intelligentsia. His life is a story of broken hearts. He was the
son of a zamindar, but fate made him love Parbati, the daughter of a poor
neighbour. They loved each other in spite of social barriers. Little did they
know how insurmountable they were and little did they guess what the future had
in store for them. A time came when he had to part from her and go to the city
for his education and polish. Devdas wanted to revolt against his parents, but
he had to obey them. Parbati shed many a bitter tear. She had to prepare
herself for her marriage with an old man as arranged by her parents. Devdas was
broken-hearted. Easy friends with easier virtues gathered round him. Wine came
and with it came women. Devdas invited death and death accepted his invitation.
He thus committed gradual suicide. A few pieces of wood, a flame, and he was no
more. It is the tragedy of a person to whom life seemed cramped and
meaningless. He failed to find social and emotional security and therefore he
sank to drunkenness and suicide.
Suresh in Grihdaha
is another hero of the same variety belonging to the new intelligentsia. He
is a rich, educated but conservative young man. Mahim, his friend, is a poor
but educated young man and he wishes to marry a modern girl who is the happy
daughter of an unhappy father. Suresh is determined to save his friend from
this calamity. He has never met this girl, nor any other girl, in his life. He
meets her and very soon his desire to save his friend ripens into a desire to
marry her. Achala fights through and marries Mahim in spite of difficulties.
She can endure poverty; but she cannot endure Mrinal, a cousin of Mahim, who is
married to an old man. A wide gulf begins to yawn between them. Suresh appears
on the stage. One stormy night she finds that she has eloped with her
husbands’s friend. The world mocks at her. Even Suresh mocks at her. She is a
fallen woman. Suresh realises his mistake, but it is too late. He breaks down
and seeks peace in death–the only solace and the typical end of the bourgeois
hero.
In Barididi Suren
meets a similar fate. He is a brilliant scholar or a University. His friends
and admirers advise him to go abroad for higher studies in mathematics, but his
step-mother stands in the way. He runs away from home and secures a job as
tutor to the younger sister of a young widow. She bestows on him tender care
and even love. Suren and Madhavi begin to love each other, but the bourgeois
society does not recognise a widow’s right to love. Suren, however, has to
leave the house. Five years roll by and he is now a married man; but he has not
been able to forget her. He is a big zamindar and she is his tenant. What an
irony of life! As soon as he comes to know of her identity, he begins to search
for her. The strain of the search and the shock of disappointment tell heavily
on him. Also he has not recovered from the effects of an injury he had suffered
from a street accident years ago. Somehow he overtakes her boat. It is a very
painful meeting, for he collapses with his head in her lap. In Palli Samaj or Dehati Samaj Romesh’s love for Rama also ends in frustration for
she is also a widow who has no claims to love. In Charitraheen Satish’s love for Sabitri is wasted in exactly the
same manner and for exactly the same reasons. In another novel, Shrikanta loves
Raj Lakshmi with all his heart, but she cannot surrender herself to him; for
she is a widow and a ‘fallen woman’. In almost all the novels of Sarat Chandra
Chatterjee this conflict dominates the life of the hero. Various names have
been given to this conflict in life. The conflict between tradition and
experiment, between youth and age, between reaction and revolution, seeks to
express the fundamental fact that man lives in two dimensions of time. At
present this conflict is the outcome of a clash between two cultures: bourgeois
culture, which is in a state of decay, and the socialist and humanistic
culture, which is not yet fully grown. Devdas, Suresh, Suren, Romesh, Satish
and Shrikanta are caught in this conflict. They belong to the class of the new
intelligentsia who are groping for a new faith in life. They reflect a section
of modern Indian society in the process of disintegration. All of them are
self-centred decadents, even though they are profoundly hostile to the existing
social order. They are critical of the present mainly in order to take revenge
for their own frustrated will and inner devastation.
Another variety of the ‘superfluous man’ as a hero
in modern Indian fiction is the ‘repentant nobleman’. Although he is a
land-lord himself, he disapproves of the exploitation of the tenant, not so much for economic as for moral and humanitarian
reasons. The National Movement (1921-22) became so powerful in the country that
it made hundreds of well-to-do youths give up their privileges and join the
toiling masses whom they had exploited, for ages. It was an attempt on the part
of genteel intellectuals to find a bond with the masses in order to feel less
isolated, less superfluous. Gora, the hero of the well-known novel, is, as it
were, the personification of the soul of bourgeois society yearning for freedom
and struggling against its social and political bondage. The, hero throbs and
pulsates with a new energy and vitality. His discussions about different
religious sects, about passionate nationalism, about the proper channel through
which patriotic aspirations should flow are conducted with a superb blending of
incisive logic and emotional fervour that extorts admiration. Gora represents
the full fervour and restlessness of the Renaissance Movement of the middle
classes in Bengal. The ‘gentry period’ of Indian fiction reaches its climax in
the works of Rabindranath Tagore who portrays the hero as a thinker and
reformer. He is essentially a ‘repentant nobleman’ who has been uprooted from
the soil and is seeking compensations and making fresh adjustments to the new
social order.
In the character of Premshankar, Munshi Prem Chand
has presented another variety of the ‘repentant nobleman’. He has received his
education abroad in scientific methods of agriculture. On his return to the
village he becomes the spokesman of the peasants. Gayanshanker, his own
brother, represents the class of landlords. In the novel the theme has been
lifted from a clash of individuals to a conflict of classes. Although
Premshankar is out-casted and persecuted by his own people, he devotes himself
whole-heartedly to the cause of the peasants. The ‘repentant nobleman’ who
suffers from a terrible sense of guilt plays the role of a social reformer, a
philanthropist, and even a revolutionary leader. They are the product of the
Indian political crises in 1918-20 and 1930-32–periods of storm and stress when
demoralised, backward and broken-up people suddenly straightened their backs
and lifted their heads in pride. The scope of the ‘repentant nobleman’ as a
hero in Indian fiction became very wide as a result of these crises. In the
Marathi novel he is mostly drawn from the middle classes because the landlord
is conspicuously absent in the life and literature of this people. In the
novels of Phadke, the hero identifies himself completely with the cause of the
masses and thereby feels less isolated, and less superfluous. In one of the
Gujerati novels, Snehyagya by Desai,
the hero is drawn from the lower middle classes and he plays the role of a
revolutionary leader.
Munshi Prem Chand’s Surdas, the blind beggar, who
is the product of the first Indian political crisis is another important hero
in modern Indian fiction. Surdas represents a dynamic revolt against the
industrialisation of the country. He owns a piece of land which becomes a bone
of contention between two contending groups, the industrialist who plans to
erect a cigarette factory over this suitable site and the villagers who use it
for grazing their cattle. For Surdas it is a problem; should he sell it or
retain it? The blind beggar struggles desperately to retain his piece of land
and thus fight against the evils of industrialisation. The hero has been
portrayed as faultlessly ideal and noble from the beginning to the end, without
showing any psychological transformation of his character. He has been lifted
to the moral heights of great prophets. It is the writer’s enthusiasm for pure
idealism which is responsible for this fundamental flaw in the conception of
all his heroes. Premshankar, Chakradhar, Amarkanta, Surdas have all been cast
practically in the same mould. In a letter which Prem Chand wrote to me he
says, have in each of my novels an ideal character with human failings as well
as virtues, but essentially ideal’. Surdas, therefore, only on one important
occasion realises his helplessness in this capitalistic society and thinks of
selling his land for personal ends. He is otherwise a sublimated soul which has
attained ‘moral deliverance’. At last his land is forcibly sold out by a
government official. It is a triumph of the new forces of exploitation over the
fast decaying feudal order of society.
Another variety of the hero in the earliest
bourgeois fiction is the detective, the thief, and, later on, the
gentleman-burglar. In the novels of Devaki Nandan Khatri and Kishori Lal
Goswami the romantic lover (who is the nominal chief character in the stories)
employs the services of clever detectives whose plots are sabotaged by
counterplots and whose tricks are met by counter tricks. The mistaken
identities, the smoking of intoxicating tobacco, the smelling of narcotic
perfumes are some of the common devices employed by the detectives who dominate
this type of fiction. The locks are complicated, the doors magical and the
chambers mysterious. All these elements create a bourgeois world in which
thieves and robbers flourish. These detectives engender the will to steal, to
carry on the guerilla warfare of isolated individuals against bourgeois
property. Munshi Prem Chand has portrayed the character of the thief as a hero
in the garb of a gentleman burglar. Gaban
relates the story of a gentleman-thief who tries to cover his poverty and
shield his egoism by manufacturing lies which do not carry him very far. He
buys for his newly married wife a costly necklace and is involved in debt. He
is forced to commit forgery to clear off his debt. At last the spider is caught
in its own web. The author represents him as an hopeless victim of,
circumstances, education and the social environment. Ramakanta, who is the hero
of this novel, is a typical product of the bourgeois order which idealises the
parasite and the thief.
The peasant as a hero has been recently introduced
into modern Indian fiction. Hori in Godan
is an immortal creation because he embodies in his person the life of the
historical tiller of the soil, his stoic indifference to suffering, his
generosity, his nobility, his selfishness, and his imbecility. He is a pitiless
picture of the toiling peasant and how the toiling peasant is being annihilated
in the interests of the bourgeois monopoly. In the present novel Hori is a helpless victim of the
money-lender, not of one but of three money-lenders at a time, who are
merciless exploiters of the peasant. The vicious system of land revenue, the
heavy burden of his daughter’s marriage, and the inhuman social and religious
conventions conspire against him and finally suffocate him to death. In
portraying his character, everything is so
strangely understated that the protest against the bourgeois exploitation
becomes all the more effective and vigorous. The man with the hoe thus
anticipates the birth and development of another variety of the hero in
progressive literature.
Rahul and many others have already made several
successful attempts at portraying the progressive hero. Volga se Ganga is the most outstanding piece of progressive
literature. The heroes of all the stories in this book are determined fighters,
creative labourers, a free world emancipators, proud personalities. Sumer in
the last story of the book is an educated untouchable lad who has energy,
force, will power; he is nevertheless a flat character. He is as yet in the
process of growth and development. Each one of these heroes is impregnated with
the spirit of heroic deeds. The epic man who lives and changes life has again
been introduced as the hero of progressive fiction.
It is generally remarked that the hero in
progressive literature is bound to be tendentious and therefore he ceases to be
a full-blooded character. It is true that the progressive hero is tendentious,
but he may not be stereotyped and flat. He may not be merely critical, or a man
at hopeless war with a society he cannot fit into as an individual, but he is
essentially a man in action to of the change
the conditions of life, a man in harmony with the course of history and he is
able to master life. The heroic is coming back to the novel and with the heroic its epic character. Maxim Gorky has already vindicated
the profound truth of it. He has already silenced the contentions of the
bourgeois critic by his artistic practice in creating progressive heroes of
flesh and blood in his works. Indian
society today finds itself in a great crisis
and conflict and the Indian novelists are interpreting life through the
creation of a large variety of heroes who embody and reflect the bourgeois culture of today, the
feudal culture of yesterday and the socialistic and humanistic culture of
tomorrow.