Politics of Caste and Representation in Premchand’s Kafan
Kafan (1936), the last story in Premchand’s oeuvre has been a subject of criticism in multiple ways. While Premchand has been credited for highlighting subaltern issues in his works, he has simultaneously been targeted by Dalit writers for the portrayal and use of Dalit characters in his stories. Indian literary historian Sisir Kumar Das has said “Premchand is the greatest artist of the suffering of untouchables, not only because of his great anxiety for the century-long oppression of the Harijans, but for his uncanny sense of realism with which he presents the characters belonging to the oppressed group, free from all sentimentality and pious idealism.” Francesca Orsini has also said that Premchand’s “strong social conscience and radical politics, which brought him closer and closer to socialism, were rooted in an utterly secular and inclusive view of the Indian nation, which makes him a particularly valuable and rare role model these days.” However, a more cautious reading of Premchand suggests that his writings were steeped in Gandhian rhetoric, condemning the caste hierarchies instead of challenging the system at its core. Kafan, in particular, is criticized for its indifferent treatment of Dalits. This indifference towards them has been traced back to the prevalence of Gandhian ideology in Uttar Pradesh during the 1930s. Premchand wrote from a privileged perspective. Being a Kayasth, he had no experience of caste-based inequalities and discrimination. The absence of Ambedkarite ideology in Kafan takes the story away from what is called Dalit chetna or consciousness, and Dalit aesthetics which are connected with a revolutionary mentality linked with the struggle of the Dalits.
Kafan was invariably understood by Dalit writers as having an anti-Dalit stance. Kanwal Bharti a Dalit critic, attacked Premchand for ridiculing the lives of the Dalits in Kafan. Although Bharti credits Premchand for being one of the first writers to take up the issue of Dalit oppression, he specifically raises issues with Kafan’s insensitive and inhumane portrayal of the Dalit community. The portrayal of Ghisu and Madhav as slothful, shirking and lazy, read alongside Premchand’s own caste position, is time and again interpreted as inauthentic and stereotypical of Dalits in general. Omprakash Valmiki in his essay “Premchand: Context of the Dalit Debate” critiques Premchand for wrongly conflating and confusing Dalits with farmers and peasants who suffer economic injustice and oppression but do not face inequality based on caste. In contrast, Dalit feminist writer Anita Bharti argues in Premchand’s favour and his excellent portrayal of Dalit characters who have the strength to stand against Brahminism.
Read in light of these criticisms, Kafan emerges as a multi-layered story. The variety of readings and interpretations that the story has provoked is quite telling of Premchand’s literary genius. We may even argue that the story has been successful in provoking people to think about the caste issue, which had mostly been relegated to the margins before Premchand.
In Kafan, Premchand paints a picture of the extreme poverty of Indian villages. He presents a world where people lie at the lowest rung of the caste hierarchy, lacking any mobilisation. Kafan lays bare the dysfunctionality of a system where the oppressed and the exploited begin to question all the reasons why they should maintain their links with it. In Kafan, Ghisu and Madhav’s penury becomes their weapons of weakness against a system that continues to oppress them. They realise that their position would remain the same whether they actively participate in the system and worked to survive, or if they simply idled away their lives. Ghisu and Madhav, are free from that system that feeds on their weakness. Ghisu is aware of his vulnerability but uses it for his benefit. This is what makes him so nonchalant in spite of his poverty. Ghisu, read in this context becomes a representative of all outcastes whose troubled experiences make him stoic, callous and indifferent to life and its pains. Madhav, his son also idles away his life as he realizes that the struggle for existence has no scope for him. Premchand writes “They (the peasants) called the duo only when they were desperate and had no option.” This suggests that the comparatively well-off class was helpless despite Ghisu and Madhav’s nonchalance.
Satanand Shahi in his essay “Kafan: A Multi-Layered Story” writes “At a time when there was no minimum wage or regulation of working hours, Ghisu and Madhav- through their cunning and their courage-had figured out a way to gain maximum wages for minimum labour, in opposition to the prevailing order of minimum wages for maximum labour (Shahi 253).” Shahi situates Ghisu and Madhav as characters who use shirking and laziness as a tool to manoeuvre and escape the trap of exploitation. Shirking and laziness don’t define their character. Ghisu and Madhav are chamar by caste, they are landless labourers who have realized that back-breaking labour cannot ensure a full stomach, which is why they are lazy and shiftless. It is their strategy to function in a casteist system and to escape the vicious cycle of exploitation.
It is through these small acts of rebellion that they are able to reject the Brahminical varna system, which has perpetuated the hegemony of the upper castes and subsequently ensured their financial position. When read alongside Premchand’s other short story titled “Sadgati”, the central argument of the story becomes clear. Hard work and toil will not provide the individual with an opportunity for social mobility or dignity, as long as one is burdened and restricted by the label of caste.
The central conflict of the story is Madhav’s wife, Budhia’s death. After Budhia dies in labour, both Ghisu and Madhav beg for money to acquire a shroud for her last rites. After collecting some five rupees, they look for a cheap shroud but end up drunk in a tavern, spending all their money on alcohol and food. The shroud here becomes a symbol of Brahmanical traditions which, through the institution of caste oppresses people like Ghisu and Madhav. As a reader, Ghisu and Madhav’s behaviour seems reproachable, but by the end of the story, one comes to realise that they are victims of a system, where even sympathy and grief is a privilege. Ghisu remarks that if they had the five rupees earlier, which they had collected for Budhia’s shroud, they would have bought her medicines. However, the question remains- why did they not arrange the money before, when Budhia was writhing in pain? Their negligence and ignorance of Budhia’s cries of pain have provided enough context for this claim to be mistrusted by readers. Why did they not turn to the Thakur for help? This is a question that prevails in the text throughout. Perhaps, they knew that the upper castes in their village wouldn’t have helped a lower-caste woman lying on her deathbed. As voiced by Dukhi in Sadgati when he says “They don‘t lend us even fire for lighting, and you expect them to lend us a cot! If I ask for water at the house of Kaisthas, I won‘t get it. No question of getting a cot. It‘s not like our cow-dung cakes, straw and wood; which anyone can come and pinch (Premchand).”
But this doesn’t discharge them of their inhumanity and apathy towards Budhia. They could, and should have sympathised with her as she lay crying in pain. Read in this light, Ghisu and Madhav become figures of patriarchy, absorbed in their own selfish materialism.
In the story, the women of the village come to visit Budhia after her death. Where were they when she was crying in pain? Their visit wasn’t out of goodwill, but a performance of their caste identity and the reiteration of the Brahmanical tradition. Thus the absence of the shroud for Budhia is telling, as it signals a subversion of the Brahmanical social order. Many Dalit critics have criticized the story because it doesn’t offer any structural solution to the caste problem. Dalit critics have also mentioned that the story lacks any sort of Dalit consciousness. However, Sadanand Shahi in his essay, states that Ghisu and Madhav’s rebellion goes unnoticed because we are used to seeing rebellion in a limited framework. Their rebellion gets reflected in their ignorance of the brahamanical norms which dictate that they cremate Budhia.
Ghisu and Madhav articulate the central predicament of the story. “What an unjust custom! She who did not have tattered rags to cover her body while alive must now have a new shroud.” The quest to acquire a shroud for a dead woman, who was discriminated against and oppressed in her life is filled with bitter irony. Someone who could not get even rags to cover herself had to get a new shroud when she was no more. The futility of revering a dead person, who was terribly neglected by not only her family but the community too, is exposed when the neighbours show up to give their “time-worn consolations.” These two instances portray society’s obsession with appearances, the performance of rituals, and material concerns like the presence of a shroud. Brahminism enforces anxiety about going to heaven after death, regardless of how bad life on earth was- without dignity, food and shelter. The last rites are dictated and performed by someone else, and the money is extracted by them. But Ghisu and Madhav drink to their heart’s content and give the leftover food to the beggar- confident that they are ensuring Budhia’s journey to heaven. They ensure that they send Budhia to heaven without getting involved in the falsehood of Brahamanical scriptures. This only suggests the double standards of a casteist society that was absent when Budhia was on her deathbed.
Despite the several criticisms which have been afforded to Premchand and “Kafan,” it cannot be denied that Premchand through this story brought to light questions about the intersection between caste and class. The situation of labourers and the alienation they suffer in a colonial economy that is based on caste and class hierarchies. It is essential to note that in both Sadgati and Kafan, the untouchables are poor, and their caste plays an important role in subjugating their financial position. Marxist critic Krantimohan suggests that Kafan is not about caste but about landless agricultural labourers, who are self-employed and refuse to work unless they absolutely have to.
Premchand’s representation of Ghisu and Madhav can be seen as both, a lopsided and biased view of a marginalized caste by a writer writing from a position of privilege, as well as a technique of creating turmoil in the readers to make them aware of the harsh realities of Dalit lives. The sense of satisfaction that Ghisu and Madhav feel for not being exploited by anyone puts across a strong critical comment on the terribly corrupt feudal system of colonial India.
By the time Premchand wrote Kafan, his style and writing had matured. Literary scholars have divided Premchand’s writings into four phases, and Kafan belongs to the last phase. This phase began in 1930 and continued till 1936. Premchand’s writings which belong to this phase, critique the various socio-political and economic aspects of contemporary India. Kafan is a culmination of this phase. Readers who are accustomed to Premchand’s moralistic and didactic style of writing misinterpreted Kafan because they looked for such explicit moralising. While several people have called Ghisu and Madhav inhuman, their characters undergo a lot of change.
When the story ends, we see Ghisu and Madhav revere Budhia’s memory. They enjoy themselves but in Budhia’s memory. There is some sort of admittance of guilt and responsibility. They appreciate Budhia’s labour for them and Madhav says, “how the poor thing suffered in life, and now she is dead and gone.” Surprisingly this is the same Madhav who did not even look at her dying wife when she was crying in pain. Ghisu consoles Madhav and tells him that he should be happy because Budhia has become free from the fetters of Maya. Ghisu’s remark “What good would it have done if we’d bought the shroud? It’d only be burnt to ashes,” sharply critiques the ritualistic feudal Hinduism, which Premchand tried to expose in Kafan.
Works Cited
Bharati, Kanwal. Gair Dalit Lekhako Ke Dalit Sahitya Par Hamle … in Jai Prakash Kardo.m (ed.) Dalit Sahitya 2000 (Delhi: publisher not mentioned, 2000) p.194
Joshi, A. (2021). Muse India.
https://museindia.com/Home/ViewContentData?arttype=articles&issid=96&menuid=9375
Premchand. “ (Kafan).” Modern Indian Writing in English Translation: A Multilingual Anthology, edited by Dhananjay Kapse, Worldview Critical Edition, 2016, pp. 233–239. Print.
Premchand. “ (Sadgati).” (The Best of Premchand’s Stories), Sahni Publications, 2007, pp. 199–206. Print.
Premchand. “The Shroud.” Modern Indian Writing in English Translation: A Multilingual Anthology, trans. by M. Asaduddin, edited by Dhananjay Kapse, Worldview Critical Edition, 2016, pp. 225–232. Print.
Pathak, A. (2019, October 10). Could the Swavarna Premchand Depict the Life-World of the Downtrodden Dalit? The New Leam. https://www.thenewleam.com/2019/10/could-the-swavarna-premchand-depict-the-life-world-of-t he-downtrodden-dalit/
Shahi, Sadanand. “Kafan: A Multi-Layered Story.” Modern Indian Writing in English Translation: A Multilingual Anthology, edited by Dhananjay Kapse, Worldview Critical Edition, 2016, pp. 250–258. Print.
[Anon.]. “2. The Problem of Premchand”. Writing Resistance: The Rhetorical Imagination of Hindi Dalit Literature, New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2014, pp. 43–60. https://doi.org/10.7312/brue16604-004
