Munshi Premchand and Dalit Literature: Breaking the Definition Gap

Abstract

Of late ‘Dalit Literature’ as a literary genre has been in vogue. But even before the introduction of the term, ‘Dalit Literature’, we were blessed to have a great writer, Dhanpat Rai Srivastava known by his pen name Munshi Premchand who wrote some extraordinary texts to make the people understand how the colonial India was conflicted by religion, casteism, discrimination and exploitation of lower-class people or Dalits. In fact, through his writings he seems to emerge as a singularly powerful cultural symbol around which Dalit literary and political identities are constituted. It is undeniable that Dalits are still marginalised in one way or the other. But the contention arises with some of the works of Premchand for which he is being denominated as ‘anti-dalit’ recently by some Dalit writers and critics. This paper discusses the valuable contribution of Premchand to Dalit Literature and throws question on the existing definition of Dalit Literature.