Godaan The Gift of Cow

454 Pages·2017·47.4 MB·English

by  Munshi Premchand, Gordon C. Roadarmel

The Gift of a Cow

A Translation of the Classic
Hindi Novel

Godaan

By

PREMCHAND

Tiaxslated by
Gordon C. Roadarmel

Wath « new introduction by
Vasudha Dalmia

@ En
Public by
PERMANENT BLACK
D-28 Oxiord Aparimeins, 11, LP Bazin,
Delhi 110092

Distibied by
ORIENT BLACKSWAN PRIVATE LIMITED
Bangione Dhbanebiue Calcates Chewai
Eruakulany Garaahati Hyderabad Loeknew
Mumbai New Deli Patne

(UNESCO 1958, for the Engl translation.
‘©Vauudls Dalia 2°12, Bor the fntroduction ++ this wew reprint

Soyenth Impussston 2017

ISBN $1 TH24- 049.8

Promchants Godaan was first published ix India in 1935.
“This Feglish tanslation was fst pin

by Allen and Urwin (London) and

wa Unaversty Press GBlooesamgen) us 1965,

The prosens edition har been puidished under an exclmsive sgreersent
with UNESCO by Permanent: Black, D-28 Ovfoed Apt,
1, IP Extersiot, Delhi 110092, Indi,

Ths ection iv mo. for sale in Pasta,

A sights reserved

Printed and bourd by Sapra Brothers, Dulha 119.992
INTRODUCTION 10 ‘LHE NEW EDITION

Godan ig an eminently poliical novel. It wat wrstten in 1936 by
Premchand, the best-known Hindi writer of the twenticth century,
who had gained a vast reputation for his gripping tales of social
unrest and changesin a language measused but also polemical eleva’
ed but also colloquial." A nationalis: at odds with tke British, by the
1920s Premehand had con:e to subscribe almost entirely to the
Gandhian ethos, and cowards the end of his life he wns formu
a more radical message. As he was to say in his now funous speech
at the :naugural mecting of the Prugressive Writers’ Associagion in
Lucknow in 1936:

A litseraveur or an arcist js, ly’ mae, progressive. He probably would
a lincrateur if chis were not his natme, He fecls inade-
Gacy invade as well as outside himself Lie most cemain restless in order
to fill shis deficiency He does not perceive the i
#11 chase conditions of happiness and freedom in which he wants to see

ot hive bo

dual andl society

‘them in his imagination, For shis season, heulways foes dissatisfied wich
the present mental and social conditions. Te wants to end these disgust
ing conditions so chat che world become 2 beeice place to live im and dic

in?
The individual and society in“Godaan are set within ewo nartetive
frames which draw upon each other, namely the economics and

social codes of village lifs in Awadh (on she easzern Gangetic plaives
in the heart of North India), and of the wider network of colonial
and nacionalise policics in the city of Lucknow; Awadh’s capital,

At the apex of the village social pyramid is Rai Saheb, the lo-
cal landowner. Himself exploited to some extent, 3 has inherited
the mantle of exploitation. A Rajput, obliged to the British for

The best and most easly accessible biearapliy wf Preuachean! i by Ait Rai,
Pronchands A Life (1982)
Ac translates! and cited by Coppola (1986: 26)
nainiaining, his position and penser, he is now in the process of
shifting his «llianze ¢o the Indian Natioaal Congress, He his keen
to jal for his pert in the independence s:raggie and has thus pained
another kind of moral aathority in tae cyes of his tenants, But the
wide base which supports his existence is itse‘f in disrepais, Over
three-quarters ofa century of British vole, the iot of she peasunt has
degenerated to the barely tolerable

In his fiction, written over three decades in the early cwontieth
century; Premchand presented what academic scholarship was to
fice squareiy only sowards che close of that ceutury. Colonial tas
tion policies, peacant unzest, and the failure of the nadionalist lead
enhip to respond to these issues wete to be addressed from the
Peasant-subaltern viewpoint i the pionecring first volumes of the
altern Studics collective which appeared in che early 1980s.
respond €o and partiripaw in Premchand’s literary language—inelf
stratified, generic, period-bound—and to comprehend in some
measure its socio-ideological conceptual horizon (Bakhtin 1981:
272, 275), it is necessary to possess sortie understanding of the so-
cial and political biscory of the province of Awach in Premchand’s
time, and for chis purpote it is to some of the essays in che Subaliern
‘Studies volumes that we tnrn. One of these essuys tells us thar—

In 1856 Awadh vas brought under direct Briash cule in one, ie was
Said, to rescue the provitice from the effects of mist ule and anatchy:The
‘mutiny and civil rebellion of 1937—9, which brought saat of che ficre-
‘st fighting and severest reprisals of the cenisiry, formed, fiom that point
of Viewsan ur fortunate interlucie. After that the benefits of Pax Britannica
flowed freely, towards some, Chief among the beneficiaries were che
(wo hundred and eighty ur so talugdars who, Sr their pazein the recer=
uprising, were now held up a: the ‘netural leaders’ uf the people, The
talugdars were mostly local rajas avid heads of clans, officials and tax
farmers who had secued an independent position in tke land before
he Bris sation, plus # handfai of ‘deserving chieS’ who were
piven eitates confiscaced Som the moa nutazious af the rebels. On tig
twotley crowd the new rulers formally conferred many of the rights of
the landowning gearry of Brit. Three-fifhs of the cultivated area cf
‘Awadh was settled with them in ceturs: for dee regula: paysnent of reve
Hie and assistance in maistaining order in the coaatryside. And British
olicy was now directed! towards ensuring the talt-qdars the wealch, st
(up andl security necessary co full this wole (Pandey 1982: 149)
vi
‘Village social life was entirely subordinate to the politics and inter
esis of the telugdars or zamindars, The intolorance of any kind of
deviance from social norms began at the smallest tnit of social con
aol. The tirade, ot brotherkood, of the jati or caste kept check aad
control over individual behavior, which was further kept in place
by village heads who zealously guarted the complex hierarchical
network of the various biredaris which constituted the village social
onler.

Premchand delineates these village heads, these “guardians of
justice in the village,” with masterly strokes in Godaan, and with the
“pazadic stylization” he so excels in, which he teserves entirely for
these dignitaries and their counterparts in the city

Pandit Nokheram, the agent of the vansinudar’s estate, was a very high
caste brahman. His grandfather had held a high pesition with a local
ruler but them fia laid all his possessions atthe feet of God and become
an ascetic, His father had alo spent his fe singing praises to Rama and
now Nokhicram had inherited that same piery. By dawn he would be
sitting at prayers, and until en would go on writing the name of Rama
‘As soon as he left the presence of God, however, he would throw off all
restraints and let loose venomous thoughts, words and deeds (157).

Another, nore Giee-floating, authotity was the Brahman Datacin:

He was the village troublemaker, sticking his nose inte everyane’s busi
ness. He had never committed a theft—that was too dangerous, But
‘when it came time for the loot to be divided up, he was always present
Soinchow he always managed to get off unscathed, He'd not yer paid a
single pice of rent to the zamindar. When the bailiff showed ap, Daracin
‘would threaten to throw hinwself in the well, kavioy: Nokheram help
less. ¥et Daradin always managed to have mioney to loan cue at inezrest
to the tenants (154-3).

‘Then there is the local Rajputs" the biggest Guiancier was Jhinguri
Singh, who represented a rich moneylendcr in the city” He looked
harmless enough:

Baldi descr stjlvation’ a6 one of a: number of “internally
dialogied sate of Ianguayes” where “che intentions of the fepme—
secting discourse are at elds with the mentors of the tepreiented éiscours,”
Which fighss against chem, depieting'a real word of eject mot by using the r=
presented Langage 2 4 productive pat of view, be tater by using 325 31 €3-
post to destay the represented language” (1981: 363-4)

vii
Joorgoes Singh was siting brushing his testh with a cwig He looked
like a clown—a short, ft, bald dak mar with a long tose anda big
moustache. And he was quite a joker as a wsatter of fact, calling che
village dhe hoine of fs inlaws and thereby assuming, the right to
make disparaping vemarks about all the men a3 brother-in-law or
fathersia-lew, aad about ail the women: 2: sisters-in-law ot mochers-
ow. «Ib business martors, however, he showed 9 atetcy, «
ing the lst pice of incerestand camping cn people's doorsteps until they
proruced the msoncy. (126)

‘And finally the village zecountant:

Lila Patweshwari could alsy he benevolent at umes, Daring the nna
senion he acquired renown by distributing fiee government quinine
and by showing concern for those laid up with fever. He wonld also
arbitrate al kinds of petzy quarrels. And for weddings he was the salva
fon of che poor, loaning out his palanguins and carpets, and tering
thom use his lirge canopy He never mnisied an opportunity to unk
money, but he wonld also aie those he devoured, (155)

He was, he pointed ou:, answerable only to the very bighest:* ‘I'm.
nota servant of the zamiadar or ofa money lender. L serve the royal
government [‘sarkar bled ka naukar’], which rules the whole world
and is the master of horh your zamindar and your moncylender’ ”
(228-9). As the protagonist of the novel—the sinall-time tenant
Hori—acknawledges willingly: “The village council is the voice
oF God, Whatever they think fair must be accepted cheerfully” ”
(158),

But in the India of the early 1920s, even the stusdiest ‘peasant
could be driven to fury aud revolt, though it took a Jot to bring
him to this point

When a peasant rose in revolt ataty time cr place under the Raj,he did
so necessarily and explicitly in violstion of a series of codes which de-
finest is very exisenee as a membe- of chat cclonial, and still legely
setui-Ceudal saciery, For his stcbalternity was materialized by the scruc-
ture of property institutinalized by liv, sanctified by religioa and made
tolerable and even desirablo—by tradition. Ta zebel was indeed to des
‘roy unany’ of those fannhar signs waich he had Isasned ta read and
smunipulate in order to extracta meaning out of the harsh word aroand
bin: andl live wich it, The rik in ‘tasning things upsice down’ ander
condisions was ineeedl so great that he could hardly affued co on-
gage in such a projece in a stare of absenunindodness (Guha 1983; 1}
Premchand’s village is, at this st-ge, not in revolt, though deep dis-
corte: simmers below its surface. It is at all eves faz Gor co
presenting the agricultural idyll, the stable unchenging village
comemsity conjured up by eslomal officials exiy in the ninetcenta
century4Tt pulses with Life, with hope, disappointrasnt, intrigues
and love affairs, Heit and illicit. In the years when there is a good
harvest, Lori, werk bis small trace of laud, prodaces just enough to
feed himself, his wife Dhaniya, and cheir three children; the two
girls, Sora and Rupa, and bis son Gobar,

Amicht all the uctivicy and movement in the villzge, it is Hori
who is the focus of the narrative. [Ze is endlessly compassionate, led
by his own notion of dhanna und nid (righteousness dad siorality).
Itis as if he cacties the mora! weight of this world, 2 weight which
threatens to crus him at several points in the story, His utrerance at
the beginning of the novel, when he is departing to nay his respects
to the landlord, is prophetic: “I'll never reach sixty, Dhaniya’ ”
he said, picking up his stick,“ ‘I'll be gone long before that’ ” (16).
Ashe tells Bkola, the cowherd who will strike a deal with tim and
ive him the cow he so longs te own" ‘My grain was all weighed
out at the village baru, The master took his share and the money-
lender his, leaving me just ten pounds. I carried off che straw and
hhid it during the night, or not a blade would ave heen left mie" "
{36}. As Premchand noted ir relish ir his diary entey of fara
ary Z, 1936:

Lori's debts at the op-ning

Mangrn Shah 60 grown co 309/~
Dalaci 100
Data Din 100
Rent 25
25 + OLS

This det never relinquishes ils stranglehold os Hori and his family,
even the best of mes. Iris litde consolation tha: Hori is act
alone in this fare, Lhe i:scensitication of comaodity production in
this part of she Indian comarryside meant, s Shalid Arce hes pointed

* The one occasion when it doosfezeae ito an adil x when these isa vast
the city Ir becomes ten a picnic set aid the charselers are redhiced 70 the one
A:mensional Or the chenging British visions ard views of the vdhye ard de
policy changes aecompanyi.g <8 Dewey (1972),
S.As ritod in Goyuaiza (L081), Vel, Lp. 214,
ix
‘our, that “the reprocuction of small peasant houschelds came to be
depeadear on the cultivation of sugarcane for usurious dealers”
(1982:
tween the farm calendar and the soutine of rent collection” (Amin
1982: 52},

For one thing, there was the “waat of congruence be

‘he rent is offen seesived by thr landlord in che autamn, some sis
months before the came feu, the time when the tenant receives the greater
parcof the adyauces nn the crop feom the manufacturer. In fart the newt
is, for his own security, Commonly paid by the manufacuuree dlitece to
the landlon! andi deducted fiom the advance to be puid to the cultivator:

thus the lindlord, though me necessarily himself raamafactuter, has it
interest in encouraging the cultivation. By this custom the eenant has ta
harrow in onler to pay rent six months before he can receive anjy return
by sale of the produce.*

As another Settlemecit Officer poinced out in 1917, the peasant was
deep in dec, usually to his own landlord. “He is in the hubit of
borrowing money for seed, tor his rent, even for his subsistence. All
these loans carry 25 per ceut incerest, anal che inerese forms the first
charge on the ensuing crop" (as quoted in Amin 1982: 82)

According to this zeckoning, the tenant ended up paying a more
or less permanent enhancement of 25 per cent on his recorded
zene. As if this was not enough, he was denied his lepitinnate share of
the market price at each stage of production: “within a complex
system of incebtedness and dependence, all avernues market price,
rate of interest, weights and measures und jure of implement of
production—were manipulated by moneyleading traders and re-
finers to flush our this important commodity at as low a price as
posible” (Amin 1982: 72).

Hori, though so deeply entang'ed in this web of debs and social
obligations, longs to own a cow. “For him tke cow was not only au
object of worship aad devotion; it was also the living image of
prosperity. He wanted it to beauty h’e door and to raise the pres
tige of his housz, He wanted people to age the cow at his door and
ask, ‘Whose place is that?” " (53) When be does menage to negoti
ate a deal with hola the cowhenl, and tae cow arrives at his door
step, “There was no sopping the hubbub, After al. the cow had not

© Report of a revenue official in 1870, cited in Amin (1982: 81),
x
come hidden: in a bridal palanquia. How could sein a great event
take place withoue causing 2 commotion? As soon as people heat,
they dropped their work and ran co take a look, This wat no oni
nary Local cow. She'd beet bought from Bho‘ for ciphty rupees!”
(33) He arouses the envy and jealousy of the village and of his
cstzanged brothers. Eedly in the story, che cow is poisoned by his
brother and the downward slide of the family bepins

15 Godaan then primarily a story of :nremituing suffering cold

with unrelenting sententioussess, both of which Premchand has
been understood to represert? Is this what has made the novel a
chisic of modern Hindi literature? Te seems to me tht it is the
‘minense tension. within the novel, between the kind of dlama
Hot tries to fulfil and the pulls—soctai and political away from:
it, that fills the novel with a poignancy and a defiance ta which
Teaders through the deciles have responded.

The movel can be reud as containing, both in the sense of har-
houring and of not allowing co ultimately step out of hounds, two
Kinds of rebellion—vidwit’ in Hindi—and Premchondl uses the term
The first rebel is Hori son Gobar, who falls in love with Jhaniya,
who is of a lower, cowkerd caste: she is Bhola daughter, [He leaves
her pregnant at his parents’ doorstep and rans away to th ity bee
cance he cannot face his parents, but also because ae cannot bear
the yoke of eterna! debt and humiliation. He enjoys the freedom
which comes fom earning money in the city bus is eventually caught
up ia a new Kind of exploitation, diat of the industrial worker in
industriakizing economy, with its own retwerks of exploication
Working in a sugar mill ke looks back to the life of the village:

Gobar had to start out erly in the morning, and by the time he re-
turned home at dusk afer full day's work, there was noc a spark of’
(eft im his body: In the village he'd bees forced to work just a3 hard, but
hie had mevor felt she least bie sired. The work kad been interspersed
with Lnghter and conversation, and she open fieldsand broad skies hal
Seemed to esse the strain, Flowever Juri hit body worked dices, his
‘mine bad remained free. Here, although his body was taxed less, the
hubbub, the speed and the thuntlering noise weighed him down. Thee
yas ako the constant approheasion of rebuke, The workers were all in
the «wun boat ané they owned thcir physical figue and mesval weet

fess fa palra toddy or cheep ligne, Cobar took to drinking alsc. (339)

oa
Tied with the headercss of kis own early success, at one stuge
Gobar snacks his fathers" Thar's wha: comes of heing too good
(261-2); but by the ced of the novel he has learnt to respect the
Signity Hori has zctained th-ougia all his tials. Gohar also sees that
the waditiors fostered in the village—even if he sees through them
aad can to seine extert overcome them—ate ullimnately too strong
for him to try and overcome on behalf of his futher,

The second, more sustained bus also more hopeless, rebellion is
represeated by Hori wife Dhaniya.At the start of the novel dhe has
turned thirty-six, yet she is already grey and aging. But she is full of
insight and courage. This 1s how she is introduced: “Why bother
with all this flattery for land that could not even provide food for
their stomachs? Rebellion kept welling up in her heart—but then a
few harsh words from her lrusband would jolt her back to reality”
(16). Sho resists the agents of colonial law and onder’; she refuses to
pay the police afficer who comes to investigate the killing of their
cow and who promptly allies himself with the village headmen.
he village is thrilled by her defiance. But the village is less thrilled
with her resistance to caste laws, which forbid the alliance of her
son with Jhuniya. Yer she chooses to take in the abandoned Jhuniya:
“Suddenly Dbaziya put her arm around Hon'’s neck. ‘Look, she
pleated, ‘swear to me you won't hit hex She's crying already, I! fate
weren't against her, she'd never inave fillen into all this trouble’ ”
Not conteat with all the trouble this action will get them
cluding the ruiacus fines they will have to pay at rhe behest
of the village council, sive leter takes in Siliya, another abandoned
woman, this time of the Chamar leatherwarking) caste; who has
been cast off by Matad:n, a Brahman hoy. The Chamars have riser
against this caste oppression ‘yy having collectively esfiled Matadin
bby forcing meat into his mous, and ke is so enraged that he now
refuses co look at Siliys. Dhaniya has no pity for hiss,“ ‘Men are all
alike. No one wais upset when Matadin defle:! het, Now the saute
thing’ happened co him, so what's wrong with that? Doesn't Silya’s
vircne count as virtue? He takes a chaaar woman and then makes
tout that he's $0 pions! Haskbu did just the right thing Thar’ ex-
actly the punishment hoodlums ike him deserve. You come home
with ris, Siliya.’” (10) The cuestion is how far this kind of self
willed bebavior will be allowed to go.

xii