“Prem Chand’s novels are filled with all kinds of powerful characters from all levels of society". Support the statement by giving suitable examples.
PREM Chand’s novels are filled with all kinds of powerful characters drawn from all levels of society. In his novels, we meet aristocrats and landlords, middle class peasants and landless labourers, middle class professionals and people from the margins of society. The women characters are strong individuals specially those who come from the lower classes and are not modernised. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Prem Chand rejected the nostalgic obsession with ancient histoiy. Instead, his novels look towards the future without forgetting the importance of the past.
Drawn from various strata of society, Prem Chand’s characters create a community based on domestic values. The central character of his novel ‘Rangbhoomi’ Surdas is a visually impaired beggar from so called untouchable caste. The very act of choosing such a person as the hero of a novel is significant. It makes the lives of the most oppressed section of society as worthy of literary reflection. We see Surdas struggling against the forcible takeover of his land for establishing a tobacco factory. As we read the story we wonder about industrialisation and its impact on society and people.
‘Godan’ published in 1936 remains his best known work. It is an epic of Indian peasantry. The novel tells the moving story of Hori and his wife Dhania- a peasant couple. Landlords, moneylenders, priests and colonial bureaucrats - all these, who hold power in society - form a network of oppression, rob their land and make them into landless labourers yet Hori and Dhania retain their dignity to the end