Caste Configuration and Social Equations in

CASTE CONFIGURATION AND SOCIAL EQUATIONS
IN PREMCHAND’S GODAN (THE GIFT OF A COW)

 

The word ‘caste’ comes from the Portuguese word ‘casta’ meaning ‘breed or race.’ The Portuguese who came to India in 1498 found to their surprise a perplexing system of social stratification and discrimination. Finding it difficult to explain this social phenomenon to the people at home these seafarers called it ‘casta.’ Caste as it obtains today in India seeks to stratify and hierarchise society in socio-economic terms and varying degrees of prestige or the lack of it. Caste is inherited at birth and clings on to a person lifelong. It may be possible to convert to a different religion but not to a different caste. Another manifestation of caste is that shades of it can be found among people who got converted to other religions long ago. For example, it is practised among the Roman Catholics of Goa and Mangalore centuries after their conversion to Catholicism. It may be said therefore that caste is a cultural phenomenon to some extent. In fact at the micro level each caste has a distinct sub-culture and practices of its own and thus constitutes a religious formulation.

However, caste is a pernicious system since it seeks to build artificial walls among the people belonging to the same religion and race. Furthermore it is blatantly prejudiced in favour of the upper castes and against the lower castes thus curbing their legitimate rights. The mainstream dalits are the worst sufferers of this hated system. In the Varna system they are supposed to belong to none of the four Varnas. In the words of Oliver Mendelsolm and Marika Vicziany, “There is [...] something of a ‘hard bar’ separating [the so called] untouchables from the rest of Indian society.”¹ For ages they have been ritually segregated, denied basic amenities of life and meted out inhuman treatment. Even to this day the upper caste people seem to socialize more readily with the people of other religions rather than with their co-religionists belonging to the lower castes.

In spite of tremendous advancements on the philosophical, political and technological fronts that the caste system should survive in India defies all logic. The Hindus, who showed a remarkable alacrity to adapt to the new conditions of life and took to changes with a ready willingness, show the aberration of their psyche by holding on to this system.
Social maladies often get reflected in literature. Premchand was one of the few writers who artistically responded to the vexed question of caste and its evil manifestations in the Indian society. He is the most prominent of the Hindi novelists of the 20th century. It was mainly due to his efforts that a new social awareness and a sense of purpose entered Hindi fiction. He wrote against social injustice and hypocrisy and against the ill treatment routinely meted out to the people belonging to the lower castes, especially the dalits, in the rural areas. His novels Premashram, Seva-Sadan, Sapt-Saroj, Sangram, Rang Bhoomi, Gahan, Nirmala and especially Godan testify to his commitment to the common man and to the depiction of his many woes, that too in a language easily understood by common readers. In away, Premchand was a utopian idealist and is often accused of suggesting idealistic solutions to problems requiring drastic social and legislative measures. But he never carried his idealism to its limits. He knew how to wed ideology to actual life.

In this article however I will confine myself to how Premchand portrays the caste configuration and social equations in his most famous and last published novel Godan², translated into English as Godan by Jai Ratan and P. Lal and as The Gift of a Cow by Gordon Roadarmel. The rural society depicted in this novel is vertically divided along caste lines. Standing at the top of the social ladder are the upper castes represented by the Zamindar Raisahib, the Brahmin pandit Datadin, his son Matadin, Patwari Lala Pateshwari, money- lender Jhinguri Singh and pandit Nokheram who is the representative of the Raisahib. Next to them are the farming and artisan castes represented mainly by the hero of the novel, the quintessential Indian farmer Hori Ram and his family of two brothers, wife Dhania, son Gobar and two young daughters. And at the bottom of the ladder are the Chamars, the dalits represented in the novel mainly by Silia. These people are governed by the philosophy of the caste they belong to, the first set blatantly exploiting the latter two in various forms—economic, social and even sexual.

The social structure of the village is so rigid that it is almost impossible to break the caste barriers by, for example, forging marital alliances with people of different castes. This principle applies equally forcefully even if it is Raisahib’s son. This young man is rebellious by nature, albeit not necessarily inspired by any idealistic motives but idiosyncratically so. He runs away with Dr. Malti’s younger sister Saroj and marries her. Raisahib is greatly disturbed at this development and contemplates murder but only to be eventually prevailed upon by good sense. Hori’s son Gobar falls in love with Jhunia of the neighbouring village. Jhunia does not belong to his caste and she is a widow on top of it. However, Gobar has no strength of will to stand his ground and face the consequences by living with her in the village. He leaves Jhunia in the care of his parents and runs away to Lucknow. Hori and Dhania initially hesitate to admit Jhunia into their home but their goodness wins over the social prejudice and they begin to treat her as their own daughter. For this act of kindness—which is interpreted by the villagers as an outrage and by her father Bhola as a blot on his honour—they are terribly ostracized and excommunicated by the village panchayat. He finally gets readmitted to the caste fold after paying heavily for it.
However this same panchayat which has excommunicated the defenceless Hori and reduced him to a pauper by obliging him to part with all his possessions, does not find fault with the Brahmin Matadin who carries on an affair with the Chamari girl Silia. It finally takes Silia’s people to teach him a lesson. In a rare show of dalit power they force a bone down the throat of the pandit and his Brahmanical purity is permanently defiled. It is interesting to note here that in case of this Brahmin the caste purity is dependent wholly on the food habits and external marks of appearance rather than on any inner samskaras. Having lost his caste as a result of eating beef Matadin is treated like an untouchable in his own house. He spends enormous amounts of money on purification rites and even eats cow dung to gain readmission to the priestly caste but all to no avail. This experience in addition to a bout of malaria forces him to overhaul his outlook on life. Suffering ennobles him and he gains much in stature and accepts Silia as his wife. He goes to live with her in her hut. The priestly profession is no more attractive to him. He prefers to be a farmer or even a cobbler to enjoy the love of the people who really matter to him than to live like a Brahmin being despised every minute by his own people. His self-centredness and caste pride yield place to self-sacrifice and love.

The question, which arises here, is: isn’t it too much to expect an orthodox Brahmin to have such a radical change of heart? In answer to this it may be said that Premchand believed in the redeeming power of love and in the transformative faculty of the young people. He seeks to reinforce basic human values such as love in this novel. He does not view premarital or extramarital sexual relations as immoral if they are sanctified by love. Silia loves Matadin deeply and by the power of her love she brings about a change for the better in him. Matadin is a young man, and unlike his father and other older people, he does not seem to hold rigid views. Premchand thus suggests through the various inter-caste marital/sexual alliances in The Gift of a Cow that the solution to the caste problem lies in inter-caste marriages and the harbingers of this change are the young people.

Notes
1. Oliver Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany, The Untouchables: Subordination, Poverty and the State in Modern India (Cambridge UP, 1998).
2. Premchand, The Gift of a Cow, trans. Gordon Roadannel (1968). This text has been used throughout.