The Child by Preamchand (Short story)

Dhanpat Rai Shrivastava, better known by his pen name Munshi Premchand was an Indian writer famous for his modern Hindi-Urdu literature. He is one of the most celebrated writers of the Indian subcontinent, and is regarded as one of the foremost Hindi writers of the early twentieth century. He began writing under the pen name "Nawab Rai", but subsequently switched to "Premchand". Munshi being an honorary prefix. A novel writer, story writer and dramatist, he has been referred to as the "Upanyas Samrat" ("Emperor among Novelists") by writers. His works include more than a dozen novels, around 250 short stories, several essays and translations of a number of foreign literary works into Hindi.

The story contains various issues of Indian society and psychological aspects of Indian mindset. The story starts with an introduction of an illiterate Brahmin servant “Gangu” who thinks he is the superior among all the servants because he is “Brahmin”. The owner of house is the narrator of the story and he could be Premchand himself. The rigid mentality of Gangu irritates his master again and again but he is not much affected with this kind of behaviour. One day Gangu confesses his love towards a widow named Gomti Devi, and he also marries Gomti, who has betrayed three husbands before her marriage with Gangu. Gomti gave birth to a child, a baby boy just after six months of her marriage with Gangu and Gangu accepted that child as if that was his own child. 

The interesting part of this story is change in the psychology of characters, first Gangu was a rigid Brahmin and was not allowing anyone to disrespect him but when he falls in love with Gomti, he forget everything and marry her. On the other side, the master who was not interested in caste system, he was against that marriage and he was happy when Gomti run away and left Gangu, even when Gangu has shown his child to him, he was taunting Gangu about his child’s birth just in six months. At the end, master has realized that what he was doing was not appropriate because he was an educated man and a writer but he learned a lot from an illiterate Gangu, and then he apologize Gangu and went to meet Gomti.

This story contains Indian society and culture very minutely. We can read and observe that Gangu is an illiterate Brahmin but though he has proud upon his cast as Brahmin. Gomti is a widow and remarriage of widows was a general practice, and the afterlife of widow and exploitation is also mentioned in the story. Issue of poverty in Gangu’s life and his social life is also important in story. The Child is a symbol of love between Gomti and Gangu as well as a symbol of awareness on the part of a narrator.

• Work sites

https://yeshab68.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-child-by-munshi-premchand.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premchand