Premchand

The Story

Born Dhanpat Rai in 1880, Premchand grew up in poverty and began writing early, in Urdu, before adopting Hindi as his language. His first collection of stories was burned by the British for its sedition — a sign of how directly he spoke of his times — and he was forced to write under the pen name Nawab Rai until he settled on Premchand.

His novels — Sevasadan, Nirmala, Gaban, and above all Godaan — explored the life of the people with a compassion that no writer of his age matched. His hero Hori, the peasant of Godaan, is one of the great characters of world fiction, and his short stories — 'Kafan', 'Idgah', 'Shatranj ke Khiladi' — are perfect in their art and their heartbreak.

He was also a journalist and a filmmaker — he wrote the first Hindi talkie's story — and he served the Hindi language as its greatest modern champion. He died in 1936, exhausted by work and sorrow, and his funeral was one of the largest in the Hindi heartland — the people burying the man who had written their lives.