64 Facts About Premchand

Premchand was a pioneer of Hindi and Urdu social fiction.

Premchand was one of the first authors to write about caste hierarchies and the plights of women and labourers prevalent in the society of the late 1880s.

Premchand 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.

Premchand published his first collection of five short stories in 1907 in a book called Soz-e-Watan.

Premchand's works include more than a dozen novels, around 300 short stories, several essays and translations of a number of foreign literary works into Hindi.

Munshi Premchand was born on 31 July 1880 in Lamhi, a village located near Banaras, and was named Dhanpat Rai.

Premchand's ancestors came from a large Chitraguptavanshi Kayastha family, which owned eight to nine bighas of land.

Premchand's grandfather, Guru Sahai Rai, was a patwari, and his father, Ajaib Lal, was a post office clerk.

Premchand's mother was Anandi Devi of Karauni village, who probably was his inspiration for the character Anandi in his "Bade Ghar Ki Beti".

Premchand learned Urdu and Persian from a maulvi in the madrasa.

Munshi Premchand felt isolated, as his elder sister Suggi had already been married, and his father was always busy with work.

Premchand heard the stories of the Persian-language fantasy epic Tilism-e-Hoshruba at a tobacconist's shop.

Premchand took the job of selling books for a book wholesaler, thus getting the opportunity to read a lot of books.

Premchand learnt English at a missionary school and studied several works of fiction, including George W M Reynolds's eight-volume The Mysteries of the Court of London.

Premchand composed his first literary work at Gorakhpur, which was never published and is lost.

The girl was from a rich landlord family and was older than Premchand, who found her quarrelsome and not good-looking.

Premchand managed to pass the matriculation exam with second division.

Premchand then sought admission at the Central Hindu School but was unsuccessful because of his poor arithmetic skills.

Premchand then obtained an assignment to coach an advocate's son in Banaras at a monthly salary of five rupees.

Premchand stayed in Kanpur for around four years, from May 1905 to June 1909.

Premchand visited his village, Lamhi, during the summer vacation but did not find the stay enjoyable because of a number of reasons.

Premchand did not find the weather or the atmosphere conducive to writing.

In 1906, Premchand married a child widow, Shivarani Devi, who was the daughter of a landlord from a village near Fatehpur.

The step was considered to be revolutionary at that time, and Premchand faced a lot of social opposition.

In 1905, inspired by nationalist activism, Premchand published an article on the Indian National Congress leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale in Zamana.

Premchand criticised Gokhale's methods for achieving political freedom and instead recommended adoption of more extremist measures adopted by Bal Gangadhar Tilak.

Premchand's first published story was "Duniya ka Sabse Anmol Ratan", which appeared in Zamana in 1907.

In 1909, Premchand was transferred to Mahoba and later posted to Hamirpur as the Sub-deputy Inspector of Schools.

Premchand became the Assistant Master at the Normal High School, Gorakhpur.

Premchand was an enthusiastic reader of classics in other languages and translated several of these works into Hindi.

In 1919, Premchand obtained a BA degree from Allahabad University.

In March 1930, Premchand launched a literary-political weekly magazine titled Hans, aimed at inspiring the Indians to mobilise against the British rule.

Premchand then took over and edited another magazine called Jagaran, which, too, ran at a loss.

In 1931, Premchand moved to Kanpur as a teacher at the Marwari College but had to leave because of differences with the college administration.

Premchand then returned to Banaras and became the editor of the Maryada magazine.

Premchand briefly served as the headmaster of the Kashi Vidyapeeth, a local school.

Premchand arrived in Bombay on 31 May 1934 to try his luck in the Hindi film industry.

Premchand had accepted a script writing job for the production house Ajanta Cinetone, hoping that the yearly salary of would help him overcome his financial troubles.

Premchand stayed in Dadar, and wrote the script for the film Mazdoor.

Premchand himself did a cameo as the leader of labourers in the film.

Meanwhile, Premchand was beginning to dislike the non-literary commercial environment of the Bombay film industry, and wanted to return to Banaras.

Premchand ultimately left Bombay on 4 April 1935, before the completion of one year.

Himanshu Roy, the founder of Bombay Talkies, tried to convince Premchand to stay back but failed.

Premchand was elected as the first President of the Progressive Writers' Association in Lucknow in 1936.

Premchand died on 8 October 1936, after several days of sickness and while still in office.

Godaan, Premchand's last completed work, is generally accepted as his best novel and is considered one of the finest Hindi novels.

Also, unlike Tagore and Iqbal, Premchand never travelled outside India, studied abroad or mingled with renowned foreign literary figures.

In 1936, Premchand published "Kafan", in which a poor man collects money for the funeral rites of his dead wife but spends it on food and drink.

Premchand's last published story was "Cricket Match", which appeared in Zamana in 1938, after his death.

Premchand is considered the first Hindi author whose writings prominently featured realism.

Premchand's novels describe the problems of the poor and the urban middle-class.

Premchand's works depict a rationalistic outlook, which views religious values as something that allows the powerful hypocrites to exploit the weak.

Premchand used literature for the purpose of arousing public awareness about national and social issues and often wrote about topics related to corruption, child widowhood, prostitution, feudal system, poverty, colonialism and on the Indian independence movement.

Premchand started taking an interest in political affairs while at Kanpur during the late 1900s, and this is reflected in his early works, which have patriotic overtones.

Premchand did not specifically mention the British in some of his stories because of strong government censorship but disguised his opposition in settings from the medieval era and foreign history.

Premchand was focused on the economic liberalisation of the peasantry and the working class and opposed rapid industrialisation, which he felt would hurt the interests of the peasants and lead to the oppression of the workers.

Premchand believed that social realism was the way for Hindi literature, as opposed to the "feminine quality", tenderness and emotion of the contemporary Bengali literature.

Premchand was commemorated with the issue of a special 30-paise postage stamp by India Post on 31 July 1980.

An Archive Centre in the name of Munshi Premchand has been established at the Central University Jamia Millia Islamia.

Premchand wrote over three hundred short stories and fourteen novels, many essays and letters, plays and translations.

Many of Premchand's works were translated into English and Russian after his death.

Several of Premchand's stories have been published in a number of collections, including the 8-volume Mansarovar.

Premchand realises that a loveless marriage is just like prostitution, except that there is only one client.

Heera Moti, a 1959 Indian Hindi-language film directed by Krishan Chopra, was based on Premchand's "Do Bailon ki Katha".