Prem Chand

▪ Indian author

pseudonym of  Dhanpat Rai Srivastava  

born July 31, 1880, Lamati, near Vārānasi, India

died Oct. 8, 1936, Vārānasi

      Indian author of novels and short stories in Hindi and Urdu who pioneered in adapting Indian themes to Western literary styles.

      Prem Chand worked as a teacher until 1921, when he joined Mohandas K. Gandhi's Noncooperation Movement. As a writer, he first gained renown for his Urdu-language novels and short stories. Except in Bengal, the short story had not been an accepted literary form in northern India until Prem Chand's works appeared. Though best known for his works in Hindi, Prem Chand did not achieve complete fluency in that language until his middle years. His first major Hindi novel, Sēvāsadana (1918; “House of Service”), dealt with the problems of prostitution and moral corruption among the Indian middle class. Prem Chand's works depict the social evils of arranged marriages, the abuses of the British bureaucracy, and exploitation of the rural peasantry by moneylenders and officials.

      Much of Prem Chand's best work is to be found among his 250 or so short stories, collected in Hindi under the title Mānasarovar (“The Holy Lake”). Compact in form and style, they draw, as do his novels, on a notably wide range of northern Indian life for their subject matter. Usually they point up a moral or reveal a single psychological truth.

      Prem Chand's novels include: Premashram (1922; “Love Retreat”), Rangabhūmi (1924; “The Arena”), Ghaban (1928; “Embezzlement”), Karmabhūmi (1931; “Arena of Actions”), and Godan (1936; The Gift of a Cow).

* * *