Two Classic Tales of Village India: The Realist Epistemology of Chha Mana Atha Guntha and Godaan

Abstract

If, as the poststructuralists argue, the real cannot be accessed except through texts, then realism, in the sense of an engagement with a mind-independent world, and textuality would appear to be at odds with each other. Such an opposition would, however, be a false one, and it is bred by an outmoded positivist epistemology. The “what” of the narrative, its thematic purpose as well as its wider philosophical and social vision, cannot be narrowly tied to its verbal construction. Granted, the world comes to us in the shape of stories, but I wish to show how some stories write the world in a more realistic way than others precisely by providing a better “epistemic access”¹ to it. This access is, of course, theory mediated and not innocent. The present chapter, concerned with a realist auditing of fiction, will attempt to demonstrate its thesis by reading Fakir Mohan Senapati and Prem-chand from a comparative perspective. Further, it will seek, through this comparative reading, to unravel the differentiation within the tradition of Indian literary realism to which both the authors owe their allegiance.² The texts of choice for this enterprise are bound to be Senapati’s Chha Mana Atha Guntha³ (1897–99) and Premchand’s Godaan⁴ (1936), these being not only the representative novels of the two writers but also the best known exemplars of social realism in the Indian context.⁵