Munshi Premchand’s “Kafan” or “The Shroud”^[i] (1936)is the final short story of his vast and renowned oeuvre, comprising almost two hundred and fifty short stories. Its major conflict is centered on the death and final rites of Budhia, the wife of Madho and daughter-in-law of Ghisu, belonging to the chamar^[ii] caste. Sadanand Shahi has categorised “Kafan” within the fourth and final phase of Premchand’s literary style and sensibility, wherein he performed a “stinging critique of various economic, social and cultural aspects of contemporary India” (Shahi 251). This article analyses the textual significance of the titular object, the shroud, as a real, material object in the story with respect to its metaphorical and symbolic portrayal in association with the tendency to critique society in Premchand’s work. To do so, the argument would focus on the institutions of caste and class within the framework of the story, and how these two systems have employed the shroud in the establishment of their narratives. The association of victimization based on caste, class, and patriarchy, in the case of Budhia, will also be explored through the symbol and metaphor of the titular kafan.
 
In Hindu customs, the material object of the shroud is integral to the performance of the deceased individual’s funeral and last rites, as the body is preserved within it and then burnt. It is interesting that the shroud is mentioned for the first time in the story in the second section as follows: “But there was not much time for mourning. They had to arrange the firewood and the shroud” (Premchand 229). The material object then, from the moment of its introduction, is associated with a narrative of social obligation. The act of performing the funeral is privileged in this society over the internalised, intimate, experiential sense of grieving a loss.
 
The futility and burdensome nature of the custom is a running theme in the author’s oeuvre. In “Sadgati”, the affective sympathy and pathos, characteristic of Premchand’s literary sensibility and the genre of realist fiction,^[iii]are evoked through the mistreatment of the untouchable protagonist’s corpse at the hands of the Pandit. However, “The Shroud” consists of protagonists who are much more complex than the utterly victimised and indoctrinated product of Brahmanical hegemonic caste oppression. Therefore, the symbol of the shroud too is layered in its relationship with caste, class, and patriarchy.
 
Budhia, the dead woman, is an absent presence throughout the story, much like the shroud that is to be arranged for her, and that ultimately does not arrive. The story inaugurates with her “writhing in labour pain” and she dies by the end of the first section, unseen and alone, consumed by the same pain (Premchand 225-228). She is arguably the sole figure deserving pity in the story, and the sense of pathos for her is exacerbated since the only speech attributed to her is her cries of pain from within the domestic sphere. Budhia is a figure exploited within the institution of marriage as she performs the duties expected of her and cares for the order of the household, while Ghisu and Madho are “two shameless rascals” (Premchand 226) who shirk labour and responsibilities. Prior to her death, she is neglected to an extent that evokes a sense of bitterness within the reader, as Premchand narrates that “the father and the son seemed to be waiting for her to die so that they could have a good night’s sleep” (226).
 
The quest to acquire a shroud for a dead woman neglected and victimised within her lifetime is infused with bitter irony. In “Sadgati”, the cruelty of Brahmanical oppression through caste is embodied entirely in the figures of the Pandit and his wife. Here however, Ghisu and Madho fabricate lies before Thakur, regarding their dedicated care and provision of medication to Budhia on her deathbed, while they beg for money in order to purchase the titular shroud (Premchand 229). The narrative of unequivocal sympathy for the poor and the caste-oppressed subject is complicated here, and the shroud transforms into a symbol. Budhia is not only an exploited and neglected figure of the patriarchy in her lifetime, but even the event of her death becomes a way for her patriarchal oppressors to feast and drink to their heart’s content. The absence of the shroud can then be seen to symbolize a sense of unceasing depravation for the poor, lower-caste, woman figure.
 
The shroud, as a synecdoche to the event of the funeral, also significantly emphasizes the superficiality in the customs and obligations of a society that establishes, furthers, and thrives on a power differential. The following exchange between Ghisu and Madho voices this critique:

‘What an unjust custom! She who didn’t have tattered rags to cover her body while alive must now have a new shroud.’
‘And it burns to ashes with the corpse.’
‘So it does. Now if we had these five rupees earlier we could’ve brought her some medicine.’ (Premchand 230)

Similarly, in the second section of the story, the futility of revering a dead person, who had been neglected throughout their lifetime, is exposed when the neighbours arrive upon hearing the lament and mutter the “time-worn consolations” (228). These two instances portray how the customs and rituals prescribed within the society revolve around material concerns such as the shroud and appearances, emphasized through the figure of the community that was absent when Budhia was on her deathbed.
 
Sadanand Shahi posits Ghisu and Madho as characters who use shirking and laziness as a “strategy, a maneuver to escape the trap of exploitation” in the United Provinces of 1930s, where Dalit consciousness and movement, along with an organised movement for labour rights, were non-existent (256-257). Upon reading the aforementioned commentary on the futility of the shroud, one may be inclined to believe their unconscious sense of just rebellion. However, Premchand has problematised this seemingly simple assertion by having them claim that they would have provided Budhia with medicines, had they been monetarily able (230). Their negligence, self-centered attention on roasting potatoes for their fulfillment, and Budhia’s cries of pain heard from afar in the text (225-228) have provided enough context to be mistrustful of this claim. Why they did not turn to the Thakur or the community to arrange for her medicines – this question pervades the text through the shroud that never arrives.
 
It is important to note that Madho and Ghisu do believe in the ritualistic significance of the shroud and they are indeed indoctrinated by the metaphysics of karma-based^[iv] transcendence of Hindu mythology. Ghisu’s insistence that Budhia would eventually be provided with a shroud (Premchand 231) and Madho’s confident assertion that Budhia would be a queen in heaven (232), mark the internalised belief system. The absence of the shroud throughout the text, despite this belief system, destabilizes any sense of truth in their previous claims about buying her medicines, had they received timely help from the community. The ultimate victimization, uncontaminated sympathy, and tragic pathos, thus, remain reserved for Budhia through the metaphor of the shroud’s absence, for Madho and Ghisu are presented as patriarchal perpetrators rooted in their own selfish materialism. This is depicted by their fixation on food throughout the story – roasting potatoes while Budhia is in pain (226), nostalgically remembering the lavish feast at Thakur’s wedding (227-228) and indulging in a feast of their own with alcohol at the expense of her shroud (230-232).
 
In his Presidential address to the Progressive Writers’ Association in 1936, titled “Sahitya Ka Uddeshya”, Premchand argued for an aesthetic of literature that was imbued with authorial moral guidance, stating, “Literature can be best defined as a criticism of life. . . It concerns itself with the problems of our life, and such themes as have a social value. . .  All that is ugly or detestable, all that is inhuman, becomes intolerable to such a writer” (185-186). In “Sadgati”, the criticism of caste as institution is associated with pity and pathos for the untouchable body, worked to exhaustion and death by the Pandit who then drags it away from the threshold of his home, still refusing to physically touch it after exploiting the fruit of its labour (Premchand). However, the approach in “Kafan” imbibes within it, a bitter irony and absurdism.
 
As instantiated previously, Ghisu and Madho play patriarchal perpetrators and are materialistic in nature, but they are also the victims of caste. Their economic depravity may be perceived because of their laziness and laidback attitude, which some critics^[v]have seen as the manifestation of Premchand’s bias against their caste, leading him to stereotype and dehumanise them. However, it is in reading “Kafan” alongside “Sadgati” does the underlying argument become clear – hard work and toil will not reward the individual with true social mobility or dignity, as long as one is subdued and contained by the unchanging^[vi]label of caste.
 
The symbol of the shroud is integral to this bitter fixity in caste, for it represents the hegemony of Brahmanical ritual systems and traditions that are exploitative of those in the lower rungs of the caste and varnavyavastha ladder. Their internalised belief in the metaphysics of karma and Hinduism, that have been used to stabilise and perpetrate the narrative of caste, has been discussed previously, but the following passage has a more tender tone towards the protagonists and their psychological subservience to caste: “Madho looked up at the heavens as though he was reassuring the angels of his innocence and said, ‘This is the way of the world. They give thousands of rupees to Brahmins. Who knows whether it brings them rewards in the next world’” (Premchand 230). He comments upon the custom of giving ritual offerings to Brahmins, and the tone seems to be wry when he discusses the otherworldly rewards. But the tragedy of the caste-oppressed victim is revealed in the first line of the passage, as Madho appears to worry about heavens, angels, and his religious obligation to the provision of the shroud and the ritual of the funeral. It is the narrative of punishment and the compensatory logic of metaphysics that serve as instruments of control for the sustenance of caste hegemony. Madho’s need to be absolved of the defiance of the Brahmanical ritual, symbolised by the shroud, represents how the narrative functions in society and ultimately serves to curb any form of caste-based defiance.
 
This containment and helplessness of caste can be seen in the third section of the story, when the authorial commentary, with reference to the merry drinking of Madho and Ghisu after Budhia’s demise, reads:

(“More than the liquor it was the ambience that made them happy. The sorrows of life brought them here and for a while they would forget whether they were dead or alive of something in-between”; translated by Asaduddin; 231-232, 238)

What the translation eludes and the original version of the story emphasises is the pathos of being caught in a limbo between life and death. The reality of the suffering within their existence, rooted in the caste system, is placed within the same realm as death. The transcendental logic and promise of a heavenly reward perpetrated within Brahmanical metaphysics is negated here, as the oppression of caste disallows their condition to be uplifted or empowered. Since the shroud is a material object of containment for the dead, a bitter sense of irony is prevalent in perceiving it as a metaphor of claustrophobia for the penurious untouchable within their lifetime. The claustrophobia, in this text, is experienced by the untouchable protagonists – Madho, Ghisu, and the deceased Budhia – owing to the entrapment of a casteised existence caught between a life of suffering and a death of negligence.
 
Premchand offers a glimpse into what their existence and personalities could have accommodated, had they been not limited within the hegemony and oppression that the nexus of caste and class have allotted them, by having Madho offer the leftovers as charity to a beggar: (“For the first time in his life he experienced the pride and pleasure of drinking and being on a high”; Asaduddin; 232, 239). The virtue and goodness that are socially associated with paying respect to the dead through rituals, are presented as obligatory burdens through the symbol of the shroud, while it is this act of charity to a living, depraved individual that brings heartening contentment to the widower. Premchand appears to be interrogating who the true beneficiary of these rituals is – the narrative of karma and caste, the performers, or the deceased neglected in life.
 
Alok Rai informs that the “destabilizing manoeuvre” at the heart of “the literature of conscience” which aims to alter the moral equilibrium and social order, involves the invention of a “guilty reader” (Rai 267). Toral Jatin Gajarawala too refers to Premchand’s fiction as “idealistic realism”, in analysing the discourse of sympathy prevalent within literature that aims at social reformation (Gajarawala 278). In “Sadgati”, the construction of this guilty reader is aided perfectly by the protagonist (Dukhi), who is the ideal victim of caste and class and he is portrayed only as hard-working and submissive to the exploitative systems and their perpetrators. But Premchand breaks the mould through “Kafan”, as the singular ideal victim supposedly deserving of the guilty reader’s utmost sympathy is an absent-presence, and the readers are left with two complex personalities. However, the limbo between life and death that the shroud represents, is applicable just as much for Madho and Ghisu, as it is for Budhia and Dukhi, by virtue of caste. In not simplifying matters through utter victimization, Premchand thus appears to be maturely and more realistically asserting that perfect victims may not exist in a morally grey society, but caste and class oppression will continue to be the absolute, indefensible villains.
 
 
Works Cited:
 
Ambedkar, B. R. “Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development.” Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, vol. 1, edited by Frances W. Pritchett, Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, 1979, pp. 3-22. Print.

Ambedkar, B. R. “Caste is not just a division of labour, it is a division of labourers.” Annihilation of Caste, Navayana, 2015. Print.

Gajarawala, Toral Jatin. “The Dalit Limit Point: Realism, Representation, and Crisis in Premchand.” Modern Indian Writing in English Translation: A Multilingual Anthology, edited by Dhananjay Kapse, Worldview Critical Edition, 2016, pp. 274-317. Print.

Premchand. “ (Kafan).” Modern Indian Writing in English Translation: A Multilingual Anthology, edited by Dhananjay Kapse, Worldview Critical Edition, 2016, pp. 233-239. Print.

Premchand. “ (Sadgati).” (The Best of Premchand’s Stories), Sahni Publications, 2007, pp. 199-206. Print.

Premchand. “The Nature and Purpose of Literature.” Indian Literature, vol. 29, no. 6 (116), 1986, pp. 184–191. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24159090. Accessed 26 Sept. 2020. Web.

Premchand. “The Shroud.” Modern Indian Writing in English Translation: A Multilingual Anthology, trans. by M. Asaduddin, edited by Dhananjay Kapse, Worldview Critical Edition, 2016, pp. 225-232. Print.

Rai, Alok. “Poetic and Social Justice: Some Reflections on the Premchand-Dalit Controversy.” Modern Indian Writing in English Translation: A Multilingual Anthology, edited by Dhananjay Kapse, Worldview Critical Edition, 2016, pp. 259-273. Print.

Shahi, Sadanand. “Kafan: A Multi-Layered Story.” Modern Indian Writing in English Translation: A Multilingual Anthology, edited by Dhananjay Kapse, Worldview Critical Edition, 2016, pp. 250-258. Print.

Surya, Kavita Nandan. “‘ (‘Kafan’ ke Dalit PaathkiUljhanein).” Modern Indian Writing in English Translation: A Multilingual Anthology, edited by Dhananjay Kapse, Worldview Critical Edition, 2016, pp. 240-249. Print.

 

[i]‘Shroud’ and ‘kafan’ will be used interchangeably throughout the essay to refer to the title of the story, as well as the material object.

[ii]A part of the Dalit community, this group lay outside of the Varna system within India, and its members were subjected to the casteist, discriminative practice of untouchability.

[iii] Toral Jatin Gajarawala and Alok Rai have analysed Premchand’s approach generating sympathy for the otherwise marginalised, impoverished, neglected subject through the mode of realism.

[iv] Dr. Ambedkar refuted any possibility of improving upon caste by criticising the logic of karma-based design within it: “It is based on the dogma of predestination.” He instantiated this using Chapter IX from Manusmriti, which includes the following on karma: “If he be pure, obedient to the higher (castes), mild in speech, without conceit, and always submissive to the Brahmin, he attains (in the next transmigration) a high birth.”

[v] Kanwal Bharti, Sheoraj Bechain, and Omprakash Valmiki are among the scholars who perceive Premchand’s portrayal of the untouchable protagonists as a mockery, a dehumanisation, representative of the stereotype harboured against the Dalit community (Surya 240-249). Alok Rai refers to this as the lack of a “prescriptive militancy”, which has made Munshi Premchand the target for critical scrutiny with respect to Dalit consciousness (Rai 261).

[vi] In 1916, Dr. Ambedkar theoretically asserted the absence of flexibility within the institution of caste, by emphasising that it is founded upon an “unnatural division of labourers into watertight compartments”.