Page 295 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

270 Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay

by the Socialist–Marxist tradition and the Russian Revolution. Soon,
however, he considered Wilson’s League of Nations as the ‘ray of hope
in the profound darkness permeating the new age of mutual tension and
rivalry, arrogance and materialism’ (Premchand 1962: Vol. 1, 266). In
all these, he did not achieve any logical consistency and does not even
appear fully aware of either of these streams of thought.
Similarly, while putting a reformed Hinduism in opposition to
Christianity and other supposed offshoots of modern civilization, he
little realizes that this conception of a unitary Hinduism is a modern
phenomenon developed under colonial influences and is as much a
modernist/colonial construct as the justification for industrialism (for
a detailed discussion on this theme, see Dalmia and von Stietencron
1995). Moreover, in his enthusiasm to defend Hinduism, he fails to
comprehend and often belittles Christianity. In fact, his criticism of
Christianity is as ill-informed as the denunciation of Hinduism by some
of the Christian missionaries in India. Here, his thoughts are at odds
with those of Gandhi who much admired Christianity and derived much
from it. Premchand’s inadequate, often misleading, understanding of
Christianity and his uncritical defence of Hinduism as a liberal monolith
puts him in the same stream of cultural defenders who often imputed
practically non-existent values to Hinduism and consistently failed to
see its negative sides.
On the other hand, at the village level, his defence of community
against the brutal onslaught of industrialization is more sensitive and
people-oriented. Here, his conceptualization of the people’s religion
as a mix of various tendencies is also more realistic. The arguments
against the abrupt uprooting of rural communities to pave the way
for industrial development also sound more reasonable. So, while the
philosophical peregrinations of the urban elite and their romantic ac-
tivities for national liberation often appear utopian, the desperate fight
of a divided rural community against its erosion is far more credible
and realistic. Thus, while the resistance to industrialism in the text
is rooted in popular culture, the national regeneration project of the
urban elite seems to have predominantly derived from the nostalgia
for an imaginary Hindu past. The romantic escapades of Vinay and
Sophia and the cultural sectarianism of the city-based nationalist elite
point to the Hindu nationalist ideology in the tradition of Bankim and
Vivekanand.