Page 296 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

Resisting Colonial Modernity 271

We can, therefore, conclude that Premchand’s opposition to co-
lonialism and modernism based at two different levels. The intense
suffering of the common people and the erosion of the village
communities under colonial rule provided the grounds on which much
of his fictional world was constructed. Here, his empathy with the
sufferers was profound and he wrote extensively on various aspects
of their travails. At another level, however, his identification with
a middle-class nationalism, which was open to several, sometimes
contrary, influences, made him subject to contradictions that he was
unable to overcome and which created fissures in his stance against
colonial modernity.

Note

1. For Gandhi’s antipathy towards the modern state, see Parekh (1989: 74).

References

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