Premchand's vision of truth and beauty ?

Premchand's vision of truth and beauty ?

Premchand appeared on the literary scene when India’s independence struggle had broken out of the strictly constitutional mould, and mass struggle through mobilisation of the masses was an a accepted fact of our social life.  It was time that someone upstaged the common man in Hindustani literature. With Premchand the common man, especially the peasant, became a hero type. According to Premchand, "Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture. An "ideal beauty" is an entity which is admired, or possesses features widely attributed to beauty in a particular culture, for perfection." The experience of "beauty" often involves an interpretation of some entity as being in balance and harmony with nature, which may lead to feelings of attraction and emotional well-being. Because this can be a subjective experience, it is often said that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There is evidence that perceptions of beauty are evolutionarily determined, that things, aspects of people and landscapes considered beautiful are typically found in situations likely to give enhanced survival of the perceiving human's genes. Truth is most often used to mean in accord with fact or reality, or fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. The commonly understood opposite of truth is falsehood, which, correspondingly, can also take on a logical, factual, or ethical meaning. The concept of truth is discussed and debated in several contexts, including philosophy and religion. Many human activities depend upon the concept, where it is assumed rather than being a subject of discussion; these include science, law, and everyday life. According to one estimate, he created 6,000 characters drawn from towns as well as villages. He was certainly not what is called a docu-novelist but his graphic picture of the contemporary reality can easily pass off as a social document. He can profitably be studied as a social historian. And if one may use an overworked term, his is a poetic truth. Premchand’s study of the social reality convinced him that political independence alone would not liquidate the poverty and concomitant cultural and social backwardness of India, and that the solution lay in the replacement of the existing subaltern economic system with a socialist one dominated by workers and peasants. That necessitated another movement, that for class emancipation, parallel with the movement for political independence