Gulzar

New Delhi, Aug. 2: Doordarshan has decided it will no longer play catch-up with the soaps churned out by private television channels and has opted for radically different fare. Starting on Sunday, it will air a series on Indian classics.

The national broadcaster aims to familiarise viewers with the wealth of literature in all Indian languages and has chosen director-lyricist Gulzar to get the series underway by serialising the works of Munshi Premchand.

The 125th birth anniversary of Premchand, one of the greatest Hindi writers of recent times, was observed last Saturday.

The series on Premchand starts at 9 pm next week with one of his most famous novels, Godaan. The five-hour film will be shown in two parts, concluding on Monday night.

Pankaj Kapoor will play Premchand’s oppressed peasant and his colleague Surekha Sikri the female lead.

Some Premchand short stories — Budhi Kaki, Idgah, Namak ka Daroga and Kafan, among others — will be aired every Sunday. Gulzar will also serialise the novel Nirmala.

The writer’s grandson, Aloke Rai, is happy at the television series. “My grandfather is already well known, some very good stuff has been done on him. But I am happy about the series Doordarshan is planning, I hope it will be a good one, I am looking forward to it,” he said.

The channel’s decision to showcase Premchand’s work comes at a time when a section of Dalits has dubbed him casteist and has demanded that his book Rang Bhumi, now being recommended as supplementary reading for Class XII students, be banned and taken off the reading list.

The president of the Bharatiya Dalit Sahitya Academy has moved Allahabad High Court alleging the novel used casteist words like “chamar”, which are now banned under the Prevention of Atrocities against SCs/STs Act. The Delhi-based academy has threatened to burn some of Premchand’s works.

However, there are Dalits like the celebrated writer Rajendra Yadav who have condemned the furore.

“Not all Dalits are against… Premchand; those who are agitating are… neither writers nor students, they want to take political advantage by creating a foolish controversy,” he said.