SEVASADAN
By Munshi Premchand,
Oxford, Rs 325

Sevasadan is a moral tale, a critique of turn-of-the-century Indian society and its hypocrisy regarding sexuality. One would have expected such issues to have lost some of its flavour (the book was first published in 1918). But the furore in Mumbai over beer bars and their nautch girls has clearly shown that an issue seldom dies a full death in conservative India.

Premchand supports social reform. He would rather see the locations of pleasure transferred to somewhere comfortably away from the city. But he avoids becoming a didactic standard-bearer of contemporary morality. He allows his characters to speak up and speak for themselves.

Even if he does take the side of reformers, he does not let his beliefs stifle the voices of the contenders. By preserving the sense of polyphony within the novel, he manages to make its message clear without ever impinging on the individuality of the characters, whose characterization make for a fine period study of the early 20th century society. Yet the novel never becomes a tool to serve the author?s agenda. Which makes the book overall a good read.

Suman, the protagonist of the novel, is the daughter of a village sub-inspector and she has been brought up in a somewhat well-off family. Krishnachandra, her father, is known as an extremely fair police officer, impossible to bribe.

Trying to marry off Suman, however, proves to be a big problem. Grooms must be bought with a hefty dowry, and Krishnachandra, unable to find a way out, accepts a bribe for the first time in his life. It proves to be a crucial error. His inexperience with the darker side of the system dooms his chances of getting away with the money. He gets caught and receives a jail sentence, which effectively ruins the family?s chance of living respectably.

The rest of the story, more or less, hinges on the life of Suman, who is married off to Gajanand, a poor but religious man from the city. Soon there is mutual misunderstanding and the marriage turns sour. Late in returning home one day from a musical soir?e at a friend?s house, Suman is turned out of the house by Gajanand. A derelict Suman is left with no choice but to live a life of sin. She becomes a courtesan.

The story of Suman is akin to Thomas Hardy?s novel, Tess of D?Urbervilles. Suman, like Tess, is a victim of social injustice. The events that lead to Suman?s pitiful state would, generally, not seem sufficient excuse in the eyes of contemporary society. But Premchand differs. He frames a reformative path on which to guide back the wayward into respectable society.

Society deals with its aberrations harshly. It discards and forgets. But not so in this novel. Set in a time which itself was witness to massive social changes, it takes up the issue of the marginalized and shows ways in which the problem might be dealt with. Premchand sees to it that the fallen woman, at least on the textual plane under his authorial control, does not remain forever fallen.

His primary apology for the fallen is that they are driven to sin due to the compulsions of society, not out of individual choice. A romantic view, no doubt, but which serves his immediate cause. The difficulty which the author encounters in dealing with the matter of sexuality and pleasure is apparent from the way the novel is delicately guided into a structured state of social equilibrium.

The translation has been done by Snehal Singavi, who has done a good job in preserving the feel and flavour of the original language. However, there are a few printing errors in the book which does injustice to the reputation of the publisher. The introduction to the book written by Vasudha Dalmia provides the novel?s social background.