Unveiling Social Realities: A Complete Review of Premchand's "The Shroud"

Indian well-known novelist Dhanpat Rai Shrivastava, also known by his pen name Munshi Premchand, published The Shroud in 1936. He published The Shroud just a few months before his demise.

In his short story The Shroud, Premchand critiques the social structures, religious hypocrisy, poverty, and indifference towards poverty prevailing in Indian society in the twentieth century. In this article, we will have a closer look at Premchand’s short story The Shroud. Without further ado, let’s begin.

The Shroud

“At the door of the hut father and son sat silently by a burnt-out fire; inside, the son’s young wife Budhiya lay in labor, writhing with pain” (Premchand 92).

The opening lines of the story portray a grim scene; the narrator describes the poor condition of the father and son, who sit outside their rundown hut indifferent to “the son’s young wife Budhiya” writhing in pain inside the hut. This indifference towards Budhiya by both father and son is evident throughout the story, where any hope of successful delivery is extinguished like the burnt-out fire.

Ghisu and Madhav, father and son, are introduced as a family of Chamars, members of the “untouchable” caste, who live their lives idly. They are notorious in their village as slackers and are unemployed, wandering around aimlessly and only looking for work when their bellies ache from hunger. They were also quite the thieves, stealing peas, potatoes, and sugarcane from farms.

Gender Inequality

The callousness of the father-son pair towards Budhiya, who married Madhav a year ago and provided them with food, is prevalent throughout the story. Madhav’s response to Ghisu, when he asks Madhav to go inside and check on his wife, is bone-chilling. The father and son are both waiting for Budhiya to die, for her screams to cease so that they can finally “sleep in peace.”

“If she’s going to die, then why doesn’t she go ahead and die? What’s the use of going to see?” (Premchand 93).

Ghisu and Madhav are very selfish, self-serving, and shameless by nature. After Madhav and Budhiya got married, Budhiya worked hard to provide them with meals. What she gets in return is the men of her family leaving her to die alone facing a hard childbirth. They don’t provide her with medicine, care, or any comfort to relieve her of pain but also take advantage of her death to get money and spend it on ordering a feast.

Poverty and Human Suffering

The author sheds light on poverty and human suffering in The Shroud. He is critical of his characters, Ghisu and Madhav. Their poor condition is a result of their lazy, careless, and indolent nature. The author shows poverty as cyclic in nature, where Ghisu and Madhav spend what little money they get on themselves lavishly and return to being poor. The cyclic nature of poverty traps people in a helpless situation.

The author shows the psychological effect of poverty on his characters. Ghisu and Madhav have a social obligation to buy a shroud for Budhiya however they fail at fulfilling their responsibilities and serve their self-interests. The author states that extreme poverty is responsible for moral and ethical compromises. Ghisu and Madhav’s decision to buy food and alcohol from the money gathered to buy Budhiya’s shroud can be seen as a result of the indifference they faced in society throughout their lives.

In The Shroud, Ghisu and Madhav defend and justify their actions by using twisted logic, saying that Budhiya will surely go to heaven as her death allowed them to eat and drink lavishly. This shows the moral decline and psychological effect of deprivation, as Ghisu and Madhav would rather spend the money on themselves instead of buying a shroud for Budhiya.

The author provides a powerful critique of social structure, inequality, and religious hypocrisy prevalent in his time. Through his characters Ghisu and Madhav, he offers social commentary on the social injustice present in the Indian society of the 1930s. In The Shroud, the narrator is critical of the father-and-son pair and somewhat sympathetic to their plight.

The narrator remarks that Ghisu is a little admirable as he is a cunning trickster who doesn’t let people take advantage of his situation. The narrator says to live in Indian society in the 1930s, you have to be a hardworking peasant who was voiceless, underpaid, and exploited, or a trickster like Ghisu and Madhav.

The author sheds light on the hypocrisy of rich priests or Brahmins who have become frugal with their wealth while, ironically, requiring the poor to become spendthrifts, paying the wealthy handsomely to conduct religious ceremonies. He condemns these Brahmins for looting impoverished people and then going to the “Ganges to wash their sin, and offer holy water in temples” (Premchand 95).

“If she doesn’t go to Heaven, then will those fat rich people go—who loot the poor with both hands, and go to the Ganges to wash away their sin, and offer holy water in temples?” (Premchand 95).

The author uses a satirical tone to critique societal structures and human behavior, particularly in the context of fulfilling societal expectations by performing death rituals for Budhiya. He conveys the irony of using a shroud to cover Budhiya’s body when she’s dead while she didn’t even get the chance to cover her body using rags in her lifetime. Meanwhile, the money Ghisu and Madhav get for her burial service is instead used to buy plenty of food and alcohol.

“What a bad custom it is that someone who didn’t even get a rag to cover her body when she was alive, needs a new shroud when she’s dead” (Premchand 96).

Ghisu and Madhav are responsible for their conditions as well as victims of the unequal social and economic structures in Indian society. The narrator comments playfully that they can be ascetics for the way they live simply without any possessions, though their mindset is further away from achieving enlightenment or purity.

Conclusion

The Shroud is a timeless short story that reveals the cracks in our society’s social structure. Premchand insightfully highlights the uncomfortable truth of poverty. Poverty is not only about living without material comforts; it also has a deep psychological effect that leads to moral decline, dwindling relationships, and hopelessness.

The story sheds light on the hypocrisy of religious figures, social injustice, moral dilemmas, and society’s apathy towards the marginalized. The author criticizes a society that is indifferent to the plight of the poor, stripping them of their dignity. It provides a wake-up call to stop normalizing human suffering and supporting the corrupt systems that are responsible for Ghisu and Madhav’s plight.

If you’re interested in reading the short story “The Shroud,” you can read the story here. If you want to read other reviews, click here to read the review of William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper.”

Works Cited:
Premchand. The Shroud. Translated by Frances W. Pritchett, Oxford University Press, 2003.