Magic, Madness and Mud: The Progressive Realism of Premchand, Manto and Chughtai

Abstract

This project takes up the question of Progressive Realism through the essays and short stories of three seminal authors: Munshi Premchand, Sa’adat Hasan Manto, and Ismat Chughtai, which circulated in journals during the years immediately preceding and following independence, a period of intense debate about the role of literature regarding the emerging nation. This dissertation explores the ways in which these three authors sought to engage new publics through their work while at the same time complicating some of the most prevalent ideas about nationhood and national belonging. Through close readings of these short forms which made up the majority of social commentary during this period in India, along with the work of critics like Walter Benjamin, Fredric Jameson, Namwar Singh and Jean-Luc Nancy, this project seeks to look beyond the usual commentary on Progressive Literature as for or against leftist propaganda and instead focuses on the ways in which the devices of an innovative and unique realism brought into print social actualities that had never before been expressed, and which continue to have a profound impact on the social and political debates happening in India today.