It's the year 1946 in a remote village of Marygunj in Bihar, near the Nepal border. Villagers hear that the authorities are looking for a young man in their community. Baldev, a known nationalist trouble maker is promptly tied and delivered to the police station. The villagers are shocked to learn that the officials wanted to consult Baldev and actually call him Baldevji. In those pre newspaper days in the villages , news travelled at a glacial pace and the villagers did not realise that it's almost fashionable to be a nationalist and a follower of Gandhi baba.This opening act sets up the novel which is a heartbreakingly realistic portrayal of village life in India about the time when the country got its independence.
The book is set in Marygunj, an indigo village named after the young dead wife of a long forgotten british collector. It is a typical village of the time with a few dominant families and many more poor ones. The main strand of the novel is about the arrival in the village of the idealist young doctor to set up a malaria research centre. In the course of his stay he takes care of and falls in love with the daughter of the rich and prominent householder in the village. The resemblance to 'Sachiv ji' and 'Rinky' is not coincidental. It is possible that this is one of the earliest usage of the 'pardesi babu' trope, used in so many old hindi movies and continued in 'Panchayat'. Their love story carries on in the backdrop of the Doctor's work, of the village politics and somewhere in the background, a country called India getting its independence.
The village life that emerges from this book is not Gandhi's romanticized version. It comes across more like the sink of ignorance, casteism and exploitation that Ambedkar saw them as. What hits a 21st century reader first is the abject poverty in which so many villagers lived. The kind of poverty where there are people who have not had a poori or owned a shirt ever in their lives.
Then there is the exploitation. Exploitation of the poor , who are forever in debt - no matter how hard they work. Of women, specially of the lower castes - by their families, by the rich, by the 'religious' gurus. Women who have to provide comfort to some lord who has their father's / husband's signature on a blank piece of paper. Surprisingly the book also shows how some lower caste had more sexual agency then their upper caste peers.
Freedom struggle in the country had very limited impact on the villages till very late, apart from some youths. A few congress programs in the village were largely objects of curiosity. Despite this, Gandhiji or Gandhi baba comes across as someone who was revered as a larger than life figure, almost a saint if not a god.
I always thought that the Congress party lost its idealism in the Indira era, when power shifted after Nehru and first generation of freedom fighters. The book shows how this process started even before Indepence , the moment power was in sight. Idealists in the party were being sidelined or even ridiculed in favour of the merchant classes who had lately become fervent Gandhians. One congress worker remarks that the new district Congress president was the same liquor shop owner whom they picketed a few months back. Actually even today, if we think about it, we can see all around us industrialists who benefitted from their 'support' to the Congress.
This book is an essential read for an understanding of where is the Indian society coming from. It's reputation as one of the most consequential books in Hindi literature, after Premchand's Godan,
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