Biographical writing does not have much stand in India as it is in west. In the preface of the original text Rai laments the absence of good biographies in Hindi. He holds the view that this work should have been done by someone else and much earlier. He writes, “In all the developed countries the genre of biography writing has made considerable advance. But our language Hindi is famished in this respect. Either we don’t know what good biographical writing is or we have an idee fixe in our mind that it is not a creative genre.
Or else fear, just fear of the impediments in the way’. He then goes on to say that almost all the writers and scientist and artists have more than one biography written on them. He asserts that biographical writing is no less creative than of the novel. In the similar vein, Ramchandra Guha in his essay ‘Why South Asian don’t write good biographies’ he says, “we know how to burn our dead with reverence or bury them through neglect but not to evaluate, judge and honour them.’ (Himal South Asian, October, 2002). He says that the reason that the art of biography writing remained undeveloped is the Indian tendency either to eulogize a person or condemn him/her completely.
It should be understood that biographical writing is an amalgamation of both historical facts and esthetics of literature, which makes it one of the most difficult writing genre. It is important that the biographer should be sympathetic to the person he/she is writing about but at the same time he/she must not be blind and should be able attain a critical attitude where required. The idea should be to present the complete picture of the life of the person and world around him/her. And that is why the biography written by Rai is considered to be the masterpiece in the genre of biographical writing.
Rai’s biography of Premchand brings the author as a person of extraordinary talent and fervor for social cause but still a simple and humble man at heart. At the beginning of the introduction of the biography Rai uses three anecdotes to stress the utter simplicity of Premchand even after being established as a successful writer. The most famous example of his simplicity is the photograph in which we see him seating on a chair wearing dhati and kurta and canvas shoes. It is clear that the shoe of his left leg is torn and his toes can be seen protruding. A well-known Hindi satirist, Hari Shankar Parasi has even written a piece on this photograph called Premchand ke Phate Voote,
To say that Rai relation with Premchand has affected his writing would be an accusation which Rai does not deserve. Here is no doubt that Rai has drawn the life of the author with a complete objective stance without getting involved in it subjectively. One example is in the episode wherein he deals with the charges of plagiarism against Premchand for Rangbhoomi. Here, we see that he does not try to defend Premchand at all, rather he tries to bring the entire controversy as it was.
Another instance of this objectivity is in the Rai’s criticism of Premchand’s obsession with the idea of acquiring his own press. He says that Premchand’ financial condition was not strong enough to support this venture but still he put everything on stake to support it, which was not likely to succeed. The entire biography is filled with such instances where we can literally witness the objectivity retained by the Rai while putting his father’s life on the pages.
Some of the distinctive features of Rai’s biography of Premchand are:
(a) His graphic presentation of Premchand’s transition from the reader of magic and fairy tale to a writer of social cause.
(b) His style is unaffected and unhurried.
(c) The presence of humour.
(d) The author’s readiness to reflect and soliloquize on his own behalf as well, at times, his subjects.
(e) The objectivity maintained by the biographer throughout the biography.
(f) Rai’s style to produce the evidence first and then draw the conclusion from it.
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