NOTE 71 convinced of Bolshevik beliefs.)5S Prem Ghand is one of those rare writers who has drawn a clear picture of an epochal consciousness. His literature is the historical evidence of the rise and decline of an epoch, and of its different political, economic and social processes. Not only does he have a feeling of sympathy with the exploited and oppressed masses, but he also shows a purposive hatred and indignation at the exploiting classes, and portrays the development of the class struggle in rural India. He even searches for the causes of this state of affairs on the ideological level, as a result of which, over the years, the goal of a society free from exploitation takes shape and becomes more and more firmly rooted in his work. In Prem Ashram he states, ^My belief is that man must live by his labour. No one has the right to make the earnings of others his means of of existence"6. This view is not accidental but one that runs like a red thread through all his political novels. Even at the very beginning, his characters display a vehement opposition to exploitation and injustice. Indians Freedom Road A society free from exploitation meant for him the government of workers and peasants, and its model was the system established in Soviet Russia after the October Socialist Revolution which left a deep and indelible impression on PremChand. In it he saw the development path for India, the solution to the problems of peasantry and the oppressed masses. In Prem Ashram which was his first political novel, the peasant revolutionary Balraj expresses the view that one day in this country too, a panchayat of workers and peasants would come to power. This dream was shared by the author. He challenges his reader by crying out: You people laugh at peasants as though they are of no consequence and are fit only to be the bondsmen of landlords; but the paper I get tells me that in Russia peasants rule over the state and they do as they please. Near Russia is another country, Bulgaria, and only recently the peasantry removed their king from his throne and have set up a government of workers and peasants.7 The conception of a society without exploitation became more far-reaching and clear in Prem Chand's writing with the passage of time. To him ^self-determination*5 meant more than replacing Gyan with Govind,8 and he said so. His swaraj did not mean power for John Sevak, Raja Mahendra, moneylender Samarkant who courted martyrdom by having his nails cut, the self-styled patriot Rai Arnar Pal Singh and the nationalist industrialist Khanna. It was meant to liberate and accord due human diginity to Manohar, Balraj, Sur Das, Devi, Goodar, Munni, Saloni, Hori, Gobar and Dhania, representatives of the poor and oppressed masses of India. Prem Chand saw liberation of the peasantry in the destruction of