NOTE 75 poor and swallow them up.'20 Nor is the state apparatus sacrosanct. Prem Chand puts his views across in the words of Shanti Kumar, a college lecturer, in Karmbhumi, the novel inspired by the Rai Bareilly peasant upsurge led by Baba Ramachandra: ^Government is not necessary. It is only an organization of educated people to keep the poor in submission, and they call it government. Remove the difference between the rich and the poor and the government is finished!"2 l The Contrasts Thus we see that Prem Chand never compromised on the issue of classless society by covering up the contradictions between the rich and the poor,, whether in his period of idealism, ^idealistic realism5 or socialist realism. That is why we find his world view becoming sharper and even more uncompromising in his later writings which, without any label, can be regarded as of the people and for them. - Because they are drawn directly from the peasantry, the workers in Prem Chand's novels retain their peasant characteristics but the strike movement of the late 1920s and 30s finds an echo in Godan, where Gobar, in spite of all his peasant opportunism, displays a heroic working-class attitude when he takes part in a strike and is severely wounded while defending his trade-union leader, Mirza Khurshed.22 But the failure of the strike movement in Godan was the result of an opportunist trade-union leadership and not for any lack of fighting spirit of the working class. This is eminently brought out in Mirza Khurshed^s totally frivolous attitude to the trade-union movement, which is merely a diversion for him: after the failure of the sugar mill workers' strike, he goes on to form a drama group of prostitutes.aa This turn-about should be regarded as a severe indictment of revisionist and economist practices of an opportunist leadership of the trade-union movement in U P and not as an attack on the fighting capacity of the working class which comes off with flying colours, as exemplified by Gobar. K P SINGH 1 Prem ChancPs major writings and their dates ofpublibation: Seua Sadan (1918), Prem Ashram ('1920), Kaya Kalp (1925), Ranj Bhumi (1927), Gabon (1930); Karmbhumi (1932), Godan (1936). 2 Sachi Rani Gurtu ("ed.), Prem Chand Aur Gorki 1955, p 26 8 Prem Ashram, Saraswaii Press, Allahabad, undated, p 227. 4 Discussion with the Marathi writer T Tikekar, in Rajeswar Guru, Prem Chand ek Adhyan, 1958, p 101. c Amrit Rai, Kalam ka Sipahi, 1962, p 202. 6 Prem Ashram, op cit., p 164. 7 Ibid., p 43. 8 The short story Ahuti in Kafan aw Any a Kahaniyan, 1956, p 45. 9 Rajeswar Guru, op. cit., p 101. 10 Nand Dularc Bajpai, Hindi Sahitya Biswin Shatabdl, 1958, p 88.