PROBASHI- A Cultural News Magazine Volume 2 Issue 2 | Page 21

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Munshi Premchand : Battles in Howrah

Munshi Premchand: Battles in Howrah
Munshi Premchand, one of India’s most prolific author remains largely forgotten including in his home state of Uttar Pradesh. However
at a house in a small residential lane in Howrah near Kolkata, Munshi Premchand is remembered and revered. And leading this is a
couple Shri Rakhal Chandra Chowdhury and Smt. Shila Chowdhury in their seventies, who have dedicated their whole life and their
savings in keeping the legacy of Premchand alive. West Bengal has no dearth of literary giants, the Chowdhury’s had a choice of
luminaries like Rabindranath Thakur, Bankimchandra, Michael Madhusudan , Saratchandra and the likes to emulate and revere.
However how and why this Bengali couple decided to learn Hindi and translate most of Munshi Premchand’s work in Bangla is a
beautiful story, a story of love for literature and its power to transcend boundaries of geography, culture and time. Probashi spoke to
this couple and was humbled by the lifelong dedication for the cause of getting Munshi Premchand his due despite heavy odds. Munshi
Premchand once said लगन
न
| (Dedication does not care about the thorns strewn on the path); the Chowdhury
couple is an example.

At the annual Kolkata Book Fair,
amidst brilliantly merchandised stalls
of big publishing houses, every year
one finds tucked away in the corner a
small rather non descript stall of Yuva
Prakashani , a publishing house which
largely brings out translation of
Munshi Premchand’s work in Bangla.
You will only see a couple of people
there, no neon signs or posters of the
latest releases or salesmen doing hard
sales talk. Instead you find the
complete titles of one of India’s best
authors stacked and an encyclopaedia
of information on Munshi Premchand
from people manning the stall - Smt
Shila Chowdhury or her daughter
Surma Chowdhury (Mukherjee)
It is indeed surprising that when the
world has almost forgotten this gifted
author, he puts up a spirited battle in
Kolkata. Lieutenants in this battle
have been two extraordinary
individuals who have given a life time
for the cause of keeping the legacy of
Premchand alive. They are Shri Rakhal
Chowdhury and his spouse Smt Shila
Chowdhury, residents of Howrah in
the suburbs of Kolkata.
The life experiences and exposure
prepared this couple for this cause.
Shri Chowdhury crossed over the
India border from Comilla District
(now in Bangladesh) post partition of
India, as a 9 year old orphan. His
uncle got him admitted to the
Aukland Orphanage House, Kolkata.

Shri Rakhal Chandra Chowdhury and Smt Shila Chowdhury, a lifetime dedicated
to Munshi Premchand

As luck would have it, the
orphanage house sent some of the
children in 1955 to Anand Niketan,
Wardha, a school setup by
Mahatma Gandhi under his Nai
Talim educational experiment. The
medium of teaching at Anand
Niketan was in Hindi, and it is here
that
Shri
Rakhal
Chandra
Chowdhury got introduced to the
Hindi literary figures of whom
Premchand stood out for this
teenage boy. It was here in Wardha
that Shri Chowdhury read the
complete
works
of
Munshi
Premchand. At Wardha Shri
Chowdhury, then in his late teens,
attended the Hindi Sammelan in
1960, where discussion cantered on
translation of Hindi Literary Works
into other Indian vernacular
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languages. The idea stuck, and Shri
Chowdhury, then a young man
initiated his work to translate Munshi
Premchand’s short stories into
Bangla. It started out of reverence
for the author; publication of these
translations was to happen many
years later.
1n 1963 Shri Chowdhury joined as a
faculty at the Shibpur Deenobondhu
Institution Branch School in Howrah.
In 1965 he married Smt Shila
Chowdhury. Soon was to start the
couple’s lifelong obsession with
Munshi Premchand.
It was in 1971 that the three
language system was introduced in
West Bengal, which made it
mandatory for school students to