Why has India forgotten this writer?

July 31, Premchand’s birth anniversary, leads the author to wonder why one of India’s most celebrated writers has been forgotten by urban readers today.

Many pensive pauses, edits and deletions later, I think it is best to start an essay about Munshi Premchand the way he would have — by stating the truth as it is. And the truth is, however unkind it may be, — as those loving him, his writing and his literary philosophy will attest — that he, one of the brightest lights in the horizon of Indian prose, stands eclipsed if not forgotten by the urbane Indian fiction readers of today.