• Munshi Premchand's last story Shroud (1935) is a social classic - a true story of an oppressed victim. DhanPat Rai Shrivastav, Munshi Premchand (188-1936) is best known to us for his realistic understanding of the rural oppressed caste and his inter-genre depiction of the life of the lower castes and the "untouchables", now known as Dalits. Premchand is famous for the "real" level of his village, and indeed it is there, it has its limits. However, "The Shroud" is marked by its sympathetic portrayal of the downtrodden and untouchables.
• In Shroud, Premchand shows the duo living in the father-son community of Ghisu and Madhav Chama. The lowest caste among the untouchables. They appear here as villain characters due to the negative screenplay. At the beginning of the story, we see Madhav's wife Budhiya dying after giving birth. They were sitting on the doorstep of their hut, beside a dead fire, spreading boiled potatoes, while inside Madhav's wife was in labor. However, none of them are concerned about protecting her. "The Shroud" tells the tragic story of the death of a pregnant woman who was shunned by her husband and father-in-law.
• Even as Budhia dies inside, Ghisu remembers the feast he had 20 years ago at Tagore's wedding. “The women ate each puris into their lungs, each! Young, old, everyone was eating puris and most of them were made with real ghee! Chutney, raita, three types of dry vegetables, one with meat juice, curd, chutney sweet...'” But this memory is for a big feast, in this context, the words are odd and obscene. Meanwhile, the descriptions are awkwardly funny. When his son asks him, "So you should have kept twenty puris?" And Ghisu replies "I had more than twenty puri". Madhav adds "I wish I had fifty!"
• Madhava's wife Budhiya dies and, by his father's side, he sets out to collect money for his last rites. After collecting enough money, they go out to buy kafans for embalming the dead woman's body, a mourning pyre. But they get to the "madhusala". There they spread the money they used to buy mourning kafans and other items, drinking fountains and food. He leaves them "finally sozzled and failing to the ground" in the last line of this story.
• Dalit thinkers consider it an attempt to mock the "puchal" of the shroud. However, this is a charge that looks truly ridiculous if one considers Premchand's writings as a whole. On the contrary, Dalit characters in earlier stories. They question the custom of wrapping the corpse of a woman who never got a new saree, a new kafan. They collect money for mourning activities and spend it on alcohol and delicious food, food of the heart.
• The story was sometimes attacked by Dalit critics, on the grounds that 'The Shroud' paints an unflattering and hostile picture of two opposing protagonists who clearly identify as Chamars. Yet, throughout 'The Shroud' these two are repeatedly and emphatically portrayed as unique, isolated individuals. Everyone else in the story, of every caste and social class, finds them humiliating. Overall, 'The Shroud' is characterized by its realistic depiction of contemporary society in colonial India.
• Premchand's artistic aim is not to portray the condition of Dalits, but to highlight the feudal-colonial exploitation of peasants. Despite working much harder than Ghisu and Madhav, the farmers did not make good profits. Moreover, Premchand highlights our attitude to reality with the great artistic craftmaship of his time.
• Like other short stories, Premchand's 'The Shroud' offers an unparalleled panorama of South Indian life. The author portrays the poverty and heartlessness of the people of North India where casteism prevailed. However, the elements of social realism make it an excellent example of a tragic short story. Indeed, in 'The Shroud' Premchand highlights the socio-economic deprivation of the dispossessed sections of colonial India, not by the colonial rulers but by feudal India itself.
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