Resistance in the postcolonial Hindi literary fied: Mohan Dās by Uday Prakāś

This paper reads Uday Prakāś’s Mohan Dās as a multi-layered story of resistance. From the thematic point of view, it is a story of marginality, featuring a young Dalit resisting the oppression of the hegemonic society. It is also a story of multiple identities – or of a total loss of identity. The text resists gender categorisation. There is continuous meta-textual play: Mohan Dās reminds us of the historical Mahatma Gandhi not only through his name (the Mahatma’s given name is ‘Mohandas Karamchand’), but also concerning his ideas and actions (persisting in his search for truth, never resorting to violence). Other fictional characters in Mohan Dās obviously refer to the Hindi literary field, like Gajānan Mādhav Muktibodh and Śamśer Bahādur Siṃh. As Mohan Dās was first published in the literary magazine Haṃs in the Premcand anniversary issue (August 2005), and Uday Prakāś often refers to Hindi authors of the past in his works, it is possible to analyse the text as calling for an alternative canon in Hindi literature, one that resists the mainstream. Mohan Dās can be seen as an example of postmodern Hindi literature in which the focus is not on the urban middle class, but on the rural and subaltern India.