Desecration of the fat Brahman in select fiction of Premchand

This article examines the ostensibly scandalizing, controversial and derisive portrayals of corpulent bodies in Premchand’s literary corpus. It employs the South Asian conceptual category of “darshan” (auspicious sight) to point out the fundamental asymmetry that the writer constructs between culturally revered notions of devoutness and the sardonic authorial commentary that relentlessly seeks to question such beliefs. Closely analyzing how the corporeality of Hindu priests repeatedly bears the brunt of authorial disapprobation, the article makes a discursive case for moral critique where fatness is never simply reduced to a somatic reality but is also meant to stand for material privilege. Instead of reading Premchand’s fiction as a reductive, straightforward, or anachronistic case of fatphobia, it makes more sense to interpret it in relation to the weak, emaciated, and perpetually underfed Dalit bodies that are often at the receiving end of Brahmanical arrogance, conceit, and victimization.