Godaan

Godaan is a Hindi novel by Munshi Premchand, published in 1936 as his last completed novel and counted among the major works of modern Indian literature. It follows Hori Mahato, an elderly, impoverished peasant whose modest ambition to own a cow draws him deeper into debt to moneylenders and landlords, and who works himself to death still pursuing that goal. Through Hori's story, Premchand examines caste based discrimination, the economic exploitation of the rural poor, the subjugation of women, and the pressures of industrialization on village life under colonial rule, reflecting the author's own socialist convictions. The novel has been adapted for film and television and remains a central text in Hindi literary studies.