A commemorative postage stamp on the Birth Centenary of ‘Nawab Rai‘ Munshi Premchand, an Indian Hindi writer :

Nawab Rai Munshi Premchand (मुंशी प्रेमचंद)Issued by India

Issued on Jul 31, 1980

Issued for : Indian Posts and Telegraphs Department is privileged to honour the memory of a great litterateur by issuing a special postage stamp.

Description of Design : The stamp and first-day cover depict the portrait of Prem Chand.

Type : Stamp, Postal Used

Colour : Red Brown

Denomination : 30 Paise

Overall size : 3.91 x 2.90 cms.

Printing size : 3.55 x 2.54 cms.

Perforation : 13 x 13

Watermark : Printed on watermarked adhesive stamp paper

Number printed : 20,00,000

Number per issue sheet : 35

Printing process : Photogravure

Designed and printed at : India Security Press

Name : Dhanpat Rai Srivastav

Born on Jul 31, 1880 at Lamhi, North–Western Provinces, British India [now in Uttar Pradesh]

Died on Oct 8, 1936 at Varanasi, United Provinces, British India [now in Uttar Pradesh]

About : 

  • That led him to adopt the pen-name ‘Prem Chand‘ in 1910. Bare Ghar Ki Beti was the first story to appear under the new name.
  • In his creative life of thirty-three years he has left behind a body of work which is outstanding in quality and stupendous in quantity. It consists of some three hundred short stories (some of them still surfacing), fifteen big and small novels, three plays, a few translations, some essays on languages and literature, and a sizeable bulk of journalistic writing.
  • With stories like Kafan, Poos Ki Raat, Savaa Ser Gehun and Sadgati and novels like Premashram, Rangbhumi, Kayakalpa, Gaban, Karamabhumi and Godan as also shorter ones like Nirmala and Pratigya, he took the Urdu and Hindi fiction into the wide world of live flesh-and-blood human beings, thus making it a truly modern genre of writing – a vehicle of the writer’s social concerns. The short story is the genre, in particular, wherein he is considered one of the great world masters. He is universally acknowledged as the best portrayer of peasant India among modern writers. He has been widely translated at home and abroad.