Abstract: Millions in rural India eke out a poor existence. Their life is not only hard but also insecure. Almost half of the people are uneducated with poor health services. The miserable poverty in villages is making the people normally corrupt and insensitive to social evils. The story Kafan, by Munshi Premchand, is a classic social-realistic tale of downtrodden victimhood. It satirizes rituals and indifference of dalits who feel so much oppressed and dejected that they think their wretched miserable life is not going to change for better in future. In Kafan, Premchand has adopted a different technique and presents the theme in a different way, different from other novels and short stories. He takes for granted the miserable plight of the masses groaning under oppression, poverty, ill-health and injustice. He presumes that people know all about such sufferings and have been made aware of that through the writing of social reformers and writers. He has been doing all this, all along, through his writings and the people are painfully aware of the sufferings caused by social customs, religious ritual, unjust laws and system.
The present paper is an attempt to show how poverty and deprivation can lead to the insensitiveness in the two protagonists i.e. Gheesu and Madhav. Actually, poverty and hunger had completely shattered the moral or human sense in them. The effect of hopelessness of hope (Psychosis) in them has sapped human feelings out of their consciousness. The moot