Answer the question based on the passage. "Maila Anchal" is Hindi's…
2025
Answer the question based on the passage.
"Maila Anchal" is Hindi's representative regional novel (aanchalik upanyas), and for this reason its narrative generally carries all the features found in any regional novel. The setting a regional novel adopts covers, in full detail, every facet of the life of that particular time and place, and every face those facets can take. Maila Anchal, too, carries the same kind of content. In Maila Anchal, the detailed and complete story of the village 'Merigunj' is presented in such a way that publicising the region's problems has remained its purpose, though that purpose stays dissolved within the act of creation itself; the novel offers a deep portrayal of both the beauty and the ugliness of the region. It also depicts casteism, bureaucratic high-handedness, opportunistic politics, and the hypocrisy of monasteries and hermitages. Renu ji's Maila Anchal stands apart at the level of both subject matter and craft. It portrays rural life through an altogether new kind of craftsmanship. Its greatest distinguishing feature is that its hero is not any single individual — rather, the region as a whole is its hero. The second major point is that this novel, composed against the backdrop of the Mithilanchal region, makes extensive use of that region's particular dialect, and this usage is so effective that it presents the desires, aspirations, customs, festivals, and thinking of the people there to the reader with complete authenticity.
What would be the most appropriate title for the given passage?
Answer: D. Regional novel 'Maila Anchal' — ConceptAn 'aanchalik upanyas' (regional novel) is a Hindi literary genre in which one specific region's landscape, dialect, customs, and everyday struggles…
- A.
Political novel 'Maila Anchal'
- B.
Historical novel 'Maila Anchal'
- C.
Social novel 'Maila Anchal'
- D.
Regional novel 'Maila Anchal'
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Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
Concept
An 'aanchalik upanyas' (regional novel) is a Hindi literary genre in which one specific region's landscape, dialect, customs, and everyday struggles are portrayed with full, many-sided detail and effectively function as the work's protagonist, rather than any single human character. The genre is credited to Phanishwar Nath 'Renu', whose 1954 novel Maila Anchal is regarded as its defining example in Hindi.
Application
The given passage matches this definition point for point: it opens by directly calling Maila Anchal Hindi's 'representative aanchalik upanyas'; it states that every facet of the life of that time and place is present 'with full detail'; it names the village Merigunj as the site of the story and says explicitly that the region as a whole — not any individual — is the novel's hero; and it highlights the deliberate, extensive use of the Mithilanchal region's own dialect to render local people's aspirations, customs and festivals with full authenticity.
Cross-check / Contrast
A political novel keeps a struggle for political power or governance at its centre throughout; here, party politics is only one item within a longer list of regional traits, not the passage's organising theme.
A historical novel is built around reconstructing a specific past era or a real sequence of events; the passage carries no dated timeline or historical record.
A social novel keeps a single social problem or custom as its sustained central subject; here, several social ills are each named only briefly, as threads within a broader portrait, never developed as the passage's sole focus.
So the passage is best titled 'Regional novel Maila Anchal'.