New Delhi, May 31 -- Nearly 60 years ago, one of the most influential Hindi satirical novels was published-Shrilal Shukla's Raag Darbari (1968). Shukla, a former Provincial Civil Service officer working with the Uttar Pradesh government, presented an unforgettably dire portrait of India's Hindi heartland through the fictional village of Shivpalganj, where the novel unfolds. In the decades since its publication, Raag Darbari has been adapted for stage and screen, and every new production has underlined the novel's enduring prescience.

Shukla's Everyman central character is an idealistic graduate called Rangnath who has just finished a master's degree in History. When Rangnath (who resembles Voltaire's Candide in his tragicomic naivete) vi...