गुनाहों का देवता (Gunahon Ka Devta) is Dharamvir Bharati's 1949 novel and one of the most widely read works of modern Hindi fiction. Set in Allahabad, it follows Chandar, a young scholar working under Professor Shukla, and Sudha, the professor's daughter, whose deep affection for each other never crosses into an openly acknowledged romance.
Chandar treats Sudha with an almost devotional restraint, and Sudha, bound by filial duty and the social expectations of her time, ultimately agrees to an arranged marriage rather than pursue what exists between them. Bharati traces the emotional cost of that restraint on both characters, along with the surrounding cast of Chandar's friends and Sudha's sister Binti, whose own romantic entanglement runs parallel to the central story.
The novel is often read as an exploration of idealized, sacrificial love shaped by post-independence India's social conservatism, and its prose style — lyrical, emotionally direct, steeped in classical Hindi literary tradition — has made it a fixture of Hindi literature curricula and one of the best-selling Hindi novels of the twentieth century.