Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable: A Critical Review

Reading Time: 7 minutes

 Mulk Raj Anand, one of the most highly regarded Indian novelists in English, was born in Peshawar in 1901. He was educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge. He lived in England for many years and finally settled in a village in Western India. His main concern has always been for the people in the weaker sections of Indian society who have no way to articulate their anguish against the oppressors. His novels have been translated into several world languages. His important writings include Untouchable (1935), Coolie (1936), Two Leaves and a Bud (1937), The Village (1939), Across the Black Waters (1940), The Sword and the Sickle (1942), Private Life of an Indian Prince (1953), Confessions of a Lover (1972) and The Bubble (1988). He is also noted for being among the first writers to incorporate regional Indian idioms into English.  He was a recipient of the civilian honour Padma Bhushan. He died of pneumonia in 2004 at the age of 98.

THE NOVEL – IN A NUTSHELL

Untouchable is Anand’s first novel, written in 1935. It narrates a day in the life of Bakha, a sweeper boy. He is unlike traditional sweepers. In the novel, he struggles hard to lead a better life. In the morning, he goes to clean the latrines. Then, he goes to the city to clean the streets on behalf of his father, Lakha. There, he unknowingly touches a high-caste Hindu and lands up in big trouble. This starts a series of abuses, humiliation and indignity. Soon after this episode, he learns that Pt. Kali Nath tried to molest his sister, Sohini. All this enrages him and affects everything that happens  later, such as the hockey match, the country walk and the wedding of the washer woman’s girl, whom Bakha liked. The novel ends with three solutions to the problem of untouchability – Christ, Gandhi and the flush system.

CHARACTERS
Bakha –  protagonist (18 years old).

Lakha – Bakha’s father, Jemadar, of all sweepers.

Rakha – Bakha’s brother

Solini – Bakha’s sister.

Chhota and Ramcharan – Bakha’s friends.

Charat Singh – Havildar.

Pandit Kali Nath – The Priest.

Colonel Hutchinson – Christian missionary in India.

Mahatma Gandhi

Iqbal Nath Sarashar  – a poet.

R. N. Bashir (B.A) – poet’s friend.

ANALYSIS 

Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable articulates the abuses towards an exploited class. Bakha is the fiery voice of those who represent the Untouchable caste. The novel depicts untouchability as a social evil. The novel enjoys immense popularity as a document showcasing Hindu society’s injustice. It has been translated into twenty world languages. A remarkable feature of the novel is that Gandhi appears in person to speak on the evil of untouchability. Anand is a writer with a mission, and art is a tool for him to serve humanity. The novel, however, is not a piece of propaganda, and he has employed the stream-of-consciousness technique to reveal the mind of the character Bakha. E.M. Forster describes Bakha in the Preface to the novel, “Bakha is a real individual, lovable, thwarted, sometimes grand, sometimes weak and thoroughly Indian. Even his physique is distinctive; we can recognise his broad, intelligent face, graceful torso, and heavy buttocks as he does his nasty job or steps out in artillery boots in hope of a pleasant walk through the city with a paper packet of cheap sweets in his hand.”

 We get a miserable vision of the place of living of the untouchables as described at the beginning of the novel, “The outcastes’ colony was a group of mud-walled houses that clustered together in two rows, under the shadow both of the town and the cantonment, but outside their boundaries and separate from them. There lived the scavengers, the leather workers, the washermen, the barbers, the water-carriers, the grass-cutters and other outcastes from Hindu society.” One can refer to Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, in which Velutha faces similar discrimination. Mulk Raj Anand has been regarded as a social realist for the themes and issues that he brings forward in his works. The social aspect of the novel, the treatment of religion and caste discrimination, has been delineated in a realistic manner.

In the beginning, the ‘caste system’ was not governed by religion. It is a latter-day development. The caste originally meant the division of function and responsibility in the agrarian society of the Aryan Hindus. Initially, there were four castes. The Brahman (priest), the Kshatriya (soldier and feudal lord), the Vaishya (farmer and shopkeeper) and the Sudra (bondsman and artisan). After the conquest of North India by the Aryans, the aborigine population were either driven to the South or enslaved. This section of society became the “outcastes”. Their function was to do menial jobs, such as removing human excrement.

Furthermore, the temples were forbidden to them, and any physical contact with a caste Hindu was severely punishable. Thus, this caste, fulfilling the most menial of customs, was degraded to the position of untouchability. This is the social background of Untouchable. The novel has an economic background against which the tragedy and pathos in the lines of the social outcastes stand out. Financial freedom is the golden key to opening the gates of happiness. The sweepers are untouchables not only because they are ostracised by society but also because of their poor living conditions. Without economic prosperity, sweepers cannot fight against this evil. Their poverty keeps them dirty and unclean. This economic background looms large in Untouchable.

It is evident while reading Untouchable that M.K. Gandhi, James Joyce and Gorky have largely influenced Anand. Anand wrote the novel during his stay at Sabermathi with Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi appears as a character towards the novel’s end to speak on the evil of untouchability. Gandhi wanted an ideal Hindu society without any caste distinction. For him, the practice of untouchability was a blot on Hindu society. He called the untouchables Harijans, or the men of God. The novel’s high point is when Gandhi speaks against untouchability and praises the humble origin of the untouchable, making him a man of God. He denounces those who believe that because of his dharma, a man is polluted and can pollute others. Thus, the novel expresses ideas that align with Mahatma Gandhi’s views on untouchability. Anand read Joyce’s works and was very impressed. In his first novel, Untouchable, Anand borrows the stream-of-consciousness technique from James Joyce and simplifies it according to his needs. Thus, Untouchable is a successful attempt at experimental fiction in India. His subsequent influence is Gorky; like him, Anand delves into the lowest dregs of society in search of his hero and selects Bakha.

As Anand himself states, the writer’s goal is to transform words into prophecy, yet the readers struggle for the meaning in the novel’s closing scenes. After studying the terrible problem of untouchability in a shockingly realistic manner, Anand puts forth three solutions to the ghastly evil of untouchability in the last part of the novel. The first solution is the conversion to Christianity because Jesus Christ makes no distinction between the poor and the rich, and the high and low caste. In the novel, Colonel Hutchinson, a Christian missionary working in India, gives Bakha this first solution for untouchability. But Bakha realises the practical impossibilities of this solution. The second solution is that of Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma says that all public wells, temples, roads, schools, and sanitoriums must be declared open to the untouchables, and special attention should be paid to improving the living conditions of the untouchables. This is how the evil of untouchability can be rooted out. Bakha could not comprehend the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, but he was impressed by the concrete example of Uka. The following solution is to introduce the flush system. The young poet Iqbal Nath criticises Gandhi’s approach and suggests this solution. The poet seems to be the novelist’s mouthpiece, and the argument favouring the machine is logical and convincing. E.M. Forster rightly says, “No God is needed to rescue the untouchables, but simply and solely the flush system. Introduce water closets and main drains throughout India, and all this wicked rubbish about untouchability will disappear.” When Bakha hears this solution, he wonders, ‘What is that machine called, the flush system?’

The novel also has a nightmare sequence in which monkeys surround Bakha. Through this, the novelists’ purpose was to show Bakha’s views about the world, which, even in his subconscious mind, haunts and confines him within a bleak world. Flashbacks are used along with symbolic images and thoughts, combined with an awareness of reality that renders a modern touch to the novel. Anand uses several recurrent images in the story, mainly the image of the sun and the river. The sun symbolises life’s creative and vital force and is seen as a contrast to people’s lives depicted in the novel. The image of the river is symbolic of the anguish and grief of the people, as it stands for the flow of existence, which is past change. The novelist uses many English words, idioms, and phrases that reflect the Indian way of speaking. Many words in Hindi and Punjabi have not been translated into English, like girja ghar, jalebi, babu, and Harijan. At the same time, some abusive words in Hindi have been translated into English, like son of a pig, swine dog and others. The aim must be to capture the flavour and colour of a particular village in Punjab during pre-independence times and give a realistic representation of it.

Untouchable is a triumph of Anand’s technical brilliance. It has rightly been hailed as a technical feast of compactness, concentration and structural uniformity. It is experimental in its form and technique. Anand uses the stream-of-consciousness technique to present Bakha’s mind. He has observed three unities of place, time, and action. In Untouchable, there is no rambling in the action; it is restricted to one place from the beginning to the end. The classical unity of time is observed – 12 hours; the novel depicts a day in the life of Bakha, and the story has unity of action because the action is not episodic but organic.
Untouchable is Mulk Raj Anand’s first creative attempt at expressing his central philosophy of humanism through fiction. It is a unique novel – a triumph of theme and technique.

 

 

 

 

 

WORKS CITED

Anand, Mulk Raj. Untouchable. 1935. Penguin Books, 2001.

Mukherjee, Meenakshi. “Realism and Reality: The Novel and Society in India.” Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand, edited by Atma Ram, Arnold-Heinemann, 1975, pp. 105–127.

Bhattacharjee, Ananya https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/engp14/chapter/untouchability-mulk-raj-anand-untouchables/

Parameswaran, Uma. A Study of Representative Indo-English Novelists. Vikas Publishing, 1976, pp. 38–63.

Sinha, Krishna Nandan, Indian Writing in English., University of Michigan: Heritage, 1979 Cowasjee, Saros, So Many Freedoms, Delhi, O.U.P., 1977.

Dhawan, R.K., ed. The Novels of Mulk Raj Anand, New York: Prestige, 1992.

Cowasjee, Saros. So Many Freedoms: A Study of the Major Fiction of Mulk Raj Anand. Oxford University Press, 1977.

Paul, Premila, The Novels of Mulk Raj Anand: A Thematic Study, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1983

Singh, P.K., Major Indo-English Novelists & Novels, Jaipur: Sublime Publication, 2001

Walsh, William, Indian Literature in English, London: Longman, 1990

isj.org.uk/mulk-raj-anand-novelist-and-fighter/