Dessertation
Dessertation
The present Research is a modest attempt to analyze and evaluate the theme of
exploitation in Untouchable.In this novel,Mulk Raj Anand tries his best to free the working class
from the inequities and inequalities, in a caste ridden society. He presents the social, political,
and economic problems which India faces today.he has committed himself to the welfare of the
down-trodden. Moreover, he insists that all people must have education, economic equality
which enable man to ameliorate from the clutches of poverty, violence, greed, jealousy,
suppression and narrow mindedness. The Novel analyses Anand’s portrayal of the suffering of
the untouchables and their exploitation by the caste-hindus with special reference to
Untouchable, the first novel of Mulk Raj Anand. Bakha, the protagonist of the novel, portrayed
as scavenger, suffers insults at the hands of the high cast Hindus in the cast-ridden Hindu
society. In spite of insults, Bakha remains optimistic and his optimism is highly portrayed by
Anand. . The power conflict exhibits the forced character of both cultural and socio-political
adaptation and underscores the role of coercion, segregation and discrimination in the
dominated group at the bottom rungs of the societal ladder.The plantation workers in the novel
reveal a growing psychological stamina to survivein the face of exploitation. The summation of
study mainly focuses on Anand’s positive approaches and his explicit and implicit suggestions
for the eradication of exploitation. The exploitation of the poor caused by moral and social make
them understand the meaning of life. Anand’s heroes struggle, suffer, and prove their worth.
Man’s feeling of nothingness leads him toward a quest for meaning of existence. After a long
and tedious search, Anand’s protagonists reach some sort of culmination of their efforts, and
there appears a streak of hope in them. Reading Anand’s novels will always be a rewarding
experience, and indeed, he has found a niche for himself in the annals of Indo-English fiction.
Introduction
Mulk Raj Anand occupies one of the top most positions in Indo-
Anglian literature and his rank among the novelists is very high indeed. Anand is
famous chiefly as a writer of social novels. His novels deal with some of the
most glaring social evils which include untouchability and the exploitation of
labourers. His creative writings are no doubt, saturated with the element of
protest which is inseparably connected with his view of life. The novels
untouchable, coolie, and Two leaves and a Bud are emphatically novels of
protest, as are Anand’s subsequent novels. Anand derives his fervent socialistic
faith and his vision of a modern egalitarian society from the European tradition.
His numerous novels form a fictional chronicle in which his eclectic humanism
and humanitarian compassion for the underdog are persistent themes. To his
Indian past however, Anand’s attitude is ambivalent. On the one hand, he is
indignantly critical of the deadwood of the ancient Indian tradition. He takes up
cudgels against its obscurantism and fossilization. But, then he has had also a
lifelong interest in ancient Indian art. His intuitive understanding of the mind of
the Indian peasant, in his writings indicate that he is equally aware of the finer
and enduring aspects of the Indian way of life.
Mulk Raj Anand is a writer with an axe, and his fiction may
appropriately called “a literature of protest.” It is a kind of literature, which
Anand holds in high esteem because it strikes hard at the roots of sectionalism,
caste conflicts, snobbery, contempt. Anand’s works are not mere exercise of
intellectual, Marxism, as wer believe, but they are spontaneous expressions of
human misery. As a committed humanist, he heralds a revolt and a creative
struggle to bring about a new society. He does not indulge in violent attack with
words but makes a constructive protest.
Anand’s notable marks are vitality and a keen sense of reality. He is a veritable
Dickens for describing the inequalities and idiosyncrasies in the current human
situation with candour as well as accuracy” Dr K.N. Sinha writes: “Ananad is
firmly and centrally rooted in the Indian tradition of fiction. Although he has
ranged widely, read absorbing alien cultures and traditions, he has returned to
India, believing that the future is potentially in the East.”
The novel Untouchable (1935) is Mulk Raj Anand’s first and powerful
proletarian novel. Anand is a staunch believer in the Buddhist concept of
compassion that, he devotes his fiction to a communication of pity to the under-
dog. He has keen insight into the problems of the people, men, women, farmers
and clerks. and such people, who stand on the bottom rungs of the social ladder.
Anand, the lover of the underdog, not only highlights the problems of
untouchability but also offers a solution. He sympathizes with the poor and the
exploited and champions their cause. It was Mahatma Gandhi, who had asked
Mulk Raj Anand in 1930 to write a pamphlet on untouchability, but instead of
writing a tract, Anand wrote this social and realistic novel, dealing with the
problem of untouchability. Anand skillfully delineates the plight of the
outcastes, especially the untouchables of India.
After a long wait there comes Pandit Kali Nath, one of the
priests of the temple of the town. At the request of all the outcastes, the priest
comes forward to help her. Actually, he helps her not out of sympathy but out
of constipation. He thinks that drawing water from the well will relieve him
from constipation. He draws a pot full of water and pours into the pitcher of
Sohini because he finds that, she is the only most beautiful girl among the
outcastes. He asks her to come to his house in the afternoon to sweep it.
Sohini, with gratitude, agrees to do so. She is peerless in beauty and physical
charms:
She had a sylph like form, not thin, but full bodied within the limits of
her graceful frame, well rounded on the hips, with an arched narrow
waist from which descended the folds of her trousers and above which
were her full, round globular breasts, jerking slightly, for lack of a
bodice, under her transparent muslin shirt. Sohini matchless
beauty tempts Pandit Kali Nath, and he makes an attempt to molest
her. Gulabo, the washerwoman, is jealous of her beauty and calls her
immodest, corrupt, “wanton” and “prostitute” in order to defame her in
the locality.
Lakha is old and weak, and his behaviour with his children is rude and
grumpy. He badly abuses them. Although he abuses and ill-treats his children,
he is kind at heart. He is fond of delicious dishes such as pickles, maize flour
bread, fried bread, vegetables, curries, sweets and leftovers from the plates of
high caste Hindus. Lakha impresses upon Bakha that some of the caste Hindus
are kind and generous to them. Anand says: “He had never renounced his deep-
rooted sense of inferiority and the docile acceptance of the laws of fate”).so, Lakha has no sign
of self-respect.
Bakha as a Victim of Social Injustice
Bakha after finishing his breakfast goes out, for the first time, to
sweep the roads in the bazaar. On his way to the bazaar, he meets delicate, young
schoolboys and requests the elder son of Babu to teach something for him. After
after a long hesitation, the boy agrees to teach him. In those days, the teachers would
not teach the untouchables because their fingers which guided the students
across the tests should touch the leaves of the outcast's books and thus be
polluted. Here, one can easily notice Bakha’s higher sensibility and yearning for
education of which he was deprived.
Low caste people and the “pariahs” are not allowed to attend school and sit with
the caste-Hindu children. Even the teachers in the school hesitate to touch the
finger of the outcasts because they thought that their body will be polluted. The
reason behind Anand’s choice of education is that, Anand himself has been a
victim of this educational system and so his attack is vehement:
If education is the transmission of life from the living, to the
living, to the living, then we do not know how to describe the
system of teaching that prevails here. It is carrying death from the
dead, through the dead, to the dead.
Bakha is very much elated by the sights of the bazaar. His mouth
waters when he sees rasgullas, gulab jamuns, ladus. He knows certainly they are
not cheap. He buys four annas worth of jalebis. He puts four nickel coins on the
show board for the confectioner’s assistant who washes them and takes them up.
The confectioner wraps jalebis in a torn piece of paper and throws at him like
cricket ball. The warm, sweet and syrupy jalebis satisfy him.
Bakha’s joy could not linger long. In the delicious taste of the syrup of
jalebis he is full of pleasure. He forgets that he is untouchable. In the market,
Bakha, the untouchable, whose shadow pollutes the caste Hindus, unconsciously
touches a Brahmin. He abuses and beats him. Bakha finds himself in the midst
of mocking, jeering and cursing the crowd. This traumatic experience upsets him.
Then he begins to herald his approach as he moves along the road: “Posh, posh,
Sweeper coming
Bakha reaches the big temple of the town where great insult waits
for him. He goes to clean the temple's outer part. Out of curiosity, he ascends a few
steps to see how the worship is going on inside it. Being a sweeper, his entity is
prohibited into it. The devout worshippers shout, “polluted, polluted”. Bakha
jumps down from there. A crowd gathers there at once. Bakha is again
trembling in fear. Some orthodox people, who have noted Bakha on the stairs,
begin to scold him loudly and discuss how the temple can be purified after
Bakha’s climbing some of its steps. Then they see that, it is Pandit Kali Nath
who had raised the alarm. He is angry and outraged at getting touched by an
untouchable girl. Bakha sees Sohini, his sister weeping and silently standing a
little behind the shouting priest. Sohini tells him how the priest had tried to
molest her. The incident pains Bakha very much. Bakha wants to teach a lesson
to the Brahmin dog but he cannot.
He knew, of course, that except for his English clothes there was
nothing English in his life. But he kept his form, rigidly adhering
to his clothes day and night and guarding them from all taints of
The Indian quit, though he shivered with the cold at night.
When the sweepers, change their profession, they will no longer remain
untouchables. If the machine is introduced which clears dung without
anyone having to handle it the flush system, then the sweepers can be
freed from the stigma of untouchability.
The critic Mr. Bashier, represents the influence of British culture
on the elite. He too, hates the Indian way of life and believes in imitating
English manners and modes of living and thinking. He calls himself "a Dest
Sahib”). He says:
Gandhi is a humbug. He is a fool, hypocrite. In one breath he says
he wants to abolish untouchability, in the other he asserts that he is
an orthodox Hindu. He is running counter to the spirit of our age,
which is democracy. He is in the 4th Century B.C. with his
“Swadeshi” and his spinning wheel. We live in the 20th century. I
have read Rousseau, Hobbes, Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
The author realistically shows the plight of the Untouchables and offers
solutions to the social evil. It is not an exaggeration to say that Untouchable is
Anand’s best novel. It is an example of sustained poetic realism. Although it
employs a low mimetic form of fiction, it also has esoteric poetic flights, and a
breath of metaphor uncommon to such a form. His close association with the
underdogs and his passionate observation of their woes has given this novel a
rare cogency and an intimate quality of felt life. Bakha represents not only of
his own, but also of the people like him. As Dr.Balarama Gupta says:
The climax of the novel, the incident wherein Bakha ‘touches’ the
Lallaji, is especially significant for the slap dealt on. Bakha’s face is
symbolic not only of all the cruelty to which untouchables are subjected,
but of the scornful treatment meted out to the underprivileged all over
the world as, for instant, the Negroes in U.S.A.
Technically speaking, of all Anand’s novels, Untouchable is the least
flawed in form and structure. The narrative technique itself is a thing of perfect
unity and chiseled finish. The whole action, takes place during twelve hours
from dawn to dusk, shows three clear stages of development. In the first stage,
at the end of which suddenly comes the traumatic experience of pollution in the
marketplace. The first stage occupies a little more than the first one-third of the
book. The second stage covers slightly less than half of the book, and shows the
graph of Bakha’s spirits going through rapid fluctuations. The third and the last
phase balance the one third of the novel. During this stage, the three possible
solutions to his problem are suggested to Bakha. Each stage ends on a dramatic
note and the fact that Bakha’s course on this momentous day goes continuously
through ups and downs together ensure that suspense is maintained throughout.
Professor Anniah Gowda says that, the reality Anand presents in
his novel is not merely photographic, but frequently expressionistic. Further, he
quotes an incident in the novel to support his statement that, ‘untouchable” is
unrealistic’. He says that Anand should have made Sohini demand an
appropriate fee and then accept the priest’s proposal. But, this charge is firmly
opposed by Dr.Balarma Gupta and he says that this is a curious argument
because it appears to pre-suppose that all low-class women are loose in their
morals: “It is tenable because Sohini has been depicted in the beginning as a
shy, docile, and good girl, not as an amorous coquette. So Professor Gowda’s
charge is absolutely baseless”.
Conclusion
Work Cited
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