ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 19, 2020
MULK RAJ ANAND: A VOICE OF SUBALTERN
Rimpa Khatun
Research Scholar, Department of English Bodoland University, Kokrajhar Assam, India
E-mail: [email protected]
Received: 14 April 2020 Revised and Accepted: 8 August 2020
ABSTRACT: „Subaltern‟ represents the marginalized, non-elite and oppressed people or a group of people in opposition towards an elite and ruling class. Though we say, India is a developing country, but still it cannot revive from the practice of discrimination in the ground of caste hierarchy and gender. Mulk Raj Anand , an Indian novelist who stands with the deprived class of society. Many contemporary writers have been starting to raise their voices in favor of the poor people. Mulk Raj Anand is on the top position among them. He chose his protagonists from the lower classes of the society. My article is an attempt to show that Mulk Raj Anand is a writer of poor people who feels the suffering of the poor marginalized people with reference to his two important novels Untouchable (1935) and The Road (1961).
KEYWORDS: subaltern, suffering, exploitation, illiteracy, colonialism, post-colonialism.
Subaltern describes the social position of an individual or a group of people or a community who lives outsides the mainstream of society. They live beyond the centre of power, of cultural dominance, and economical or social welfare. In the Indian Hindi language crime thriller web series Paatal Lok that was premiered on Amazon Prime Video on 15th May, 2020, the character Tobe Singh kills three upper caste bullying boys who always irritate him by joining the gang “Danger Manjaar” that has been formed by some boys whose community has been oppressed or marginalized from a long time and consequently, he has to elope from his home state Punjab to Delhi and enters into the world of crime. But, in Punjab when the victims‟ relatives could not catch Tobe, out of revenge, they rape his mother in front of her husband and brother in law. Caste related violence could be seen in numerous forms. Though we say, India is a developing country, but still it cannot revive from the practice of discrimination in the ground of caste hierarchy. Many students commit suicide because of the marginalization they face in their educational institutes. However, Women become subalterns when we compare its status with men as Spivak already said in her essay: If you are poor, black and female you get it (subaltern) in three ways ( Spivak: 90) Many contemporary writers like Spivak, Bhabha, and Beauvoir have been starting to raise their voices in favor of the subalterns. Women have been represented in literature as „subaltern‟, „marginalized‟, „second sex‟ and „other‟. Mulk Raj Anand is one of the writers who raise their voice in favour of the marginalized people. His novels deal with the real life issues of poor common people like poverty, hunger, illiteracy, exploitation, racism, exploitation of female body and superstition. He adopts his protagonists from the marginalized communities who have been suppressed from a long time. .His best known novels are Untouchable (1935), Coolie (1936), Two Leaves and a Bud (1937), The Village (1939), The Sword and the Sickle (1942) and The Road (1963). In Untouchable (1935), the protagonist is a sweeper (Bakha) who hates his untouchable status and poverty. Coolie (1936) is all about story an orphan boy - Munno, who struggles for his livelihood and suffers the communal frame of the Indian society. In his third novel Two Leaves and a Bud, Anand presents a realistic picture of colonial and capitalist society through the sufferings of a poor underclassmale protagonist- Gangu. Anand reflects the evil of poverty and cruelty which Gangu faced in a tea state .Gangu represents all the down trodden society in pre-independence of India which was exploited by the White men.
The original pre-Independence Indian scenario has been portrayed in this novel- Untouchable which focuses the worst images of Indian society. Bakha the protagonist of the novel is an untouchable coming from the lower strata of Indian society. Bakha has to clean the latrines more than twice a day. This novel depicts the events that happen in one day of Bakha‟s life. Being a subaltern, Bakha suffers a great deal of humiliation at the hands of the higher class people.For instance, the Brahmin priest curses him for polluting the temple by standing outside the door. His humiliation is highlighted in the scene in market when Bakha touches Lallaji inadvertently, the latter slaps him. Bakha is a very sensible boy, he is aware of his lower status that he dislikes.Anand brings the real historical figures like Mahatma Gandhi, IqbalSarshar and Colonial Hutchinson in the context of the text,
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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 19, 2020 those who raised their voices in favor of the subalterns.As Anand is a realist, he presents the real events and issues of Indian society.Anand exploresthe theme of untouchability when Gandhi was raising his voice against it through mass movement is not a sheer coincidence. It shows Anand‟s faith in Gandhi‟s ideology and his own concern about untouchability. After listening the lectures from these figures, Bakha begins to dream of becoming an honourable man. Bakha is the representation of all the lower class people. This novel is a powerful indictment on the caste discrimination and hypocrisy of the higher classes. Mulk Raj Anand‟s third novel Two Leaves and a Bud which was published in 1937 had brought him immense popularity. In this novel, Anand presents a realistic picture of colonial and capitalist society through the sufferings of a poor underclass male protagonist- Gangu. This novel presents the pathetic life of the coolies of Assam Tea Estates. Gangu is the representation of the whole exploited Indian laborers of the tea plantation who become the victim at the hands of the Capitalists as well as the Colonizers. Anand reflects the evil of poverty and cruelty which Gangu faced in a tea state .Gangu represents all the down trodden society in pre-independence of India which was exploited by the Whitemen. Anand always presents a realistic picture of colonial as well as post-colonial society in his novels where the subaltern suffers. Though he follows the ideology of Subaltern Studies Group to uplift the subaltern and return them their social rights and voice in his novels, but he also agrees with Spivak that the subalterns can not speak. They can not speak because they are not allowed to raise their voice against the authority as they don‟t have any historical and political importance.Thus,Spivak claims that the voice of the subaltern cannot be retrieved. As the history was written by the authority, so the poorpeople have been marginalized. Hence, Spivak claims this history as biased and impartial.
Anand writes his another novel-The Road (1961) is a sequal to Untouchable.In it, Anand again represents the caste hypocrisy in Indian society which was represented twenty-five years ago in Untouchable. Though the setting and characters are changed, the theme of the exploitation of the subaltern is the same. Bhakha is replaced by a poor boy - Bhikhu.Bhikhu is thus the authentic voice of the downtrodden, low caste poor. He is both a victim and a rebel. Anand wants to point out that the independence has not made any significant change in the misfortune of the untouchables. The low caste people turn a little rebellious but the high caste also turn more rigid in their attitude towards them. The Road deals with a single incident in the life of an untouchable in a small village. The incident of constructing the road to facilitate transportation of milk from Govardhan to Gurgaon, a town nearby creates a conflict between the caste Hindus and the low caste untouchables. The construction of the road shortens the distance between two places but widens the gap between the two classes. As a realistic novelist, Anand does not end the novel with the happy union of the two classes. He knows that untouchability is deeply rooted in the Indian psyche.For Spivak, there is an element of double oppression for poor women in the colonial situation. Spivak said,
…in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and can not speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow. (Spivak: 294)
Women become subalterns when we compare its status with men in both Pre and Post Independence Indian societies. Being subalterns, Indian women become the subject of exploitation both by the male and the upper caste classes. In Untouchable, Anand presents the character of Sohini, Bakha‟s sister who not only exemplifies caste exploitation but also sex exploitation. As a caste-exploited, she is shown waiting patiently for a long time when she goes to fetch water from the caste well. Gulabo, a washer woman, a caste superior to all other outcastes exploits Sohini. She not only abuses the sweeper girl but also rushes to hit her. Sohini behaves unlike any other outcaste woman. When other women make servile appeal and show their abject humility to the passerby high caste Hindus to draw the water from the well, she sits patiently away from them. She becomes the victim of sexual exploitation due to her caste and poverty. She is very beautiful but she has not enough clothes to protect her beauty from the hungry eyes of the male. When the Pundit tries to molest her she screams to protest, but when the priest accuses her for polluting him she remains wonderstruck. She realizes that no one will believe her. She stops her brother from taking any aggressive action against the priest and returns home. She accepts her humiliation with the docile humility of the woman of her caste.Lakha is so afraid of them all that when Bakha talks about retaliation, he says,
We cannot do that. They are our superiors. One word of theirs is sufficient against all that we might say before the police. They are our masters. We must respect themand do as they tell us.(Anand:109)
The exploitation of women is one of the prominent themes of The Road. In this novel, the female characters are simple, sincere but suffering souls. There is not much difference between the exploitation of the women of high
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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 19, 2020 caste and that of the low caste. If we compare Bhikhu‟s mother Laxmi, Sanju‟s mother Bhagwanti and Lachman‟s mother Sapti with each other, they are found not much different in theirattitude towards life. All of them are superstitious, religious,stereotype, rustic women. Mala and Rukmini become the victims of the dowry systemwhereas Bhagwanti and Sapti are the victims of the patriarchal system.Bhagwanti though a wife of the Sarpanch of the village, has no voiceof her own. Sapti, goes against her husband‟s wish but onlytemporarily. Both Bhagwanti and Sapti are superstitious women.PanditSuraj Mani takes disadvantage of their blind faith. He compels Sapti to desert her husband and compels Bhagwanti to perform specialpooja for his own advantage. Laxmi is the victim of the socialexploitation. Being a woman of a low caste, she is not allowed to go to the temple. Rukmani and Mala belong to the high caste but they are noteven considered as human beings while arranging their marriages.They are offered by their parents in a bargain for the marriages of theirsons. Rukmani exposes her anguish over the social system. Through Rukmani, Anand asks the following question to the male dominated society:O why, O Why were the tribes of men so privileged(Anand:100)
After the colonial rule, the subalterns were again subordinated to the male as well as the elite upper class. The subaltern women continue to suffer and there is little scope for further improvement. In most Indian families, men are the all in all. They take all the important decisions, they represent their families, and women are considered only helpers or home makers. Women are expected to assist the men to maintain the household things. Their personal expectation, emotions and existence have been ignored. Moreover, a woman‟s submissive and silence nature are highly appreciated by the male dominated social and cultural societies. Like Spivak, Anand also claims that the subalterns can not speak. Being a humanist, he feels the pains and sorrows of the subalterns and hence,he desires to uplift the life of downtrodden from their degradation through his fictional works.Anand wants to highlight that even the untouchables are human beings.They share equal fundamental rights and position in society.
REFERENCE
[ 1] Anand, Mulk Raj. Untouchable, India: Penguin Books, 2001.
[ 2] Barbaruah, FatehaHaque. Ed. Two Leaves and a Bud, Aditya Book Distributor, Guwahati, 2010
[ 3] Paul, Premila.The Novel of Mulk Raj Anand: A Thematic Study, Delhi:Sterling Publication,1978.
[ 4] Spivak, Chakravorty, Gayatri (1995). „Can the Subaltern Speak?,‟ The Postcolonial Studies Reader. Ed:Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. Rourtledge: London. [ 5] Hawthorn, Jeremy. A Contemporary Literary Theory, New York:Oxford University Press Inc,2000. [ 6] Abrams, M. H. A Handbook of Literary Terms, New Delhi, 2009
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