Volume II, Issue VIII, December 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065

The First World War Revisited In Indian English Fiction A Re-Examination of ’s Novel

ARADHANA MUKHERJEE M.A.

A PREVIEW BY DR.NEELUM SARAN GOUR Professor of English Modern European Languages University of Allahabad Allahabad .

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The First World War was the culmination of many causes and the most important was the system of secret alliances. Prior to 1914, Europe was divided into two armed camps. Things remained in this condition for some time. England followed a policy of splendid isolation during the 19th. Century and she began to feel that she was all alone. Japan, France and Russia became her allies. On the other hand, Turkey joined hands with Germany. The British army during the First World War fought the largest and the most costly war in its long history. Its units were made up exclusively of volunteers at the beginning of the conflict. Army commanders had to cope with the new tactics that were developed like the change from manoeuvre to trench warfare. The infantry and the artillery learned to work together. There was shortage of food as well as diseases like trench fever which killed many British soldiers. But nevertheless, in some major battles like those in places like Ypres, The Britishers played a major role in establishing peace by defeating the Germans. The division of Europe into two camps gave rise to an atmosphere of jealousy and enmity. There was narrow nationalism in the hearts of citizens during this period. The love for one’s country demanded the hatred of the other. Love for Germany demanded the hatred for France and vice versa. It was intense nationalism in Serbia which created bitterness between Serbia and Austria- Hungary. That was also responsible for the murder of Archduke Francis Ferdinand who was the heir to throne of Austria- Hungary in 1914. There was poisoning of the public opinion through the newspapers. They tried to inflame the nationalist feeling by misinterpreting the situation in other countries. They often took up some point of dispute, exaggerated it and made attacks and counter- attacks until a regular newspaper war was created. Due to militarism, there arose the dangers of great standing armies and large navies with the system of espionage. The military and naval armaments grew year after year. Their intention was to produce a sense of security, but the reality which came out was that there was universal fear, suspicion and hatred among various nations. This resulted in an armed race. Such a race could only end in a war. This was not conducive to the maintenance of peace. Among all the colonies in the British Empire, the contribution of India in terms of soldiers remained the highest. Many soldiers like the Gurkhas and Punjabis were recruited in the British army during the First World War. India joined the war as it was an important part of the British Empire. 2014 being the centenary of the First World War, it is appropriate to examine a novel with a theme rare in Indian English Literature the war theme in Mulk Raj Anand’s novel.

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In the novel Across The Black Waters, the soldiers arrived at Marseilles. They were greeted by the French people with the joyous cries of Long Live Hindus or Vivent les Hindous. They were immediately despatched to the trenches to fill the gap caused due to the heavy reverses suffered by the British at the hands of the Germans.

Most of the sepoys were recruited from the peasant- warrior classes of North and North- Western India, with Punjab contributing more than half the number of combatants. They came from diverse religious backgrounds, including Punjabi Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus. The Indian army was a multi- ethnic, multi- lingual and multi- religious force. They fought fiercely in places like Ypres, Festubert, suffering traumatic losses and also winning the coveted Victoria Cross. War literature was a new thing for Indian authors in English. In the absence of any large- scale war during the British regime’s early segment, no war literature developed during that time. The First World War induced people to write about war and Anand was the pioneer of Indian war literature.

When war was declared on August 4th, India rallied to the cause. Offers of financial and military help were made from all over the country. Wealthy princes offered great sums of money. Nepal offered help by sending one lakh Gurkhas. Indian troops were on the Western Front by the winter of 1914, but at the end of 1915, they sustained many casualties. Along with casualties and sickness, the Government decided to withdraw Indians from the line of duty at the end of 1915. Such was the cost of the war, that the Indian economy was pushed to near bankruptcy. Many people were killed. Thus we see that the impact of the First World War was unprecedented.

The 4th of August 2014 marked the 100th anniversary of the day Britain entered of the costliest conflicts in history- The First World War- with fighting continuing until the 11th of November 1918, Armistice Day. This is as given by The Royal British Legion under the title ‘WW1 Centenary. The Indian contribution to WW 1’s war efforts was one of the largest from the colonies of the Empire. (www.britishlegion.org.uk/rememberance. Web. page 1)

In retrospect the Indian contribution to Britain’s war effort may be summed up briefly by the following details:

The First World War started on 28th July, 1914 and finished on 11th November, 1918. The war involved all of world’s great powers, 70 million combatants, with more than 9 million

http://www.ijellh.com 111 Volume II, Issue VIII, December 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065 killed. British Empire entered the war on 4th August, 1914. Over 1.1 million Indian servicemen fought in the World War and there were around 70,000 fatalities. The Indian army dominated, but the Indian Navy also contributed and Indians served in the Army Flyng Corps. There were also labour battalions recruited from Bengal. The Indian Army has the distinction of having fought in almost all the theatres of the war- France and Flanders as well as in Mesopotamia, Palestine and North Africa. 11 Victoria Crosses were won by Indian soldiers and memorials are now being prepared for presentation to the Government of India.(WW1 centenary commemoration from British High Commission, New Delhi. Web. Page 1)

Mulk Raj Anand’s prose showed his progress. In the earlier novels, we find the signs of haste in his writings, but in the Lalu Trilogy [The Village, Across The Black Waters and ], the style gets richer and there is more depth. Anand wrote about rural life as it existed in countryside of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh but he came out of the limitations of a regional author and flowered into an international celebrity through his book Across The Black Waters. He viewed the First World War from outside. Anand’s mouthpiece Lal Singh looks for answers to questions of identity, destiny and meaning. He is not afraid of the defeat which is before him.

Variously described as a ‘Marxist Epic’ and a panoramic vision of pre-war Indian society, the Lalu- Trilogy marks an important phase in Anand’s career as a novelist and as a revolutionary idealist. It is the most ambitious project which he has undertaken and which makes him the greatest author of Indian War Fiction. Anand delves into the historical past with a view to shed light on the events of 1914. The trilogy analyses the ‘tense, fear-ridden and war- torn world, both in Europe and Asia, from which these novels were carved out.’ The Village, Across The Black Waters and The Sword And The Sickle are three novels written as a continuous story and yet each of these in itself is a complete unit. Together, they constitute the Trilogy. These novels shed light upon the life, adventures and struggles of Lalu, who is the hero in these novels. His attractive personality works like a magnet binding the works together, though the theme of each of these novels is different from each other.

The protagonist, Lal Singh, is a young man from the village of Nandpur in Punjab. The society to which he belongs is a most conservative one, where fanaticism in religion, superstition and meaningless rituals thrive. Due to the strict control of the landlord, he finds it impossible to survive and as a result runs away and is forced to join the army. Lal Singh is a

http://www.ijellh.com 112 Volume II, Issue VIII, December 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065 lonely person and fights against the superstitious society. The Trilogy shows the progress of Lal Singh from the village to the cantonment, and from there to Festubert in France and back to Nandpur as presented in The Village, Across The Black Waters and The Sword And The Sickle.

Anand had spent some of the happiest days of his life in his village in Central Punjab, among the tribesmen of the North-West Frontier Province and in the Kangra Valley. His friends who came mostly from the villages, talked of harvest and good things like lassi and sugarcane juice. He had disgust for the social life filled with obsolete and useless rituals and the superstitious beliefs of the villagers. He was also sad to see the pitiable financial condition of the rural folk when they could not pay money and when their houses, cattle, lands, as well as their produce were confiscated by the landlords and money lenders. This social situation provided inspiration to the author in depicting the struggle of the hero Lal Singh to free himself from the evil effects of the society.

The Village published in 1939 begins when the old man, Nihal Singh who is a farmer, reaches Nandpur Station after selling cotton and maize in the town of Manabad. He is sad because the earnings received by selling these crops are not enough for him to pay the rent of his land. His youngest son, Lal Singh welcomes and accompanies him for a smooth journey home. The old man waxes eloquence about bullock cart journeys. Out of kindness, the father does not want that his son should carry the luggage. Lal Singh goes to collect the hoe which he has given for repair at the powerhouse. While thinking about the means to go to the fair in Manabad, he wipes the sweat from his forehead and is annoyed with Sikhism which demands that the followers should wear their hair long and sad that he belongs to this religion.

After toiling hard, when he returns home, he is told by his eldest brother to visit the mahant and to take the parcel gifted by his father to him. Lalu visits the monastery taking the gift with him. He takes the blessings of the holy man and places the parcel before him. He comes out from the chamber and finds his two friends, Gughi, son of the yekka driver and Churanji, the money lender’s son. They climb up to the top of a cart whose owner was the landlord, Sardar Bahudur Harbans Singh. The landlord’s daughter Maya, a maturing girl of fourteen is travelling in the same cart on which are Lalu and his friends. He gets a good opportunity to come in contact with Maya.

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Later when they reach the fair, Lalu cannot locate his friends. He feels very hungry and enters a Muhammadan shop and orders an earthen saucer of meat curry and eats to his heart’s content. Then, without knowing the transgression which he is committing, he has his hair cut. When his relatives know about this, he is treated very harshly. After this shocking episode, Lalu keeps a low profile in his house. He hardly talks to anyone but on his mother’s request he goes with his father and brother for a loan to the shop of the money lender Chaman Lal, as his son Churanji is the friend of Lalu.

Soon, Lal Singh’s family gets busy in the marriage preparations of his elder brother Dayal Singh. The house is in a merry mood. One day, a group of children come to play the dholki and sing. Among them is the landlord’s daughter Maya, to Lalu’s surprise. They start playing and when the game is at its peak, Maya falls upon Lalu beating him, scratching him and digging her fists into his sides while he goes on laughing and trying to ward her off. Just then, the Sardar Bahadur appears and seeing them in this manner, he becomes very angry, abusing Lalu and dragging his daughter away.

The next day, the police Havildar Napoo Singh comes to Lalu’s house to arrest him for theft. Lalu realises that he is being punished by the landlord for daring to play with his daughter, so he runs away to Manabad. He comes to know that army recruitment is taking place. Lalu thinks that if he joins, he can escape arrest and so without thinking twice he agrees to join the army.

Lal Singh and the other people are taken to the 68th Rifles of Ferozepur. Though by birth he is a Sikh, because of his short hair Lal Singh is enlisted as a Hindu Dogra to Platoon B Company in the 68th Rifles. The new recruits are given intensive training. The hard hearted drill master Lance Naik Lok Nath dislikes Lalu from the beginning. His dislike is so intense that he slaps and abuses him for any slight mistake committed during the drill. On the other hand, Lalu receives compassion and affection from Uncle Kirpu, Daddy Dhanoo and Havildar Lachman Singh. After nearly five months, he gets news that his father is seriously ill. He receives the permission to go home. After travelling from Ferozepur by train, he reaches his home.

After coming to his home, Lalu is drawn to his father by deep affection. His father is being medically taken care of not by a doctor but by a Mullah due to the prevalence of superstition. When his leave expires, Lalu packs his luggage and reverently touches his father’s

http://www.ijellh.com 114 Volume II, Issue VIII, December 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065 feet. He is blessed by his father and also told to be brave. When Lal Singh reaches Ferozepur, the rumour that he heard proves right that there is a war between Germany and England. The orders come for the 68th Rifles to go to war as part of the Ferozepur Rifles. Lalu and his friends talk about their date of leaving and about the destination, as the sepoys are being kept in the dark on both these counts and there is guess work in all matters. On the day, when Lalu is waiting to enter the ship he gets a telegram of his father’s death sent by is cousin Harnam Singh. Though he is grieved, he goes to his companions in the ship which sails to France.

The novel is hampered by the lengthy description of the cantonment life and the movement of troops who are to take part in the war. This is the only weakness visible in the plot because The Village is a very interesting novel as the reader is curious to know about Lal Singh’s further adventures, his voyage across the black waters to France. The Village holds up a shows the mirror to the situation prevalent in every village of India and the novel is a panorama of rural India we know, giving the colourful picture of rural life prior to the First World War. This gives the novel its excellence making it a lasting work of art.

The second novel in the trilogy, Across The Black Waters published in 1939, is based on Anand’s experience in trench warfare in Spain. The scene of the novel is the battlefields in France during the First World War and it shows the Indian troops in action at Messines and Festubert in 1914 and 1915. The novel traces the development of Lal Singh, from ‘innocence’ to ‘experience’ and also gives voice to Anand’s views on war, poverty, religion and various social evils which afflict the Indian Society. While Anand’s protagonists in his earlier novels like Untouchable and become mute witnesses of pain and uncontrolled social discrimination, in the trilogy, Lalu comes out and reacts sharply to the changing pattern of life. The author showed the hero’s urge to live and to fight against heavy odds. He fights valiantly with the forces of the society which tries to silence him. He neither succumbs to the rigidities of the caste system nor bows down before the various old fashioned religious customs. He even becomes a relentless crusader and a dedicated soldier, gearing up his strength to revolt against all the forces of ruthless repression perpetrated by his superiors like Lance Naik Loknath and Jemadar Subah Singh. Lalu’s cherished ideal and values of autonomy and social equality to the peasants are further tested and formulated in Europe. Lalu sees the boredom and the horror of death which the First World War brought in its wake. Lalu’s confrontation with the political and social realities and his understanding of life become the theme as well as the crux of the

http://www.ijellh.com 115 Volume II, Issue VIII, December 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065 novel. Anand charts out the details of the lives of soldiers, their anguish and helplessness. The novel is more concerned with the horrors of war and the nausea associated with it. The author presents a world in which an individual has no choices available. Lalu experiences the bonhomie of his companions, who die one by one, leaving him disconsolate. Dhanoo is drowned, Lachman Singh is killed in action, Kirpu shoots himself dead and Hanumant Singh is shot by one of his superiors when he refuses to fight due to illness. The protagonist is more than perturbed to see the horrors perpetuated by war and the sight of maimed bodies evokes in him disgust as brought out in the following lines:

“Lalu sat coiled up in the slimy straw in the cave, scraping the mud off his boots and clothes. If he had been told even a fortnight ago that in Vilayat, the land of his dreams where he had been so happy and eager to come as an adventurer, the Sahibs, whom he admired so much, were wilfully destroying each other, ruining their villages and the cities, he, would not have believed it.”

Across The Black Waters is Anand’s mirror showing the evils of war. The scattered corpses which we come across gives the impression that it is the celebration of death. There is only sorrow in the whole novel and we cannot help being affected by it. The soldiers in the novel are crushed by the war machine. They are constantly forced to commit violence for a meagre salary and for a uniform. The cruelty expected from them is evident in the advice given by Lance Naik Lok Nath just before they are pushed into action;

“Now you show them some of your savagery. All brave men like hand – to – hand fighting. And I have always tried to instil in you the fact that as brave sepoys you must charge the enemy without fear with your bayonets, wherever you find him, and hit him in a vital spot. Aim at the heart, remember the belly or the testicles of the enemy! If he has the advantage in attack, swiftly fell him with a blow from the butt end of your rifle and trample upon him and drive the bayonet deep into the body and draw it out so that he bleeds and dies.”

Bravery at war is nothing but barbarism. It is clearly expressed by Lalu in one of his casual talk with Daddy Dhanoo;

“If one who slays one is a murderer then he who slays a thousand is not a hero.”

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The cruelty of war is stressed throughout the novel. Orders to march or attack are the only words that the sepoys hear from their superiors. No excuse can be given for their inability to march. In a horrible scene, a sepoy named Hanumant Singh who is suffering from fever is ordered to get up and march which he refuses to do, gets abuses and as a result is shot dead;

“I shall deal with him, said Suchet Singh, taking out his revolver. If you don’t get up while I count three...... one, two... three. And he shot at Hanumant so that the sepoy shrieked and doubled over with a Hai, hai, oh my....”

Denunciation of war is the main theme which is an important aspect of social criticism in Across The Black Waters. When Havildar Lachman Singh waxes eloquent about the bravery of sepoy Usman Khan of Pathan Company, we see the reaction of Uncle Kirpu in the following lines;

“Bravery, said Lachman; what a bravery! Sepoy Usman Khan was hit by rifle fire. He was hit a second time but he stood like a Bahadur. A large piece of flesh was blown away from both his legs by a splinter and he had to be carried back. Karnel Sahib has recommended him for a medal...... He can hang it on his ....., said Kirpu, now, that he has no body left to decorate.”

The soldiers are encouraged to commit crimes for the reward of medal and promotion. Uncle Kirpu’s mockery of the medal for bravery is clearly seen when he is making fun of his friends when they are discussing the possibility of getting them;

“Boys, it is my duty as a Lance Naik to tell you that there are some gold medals being given by the women in the Red Lamp Shops.....”

The novel also deals with the exploitation of soldiers in the lower ranks during the war and also exposes the cruelties perpetrated by the superiors. The sole purpose of Anand is to show the havoc wrought by war by showing the debris of houses, destruction of farms as well as the apathy of people who were ready to live in the ramshackle homes and were least concerned about the war. An individual’s hopes and dreams are blighted by the war which is brought out beautifully by the author in the novel. This is a severe indictment on war by Mulk Raj Anand. The novelist shows the futility of war and the madness of the armed conflict. This is brought out beautifully in the following lines:

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“And as three men fell wounded into a depression, Lalu recognised Rikhi Ram gasping with a bullet right through his temple. Lalu could not look at him. Some of the wounded were weeping, whimpering. Lalu crawled forward and craned his neck to look. Turmoil and confusion.”

Like The Village, Across The Black Waters is free from the elements of propaganda. The criticism of Anand on the evils of war is shown by agony and tension, the soldiers suffer as they fight and die nobly for the Government. We readers find the novel interesting because it is the only major war novel of Indian writing in English about the First World War.

The third novel of the trilogy published in 1942 is The Sword And The Sickle. The title depicts the struggle of the peasants against the landlords and their agents representing the money lenders. The main social concerns expressed in the novel are about war and its devastating effect, the cruelty of the landlords as well as the farmers strictly adhering to the crime of untouchability. It is shown in the novel that some of the very poor farmers though very hungry, get up on seeing the untouchables without touching the tasty meal;

“...not even the privations of the march, though which they had eaten only roasted gram, would make Bhupendra and Raghu touch the food, while others gobbled handfuls of the delicious rice mixed with gravies of different dishes, spiced with the tastiest condiments.”

The novel has many loose ends. The story of what happened to Lalu’s friends at Nandpur and the Count’s arrest are simply introduced and then ignored without any second thoughts by the author about what will happen to the novel. The novel is not tightly bound to the first and the second volumes namely The Village and Across The Black Waters of the trilogy. The novel is filled with numerous sermons on the evils of Landlordism, Communism, Gandhism etc.

Thus we see that though The Sword And The Sickle is not a very great work as compared to the previous novels which are The Village and Across The Black Waters, the experiences of the protagonist in Punjab, France and Uttar Pradesh make the three novels a great trilogy.

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Anand condemned the way in which modern civilization was drifting towards violence, bloodshed and pain. His novels show the degradation and bestiality produced by selfish persons who did not care for the consequences which the war produced. Across The Black Waters comes out as the finest work on war literature by an Indian author where action is vividly described in terms of blood and despair giving us a sombre insight in the minds of soldiers as well as painting the futility of war.

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Bibliography a. Mahajan V.D.History of Modern Europe since 1789. S.Chand, 2007.Print. b. The Royal British Legion: First World War Centenary. http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/rememberance.Web page1 c. World War1 centenary commemoration from: British High Commission, New Delhi 20-10-2014 Web Page 1 d. Ram Atma. Mulk Raj Anand A Reader.Sahitya Akademi. New Delhi, 2005.Print. e. Anand, Mulk Raj. The Village. Orient Paperbacks, New Delhi, 2008.Print. ---.Across The Black Waters. Orient Paperbacks, New Delhi, 2008.Print. ---The Sword And The Sickle.Orient Paperbacks, New Delhi, 2008.Print.

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