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Ques. What is the Theme of Untouchable ? Ques. Describe the exploitation and caste oppression in the Novel of Mulk Raj Anand?. Subject: English Class: B.A. Final Year Name of Paper: Second Paper( Indian English Literature) Topic: Untouchable Novel by Mulk Raj Anand Sub-topic:A Brief Notes on Theme of Untouchable Novel/ exploitation and caste Oppression Key-Words: Dalit, Oppression, Scavenger, Gender , Discrimination, Uppercaste, Domination Prepared By Name: Manish Chand Assistant Professor-English Department of English Email: [email protected] Mob:8738008905 /9264926732 Lalta Singh Govt. Girls P.G. College Adalhat,Mirzapur Introduction About Author • Mulk Raj Anand is the most celebrated social realist in Indian English fiction. He is as prolific writer as R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao. • Mulk Raj Anand was born on 12thDecember 1905 in Peshawar in a Kshatriya coppersmith family and died on 28th September 2004. • He was awarded the Ph.D degree in 1930 for his thesis titled The Thought of Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Russel. • He was a recipient of the civil honour of the Padma Bhusan in 1967. • He won the Sahitya Academy Award for his novel ‘Morning Face’ • He was deeply influenced by M.K. Gandhi. • Anand has written almost 15 novels and some stories books. • His popular novels are Untouchable(1935), Coolie(1936), Two Leaves and a Bud(1937), The Village(1939), Across the Black Water(1941), The Sword and the Sickle(1942), The Big Heart(1945), Seven Summers(1951), The Private Life of an Indian Prince(1953), Gauri(1960), The Road(1963),The Death of a Hero(1964), Morning Face(1968), Confession of a Lover(1976). Practice of Untouchability based on Caste System • The real theme of untouchable deals about the poor, dirty and backward condition of all those men, women and people based on exploitation and traditional caste system who belong to untouchables of India. • Mulk Raj Anand’s debut novel Untouchable is true picture and voice of dalit life. In this novel, Anand has made very evident that there is practice of untouchability by a hypocratic Brahmin caste. Bakha a dalit, can sweep the temple steps but he is not allowed enter the premises. He is touched and cursed by the priest Pandit Kalinath. Anand illustrates: • “Get off the steps, you scavenger! Off with you! You have defiled our whole service. You have defiled our temple! Now we will have to pay for the purificatory ceremony. Get down, get away you dog!”(Untouchable,p. 53) Dalit Exploitation in the form of Geographical Division in Untouchable novel. • Dalit colony(outcaste) is situated far away from Hindu colony. Caste based hierarchy significantly controlled to human lives since the time of Aryan dominance in India. The varnasrama contains four classes like for example Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra, divided according to their job or profession. The living condition of these castes is very miserable. They are bound to live in mud walled areas in single cottages. The novel begins with realistic picture of the outcaste’s colony. Anand illustrates: • “The outcaste’s 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 watermen, the barbers, the water-carriers, the grass-cutters and other outcastes from Hindu society.” (Untouchable, p. 1) Dalit Exploitation Based on Gender • There is a discrimination and exploitation not only on the basis of caste but also sexual molestation of dalit girl. Pandit kalinath is attracted by Sohini’s physical beauty and grace. She is sister of Bakha.Here, Pandit Kalinath has no caste prejudice in term of untouchability but lust for her which reflects his dual nature and hypocrisy of Brahmin. Sohini is invited to clean the temple premises. Sohini’s physical molestation is done at the hand of the temple priest. For fear of being found guilty, he begins shouting that she has defiled and polluted him. Somehow she escaped herself and tells all that happened with her brother Bakha. Anand observes: • “He-e-e just teased me, she at last yielded. ‘And then when I was bending down to work, he came and held me by my breasts.’ The son of a pig! Bakha exclaimed ‘I will go and kill him!” ( Untouchable,p.55) Discrimination Being an Outcaste • For being an outcaste, Bakha had to shout and announce his arrival for begging purpose as well as. Even he could not dare to touch the sanctity of house by climbing the stairs. On account of this whenever he used to go for begging, he could only shout from certain distance ‘bread for sweeper’. After the sadhu, he could be given attention and bread had been flung down at him because he belonged to dalit community. Meanwhile, sadhu was given special attention because he was associated with Hindu society. Anand illustrates: • “‘Bham, bham, bhole Nath, cried the sadhu in the peculiar lingo of Sadhuhood, shaking the bangles on his arms, which brought two women rushing to the terraces of their house-tops. ‘I am bringing the food, sadhu ji’, shouted the lady at whose doorstep Bakha was at rest.”( Untouchable, p.62) Atrocity and Humiliation being born as Dalit Bakha is humiliated and abused by upper caste Hindus in another incident. He goes to the city to clean roads. He wants to buy a cigarette and jalebis worth of four annas. Being as an untouchable, he was supposed to call ‘Posh keep away, posh, sweeper coming, and posh, posh, sweeper coming.’ But unfortunately, s caste Hindu is touched and polluted by his hand accidently. Bakha is encircled by perpetrators and got hot abused. A hard slap is given by the polluted by Hindu. Bakha helplessness boils in his heart; meanwhile a Muhammadan tongawalah helps and dispersed the crowd. Anand illustrates: • “Keep to the side of the road, you, low caste vermin! He suddenly heard someone shouting at him, why don’t you call, you swine, and announces your approach! Do you know you have touched me and defiled me, you cockeyed son of a bow-legged scorpion! Now I will have to go to take a bath to purify myself.” (Untouchable,p.38). Uppercaste domination and Opperession • Another incident of uppercaste domination and oppression can be seen in Untouchable novel. Bakha could not be educated because he was born in poor dalit family. Anand narrates: • “ And Bakha had wept and cried to be allowed to go to school. But then his father had told him that schools were meant for the babus, not for the lowly sweepers.” (Untouchable, p.30). CONCLUSION • Mulk Raj Anand is perhaps the first Indian novelist in English who writes realistically in his fiction about the doomed lives of the downtrodden and dalits. The important feature of Mulk Raj Anand’s novel Untouchable is revolt against the conventional, conservative, orthodox norms and his ultimate demand or urge for a new code of conduct and morality. Therefore, S.B.Wadikar says “in the situation depicted, Anand too like Karl Marx, expects human beings to suffer as human being, and not as animals. (Wadikar,2007:154) • In his novels he portrays the lives of a sweeper, a coolie, a peasant etc., who are all the vicims of capitalistic exploitation, poverty, squalor, class-hatred, race-hatred and inhuman society. As Prem Paul Sudhakar points out : In his novels he reveals a truine intuition of the inhumanity of man, his expliotative nature and his possible redemption.(Sudhakar, 1985:2) • In a nutshell, Mulk Raj Anand comes before us being as social realist and reformer through his works of creative writing. Workscited • Bhattacharya, N. edt. Mulk Raj Anand Untouchable. Pearson India Education Services Pvt.Ltd:2008.print. • Sudhakar, Premila Paul. Major Themes in the Novels of Mulk Raj Anand.Perspective on Indian Fiction in English.ed.M.K.Naik. New Delhi:Abhinav Publishers,1985p.2.print. • Limbale, Sharankumar. Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature. Translated by Alok Mukherjee. Orient Blackswan Private Limited Hyderabad: 2004. p.104.print. • Wadikar, Shailaja B. “A Silent Suffering and Agony in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable”.Indian English Poerty and Fiction: Critical Elucidation.edts Prasad Amar Nath & Rajiv K. Malik. New Delhi:Sarup & Sons,2007.p.144. print. .
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