Mulk raj anand

 My Rating: 4/5

Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 160 (Paperback)
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date of Publication: 29 August 2001
Original Date of Publication: 1 May 1935

Synopsis:
Bakha is the eighteen-year-old son of the town’s head sweeper. He lives in a mud house with his brother, sister, and their father. Having stayed with his uncle at the British regimental barracks, he’s highly influenced by their fashion of dressing. But life is not that simple when you’re the underdogs in a society rife with casteism and you’re the untouchables.

Review:
This is a short novel, under one hundred and sixty pages, but it leaves you with profound thoughts. Set in pre-independent India, Untouchable is a dirty story. You’ll know why I said that when you read the delightful Preface by E.M Forster. The story of an ordinary lad, who is conscious of his status in society and yet can’t help but question its unfairness.

Some readers, especially those who consider themselves all-white, will go purple on the face with rage before they have finished a dozen pages, and will exclaim that they cannot trust themselves to speak.

It made me appreciate the privileged life I live, and also how some parts of my society haven’t yet let go of their age-old prejudices. The story tells us about how tough it is to grow up, not only as outcastes but also as a girl growing up there without a mother to shelter her. Though it made me feel odd when Bakha didn’t miss his mother that much. Made me wonder whether it was due to being emotionally stunted, but that thought didn’t last long especially after experiencing his conflicting feelings regarding his identity and his place in society in the general scheme of things.

He was vaguely ashamed and self-conscious at being seen buying sweets.

What was odd or maybe wasn’t was the incestuous angle where Bakha thinks about his sister Sohini, even though he is aware of how wrong he is in his thinking in the next instant. Apart from that, it is such a moving story. You can feel their helplessness, not being able to worship in the temple, eating leftover food of others, etc.

He wished someone would come, someone to fill his mind, which had dried up, become suddenly empty.

In the end, it seemed surreal, the way the events unfolded, that it all happened within a single day. It ends on a hopeful note, though there is no immediate relief to be got from his continuing plight.

After reading this, what I felt was that before teaching about religion, which is no doubt a part of our identity for some of us, we should rather learn about humanity. The author describes the characters and their feelings in a heartfelt way, a story everyone must-read. As E.M. Forster wrote to Anand in a letter:

…you ma(d)e your sweeper sympathetic yet avoid(ed) making him a hero or a martyr…

Anand is one of the Big Three writers who defined Indian English writing, by making use of an English “that is constructed by and constructs the geographical and social space” of their native land. A doctorate in philosophy turned writer, he was a realist who didn’t set much store by the beliefs of the aesthetes. The plot of this story is often said to be one of the best experimental plots in the elementary stage of the Indian novel in English.

P.S. One thing that really bugged me was the number of commas, it kind of hindered the flow of the story, which is essentially one big chapter.

Additional reading:
On the Genesis of Untouchable: A Note by Mulk Raj Anand
(If you find this book somewhere, please do share. An e-copy will work wonders too!)

You can get your copy here:
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon India | Kobo | B&N | Google Play

Blurb:

Bakha is a young man, proud and even attractive, yet none the less he is an outcast in India’s caste system: an Untouchable. In deceptively simple prose this groundbreaking novel describes a day in the life of Bakha, sweeper and toilet-cleaner, as he searches for a meaning to the tragic existence he has been born into – and comes to an unexpected conclusion. Mulk Raj Anand poured a vitality, fire and richness of detail into his controversial work, which led him to be acclaimed as his country’s Charles Dickens and one of the twentieth century’s most important Indian writers.

About the Author:
Mulk Raj Anand was an Indian writer in English, notable for his depiction of the lives of the poorer castes in traditional Indian society. One of the pioneers of Indo-Anglian fiction, he, together with R. K. Narayan, Ahmad Ali and Raja Rao, was one of the first India-based writers in English to gain an international readership. Anand is admired for his novels and short stories, which have acquired the status of being classic works of modern Indian English literature, noted for their perceptive insight into the lives of the oppressed and their analyses of impoverishment, exploitation and misfortune. He is also notable for being among the first writers to incorporate Punjabi and Hindustani idioms into English