social issues represented in works of Mulk Raj Anand

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NAME: Ami Sojitra

COURSE: Indian writing in English

TOPIC: social issues represented in     works of Mulk Raj Anand

SUBMITTED TO: Department of English (MKBU)

ENROLMENT NO: PG15101034

Social issues represented in work of MULK RAJ ANAND

INTRODUCTION:-

             There are many Indian writers who have written about social issues of India. Mulk raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, Raja Rao etc. has written in English. Mulk Raj Anand is also one of the famous writer of Indian English Writing.  He has focus on the burning problems of pre-independent Indian society. Anand’s ‘Untouchable’  is a Sociological document that focuses attention through a sweeperboy, Bakha, on a number of customs, traditions, social-evils, etc. Indian society during 1930’s.

         The most Significant event in the history of Indian English fiction in the 1930’s was the appearance on the scene of its major trio: Mulk Raj Anand, R.K.Narayan and Raja Rao. The deal with the Indian social issues, in one way or another.

          Anand’s first three novels –

·         ‘Untouchable’ (1935),

·         ‘Coolie’ (1936) and

·         ‘Two Leaves and a Bud’ (1937)

 Deal with the Indian Social issues in Pre-independent India. Anand turns to the lot of class of the under-privileged, the down-trodden and the outcasts.

         Anand’s fiction has been shaped by what he calls, “The double burden on my shoulders, the AIPs of the European tradition and the Himalaya of my Indian past” 

        To his Indian past, Anand’s attitude is ambivalent. As M. K. Naik writes :- “On the one hand, he is indignantly critical of  dead wood of hoary Indian tradition – Its obscurantism, and fossilization; On the other, as his life-long interest in ancient Indian art and the intuitive understanding of the Indian peasant mind, in his writings indicate he is equally aware of its inner and enduring aspects as well”

       There is  no question that Mulk Raj Anand has fashioned with ‘Untouchable’ and ‘Coolie’, the novels that fluent the abuses of an exploited class an untouchable in ‘Untouchable’,  Munno in ‘Coolie’ is indeed the ‘Fiery voice’ of those people who form the untouchable caste and child-labor like Munno. The time 1930’s was the seed-time of modern Independent India - a packed decade indeed when Raja Rao wrote: ‘Kanthapura’ and Anand respond to the impact of events in India. He wrote for the poor and as a man of the people.

       In writing of the bottom dogs rather than of the choose and the sophisticated, he had ventured into field that had been largely ignored by the Indian writers.

·         Bankim Chandra’s novels were but romances,

·         Tagore was chiefly interested in the upper and middle classes, and

·         Sarat Chandra in the lower-middle classes; and

·         Munshi Pramchand chose his themes from the peasantry and humble folk of Uttar Pradesh.

 None of them cared to produce realistic and naturalistic fiction . K.R. Srinivasa Iyenger writer about the themes of Mulk Raj Anand :-

                              “It was Anand’s aim to stray lower still than ever Sarat

                               Chandra or Premchand, to show to the west that there

                              Was more in the Orient than could be inferred from Omar

                            Khayyam, Tagore or Kipling, and so he described a waif like

                             Munno in ‘Coolie’ and untouchable like Bakha, and indentured

                            Laborer like Gangu and set them right at the centre of the

                            Scheme of cruelty and exploitation that India held in its vicious grip”

   Thus, When Anand started writing fiction, he decided to prefer the familiar to the fancied, that he would avoid the romance and sophistication but explore the bylines of the outcastes and the peasants, the spays and the working people. To Anand it was no laborious exercise, rather it was merely the easier and more natural way; he was himself of the workers and he wrote in a brisk unselfconscious way about what he had seen at first hand in the years of his childhood, boyhood and youth.

‘Untouchable’ (1935)

There is no question that Mulk Raj Anand has fashioned with ‘Untouchable’, a novel that articulates the abuses of an exploited class. He is indeed the ‘Fiery Voice’ of those people who form the untouchable caste. Anand’s father was a subedar  in Army and Anand, as a child mixed freely with the children of the sweepers, attached to his father’s regiment, and such associations cutting across caste divisions, and continued during his boyhood and youth. These early playmates and friends became the heroes of his first novels. Recalling the occasion of writing the ‘Untouchable’, Anand Writes,

                 “One day I read an article by Gandhiji describing 

                  How he met Uka, a Sweeper boy, finding him with  

                 Torn clothes and hungry, he took him into his Ashram”

            At that time, living in Bloomsbury, England , Anand wrote to Gandhiji seeking an appointment and met Gandhiji at Sabarmati Ashram. Gandhiji read Anand’s draft-novel and  finally the novel was published in 1935.The novel depicts a day in the life of Bakha, a Sweeper-boy, and brings out the impact on him of the various events which take place, by giving us his ‘Stream of Consciousness’, in the manner of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. He is eighteen year old son of Jamadar, Lakha who gets a pair of breeches from an English soldier, and tries to be in ‘fassun’. But as the day begins, his work of toilet-cleaning begins. He is steady and efficient in his work. His sister Sohini goes to village-well to fetch water; Kalinath, the village priest of the temple draws water to fill Sohini pail, and feels attracted to her beautiful body, and driving away the others suggests her to go to his house later in the day to clean the courtyard. When she goes to his house, he makes improper suggestions to her, and she starts screaming, he shouts ‘polluted, polluted’, and a crowd of people gather.

             Bakha reaches at that spot,  a caste Hindu whom he touched by chance, and finds Sohini standing with her face-downward, attacked by caste Hindus who sided with Kalinath. He get the situation, back with anger but remembering the thousands-year old slavery, controlled himself. Sending away Sohini, goes to collect food from door to door at that time people throw bread as he was a dog. When he returns home, he tells his father,

                                       “They think we are mere dirt because we clean their dirt”

          Once he  carries the child in his arms who was inured, but the child’s mother, instead of thanking Bakha rebukes and abuses him for having polluted her child :-

                                   “Oh ! you eater of your masters what have you done?

                                     Give me my child. You have defiled the house,

                                      besides wounding my son”

         Than Bakha meets col. Hutchinson, the Christian, missionary, who takes him home quite lovingly and teaches him about Jesus Christ. Then Bakha goes to the ‘Gole Maidan’ and hears the speech of Gandhiji, who talks about social reforms as solution to the menace of untouchability he was encouraged by the soothing words of Gandhi. M. K. Naik writes about the concluding part of the novel:-

                         “In the end it suggests three alternative solutions to his problem: - a

                         Missionary tries to persuade him to embrace Christianity; he listens to

                         Gandhiji who advocates social reform; and he also hears of mechanized

                         Sanitation, as the only answer possible.”

         ‘Untouchable’ is a sociological document which focus  on a number of customs, traditions, social evils etc. of Hindu Society during 1930’s.  The untouchables were not only poor, ill-fed, ill-clothed but also sick and diseased. Thus, Bakha’s mother died because of lack of treatment, and his father was asthmatic. They were also used to be subjected to great hardships by the callous caste Hindus.

        They could not draw water from the village-well. Sohini, Gulabo and other women had to wait for hours for a pitcher of water. They had to depend upon them for their daily food. According to custom, when Bakha or any other untouchable walked through the bazaar, he had to cry around ‘posh, posh, sweeper coming’. Ever the shadow of an untouchable should not fall on caste Hindu. A pinch of irony makes the theme more effective.

         M. K. Naik writes about it :- “ ’Untouchable’ is a scathing indictment of Hindu Society and irony is the weapon of this indictment”

The caste Hindu people keep themselves away even from the shadow of he untouchable, but of all persons, the priest Kali Nath treats Sohini like a Juice morsel of girlhood to be molested with impunity. It is also ironical that shunned by the caste-Hindus, Bakha gets help and sympathy from Muslims, Christians and sub-caste people like washer man’s son and Charat Singh.  In his preface to the book, E.M. Forester wrote:-

                                “The book seems to me indescribably clean….

                              It has gone straight to the heart of its subject and purified it”

 Coolie:-

            ‘Coolie’ is epical in sweep and panorama in purview, pictures the effects that the pervasive evil of class-system has on a poor hill-boy, Munno. The novel is remarkable for the largeness of its canvas, the multiplicity of its characters, and the variety of its episodes. ‘Coolie’ is odyssey of Munno, an orphaned village-boy live on Kangra hills, who sets out in a search of livelihood. His several roles including those of a domestic servant, a coolie, a factory-worker and a rickshaw-puller, take him to various places from Bombay to Simla, until swift tuberculosis brings his struggle to an untimely death

            ‘Coolie’ is visible India, that amalgamation of the horrible and the holy, the inhuman and the human, the sordid and the beautiful. The general effect is panoramic; good and evil being thrown together as in actual life. Munno as orphan was left to be brought up by his cruel uncle and aunt. Munno’s cruel aunt keeps beating, abusing and scolding because Munno causes financial burden upon the family. His uncle decides to send him to Shamnagar to appoint him as a domestic servant in Nathuram’s house. At Shamnagar, due to his impish curiosity and juvenile buoyant spirit often put him to trouble. Due to the class distinction Munno has no right to join in the merrymaking of little girl, Sheila and her friends. He cannot eat from a plate as his social superiors do. His sitting for toilet in the open, breaking crockery caused for him a lot of scolding and beating. Munoo comes to the conclusion:-

                    “There are two kinds of people in the world; the rich and the poor”

             His experiences as a coolie in the grain market, and vegetable market are most depressing and disappointing. The pictures of coolies lying huddled at night because they do not have enough accommodation and their hectic search for work during day time show the multitudes of unemployed had to undergo in those days. Escaping from Daulatpur Munoo reaches Bombay with the help of an elephant driver, with a piece of advice :-

                       “The bigger a city is, the more cruel it is to

                       The sons of Adam. You have to pay even for

                       The breath that you breathe”

 Bombay, far from Munno’s dreams proves nightmare. He is disillusioned at the first contact with reality. At the corner of a footpath Munno sees a Coolie lying huddled:-“pillowing his head on his arm, shrinking into himself, as if he were afraid to occupy too much space”

             The bodies of numberless lay strewn in tattered garbs, in a sleep which looked like death.

             At Bombay, the cotton factory where Munno comes to work is nothing but another version of hell where countless lads like him are condemned to subhuman existence. The coolies toil with their sweat and blood, while the converse the weather over a cup of tea. The cruelty of child labor is another evil in Bombay and other industrial towns, making little children work under abominable conditions for long hours for a paltry wages is an evil practise almost built-in a capitalist factory frame-work.

             In Bombay the labour exploitation is quite obvious. Munno gets a job after many effort under Jimmy Thomas (Chimta Sahib), From Bombay He is taken to Simla in a Motor-car by an Anglo-Indian lady Mrs Mainwaring. Anand is anxious to present his hero in the aristocratic set up to complete his social picture of suffering and exploitation.He finds in Simla that there are only two categories of people – ‘Sahib Log’ and the ‘Coolies’ the life of plenty and luxury, and the life of under-employment and over work. Soon, He develops tuberculosis, and after a brief treatment dies in a hospital.His fight for survival that illuminates, with raw immediacy, the grim fate of the masses in            Pre-independent and Partition India. Premila paul writes about it:-

                “But inspite of the tragic ending ‘Coolie’ is not

                  Pessimistic novel. The hope of humanity lies in

                People like prabha, Ratan, and Mohan”

 Anand is aware that poetic justice is not meted out in life. However, he is optimistic and has firm faith in human goodness. C. D. Narsimha is of the opinion the death has ceased to frighten the poor, they are past fright, it is the life that is threat, and death is a release.

 Conclusion:-

             The movement of freedom and before that our own people of india suffered from various issues which described by many Indian English writers like Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, Raja Rao, etc.. They all have reflected situation of people and their problems especially Mulk Raj Anand has described issues related to lower class people and high class people, which shows the two divided groups in India. Untouchabilitu is issue described by Anand, Sati-practise is described by Raja rao and others.

                Thus, Mulk Raj Anand has show the real face of india in his works.
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