Mulk Raj Anand - Social Protest in ‘Untouchable’

 

Mulk Raj Anand

Social Protest in ‘Untouchable’ 

Mulk Raj Anand’s first five novels including some of his best work, Coolie, Untouchable, Two Leaves and a Bud, The Village and Across the Black Waters, appeared between 1933 and 1940, although he had already written a considerable amount before this, including a study of Persian paintings and a book on curries. He is passionately concerned with the villages, with the ferocious poverty and the cruelties of caste, with orphans, untouchables and urban labourers. He writes in an angry reformist way, like a less humorous Dickens and a more emotional Wells, of the personal sufferings induced by economics - really economics, one feels, even when he is writing of caste. His sharpest, best-organized novel is Untouchable, which was very highly thought of by E. M. Forster. It is an interesting combination of hard material, narrow specific theme and throbbing Shelleyan manner. The action, occupying a single day, is precipitated by a great “catastrophe”, an accidental “touching” in the morning. Everything that follows is affected by it, even the innocent and vividly realized hockey match. Of the three solutions hinted at to the problem of the untouchable — Christ, Gandhi and Main Drainage — it is the last which is more favourable. Untouchable (1935), which “poured out like hot lava” from the volcano of Anand’s “crazed imagination” despite the best efforts of scholars like Bonamy Dobree, Maurice Brown and others to seek a publisher, was rejected by nineteen publishers for “too much misery, evil and degradation in it”.

E. M. Forster, whose Preface to the novel made the book acceptable to a publisher, has, without rhetoric and circumlocution, praised Anand for “directness of the attack” and has frankly brought out the fact that Indians “… have evolved a hideous nightmare unknown to the West: the belief that the products are ritually unclean as well as physically unpleasant, and that those who carry them away or otherwise help to dispose of them are outcastes from society. Really, it takes the human mind to evolve anything so devilish. No animal could have hit on it.” Anand was hailed for portraying the stark realities of poverty, dirt and squalor that engulfed the millions of silent sufferers, and for his sincere protest against such an internal system. Describing the creative process of writing Untouchable, he says: Untouchable was, in its sources, a ballad born of the freedom I had tried to win for truth against the age-old lies of the Hindus by which they upheld discrimination …. Someone in the great Mahabharata had cried “Caste, caste - there is no caste”. And I wanted to repeat this truth to the ‘dead souls’, from the compassion of my self-explanations in the various Hindu hells, in the hope that I would myself come clean after I had been through the sewer, as it were.

The novel has proved a great success; it has not only run into many editions, but has been translated into more than twenty languages of the world. The story of Bakha, a scavenger, a descendant of “the weakness of the down-trodden, the helplessness of the poor” embodies Anand’s vehement protest against the indignant fourfold Hindu caste system, which kills the valiant, the beautiful and the glorious. In the midst of his spiritual conflicts and emotional crises, the sweeper-lad wishes to dress himself like a “gentleman” in the ‘fashion’ of Tommies. He is noble, healthy, vibrates with life, just in contrast to his dirty profession and appallingly subhuman status.

The graphic description of Bakha’s morning and evening rounds of regimental latrines, his deputizing for his father’s job in the town, the insults heaped on him for not announcing his approach, the molestation of his sister, Sohini by the devil incarnate, hollow-cheeked Pundit Kali Nath, the flinging of the bread on the brick pavement near the gutter to be picked up by him - all these present a world of untold horrid miseries and humiliations. Anand’s rage against the high-caste Hindus, who have cleverly condemned a whole community of people, is evident.

“Noble savages” like Bakha and Munoo are not permitted to give vent to all the latent potentialities of manhood in them. Bakha’s sincere craving for “Red Lamp” cigarettes, trousers, puttees, sola topi is an unconscious reaction against the life that has been forced upon him by his “smoky world of refuse”. His traumatic experience, when he gets a slap for polluting the caste Hindu by his unholy touch followed by the crescendo of “Dirty dof! Son of a bitch”, forces him to delve deep into his conscience, the very truth of his existence. He realizes his fate: “Untouchable! Untouchable! That’s the word! Untouchable! I am an Untouchable!” And so long as he continues to clean the latrines, he will never get rid of this label. “They think we are dirt, because we clean their dirt.” He occasionally stirs out of his humility and is on the point of revolt, but the sparks of his angry voice are hushed by his realization of harsh realities. The novel proposes three probable solutions to Bakha’s problem of cleaning the latrines: he can accept the kind offer of the Salvation Army Chief, Colonel! Hutchinson’ he can take comfort in Gandhi’s mild reprimand of caste-Hindus and the eulogy of untouchables as Harijans (sons of God); he can hope for new life with the introduction of “the machine”, suggested by the poet. The last (the machine), an obvious reference to the flush system, appeals to him and he wishes to know further about this.

Anand’s protest against the miserable life of the untouchables acquires a new significance in the context of numerous recent incidents of atrocities, committed by the Hindus on the Harijans. How they are burnt alive, killed in cold blood, deprived of their land and houses—is a sordid story with no parallel in history to match it. It is a matter of great irony that most of the political parties in India have professed at one stage or the other to be true Gandhians but little substantial has been done for the emancipation of the untouchables. Practice of untouchability has been made a crime under the Indian Constitution, still there are millions of untouchables who have to depend on the dirty job of cleaning the latrines for their bread.

Political promises to ameliorate their sufferings are just a lip service, as nothing very concrete has been done to introduce flush system in all the cities and villages of the country. India’s present predicament, after thirty years of independence, is a vindication of Anand’s vivid imagination. In the matter of religion, Anand has always vehemently protested against the mystic origins and myth-making. He recalls his first sharp reaction to the merciful God on the death of his innocent cousin Kaushalya at the tender age of nine: But God did not answer my protest. So, I have tended to regard him, since then, as the enemy of mankind. In fact, from that time my belief in the man with a big beard sitting on the top of the sky, determining the fate of everyone, has been shaken more or less completely.

Anand was impressed by the Christian missionary Colonel Hutchinson; but he rejected Christianity for its unscientific creation of myth and its view that man is a born sinner. Naturally, Anand made humanity as his chief concern. The gospel of Christ, as in Untouchable, does not interest Bakha. He raises a volley of questions about the identity of “Yessuh Messih”. Hutchinson’s devotional songs fail arousing Bakha’s emotions, since Christianity does not appear to touch the fringe of his problem. Theology does not satisfy him and the temporary charm of Sahib’s company soon evaporates. The Colonel makes a muddle of the whole thing. Hinduism also, with its network of castes, its mysticism and illogical and blind faiths, has been severely opposed by Anand. Bakha’s visit to the temple is much revealing. The author gives a strikingly realistic analysis of Bakha’s mental conflicts and spiritual crises, when he is filled with awe at the sight of twelve-headed and ten-armed gods and goddesses of the Hindus. The invocation to different gods and goddesses (“Ram, Ram, Sri, Hari, Narayan, Sri Krishna”, “Hey Hanuman Jodah, Kali Mai”, “Om, Om, Shanti Deva”) appears to draw him towards the temple and “seemed to advance towards him like a monster, and to envelop him”. Anand frowns at the religion that does not allow its devotee to have a free access to his deity. The low hoarse cry “Polluted, Polluted, Polluted” rudely shakes him, for, to his amazement, he discovers that his entry has defiled the temple of his deity. He is dazed and his blood is congealed. His discovery of the priest’s attempt to molest Sohini rouses not only the hero in him to strike back, but also his indignation at the cold lifeless gods who fail to protect an innocent girl from the indecent advances and lusty clutches of a devil. Anand mocks at the hypocrisy and hollowness of Hindu religion for its curse of “pollution by touch” which baffles all reason, sensibility and good sense, in contrast to the allowance of all sorts of unclean practices like gargling and spitting in the stream, relieving in the open, swindling by the moneylender as Ganesh Nath does, and manipulation of the scales by the confectioner.