Review of Mulk Raj Anand ’ s Novel :
Untouchable
- Veeru
‘ Untouchable ’ was the first novel that had presented the sufferings of the dalits to the world . This novel was written by Mulk Raj Anand in English in 1935 . He was educated in the universities of Lahore , London and Cambridge ; lived in England for many years and finally settled in a village in Western India after the War .
Mulk Raj Anand was born in the caste of Kshatrias – But as a child he played with the children of sweepers and scavengers attached to an Indian regiment . He had practically seen how the Hindu caste system had been humiliating them at every turn of their lives .
In his novel he made his main concern for ‘ the creatures in the lower depths of Indian society who once were men and women : the rejected by the society , who had no way to articulate their anguish against the oppressors ’.
Mulk Raj Anand was one of the founder members of the Indian Progressive Writers Association ( IPWA ) and one of the members who drafted the declaration of the IPWA .
He directly attacked the caste system , which was so devilish to outcaste those who carry and clean the human feces and help to dispose the unclean human products .
The sweepers and the latrine cleaners- the scavengers - belong to the outcastes of the Hindu caste system , they are of the lowest caste among them and they are looked down even by the other outcastes .
Mulk Raj took up the wretched life of a young scavenger in an Indian city as the theme of his novel and described a day in his life with every realistic circumstance .
As E . M . Forster in his preface to the novel stated , ‘‘ the scavenger is worse off than a slave , for the slave may change his master and his duties and may even become free , but the sweeper is bound for ever , born in to November - 2021 a state from which he cannot escape and where he is excluded from social intercourse and the consolations of his religion ’’. The scavenger as he walks along the public roads it is his duty to call out and warn them out that he is coming . These in human and harsh conditions imposed on them by the caste system made the scavengers to for me the brunt of their misery with
a resigned air of fatalism . They only get abuse and derision where ever they go . They inherited the spirit of resignation through the long centuries down through counters outcaste ancestors . Serfdom of thousands of years had humbled them . They have come down in the social scale due to their profession imposed on them by the system .
Mulk Raj took up this as a subject of his novel and he exposed the inhuman nature , hypocrisy and beastly nature of the social system , ruthlessly attacking the orthodox Hindu caste system which is supposed to be based on Hindu scriptures and the CODE OF MANU , the basis of abhorrent caste system .
He exposed how the outcastes do not have their own wells for water , since they cannot financially afford to dig them and how they had to wait at the water wells of the upper caste Hindus for hours craving for the pity of the ‘ gentlemen ’ of upper castes to draw and fill their pitcher with water .
He also exposed , how the children of outcaste have no schools to go and get education , and how they are barred from the schools of the upper castes , as the children of the upper castes will be contaminated by the touch of the low caste children . Moreover he showed how the teachers wouldn ’ t teach the out castes , lest they should touch the fingers which guided the students across the leaves of out caste ’ s books and be polluted . Mulk Raj exposed this cruelty of orthodox Hindus and their system which forced the children of scavengers to resign themselves to the hereditary lives of theirs craft – to work at the latrines from the age of six itself .
He depicted vividly , how the scavengers have to beg for their daily bread , in the back lanes of the residents of the city , after cleaning the drains in the gullies , crying “ Bread for the sweeper mother ! Bread for the sweeper !”, till the lady of the house shows pity and throws a chapati or two to them .
He also described how these out-castes get the foal leavings of sepoys who wash their hands in their round brass trays over the leavings of bread and salad , and then throw them to the out-castes .
He also described how these down-trodden , under dogs show their gratefulness even at a single act of charity made to them by the well offs . He showed how these oppressed react to a simple act of kindness as a great generosity . In the story the scavenger boy Bhaka was given a hockey bat as a present by Havildar Charat Singh a caste Hindu . Mulk Raj describes the reaction of Bhaka who overcame by the man ’ s kindness as contd . in page 12 13