Champion of the Marginalised

Mulk Raj Anand, the father of the Indian English novel was born on 12th Dec. 1905, in Peshawar which is now in Pakistan and died of complications, due to pneumonia, in Pune in Sept. 2004, at the age of ninety nine. His father Lall Chand Anand was a Non Commissioned Officer in British Army. His mother Ishwar Kaur Anand was his mother. Mulk Raj Anand nurtured a revolt against British Raj from his teen age. He completed his graduation in philosophy and came into close contact with poet Md. Iqbal. He gave Anand a few addresses of his friends who were in London and one hundred rupees. His mother gave him a very small amount having sold away her ornaments. Anand was very much perturbed to look at the torture of his mother by his father. Further he observed how aunts were exploited by his uncles in his own family. Mulk Raj Anand left home and arrived in London, where he came in touch with Virginia Wolf. Later on he became intimate with T. S. Eliot, Herbert Read, Harold Lasky, Middleton Murry and W.B. Yeats. Poet George Russel advised him to go to India and to meet Gandhijee. He met Gandhijee. He sent Anand to work among the Harijans so that he could elaborate his ideas in his novel. It is Gandhijee’s advice and help which made the novel ‘Untouchable’ successful. Anand had deep respect for Gandhijee. He was the Tagore Professor of Art in Punjab University and founder of the full time art journal Marg. He edited it for over forty years facilitating the shaping up of the contemporary Indian philosophy and aesthetics of art. Coming under the influence of the writings of Tolstoy, Ruskin, Morris and Mahatma Gandhi, he became a diehard socialist. He was a romantic deeply involved with stark realities, moving effortlessly from Bloomsbury to Sabarmati. He established progressive Writers Association in London in partnership with Sajjad Zahir. He lectured in a League of Nations School of Intellectual Cooperation in Geneva between 1932 and 1944 and also at the Workers Educational Association in London. He was honoured with the title of Padma Bhusan, an award of Sahitya Academi and several other international awards. He was a father-like figure, not only as a progenitor of the major Indian fiction in English, but also as a human being with natural warm-heartedness and all-encompassing humanism.

In 1936, he established the Indian Progressive Writers Association with Munshi Premchand, the outstanding spokesman of the underdog. This association developed to become the biggest writers’ movement in the history of Hindustan. Anand was very much influenced by Adi Sankaracharya, Guru Nanak, Kabir and Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Their teachings and service for the humanity were reflected in his writing. He was also influenced by Indian Sanatan Dharma. The heart of the Sanatan philosophy lies in the following Bahujan Hitaya, Bahujan Sukhaya. Udar Chartanam tu Vashudaiva Kutambakam.

Caste and national barriers have nosignificance for him, and he regards all mankind as one. If there is any division it is that ofthe haves and the have-nots. His main purpose is to focus attention on the plight of the have-nots.

The sweeper is worse off than a slave,
for the slave may change his master
and duties and may even become free,
but the sweeper is bound for ever,
born into a state from which he cannot
escape and where he is excluded from
all intercourse and the consolations
of his religion.

The African-Americans and the ‘Untouchables’ were made ignorant by being denied opportunities of education. W.E.B. Dubois said in his essay on ‘Education’ “if we ever compel the world’s respect, it will be by virtue of our heads and not heels.” Various writers have perceived this problem of education important enough to make it an issue in their works. Frederick Douglas’s Narrative, William Wells Blown’s Clotel, Richard Wright’s Uncle Tom’s Children. Mulk Raj Anand’s ‘Untouchable’, Sankarava Kharat’s two short stories ‘The Town-Crier’s Call’ and ‘Inside The Village Womb’are some of the examples.

As with the slaves in America, education was for upper classes of the society during pre-Independent India. Bakha, in Anand’s ‘Untouchable’, desires to go to school when he shows his utmost desire to go to school his father answers “schools were meant for babus, not for the bhangis.” First of all he cannot understand why there should be one rule for him and another for the ‘babus’. As he grows older, he comes to know about ‘Untouchables’ that hits him with great force. He realises that as a sweeper’s son, he can never aspire for education. His mere presence would pollute the educational institution. The teacher would have to guide him and while doing so might accidentally touch him. This would also pollute the teacher. What a shameful experience!

Anand’s writings arouse sympathy for the voiceless. As Meenashi Mukherjee says “Anand is a rational humanist, in the western tradition, believing in the power of science to improve material condition, in progress and in the equality of all men, and his manifest intention is to propagate his beliefs through his novels.”

Anand is a committed writer, a novelist with a purpose, his purpose being tofocus attention on the pain, suffering and misery, of the poor and the under­privileged group as a result of exploitation by capitalism, industrialism and colonialism. Anand’s humanism may be compared with that of Premchand, who raised his voice against the rotten system of the society. Anand’s humanism is found in all his novels but Untouchables, Coolies, Plantation Labour, Common Sepoys, Industrial Labour, Peasant Women are particularly more significant in this connection.

COOLIE opens with Munno an orphan of fourteen years. Poverty compels Munno to work for daily meal at the age of fourteen. He embraces humiliation at hands of the lady of a house out of poverty and his uncle takes away the poor three rupees which he earns in a month. Leaving Sham Nagar, he gets himself in Daulatpur in a pickle factory, where he is respected by Prabh Dayal and his wife, the owner of the factory. When the factory is sold out due to treachery of the partner, Munno works as a coolie to make both ends meet. Here, he gets extremely low wages and insults. He is not alone; this is the experience of countless masses. Thinking to keep away from the pain and suffering, he goes to Bombay, where he joins the service in Sir George White’s Cotton Mill, and is exposed to the full force of industrial and colonial exploitation. The final act of Munno’ s tragedy commences in Shimla when Mrs. Mainwaring makes him her boy-servant, her rickshaw puller and exploits him sexually also, as a result of which he dies of consumption at the age of sixteen.

Really, Anand has painted the pre-Independence India with his fine brush - the pain, tears, sufferings and cries of the poor.

As a human being Anand will live in the hearts of those who came in his contact but as novelist and writer he belongs to the era. Anand’s death has indeed created a vacuum in Indian English writing that will not be filled for many years to come.
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‘The sky is not the limit’
– KALPANA CHAWLA