Assignment Paper: - 2
Topic : - Untouchable as a social satire.
Student’s name : - Makwana Jayshri D.
Roll no :- 26
URL :-makwanajayshri261011.blogspot.com
Semester :- 1
Batch :- 2010-11
Submitted to,
Mr. Devershi Mehta
Department of English.
Bhavnagar University.
Introduction:-“Mulk Raj Anand” is to day a star of the first magnitude in the sky of Indo- Anglian fiction. Mulk Raj Anand brought everything now to the Indo – Anglian novel and short stories – new matter, new technique, new style, and new approach”
Anand is a novelist with a mission, his is a novel of ‘human centrality’. and the form which he chooses is quite adequate far his purposes his mission being to write far the betterment and uplift of the underdog of society he was the writer of underdogs and he wrote about the burning social problems of India and he is a committed writer and he is interested in many things and whatever comes from his pen is ‘true to life’, His personal experiences and the reform of India’s political, social and cultural institutions are major elements in Anand’s writing.
Major works of Mulk Raj Anand:-Ø ‘Untouchable’ –(1935)
Ø ‘Collie’ -(1936)
Ø Two leaves and a Bud – (1937)
Ø The sward and the Sickle.
Ø The Big Heart (1945)
Ø The private life an Indian prince – (1953)
Ø Seven Summers – (1951)
Ø Morning face – (1968) etc ………
Anand is one of the three great Indian novelists writing novels in English, the other two being Raja Rao, and R. K. Narayan His creative span cover a period of over thirty six years It is surprising that despite this impressive bulk of his writing he has received less critical attention then the other two novelist, and his art has not been properly evaluated.
‘The untouchable, Mulk Raj Anand”
“Untouchable could only have been written by an Indian, and by and Indian who observed from the outside however sympathetic, could have created the character of Bakha, because he would not have known enough about his troubles’ and no untouchables could have written the book, because he would have been involved in indignations and self – pity”
- F. M. Forster
‘The untouchable’ is one of the finest works of Mulk Raj Anand. It faced a lot of controversies as he conveys precisely the matter of untouchbility. The author displays compassion for the plight of untouchables but he does this without overdose of sentiments.
“Untouchable” as a social satire:- ‘untouchable is a socially conscious or sociological novel. It focuses attention on a number of customs, traditions, social evils etc……… of Hindu society in the 1930 s, more particularly the evils of the caste system. Hindu society is orthodox and caste – ridden and has compelled a large section of its people to live sub – human lives like animals. The novel deals with the misery and wretchedness of the poor and their struggle for better life. Thus the novel provides a scathing indictment of the caste system and exposes the and hypoerisy of the caste Hindus.
The novel ‘untouchable’ is also a forceful piece of social criticism, without any anger or hysteria. Anand has exposed and satirized the hypoerisy, bigotry and callousness of the upper caste Hindu who can be polluted by the mere touch of an untouchables like Bakha, but who like pandit kalinath, do not hesitate to molest his sister Sohini, Anand has denounced the upper caste Hindus who to quote the words of E. M. Forster.
“have evolved a hideous nightmare unknown 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’s condemnation of untouchability derives its effectiveness from a total control of all aspects of his problem. There are some effective points which clearly shows the social satire in the novel untouchable.
Miserable plight of the untouchables :-The untouchables live in Kuchcha, mud – walled, single roomed cottages, in extremely dirty and unhygienic surroundings. There is no proper system of drainage, water stagnates, and often diseases like Malaria break out. There is foul smell everywhere. The untouchables are not only poor and under – fed, they are also sick and diseased, Thus Lakha suffers from Asthma, he coughs and coughs, and Bakha’s mother died because they were too poor to arrange for suitable treatment or medicine, During childhood, once Bakha became seriously ill, and it was with great difficulty that lakha could persuade a Muslim hakim to come to his cottage to examine his none of the Hindus would come to the colony of the untouchables for it would pollute them.
The Hypocrisy :- The very touch – nay even the shadow – of an untouchables is supposed to pollute when Bakha accidentally touches a caste Hindu in the Bazar he is slapped on the face, abuses are showered upon him, and Jalebies in his hand - Jalebies over which shop – keeper had cheated him and which had been given to him as to leper – fall down in the dust. Bakha, feels much humiliated and fears well up in his eyes.
According to custom, he then walks through the bazaar crying.
“Push, push, sweeper coming”,
Nothing could be more humiliating for a sensitive soul like Bakha. He is indignant but is helpless, before the devilish age old customs and traditions. when in the evening a little boy is injured during the hockey – match. He takes him to his mother so that his wound may be bandaged, and he may be properly looked after but instead of thinking him, the ungrateful mother showers abuses on him for having polluted her house and her son. Constructed with this callousness is the humanity of Havildar charat singhs who treats him kindly ask him to have fell with him, and gives him a new hockey strike – to play with. By contrast they highlight the inhuman nature of caste Hindus who.
“is armed with the feeling six thousand years of social and class superiority – a feeling which refuses to accept the fact that the untouchable is a human being, but insists on treating him like a sub-human creature, to be ignored or bullied or exploited as the occasion demands. It is this that makes the temple priest pandit kalinath treat sohini, Bakha’s sister like a juicy morsel of girlhood to be molested with impunity; and this same attitude prompts the betel-leaf seller from whom Bakha buys cigarattes to fling the packet at the untouchables
“as a butcher might throw a bone to an insistent dog sniffing round the
corner of his shop”
The caste Hindus are hypocrites of the first water. They do not allow the untouchables to draw water from their wells, to climb even the steps of their temples, and the very shadow of an untouchables is supposed to pollute them. If an untouchable, even brushes against their clothes they must wash themselves and purify themselves with the water of holy river Ganges. But they do not hesitate to molest a sweeper- girl if they like her.
Thus pandit Kalinath in the novel treats sohini, Bakha’s sister as a juicy morcel to satisfy his lust when he fails in his attempt he raises the cry
“ Polluted! Polluted!”
And all the caste Hindus in the temple really round him. Meanwhile, Bakha also comes upon the scene, having swept the streets. He is furious but, sending away sohini, tries himself to collect bits of bread at the houses of the well-to-do. In this he much less successful than sohini usually is, and he returns home and bitterly tells his father:-
“They think we are mere dirt because we clean their”
Callousness of the caste-Hindus:- Not only are the untouchables compelled to live like pigs in a sty, they are also subjected to great hardships by the callous caste Hindus. They cannot draw water from the well, even climb its steps, for this would pollute the well. Sohini, Gulabo and others have to wait for a pitcher of water for them. They cannot cook, or have tea, or clean their utensils till they have a pitcher of water after a long wait. They are entirely at the mercy of their superiors even for their daily bread and their daily supply of water. When Bakha goes to the city to collect food, a loaf of bread is thrown at him from an upper-window as if he were a dog. Bakha feels extremely humiliated, and hot anger burns within him. It is on these crumbs that they feed, crumbs and left overs, which are often slimy and dirty.
Their Dirty, Corrupted Souls:- These outcasts of society live in filthy surroundings, and the environment in which they live has corrupted and polluted their souls, which are as dirty as their habitation. Bakha is an uncommon boy; he is conscious of the filth and dirt in which they live, and is nauseated by it. But not so are the other untouchables. In this respect, Rakha, Bakha’s brother is a true representative of the caste to which he belongs. He is dirty and like the French novelists of the naturalistic school, Anand gives a pen- portrait of Rakha in all his filthiness.
“His tattered flannel shirt, grimy with the blowing of his ever- running nose, obstructed his walk slightly. The discomfort resulting from this, the fatigue, assumed or genuine, due to the work he had put in that meaning, gave a rather drawn, long- jawed look to his dirty face on which the flies congregated in abundance to taste of the sweet delights of the saliva on the corners of his lips.”
He is so dirty that Bakha cannot bear to eat from the same bowl with him, and rises abruptly from the meal.
Moral Degradation Caused by Servitude:- Bakha is indignant he would like to revenge himself on the Pandit, but the servility of centuries,
“Which is ingrained in him paralyses him even when he vaguely thinks of retaliation.”
When he accidentally touches and pollutes a man on the street, a crowd gathers round him. Then,
“his first impulse was to run, just to shoot across the throng, away, far away from the torment. But then he realized that he was surrounded by a barrier, not a physical barrier because one push from his hefty shoulders would have been enough to unbalance the skeleton- like bodies of the Hindu merchants, but a moral one.”
Similarly, when, at the temple, Sohini tells Bakha about her molestation by the priest, his first reaction is:
“I will go and kill him.”
Next moment, however, he left the cells of his body lapse back chilled. His eyes caught sight of the magnificent sculptures over the doors extending right up to the pinnacle. They seemed very vast, fearful, and oppressive. He was cowed back. The sense of fear came creeping into him. He bent his head low. His eyes were dimmed. His clenched fists relaxed and fell loosely by his side. He left weak and wanted support.
“Weakness corrupts and absolute weakness corrupts, absolutely centuries of social ostracism have degraded the untouchable, his mind and heart have been damaged and he has grown incapable of self- assertion and absolutely passive and helpless.”
He has come to accept his place in society as divinely ordained and the caste Hindu as his natural superiors. A Bakha, now and then, may resent, but even ahe fails to transform his resentment into overt action.
Ironic treatment of caste Hindus:- Irony is the most important weapon of satire. As Irony is implicit in the novel, one finds everywhere and even more pervasively than in any other Anand novel. The novel unfolds a child of modern India shackled by age-old traditions; the Hindus who pride themselves on cleanliness gargle and spit in the stream and pollute the water while a person incomparably cleaner than themselves is treated like dirt. There are Muhammedans walking about which hands in their pyjamas, purifying themselves in the ritualistic manner preparatory to their visit to mosque, but infuriated when asked what they are doing; men squatting in the open to relieve themselves, earning from the Tommies the well- deserved abuse: the rich Hindu businessmen overfeeding idle priests but grading dry bread to those who sweat for them; betel- leaf shops where lithographs of Hindu deities contend for space with those of beautiful European Women; the petty merchant- cum- money- lender whose prices go up for the poor, and the sweetmeat seller who deftly manipulates the scales to cheat the outcastes.
There are orthodox Hindus who worship a bull emitting foul smells but will not touch a human being; there are tenples whose doors are closed to those who keep its grounds clean; we see the queer Hindu notion of pollution by touch and “pollution from a distance”, and the hypocrisy of Hindu women who treat the sweepers as pariahs but want to be called ‘mother’ by them.
Ironic Treatment of the English:- The ruling class too comes in for criticism. Englishmen after years India, learn only sweeper- words such as
“Acha (good), jao (go away), jaldi karo (be quick), sur ka bacha (son of pig), kute- ka- bacha (son of dog)”
The missionary’s wife in the novel sums up the attitude of most Englishwomen towards the native, attitude which Orwell predicted would cost England her Indian empire. The missionary himself, for all his genuine efforts, has failed to transplant himself to the Indian soil and the presence of his irreligious wife right is his house makes a mocliery of his attempt at proselytizing the heathens. But in this novel it is not the rulers that Anand is really concerned with, but the depravity that has infested Indian Society since the first Aryan invasion.
Untouchable is a novel of the thirties when India was still a colony, when the evil of untouchabillity was rife through the country, and when Mahatma Gandhi was carrying on his crusade for eradication of this evil and when the burning, torturing and killing of untouchables was a daily event, when these oppressed or down- trodden people who could not even complain or grumble. Individuals like Bakha, who resented the treatment meted out to them, were rare, and even such rare individuals lacked the courage to act.
Bakha’s modernity:- Bakha is a superior kind of lad, and his superiority is seen not only in his god- like figure, and graceful movement even when cleaning latrines, but in his response to the force of change and modernity, in the fact that he has,
“caught the glamour of the Whiteman’s life. He does not want to be a caste Hindu but a white sahib. He insists upon dressing himself in an English rigout bought second- hand out of his bakshish money and even goes to bed for him the unattainable which he can only worship in the spirit of ‘the desire of moth for the star’”
In Bakha’s scale of values, the white sahib is far superior to a caste Hindu but a white sahib; and in a less unbridled mood, his imagination sees himself at least.
“clad in a superior military uniform, cleaning the commodes of the sahibs in the British barracks.”
The forces of modernity are at work, modern society is in a state of transition, and Bakha feels the pressure of such forces and so yearns for social change and the betterment of his lot. He is a dissatisfied, suffering soul longing for change, because the forces of tradition are too firmly entrenched. He is a true product of a society in the process of transition.
The Forces of Social Change:- Mulk Raj Anand, at the end of the novel, offers three solutions to Bakha.
ü The first solution is from col. Hutchinson, a missionary Salvationist. He tells of Jessus and Christianity: Bakha asks a question “who is Jessus?” but he gets no solution. At last col.Hutchinson tries to take Bakha to a church but soon receives a sharp comment from there, before the old man could realize anything. Bakha firmly and fully believed in this own religion of col.Hutchinson and is not attracted by the religion of col.Hutchinson.
ü The second solution comes from Mahatma Gandhiji who speaks of Harijans and describes them as ‘sons of god’. Gandhiji spoke of freedom and the struggle for independence, and Bakha did not understand anything. But soon Gandhiji started on untouchability.
“I shall only speak about the so- called ‘untouchables’ whom the government tried to alienate from Hinduism by giving them a separate legal and political status.”
ü The next solution comes from the poet, Iqbal Nath Sarkar. He talks of man’s birth and re- birth, unpanishads and Vedas, Maya and other things. He pleads for flush latrins and industrialization to abolish the class divisions. He says,
“Well, we must destroy caste, we must destroy the inequalities of birth and unalterable vocation. We must recognize and equality of rights, privileges and opportunities for everyone. Mahatma Gandhi, didn’t say so, but the legal and social basis of the caste system having been broken down by the British Indian penal code, which recognizes the rights of everyman before a court, caste is now mainly governed by profession. When sweepers change their profession, they will no longer remain untouchables. And they can do that soon: for the first thing he will do when we accept the machine will be to introduce the machine which clears dung without anyone having to handly it, the flush system. Then the sweepers can be free from the stigma of untouchability and assume the dignity of the status that is their right as useful members of a casteless and classless society.”
Appeal of the Novel Today:- Anand’s rendering of the plight of the untouchables is realistic and intensely objective and impartial. Conditions have much changed since then. They are better fed, and better clothed. The practice of untouchability is a legal offence. There are reservations for them in all services and in the parliament. There are Harijans judges and administrators in large numbers. But still much more remains, to be done to ameliorate their lot. Daily we read in the papers of the killing, burning and torturing of Harijans and the raping of the woman-folk.
Writes Suresh Nath in this connection,
“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 Hindus on the Harijans. How they are burnt alive, or killed in cold blood, deprived of their land and houses- is a sordid story with no parallel in history to match it. It 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 alleviate their sufferings are just a 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, is a vindication of Anand’s vivid imagination.”
Conclusion:- The novel, Untouchable as a social satire. In short, the novel gives us a view of social order which is traditional bound but in which the traditional order is being subjected to insist questioning from various quarters. Things are on the move, and it is this movement, this transition, which has been depicted through the story of Bakha.
Therefore, Anand’s novel is relevant even to-day.
“it has not grown out- dated of superfluous. Moreover, it is not a mere pamphlet or propaganda tract, but a great work of art which gives artistic form and expression to the novelists felt-experiences.”
Hence it would continue to give aesthetic pleasure as long as English literature is read and enjoyed.
