Untouchable By Mulk Raj Anand Summary

This article explores the spirit of postcolonialism in the writings of Mulk Raj Anand. In his novels Untouchable and Coolie he not only reflects the exploitation of his contemporary society but also he has posed strong objection to the system. The society was ridden with so many categories of social exploitations based on religion, caste, class, poverty, education, marriage and sex. Anand in his fictional writings stages a three-fold protest against the political domination of colonialism, the economic exploitation of feudalism and capitalism and the religious bigotry of Hinduism. Anand’s emergence as a protest writer is thus the natural outcome of his exposure to man’s inhumanity to men which reached his apogee during the colonial era. …show more content…
The colonial experience is a live experience to him and his writing is therefore linked to this theme directly. Spending his childhood in the cantonment of Mian Mir and Nowshera, Anand was constantly conscious of the presence of the alien masters. He stood in awe of them, feared their power and resented their domination. Early in life his admiration for the Sahibs was shattered by the unjust punishment meted out to him by the Adjutant Sahib of his father’s regiment. As Anand salaamed and stared at the officer, waiting for the latter to smile, the officer got irritated and swished his cane. Anand was even more disheartened to see the passive submission of his father to the power of his White …show more content…
He saw the corpses piled up in the graveyard and this left a lasting and terrifying impression of the British on his innocent mind. Later in 1919, when a curfew was declared in Amritsar, Anand went out to see that curfew. But he was arrested, flogged and detained in the police station overnight. In the same year he witnessed another tragedy wherein nearly three hundred women were shot dead by the British regiment as a punishment for their disobedience. All these incidents of colonial violence left such an indelible impression on Anand’s psyche. Colonial authority was not the only structure of hierarchy that Anand noticed. By the time he was nine, he knew that there were superiors and inferiors all around him. The caste structure that discriminated a section of people as untouchables and privileged certain castes over the others; the caste systems in which the rich controlled the poor; the regimentation within the cantonment where the native officers behaved exactly like their White bosses, and the patriarchal hierarchy in which all decisions were taken by the male - all these came to be so deeply inscribed in his psyche that his creative work confronts these issues. Anand in his fictional writings stages a three-fold protest against the political domination of colonialism, the economic exploitation of feudalism and capitalism