MULK RAJ ANAND

Of the Indo-Anglian novelists, only Mulk Raj Anand and R.K. Narayan have shown anything like stamina
and stern consistency of purpose. Anand hails from the North West frontier of India while Narayan
hails from the South. Both of them combine the North-South vigour and aristocracy. Mulk Raj Anand’s
father was a traditional copper-smith and a clever craftsman with both brawn and brain, an eye for
beauty wedded with his craftsmanship. Mulk Raj’s mother was a peasant who had known the sense
of ache in the heart of Indian village community. The Gandhian salt satyagraha movement happened
in 1930 and 1932, the three Round Table Conferences , the passing of Government of India Act in 1935,
the Gandhian movement for Harijan uplift etc. during this time.

Mulk Raj Anand’s first five novels appeared in the following sequence: Untouchable (1935), Coolie
(1936), Two Leaves and a Bud (1937), The Village (1939) and Across the Black Waters (1940). Mulk
Raj wrote for the underdogs rather than for the elite. Anand the novelist is a political evangelist,
advocate of the down-trodden. But he also turned to poetry, arts and philosophy before he turned his
political creation to novels. Untouchable covers the events of a single day of the ‘low caste’ boy Bakha.
Bakha is the son of a sweeper yet he has come under western influence. He has secured a pair of old
breeches and a pair of old boots, he understands the ‘fashion’ of the days; yet he has to do the task of
latrine-cleaning every morning. He feels the agony of self-abasement and frustration. There are two
solutions to his problems. Colonel Hutchinson asks him to convert to Christianity and get rid of his
caste. There is the Mahatma and his Harijan movement. Thus Bakha is the prototypical ‘untouchable’
and he himself is a unique individual.

Coolie is twice as long as Bakha and the action is spread over some years and moves from village to
town, from town to city, from city to Bombay, and then to Simla, India’s summer capital. This novel is
about the hill-boy Munoo. We follow his misfortunes with his uncle and aunt in village, Bilaspur, then
with the Sub-Accountant’s family at Sham Nagar, then with Munoo’s benefactor , Prabha and his wife
in the incredible Cat Killer’s Lane in the old feudal city of Daulatpur, then the slums of Bombay, and
lastly with Mrs Mainwaring at Simla. Coolie is a macrocosm of Indian society. Every where Munoo is
exploited and his only way to survive is by patient suffering. Everyone in some way or the other
exploits him and the society is a mixture sordid and the beautiful; the humane and the horrible.
Everwhere his services are welcome but he is merely tolerated for his caste. In ‘Untouchable’ the evil
is isolated as caste, in Coolie the evil is greed, selfishness and inhumanity in a hundred different forms.

There is the formidable Bibiji in Babu Nathoo Ram’s house at Sham Nagar. There is the inimitable Todar
Mall in Cat Killer’s Lane and Lady Todar Mal in Cat Killer’s Lane which is Hell. He experiences domestic
service, service in a pickle factory, service as a coolie and porter, and even disciplehood for an hour of
a lecherous ‘yogi’. ‘Coolie’ is most definitely Dickensian and is the prose epic of modern India. Finally
when worn out by work he hastens to the grave like Laksmi Mother India receives Munoo to her bosom
with the words “We belong to suffering! My love!”

Two Leaves and A Bud is a ‘dramatic novel’. It starts from a village in North India and the protagonist
Gangu crosses horizontally from Northern to Western India. He moves from a village near Hoshiarpur,
Punjab to the Macpherson Tea Estate in distant Assam. Gangu is middle-aged. He has with him his
wife Sajani and two children Leela and Budhoo. The Tea Plantation is a world within a world. ThE
foreign exploiters create the pattern of tension. Croft –Cooke is the boss of the plantation. He and his
reasonably contented wife and daughter Barbara who is in love with Dr. De la Havre create the
 2

atmosphere of the romantic Tea-Estate. The villain of the novel is Reggie Hunt, the assistant manager.
When malaria breaks out Sajani dies and Reggie Hunt runs in lust for Leela who was picking tea leaves
and seeing Gangu in front brutally murders him.

In the next three novels which form a trilogy, Village; Across the Black Waters and The Sword and the
Sickle we are first introduced to Lalu Singh, the youngest of the Sikh farmer’s son. The atmosphere of
the village Nandpur is vividly evoked. It comprises of the sarkar, superstitions, mass conformity,
cupidity and cruelty of some and apathy and helplessness of many all conspire to break the free and
ardent spirit of Lalu Singh. At every turn he is seized with discomfiture and the agony and anger is in
vain. At the King George Haircutting Saloon Laloo gets his long Sikh hair shorn away in a rebellious
spirit. There is commotion in the house. Tremendous expressions of hate and prejudice makes him
want to leave the village.

The second novel deals with Lalu’s experiences in France. From the moment of his arrival at Marseilles
to the time of his capture by the enemies is drawn with subtlety and art. In the background is the
conflict between the Allied and Central Powers. Lalu is caught in the storm of war. HE is an Indian Sepoy
who cannot understand why Europeans should kill each other.

While the war is still raging and Lalu is free he writes to his mother that he will return back to India
and redeem the mortgaged family property. But here in India he is involved in the politics of the
twenties. In The Sword and the Sickle Government against the people, people cut up in divisions, play
of political and personal rivalries, clash of ideologies and selfish greed.

As a writer Anand is a veritable Dickens. He presents his characters with a lively curiosity and deep
compassion.