Mulk Raj Anand

'The Two Lady Rams'

Discipline Course 1
Semester-I
Paper 2: Indian Writing in English
Lesson: Mulk Raj Anand, ‘The Two Lady Rams’
Lesson Developer: Nidhi Madan
College/Department: Mata Sundri College for Women,
University of Delhi

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 Mulk Raj Anand

'The Two Lady Rams'

Mulk Raj Anand –‘The Two Lady Rams’

Introduction
Mulk Raj Anand: Background

Mulk Raj Anand (1905-2004) was born in Peshawar, Pakistan and evidently thus, he
hails from India’s erstwhile, North-West Frontier Province. His father was a traditional
coppersmith, who later joined the army for a living and his mother too belonged to the
sturdy peasant stock. This point is of relevance to our understanding of Mulk Raj Anand’s
work since, “the craftsman’s industry and meticulous attention to detail and the army
man’s dare-devilry and feeling for attention are among the major constituents of Mulk
Raj Anand’s heritage from his father.” What he inherited from his peasant mother is “his
commonsense, his sense of the ache at the heart of Indian humanity, and his
understanding compassion for the waifs, the disinherited, the lowly, the lost.” 1

Picture 1
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Anand completed his education from Lahore, London and Cambridge and took a
Doctorate in Philosophy. Instead of then accepting a Professorship at the Government
College or University he took up the profession of writing novels and short stories. Some
of the novels written by him are Untouchable (1935), Coolie (1936), Two Leaves and a
Bud (1937), The Village (1939) and Across the Black Waters (1940). Among his
collection of short stories, one may mention The Sword and the Sickle, The Barber’s

1
K.R Srinivasa Iyengar, Indian Writing in English, 1962. 2nd ed. (New Delhi & Bombay,
India: Asia Publishing House, 1973) 331-32.

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'The Two Lady Rams'

Trade Union, The Big Heart, Seven Summers, Private Life of an Indian Prince and
Morning Face. In the Special Preface that he has written for Two Leaves and a Bud
(1951), he gives us an idea of the driving force behind his early novels and which
perhaps is the underlying concern of some of his later works, as well. He writes “of the
pariahs and the underdogs rather than of the elect and the sophisticated: and thus
ventures into territory that had largely been ignored by Indian writers till that point of
time.”2
As a child, Mulk Raj Anand had grown interacting and mixing with the children of the
sweepers attached to his father’s regiment and “these early playmates and friends
became, with the necessary imaginative idealization and transformation, the heroes of
his first novels.”3 This is the clear reason why Anand avoided romance and sophistication
in his works and instead chose to write of the outcastes, peasants, sepoys and working
people. But then, this expression came all the more easily and naturally to him since he
had grown amidst this setting.
Anand loved his characters and empathized with them, as he had seen the lot of the
downtrodden, from close quarters. Nevertheless, for the exploiter he doesn’t express
dislike or hatred, but rather gives to the exploiter a touch of absurdity and evokes in the
readers a sense of pity for him. Anand’s acute sense of observation and clear delineation
of characters that is evident in his novels is often touched with a strain of poetry in his
short stories. The appeal of his work lies in the fact that he can be “amusing, satirical,
ironic, tragic, pathetic or farcical” and that “he can present human weaknesses with
understanding and sympathy.”4 He “presents his characters with a lively curiosity and
also a deep compassion.”5 His language too is simple, often with the use of swear-words
and expressions translated from the vernacular idiom. Iyengar notes that “as a writer,
Anand is often undistinguished, and seems to be too much in a hurry; but often the
vitality of his creations, the variegated richness of his total comprehension, and the
purposive energy of his narratives carry all before them.” 6
Anand is often considered to be a veritable Dickens for the way in which he presents his
characters with depth by depicting their idiosyncrasies with accuracy and fine detail. This
was not a formidable task for Anand, considering his day-to-day rootedness with the
ground reality and his close interaction with the lower sections of society.

The First Generation Indian-English writers

The Indian-English writer of the nineteenth century was a product of the age, influenced
as he was by the immediate historical and political developments taking shape, then.
While Indian-English poetry was being shaped by experiments in literature, “the novel,
the genre of imaginative literature which gives artistic form to the relationship of man
and society, was conspicuously absent until the nineteen-twenties.”7
The Indian-English novel emerged in the 1920s, “then gradually gathered confidence,
and established itself in the next two decades.”8 And one of the reasons for this as cited
by Meenakshi Mukherjee is that “the flowering of Indian-English fiction coincided with

2
Ibid. p 333.
3
K.R Srinivasa Iyengar, Indian Writing in English, 1962. 2nd ed. (New Delhi & Bombay,
India: Asia Publishing House, 1973) 334.
4
Ibid. 356.
5
Ibid. 356.
6
Ibid. p 357.
7
Meenakshi Mukherjee, The Twice-Born Fiction: Themes and Techniques of the Indian
Novel in English, 1971. 2nd ed. (New Delhi, India: Arnold-Heinemann Publishers (India)
Private Ltd, 1974) 18.
8
Ibid 19.

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'The Two Lady Rams'

the novel’s coming of age in the regional languages of India.”9 The entire development of
the tradition of Indian-English fiction spans a period of roughly about forty years. While
social realism sprang up as an area of interest for writers like Munshi Prem Chand who
wrote in Hindi and for Sarat Chandra Chatterjee whose writings were in Bengali in the
initial phase, the genre of historical romance ushered in linked as it was “with the
awakening of Indian nationalism.”10 Thus nationalist feeling predominated the scene in
the twenties and thirties as “even the purely social reform novels were inflamed by
politics since any desire to improve the lot of the people was bound to be linked with
political independence.”11
The second phase of Indian-English writings is evident in the works of Mulk Raj Anand
and the Gandhian principles espoused in some of Raja Rao’s early works.
As we move on to the fifties the writer’s interest shifts towards capturing the inner life of
human beings as the Indian-English novelist seems to gather more interest in depicting
the individual’s journey towards self-realization, evidently with the change in political
scene in the India of the 1950s.
So we come across myriad themes in the works of these writers ranging from the
references to the nationalist movement for Independence from British rule in the 1930s
and 1940s, to a large section of Indian-English novels that focus on “the so-called
encounter between East and West”12, where “the Indo-Anglians have explored the
metaphysical, spiritual, and romantic aspects of the confrontation each in his or her own
way.”13 Some Indian-English novelists focus on the institution of the joint family with
more of a sense of nostalgia for it. It serves yet another purpose as, “it gives
opportunity for the study of human group behaviour, it symbolises an expansive pre-
industrial way of life, and it represents a deeply entrenched force of orthodoxy against
which the individual may find himself helpless.”14
Yet another theme in the works by Indian-English novelists is that of faith, considered
significant in the socio-cultural life and ethos of an Indian. While the Guru is considered
sacrosanct and holds a position of deep reverence in India, there are times that we come
across “pseudo-mystic Gurus” who “arise to meet the demands of blind-faith”15, such as
in some of the works by Bhabani Bhattacharya and R.K Narayan. Clearly “exposing the
religious impostor has an aspect of social reform”16 embedded in it. Mulk Raj Anand also
takes up the issue of the socially marginalized and outcastes in some of his earlier
writings that belong to this period as “in the nineteen-twenties and thirties there was a
strong wave of protest and reform in the literature of every Indian language.” 17Of
course, as we move on to the Indian-English novel in the modern day world, despite
being “still exploratory in form”18 it seems to be concerned with the notion of
encompassing the ‘whole of modern life”19 in its entirety.
Let us now begin to understand the influences on Mulk Raj Anand and consequently on
his writings, tracing a trajectory from the initial phase of his life to the last phase of his
life.

9
Ibid 19.
10
Ibid 22.
11
Ibid 22.
12
Meenakshi Mukherjee, The Twice-Born Fiction: Themes and Techniques of the Indian
Novel in English, 1971. 2nd ed. (New Delhi, India: Arnold-Heinemann Publishers (India)
Private Ltd, 1974) 26.
13
Ibid 27.
14
Ibid 28.
15
Ibid 29.
16
Ibid 29.
17
Ibid 29.
18
Ibid 31.
19
Ibid 31.

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 Mulk Raj Anand

'The Two Lady Rams'

Early Twentieth-Century India: The Formative Years for Mulk Raj

Anand

Anand’s life can be studied by broadly dividing it into three periods, the first phase of his
life was spent in India from 1905-1925; the second phase covers his years spent abroad
from 1925-1945; and the last phase of his life was spent in India from 1945-2004.

Anand began his studies in British-Indian schools such as the Nowshera Government
Primary School and recalled something interesting about them. He says that the
education offered in schools like this one, paid scant emphasis to Indian tradition and
rather stressed on the English curricula, the medium of instruction being English “with
particular emphasis on English history, ideas, forms and institutions, deliberately
calculated to show everything related to Indian history and tradition as inferior.” 20

Picture 2
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Anand had clear childhood memories of his grandfather’s explanations rendered of the
teachings of Guru Nanak, and also of the “family attendance at the Imperial Coronation
Durbar in the new amphitheatre of Delhi in 1911.” 21 This latter detail is cited here to
make clear Anand’s obsession with anything British during his childhood ─ including
British clothing and manners ─ and his dream to go to Europe one day, when he grew
up.
In the year 1925, on the advice of his mentor, the poet, Mohammed Iqbal and with his
mother’s help, Anand went abroad to study at University College in London and was
awarded his Doctorate degree in 1929. One of the shaping influences on him of this

20
Taken from Margaret Berry, Mulk Raj Anand: The Man and The Novelist (Amsterdam,
Netherlands: Oriental Press, 1971) 11-2.
21
Ibid. p 12.

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period was the British General Strike of 1926. This Strike convinced him of the great
divide between the rich and the poor and evoked his concern and sympathy for the
underprivileged and downtrodden. This further initiated him to actively participate in the
British Trade Union meetings and those of Marxist study circles. 22
Anand’s essential faith came to humanism, as in the process of “re-examining Hinduism,
exploring Christianity, studying modern intellectual development” he realized that
Hinduism had “tended for a long time to be more and more the social organism of caste
and less and less a unified religion”23, while Christianity too was unacceptable to him. He
laid the charge on the intellectuals of Europe for being overly concerned with fulfilling
their personal interests and for lacking a focussed vision.
After graduation and having made a trip to India, Anand returned to Europe and devoted
his time to the study of art and oriental culture. When Anand returned back to England,
his novel The Untouchable, after having been rejected by nineteen companies, was at
last published. In the second phase of his life, after 1935, Anand increased his activity
and participation, while travelling often to Europe, in areas concerning Indian
Nationalism, Socialism and his profession of letters. He is also known to have engaged in
historical events like the Spanish Civil War and for being a catalyst in laying the
foundation of All-India Progressive Writers’ Association. By this time he had successfully
completed the first nine of his thirteen novels. His years spent in London made him form
associations and friendships with well-known people like Bonamy Dobrée, Anand
Coomaraswamy, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and Pablo Neruda, to name a
few from the list.

Recording the poetry magazine Voice. Standing, George Orwell, Nancy Barratt, Empson.
Sitting. Venu Citale, JM Tambitmuttu, TS Eliot, Una Marson, Mulk Raj Anand

Taken from The Review-BOOKS Published: 11 January 2007

Site: [Link]
Accessed on 15/11/2013 at 10:40pm.

Picture 3
[Link]

22
This material has been compiled from Margaret Berry, Mulk Raj Anand: The Man and
The Novelist (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Oriental Press, 1971) 13.
23
Ibid. p 13

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'The Two Lady Rams'

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Anand returned back to India in 1945 and helped found and edit Marg, a magazine of
Indian arts and crafts which finds it reception and audience both in India and abroad.
Besides his active writing and editing career, Anand is also known for having supported
several Indian cultural organizations such as the World Peace Council, the Sahitya
Akademi of Letters, the Lalit Kala Akademi of Art, the Sangeet Akademi of Music and
Dance, the National Book Trust, the Indian Council of Cultural Relations, University
seminars and conferences, the Progressive Writers’ Association and the list goes on
further.24
Anand’s driving faith was that in humanism and his belief in humanism “as a synthesis of
the values of East and West, of material and spiritual, of science and art, of old and
new.”25 For him the need of the hour was to look at the European and Asiatic traditions
in their totality and to attempt at achieving a kind of synthesis, despite the confusions
prevailing therein and to thus aid in building a new India on the principles of the “new
values of Indian humanism.”26
We can understand the scope of Anand’s humanism27 from the following quotation. In
Anand’s view of humanism:
Literature, music and art are better able to fulfil the needs of our time than religion, and
beauty is better worth worshipping than [...] a Deity for whom the sanctions lie in the
intuitions of a few mystics [...] the sanction of poetic truth is the highest in our
contemporary world.28
Anand had a deep sense of compassion for the lower castes and outcastes in Indian
society, since for him through compassion one can better understand individuals in all
their failings and lows of life. This justifies his reason for their realistic depiction through
his works, as well.

Anand as a Writer: His Inner Faith

Mulk Raj Anand considered literature at one level, as a weapon in his hands to attack
any social, political or economic institution that could injure human freedom and equal
opportunities for all. At the other level, he understood it to be “the purveyor of a new
vision of society: an international brotherhood based on humanist and Socialist ideals
and constructed through bhakti-yoga.”29
He felt that literature had the potential to induce and effect change in the world around
us and he underscored the relevance of literature as criticism. One of the most striking
features “of Anand’s literary considerations is his opposition to art-for-art’s sake
formalism30 in favour of art-for-the message’s sake moralism.”31

24
Ibid. p 15-6. References have been made from this book.
25
Ibid. p 18.
26
Ibid. p 18.
27
“Humanism, then, is Anand’s faith; India, its proposed laboratory and hope;
democratic Socialism, its political context. Bhakti-yoga is its characteristic dynamic and
excellence.” Ibid. p 19-20.
28
Ibid. p 19.
29
Taken from Margaret Berry, Mulk Raj Anand: The Man and The Novelist (Amsterdam,
Netherlands: Oriental Press, 1971) 27.
30
Anand’s consistent disavowal of formalist art and his preference for “moralist or
didactic or propagandist art nevertheless undergoes shits of emphasis, passing through
three stages, not mutually exclusive: a brief, relatively unimportant idealism, followed

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 Mulk Raj Anand

'The Two Lady Rams'

After the year 1945, entering the third phase of his life, Anand’s literary theory, if not
always his practice emphasized humanist-oriented values. His humanist view of
literature gave centrality to lowly people or the downtrodden and stressed more on
content rather than form with a sharp, forceful attack on Indian social, political and
economic institutions of the time, when they denied freedom and dignity to humanity.
In his style of writing, he tries to blend realism with romanticism, by both imitating
characters and situations from life, and thus reality as it were; while yet culling to his
mind a lot from his imaginative, visual faculties. In this new brand of realism, that he
terms “poetic realism”, also understood now as “neo-realism” there is an evident
“combination of objective and subjective factors and a seeking of realities behind
nature.”32 Anand found fault with Western and European writers for limiting their views
and ideas to mere facts, for copying or imitating from living models and for a direct,
unmediated imitation from nature. Considered from the 1945 perspective, with rapid
changes across the globe and the World War II scenario, he believed that the social
realism of the West in the thirties was a complete failure for the reasons cited above and
made a strong case for “poetic realism” which in contrast to it “is pervaded by what he
calls variously the desire image, the flight of winged facts, the romantic will, and
revolutionary romanticism, seeking to change life in accordance with ‘the inchoate urges
of the body-soul’.”33
He believed that as a writer he was invested with a responsibility towards society, which
was:
the real courage to create a literature of protest, which can reveal the insults,
humiliations and injustices sought to be perpetrated in our society by the inheritors of
privileges who seek everything without offering sacrifices equal to those offered by less
privileged people.[...]
Our fraternity is not exclusive with the writers of our country, but also with the writers of
the world who are struggling to promote understanding among the peoples of the
world.34
Anand believed that there needed to be a synthesis or fusion between the ethos, values
of India and post-Renaissance Europe, where the idealism of the East combined with the
realism of the West for the betterment of humanity, granting freedom and equality to all.
This was an essential part of what was above mentioned as his belief in “comprehensive
historical humanism.”

by revolutionary socialism, thence broadening into […] ‘comprehensive historical

humanism’. In this last phase, Anand’s Socialism continues to draw him toward external,
group, class-oriented depictions; his humanism impels him toward internal, individual,
psychological analysis and concern with intimate human relations.” Ibid. 27.
31
Ibid. p 27.
32
Ibid. p 34.
33
Ibid. p. 34.
34
Margaret Berry, Mulk Raj Anand: The Man and The Novelist (Amsterdam,
Netherlands: Oriental Press, 1971) 37. From “The Task Before the Writer.” Indian
Literature, VI, No. 1 (1963), p 77.

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 Mulk Raj Anand

'The Two Lady Rams'

Picture 4
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Analysis of ‘The Two Lady Rams’

Now that we have studied in some detail about Mulk Raj Anand, his life and his belief
systems, let us now move on to an analysis and understanding of Anand’s short story
namely, ‘The Two Lady Rams’, which originally appeared in Mulk Raj Anand’s, “The
Tractor and the Corn Goddess and Other Stories”.
The title itself sounds a bit hilarious with the word Lady prefixed before the name Ram,
and it does seem like a strange concoction. As we read the story further, we understand
that Lalla Jhinda Ram, who was an ordinary shopkeeper had married two women, Sukhi
and Shakuntala and was almost forced to call both of them “Lady Rams” to placate the
raging bitterness and high-blown war between his two wives. Incidentally, he had
acquired the status of a knight in lieu of the “services rendered” by him to the British
Raj. Evidently then the question was of naming one or both of them “Lady Rams”.
Naming the younger wife Shakuntala alone as Lady Ram, would only have spelt disaster
for him, from the elder wife, Sukhi.
To elucidate the background to Jhinda Ram’s life in more detail, it may be mentioned
here that the elder wife, Sukhi, connoting “sukh” or “comfort” to the husband was barren
and thereby unable to perpetuate his race by giving him a child, so he married
Shakuntala. While the first wife brought along with her a big dowry and gave “financial
push to the ordinary shopkeeper Lalla Jhinda Ram ─ the dowry became the launching
pad of Jhinda Ram’s social success.”35; the younger wife Shakuntala introduced romance
in his life, reminiscent of the historically famous King Dushyant-Shakuntala legend,
where the king “forgot all sense of propriety of Kingly behaviour and spent time with the
young Ashramite incognito.”36
The technique used in the story is that of the mock-heroic, whereby seemingly absurd
situations are presented in a heroic and grandiloquent way thereby imbuing them with
hilarity and ridicule. The theme of the story that remains in focus, throughout our
reading of it, is that of the colonial master and the colonial subject. The author is
contemptuous of the colonial master and has a defined dislike towards him. However,
the authorial stance expresses the author’s dislike of the British regime and its state
functionaries in India, couched in an inflated language, to heighten the effect of the
ridicule that he intentionally targets at them.
The colonial regime had conferred the title of knighthood to Jhinda Ram, elevating his
social rank thereby to that of the elites, “in recognition of his sundry services to the
British Empire.”37 Clearly “His Majesty’s Government” ─ as it is referred to in the text ─
had not foreseen the terrible predicament that this would put Jhinda Ram into. The crisis
emerged since both the wives insisted on being given the title of Lady Ram. The trouble
escalated with the news that for conferring Jhinda Ram with the title of Knighthood,
“there was an invitation to attend the Garden Party which was to be held the next day at

35
Mulk Raj Anand, Introduction, ‘The Two Lady Rams’. Interventions: Indian Writing in
English, ed. Anand Prakash (Delhi & Kolkata, India: Worldview Publications, 2013) 5.
36
Ibid. p 4.
37
Mulk Raj Anand, ‘The Two Lady Rams’. Interventions: Indian Writing in English, ed.
Anand Prakash (Delhi & Kolkata, India: Worldview Publications, 2013) 8.

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'The Two Lady Rams'

the residence of His Excellency the Governor, specially for the ceremony of investiture of
all those dignitaries who had been granted titles, medals and scrolls of honour.” 38
The problem being that the invite was for Sir Jhinda and Lady Ram and as the knight, Sir
Jhinda only asked his younger wife, Shakuntala to get dressed in a new sari for the
occasion, the elder wife fumed when news of this apparent discrimination reached her
ears, through the servants, in the women’s quarters where she lived segregated.
The animosity and bitterness between the two wives only worsened and took the shape
of a veritable war as “trenches were dug”, “barricades raised” and “if there was no
gunpowder used, it was only because women in India have not yet learnt all the tricks of
Al Capone as the men have through the talkies.”
The mock-heroic style is built into the narrative as a domestic fight between the two
wives reaches the level of a war, with the use of war terminology, to heighten the effect
of the ludicrous in the narration of the event. An insignificant, trivial event as this being
scaled to the level of a war, of some consequence, gains the attention of the readers
furthermore with the use of war-related terms to remind us, “that despite being a
routine affair, war is a rising of passions on a grand scale.”39 The use of the war
metaphor confuses the reader for a moment, with the use of expressions like “unwritten
agreements were violated”, “malicious gossip campaign’, “partisan servants or relations”,
“Sukhi outflanked the wall”, “She resisted like a tiger and, upturning the table in the
living room, barricaded herself there and waxed eloquent about the misdeeds of Sir
Jhinda and Lady Ram all day”,40 but then the narrative shifts back to the necessity of
settling the discord within the family, with a sense of urgency.
After having been at the receiving end of Sukhi’s violent behaviour, abuses and curses
the whole day, the knight Sir Jhinda decided to put an end to it by treating his young
love with “the true sense of chivalry”41 and dragging the elder one, Sukhi by her hair, to
her part of the house. He tried to get some help from the Governor or A.D.C., but to no
avail, since at the gates of the Government House the sepoy stationed to keep guard
said that, he had strict orders that no one should disturb the Lat Sahib’s siesta.
Finally, Sir Jhinda Ram’s chauffeur who had been a witness to all the events that had
transpired into the shape of an ugly war at his master’s house offered to give a solution
to placate and resolve the reigning crisis. With a certain amount of tact and double-
dealing he approached each wife separately in her respective quarters and managed to
convince each of them that, she alone was to attend the garden party. The younger wife,
Shakuntala “had already been confident about her husband’s choice, but Sukhi’s vanity
was tickled by the special emphasis that the chauffeur laid on the Master’s ultimate
choice of her.”42 By thus impressing on each wife individually that she alone was chosen
to go for the garden party with Sir Jhinda Ram, the driver provided his master some
peace to have his meal and to get ready for the occasion, without the trouble of having
to deal with either of his wives. Both the wives appeared in their flashing saris and after
all the dressing-up ritual none of them considered having her “prolonged toilet”43 ruined
for the day. Thus with the aid of his driver, Sir Jhinda “bundled them”44 into his car and
sped off for the party at the Government House.
The unexpected arrival of Two Lady Rams instead of one did not cause a flutter or lead
to any untoward incident, during their reception at the Government House by “His

38
Ibid. p 9.
39
Mulk Raj Anand, Introduction, ‘The Two Lady Rams’. Interventions: Indian Writing in
English, ed. Anand Prakash (Delhi & Kolkata, India: Worldview Publications, 2013) 6.
40
Ibid. p 6. Reference has been made from here.
41
Mulk Raj Anand, ‘The Two Lady Rams’. Interventions: Indian Writing in English, ed.
Anand Prakash (Delhi & Kolkata, India: Worldview Publications, 2013) 12.
42
Ibid. p 13-4.
43
Ibid. p 14.
44
Ibid. p 14.

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Excellency and Her Excellency.”45 Rather, they were both complimented for their
wonderful, dazzling saris by Her Excellency, The Governor’s wife, and His Excellency
conferred Sir Jhinda Ram with the title of “the Star of the Knight Commander of the
Indian Empire.”46

The story concludes happily on the note that from that day onwards Sir Jhinda and the
two Lady Rams were “a familiar feature of all ceremonial occasions” held in the capital,
for as it is said, “they are three staunch pillars of the Raj which has conceded to them
privileges unknown in the annals of the Angrezi Sarkar of India.” 47 Interestingly enough,
the three pillars of the British Raj were the civil service, the army and the police. To liken
Sir Jhinda and his two wives to the pillars would be to underscore the ground reality of
the British Raj and the fact that the British “could not have made their footing in India
without” their share of Indian collaborators. It is “with the help of its Indian collaborators
that the British empire was able to enslave the subcontinent.” To maintain its continued
rule, the British Empire established “a hierarchical network of local traitors [...] The chief
traitors were rewarded by appointing them as the Nawabs and Rajas. These urchins
were responsible for implementing the British agenda of loot and plunder [...]. The
verified and proved servants of the empire were brought up and trained to help
administer the governmental affairs. This trusted class of the servants of the Empire,
over a period of generations, were elevated to provide the bulwark for the British Raj in
India.” Click here (Taken from [Link]

Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 2:30 pm.)

Summary
Through this it is hoped that a fairly comprehensible reading has been provided, starting
with Mulk Raj Anand’s life, the shaping influences on his life and the socio-political-
historical forces that had a deep impact on his thinking and ideology, essentially with his
underlying concern and understanding of humanism. This background was meant to lay
a foundation to then grasp more effectively his short story, ‘The Two Lady Rams’. When
we read the story we are better able to understand the subtler nuances of Indian writing
in English along with being able to perceive the deeper politics of what it meant to write
in a language which was not the writer’s, to an extent for aiming at a wider audience and
at another level what can be understood in a post-colonial world as “writing back to the
empire” with a level of ease and comfort, while yet managing to maintain the flavour of
Indianism in it.

Some Questions based on the text:

Qs 1. Comment on the relevance of the title ‘The Two Lady Rams’?

Qs 2. Discuss the use of the mock-heroic technique in the short story ‘The Two Lady
Rams’ and comment on its effectiveness?

Qs 3. Does the story ‘The Two Lady Rams’ have any significance other than merely
relating a domestic conflict? If yes, what is the underlying politics that the writer is
targeting through the reference to the domestic conflict?

45
Ibid. p 14.
46
Ibid. p 14.
47
Ibid. p 14.

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'The Two Lady Rams'

Qs 4. What do you understand by the reference to the “three staunch pillars of the
empire”? Explore both the textual as well as the suggested meaning.

Qs 5. Discuss the theme of the colonial master vis a vis the colonial subject within the
scope of the short story ‘The Two Lady Rams’?

Qs 6. What is the authorial stance towards the colonial masters? Is the language used by
the author apt to project this stance?

Qs 7. How does the knighthood conferred on Jhinda Ram escalate to a domestic conflict,
within the text? Do you think it also offers hand-in-hand a critique of the colonial regime
and its policies?

Glossary
1. Al Capone: Reference is here made to the movies based on him. Al Capone (1899-
1947) “was an American gangster who led a Prohibition-era crime syndicate.
The Chicago Outfit, which subsequently also became known as the ‘Capones’, was
dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, and other illegal activities such
as prostitution, in Chicago from the early 1920s to 1931.”
(Taken from [Link]
Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 2:10 pm)
2. Animosity: A spirit or feeling of strong hostility.
3. Annals: 1.A narrative of events year by year. 2. Historical records.
[Link]-for-art sake: It “ is the usual English rendering of a French slogan from the early
19th century, ‘l'art pour l'art’, and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of
art, and the only ‘true’ art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function.
Such works are sometimes described as ‘autotelic’, from the Greek autoteles, ‘complete
in itself’, a concept that has been expanded to embrace ‘inner-directed’ or ‘self-
motivated’ human beings.” (Taken from [Link]
Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 1:50 pm.)
5. Barren: Unable to bear young.
6. Bhakti-yoga: It “is a spiritual path described in Hindu philosophy as efficacious for
fostering love of, faith in, and surrender to God. It is a means to realize God, and is the
easiest way for the common person because it doesn't involve
extensive yogic practices.” (Taken from [Link]
Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 1:40 pm.)
7. Confer: Grant or bestow (a title, degree, favour, etc).
8. Couched: Expressed in words of a specified kind.
9. Dare-devilry: Recklessly daring.
10. Formalism: It is “an instance of rigorous or excessive adherence to recognized
forms.” (Taken from [Link]
Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 1:47 pm.)
Formalism in the context of art implies “that a work’s artistic value is entirely determined
by its form”. (Taken from [Link]
Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 1:45 pm.)
11. Humanism: An outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human
rather than divine or supernatural matters.
12. Idiosyncrasies: Anything highly individualized or eccentric.
13. Incognito: With one’s name or identity kept secret.

Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi

 Mulk Raj Anand

'The Two Lady Rams'

14. Indianism: A word or phrase characteristic of English as spoken in India. (Taken

from [Link]
Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 2:35 pm.
15. Inflated: (esp. of language, sentiments, etc.) bombastic.
16. Investiture: The formal investing of a person with honours or rank, esp. a ceremony
at which a sovereign confers honours.
17. Outflanked: To outmanoeuvre (an enemy) by extending one’s flank (the side of the
body between the ribs and the hip) beyond that of (an enemy).
18. Pariah: A social outcast.
19. Purveyor: Act as supplier.
20. Realism: (In art) fidelity of representation, truth to nature, and insistence on details;
the showing of life as it is without glossing over what is ugly or painful.
21. Reminiscent: Tending to remind one of or suggest.
22. Sepoy: A native Indian soldier under European, esp. British, discipline.
23. Siesta: An afternoon sleep or rest esp. in hot countries.
24. Sundry: Various; several.
25. Talkies: A film with a soundtrack, as distinct from a silent film.
26. Underdog: A person who is in a state of inferiority or subjection.
27. Urchin: A mischievous child, esp. young and raggedly dressed.
28. Veritable: Real; rightly so called.
[Link]: A homeless and helpless person, esp. an abandoned child.

Works Cited

For Glossary:

Oxford English Reference Dictionary. First Indian edn. 2008.

Books referred to:

Anand, Mulk Raj. ‘The Two Lady Rams’. Interventions: Indian Writing in English. Ed.
Anand Prakash. Delhi & Kolkata, India: Worldview Publications, 2013.

Berry, Margaret. Mulk Raj Anand: The Man and The Novelist. Amsterdam, Netherlands:
Oriental Press, 1971.

Iyengar, Srinivasa K.R. Indian Writing in English. 1962. 2nd Ed. New Delhi & Bombay,
India: Asia Publishing House, 1973.

Mukherjee, Meenakshi. The Twice-Born Fiction: Themes and Techniques of the Indian
Novel in English. 1971. 2nd Ed. New Delhi, India: Arnold-Heinemann Publishers (India)
Private Ltd, 1974.

Cross-referencing to Journal:

“The Task Before the Writer.” Indian Literature, VI, No. 1 (1963), p 77.

Links for Online References:

1. [Link]

Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 2:30 pm.

Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi

 Mulk Raj Anand

'The Two Lady Rams'

2. [Link]
Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 2:10 pm.

3. [Link]
Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 1:50 pm.

4. [Link]
Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 1:40 pm.

5. [Link]
Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 1:47 pm.

6. [Link]
Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 1:45 pm.

7. [Link]
Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 2:35 pm.

Links for Pictures:

Picture 1
[Link]
Accessed on 06/10/2013 at 10: 40pm.

Picture 2
[Link]
Accessed on 24/10/2013 at 2:40pm.

Picture 3
[Link]
Accessed on 15/11/2013 at 10:40pm.

Picture 4
[Link]
Accessed on 15/11/2013 at 10:20 pm.

Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi