Mulk Raj Anand: The Man and The Novelist

Fiction written in the English language by Indian writers has progressively acquired recognizable status. Mulk Raj Anand is one such figure, who is internationally recognized as an eminent novelist. He, along with R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao has long been regarded as the ‘Big Three’ of Indian English writing.

Whereas R.K. Narayan’s fiction is remarkable for its detachment, Mulk Raj Anand has written his novels and short stories with a personal commitment. The avowed purpose behind his fiction is to teach people “to recognize the fundamental principles of human living and exercise vigilance in regard to the real enemies of freedom and socialism” (Anand, Apology For Heroism 91). He employs his fiction, to help raise the untouchables, the peasants, the serfs, the coolies and the other suppressed members of society, to human and self-awareness in view of the abjectness, apathy and despair in which they are sunk. (Anand, Apology For Heroism 93)

It is quite understandable because life itself compelled him to take such a stance. Moreover, he firmly believes in ‘art for life’s sake’, as Saros Cowasjee has observed:

Like Aldous Huxley, Anand is more interested in life than in art and in art only in so far as it serves life. He is a committed artist, and we should be grateful to him for ably demonstrating in his best works that art need not be any poorer for being the handmaid to life. (Cowasjee, Author To Critic xii)

 Anand’s sympathy with the lowly and the downtrodden is not a result his Marxist leanings alone. Marxism, no doubt, strengthened his real-life experiences into intellectual conviction, but his artistic credo derives from his close observation of life around him in the opening decades of the 20^th century. In this connection K.N.Sinha has noted:

The beliefs of Mulk Raj Anand, the man, consciously or unconsciously influence the views of the writer colouring his aesthetics.

Anand’s concern and sympathy for the low and the downtrodden is present throughout his fiction, especially in novels like Untouchable, Coolie, Two Leaves and a Bud and Seven Summers etc. He protests against poverty, untouchability, exploitation, religious hypocrisy, negative social and cultural traditions in Indian society, like child marriage, arranged marriage, the low status of women in general and the widow in particular and caste restrictions. The India of his boyhood and youth was an orthodox, tradition bound and superstitions British colony, which served as a direct contrast to the emerging new concepts of social and political freedom. Last, but not the least, Anand also protests against British rule. Throughout, he remains the champion of the underdog. According to Anand it is society, which shapes the destiny of man to a great extent and against which man is in constant struggle. Mulk Raj Anand’s trilogy, The Villagw, Across the Black Waters and The Sword and the Sickle are apt examples. In the Private Life of an Indian Prince, Anand focuses more on the psyche of the individual. He has also written four autobiographical novels, entitled Seven Summers, Morning Face, Confession of Lover and The Bubble. Anand had, originally intended to write a seven volume long

Autobiographical work entitled Seven Ages of Man, but was able to publish just the four above-mentioned ones.

As mentioned earlier, Untouchable is Mulk Raj Anand’s first novel. The hero of the novel is Bakha, a tall strong lad, who is an untouchable. The caste system in India has become very rigid and oppressive. Bakha lives a depraved life. His home is a one-roomed mud house, dark and dingy.

“Untouchable opens quietly on an autumn morning and by the time the evening approaches, the author has been able to build round his hero a spiritual crisis of such breath that it seems to embrace the whole of India” (Cowasjee, So Many Freedoms 10).

Bakha, the scavenger is slapped because he is a scavenger. This leads to a crisis of identity. Bakha reacts with rage, horror indignation and a desire to take revenge. Anand’s belief in equality and social justice is well projected in this novel. Munoo is the protagonist of Anand’s second novel Coolie and like Bakha he also leads a depraved life. In his struggle for survival, he leaves the village and moves to the town and then to the city and eventually to the mountains. Munoo contacts tuberculosis and eventually succumbs to the disease. His suffering is the result of social and economic inequality. Anand criticizes the rich who not only exploit their fellow Indians, but are also ill-at-ease with other people who belong to their own class.

“The rich don’t really want to mix with each other. The women pespire in their furs and their underclothes get wet. And the men are uncomfortable in their tight trousers  as they flirt with other men’s wives. Then they say how smart it all was as they drink tea at Davico’s while you starve” (Anand, Coolie 312).

Two Leaves and a Bud, pursuing the theme of exploitation; deals with it as a colonial experience. Gangu, an old coolie is the hero of this novel. He works in a tea plantation in Assam, owned by white masters and experiences the entire might, racial prejudice and cruelty of the British Empire. All the coolies at the plantation are made to work hard and in return they can afford poor small huts, minus proper sanitary arrangements. Since the coolies have no rights what-so-ever, in the true sense of the term, they endeavor to please their white masters and even go to the extent of sending their wives to gratify their carnal desires. Gangu has a young and beautiful daughter called Leila. The white master Reggie Hunt attempts to seduce her. Gangu tries to save his daughter Leila but is shot dead by Reggie Hunt. Exploitation and oppression at the hands of colonial masters is portrayed realistically and effectively.

Lal Singh is the hero of the three novels, The Village, Across the Black Waters and The Sword and the Sickle. In this famous tril-ogy, the protagonist Lal Singh protests against various social injustices. He is an energetic rebel who makes fun of his own Sikh religion, cuts his long hair and eats meat from a Muslim cook-shop. He thinks that it is an outdated and impractical religious custom that a good Sikh should always have in his possession a Katch, a Kara, a Kirpan, a Kesh and a Kanga. Fed up with a society that he finds stifling, Lal Singh runs away from such a setup and becomes a soldier in the second novel Across the Black Waters. He fights in the war and is finally imprisoned in Germany.

“Anand’s overriding concern in Across the Black Waters, almost the sole preoccupation of the novel, is with the devastating effect of war upon the individual”. (Niven 71)

Anand is able to portray the horrors of war in a very realistic manner. Since his boyhood Anand had heard first-hand accounts of war in his father’s regiment. He had also gone to Spain to join the International Brigade while the Spanish Civil War was in progress. These experiences helped Anand to write a successful war novel. When Lal Singh returns from the war, to his village he finds it unchanged, still in the clutches of dirt and disease. The main focus of this tril-ogy is Lal Singh’s search for his identity. In the third and last novel of the sequence The Sword and the Sickle, the worldly wise Lal Singh decides to live peacefully with his wife Maya, whom he loves very much.

The four published volumes of Anand’s proposed seven volume autobiographical novel give a comprehensive picture of Anand the novelist as a man developing under the pressure of the socio-psychological events of his early life. Anand believed in the confessional novel:

“I believe in the confessional novel. In the first person singular one can be nearly honest, peel the onion layer by layer, and get to one’s conscience” (Cowasjee, Author to Critic 33).

In all the four novels he uses the technique of the first person singular. Krishan Chander, the narrator hero of the four novels Seven Summers, Morning Face, Confessions of a Lover and The Bubble recalls the experiences of his early life, his childhood, boyhood and youth. Like Mulk Raj Anand himself Krishan struggles for different kinds of freedoms, political and social. Like Anand, Krishan is also alienated from his father. Again, like the young Anand, Krishan leaves home and goes to England. Iqbal the famous Urdu poet is Anand’s guide and inspiration and so is he of Krishan. Anand’s aunt Devaki, to whom he was extremely attached, committed suicide. So does Krishan Chander’s aunt Devaki and also for the same reasons there is a clash between tradition and modernity in the lives of both Anand and Krishan Chander. The overall theme of Anand’s fiction is derived from his own observation and experience of life. This is clearly testified by the four published volumes of Seven Ages of Man.

Mulk Raj Anand has had the distinction of being elected Fellow of all three national academics – Sahitya Akademi, Lalit Kala Akademi and Sangeet Natak Akademi. The various honors that Anand receives include World Peace Council Prize and Padma Bhushan. Mulk Raj Anand died in Pune on September 28^th, 2004. A prolific writer, he continued to write till the end as is clear from his article entitled Art and Essence published in ‘The Times of India’ of September 29^th, 2004.