Q.

How far do you think ‘Untouchable’ as a novel has been successful enough
to accentuate the problem of untouchability and manual scavenging afflicting
the Indian society?

Mulk Raj Anand, acclaimed as the ‘Charles Dickens of India’, focused on the everyday
problems of pre-independence and post-independence India. He is especially known to shed
light on the lives of lower caste people who are treated with great bias and unfairness in
India. Almost all of his stories and novels like Untouchable, Coolie, The Big Heart, Two
Leaves and a Bud, etc., touch the problems of political structure, oppression of classes,
untouchability, etc. Untouchable was written in 1935 and revolves around a day’s
consequences in the life of Bhakha, a sweeper and an untouchable.

The caste system in India is perhaps the world’s oldest social hierarchy. It is a system of
stratification in which a person’s occupation and social status are determined by birth. The
terms “untouchables” or “Dalits” or “the oppressed” refers to individuals who belong to the
lowest social order. Dalits have suffered centuries of abuse, discrimination, prejudice and
violence. This “hidden apartheid” is also practised in other parts of the sub-continent.

In this novel, Anand reflects a social milieu that gives prominence to the caste system. The
novel depicts the anguish of Bhakha, a sweeper boy, who belongs to the category of social
outcasts. After independence, untouchability was abolished by the Constitution as it prohibits
any discrimination on the basis of race, religion, caste, sex or place of birth. The government
started developing policies directed towards social equity. Democracy has empowered the
depressed classes to work towards their development, spearheading a cultural revolution, so
as to broaden the society’s outlook.

Although untouchability has vanished in urban areas to a great extent, it continuous to have a
conspicuous presence in rural areas. Untouchability is not as dominant now as it was in the
earlier times in India. But there is a little doubt, whether works like Untouchable helped to
bring the issue to a level of awareness where echoes to call for its end were present. Anand
was aware of the sufferings, illiteracy, poverty and humiliation of the Indian people. So, his
aim as a novelist was to focus attention on the sufferings and problems of Indian and
especially outcaste. No on in India had yet dealt with these subjects because of their crude
realities.
Through the characters like Sohini and Pandit, Anand depicted the irony of high caste Hindus
who blamed the lower caste in one hand and then wanted to use and exploit them.

To a legal and theoretical standpoint, untouchability has been reduced in practise. Also, the
globalised setting has catapulting India into being a world force has also changed the
perception of untouchability. The novel emphasises on an individual’s attempt to emancipate
himself from the age old evil of untouchability. The author is concerned with the evils of
untouchability and the need for radical empathy. The conditions which the untouchables are
enforced into are really shocking. Anand in the part, when Sohini goes to fetch water, has
displayed how her plight is so dire that even the fulfilment for the basic need like water and
food; they have to depend on the mercy of the high caste Hindus. Anand in Untouchable
deals with the outcaste engaged in an intense struggle with oppressive forces. Bhakha has to
struggle every minute because he is an untouchable, and he has no right to live like other
upper caste.

The author is undoubtedly writing a message for his own culture in the book; much of the
novel contrasts the innate decency of Bhakha with the gap between the protestation and
practise of untouchability among the castes in Hindus.

Mulk Raj Anand depicted the practice of untouchability is essentially a matter of pretentious
religiosity and exploitation. By a very well worked out technique of dramatic irony. By
juxtaposing the plight of Sohini with that of Bakha, the novelist has reinforced the
representative character of the figure of the untouchable. Mulk Raj Anand is Untouchable
exposed the social realism in contemporary Hindu society. In Untouchable, there is discourse
on the Gandian ideologies of social and moral progress. But it is the eloquently crafted
philosophical basis of Gandhi’s address that dominates the scene. Although one might look at
the issue of casteism in its essential context of the vulgarities and misinterpretations of
Hinduism, the question remains; will industrial progress and modernity liberate the Bakhas of
society from the karmic obligation of cleansing human excreta and guarantee them basic
human dignity and general acceptance in the social order without any reference to their birth
or heredity? Ironically, Bakha caught in the maze of the Indian caste system cannot even
rebel.

The destined life of a sweeper is Bakha’s karmic and hereditary obligation; even though his
dream remains tersely defined by the iron hand of destiny. Although Gandhi declares
categorically and emphatically that untouchability is “the greatest blot on Hinduism”, his
moral philosophy seem to be way too idealistic to meet the immediate ends of social justice.
Some of the legal and social programmes proposed by the poet Sarshar are also equally
idealistic. But E.M. Forster is quick to recognize the tangle to which the Hindus have
unfortunately tied themselves.

So, Anand has accentuated these social issues, not only in Untouchable, but many of his other
works, to a great extent.