Nov 14, 2014

Indian PWA

Source: http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl2916/stories/20120824291604500.htm

Volume 29 - Issue 16 :: Aug. 11-24, 2012INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU

ESSAY

Socialists and writers

A.G. NOORANI

Sajjad Zaheer was among those who formed the Progressive Writers’ Association in Lucknow in 1936.

COURTESY: SAHMAT

Those who attended the formation conference of the Progressive Writers’ Association in Lucknow.

SAJJAD ZAHEER, a much-underestimated figure in the communist movement and in the world of literature, spoke at length to H.D. Sharma, as part of the Oral History Project of the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library in New Delhi. The first part of the article, “A versatile communist”, was published in the August 10 issue of Frontline. This part deals with, among other things, the Congress Socialist Party and the communists and the Progressive Writers’ Association.

Zaheer: There were different trends inside the Congress Socialist Party. The most powerful unit of the Congress Socialist Party [C.S.P] was the Malabar unit and the Andhra unit, the former was led by [E.M.S.] Namboodiripad and the latter was led by P. Sundarayya. Jayaprakash Narayan had a very great admiration for both these units, and whenever [M.R.] Masani attacked these units, he defended them. Now these people did not become communists and then join the C.S.P., as in my case, for example. They were Congressmen, who became Congress Socialists and then later on became communists. So it would be correct to say that in the Congress Socialist Party, there were various socialist trends and I don’t agree with the view that the whole party or its leadership, let us say, was bourgeois….

Sharma: You were a signatory, along with Dinkar Mehta and Soli Batliwala, to the draft thesis which was presented to the Congress Socialist Party Conference in 1938 at Lahore. Who had drafted this thesis and what was the purpose of presenting this as an alternative thesis?

Zaheer: It was drafted by Soli Batliwala and myself with the approval of Namboodiripad and Dinkar Mehta, and we had, of course, also shown it to our communist colleagues, like Bhardwaj, who was also present in Lahore at that time. This was, I think, to express the views of the communist leadership inside the Congress Socialist Party. Actually, I had presented this thesis earlier at the U.P. provincial conference of the party at Lucknow, of which I was secretary. It was furiously attacked by Acharya Narendra Deva as a sort of an attempt of the communists to take over the party. But that is a long story.

Sharma: Can you tell us something about the controversy that the communists wanted to capture the C.S.P. at Lahore? What was its history and what was the intention of the communists in this regard?

Prem Chand. The real big push forward to the Progressive Writers' Movement came from Prem Chand and from Josh Malliahabadi and Maulana Abdul Haq on the Urdu side.

Zaheer: I would say that the communists wanted to capture the Congress Socialist Party at Lahore is not correct. Of course, inside the Congress Socialist Party, there were different views in regard to the nature of the Congress Socialist Party: how we were going to develop it in regard to its programme and tactics. This was constantly under discussion although we had a commonly accepted programme, which had been earlier accepted by it and we had also accepted, I mean, those of us who were communists inside the Congress Socialist Party. The idea of the communists inside the Congress Socialist Party at that time was not to capture or disrupt or to drive out of the party such people who were not of the same views as they were. As a matter of fact [we wanted] to develop the Congress Socialist Party as a broad socialist united party in which communists as well as those who were not communists should be united. In fact, shortly after the Lahore Conference, a definite proposal was made by [P. C. Joshi of] the Communist Party of India to Jayaprakash Narayan, general secretary of the Congress Socialist Party, to have discussions between the two parties on the possibility of a merger of the two parties. But that is another story. There was opposition to it, I may tell you, both from inside the Communist Party as well as from the Congress Socialist Party. So it was not as if the communists were united on this question….

At that time I was not a member of the Congress Socialist Party, and Yusuf Meherally asked me to join it. I had already joined the Congress at Allahabad. I told Yusuf Meherally, “Look, Yusuf, I do not want you to be under any misconception. I am a communist and I don’t know whether you would allow communists to join your party.” He patted me on the back, and said, “Look, I know all about you; many people have told me. We have all to be together. I don’t think there is any harm in your joining the party.” In fact, he was the one who enrolled me as a member of the Congress Socialist Party. He was very friendly, emotional, and an extremely good man; I always liked him even when we had serious differences.

So the idea that it was a plot of the communists to “infiltrate”, the very favourite word used by our opponents, the Congress Socialist organisation and to capture it from inside is altogether wrong. Similarly, if you would ask Jayaprakash Narayan and if he remembers this, he would tell you that it was he who had requested E.M.S. Namboodiripad and Sundarayya when they were not members of the Congress Socialist Party [to join the party]. I don’t think they had become, later on, members of the illegal Communist Party. I don’t know exactly when they became [the members of the CPI]. It was the Congress Socialist leaders who asked us to join the Congress Socialist Party. When I say ‘us’ I mean some of the communists who later on were elected to leading positions in the Congress Socialist Party. So, this thing has to be borne in mind.

Lahore Conference

Secondly, on the eve of the Lahore Conference of the Congress Socialist Party, some of us – the names that I have mentioned – were provincial leaders. I was secretary of the U.P. Congress Socialist Party. Obviously, you could not be secretary of the Congress Socialist Party in U.P. without the consent, cooperation and patronage of Acharya Narendra Deva, who was senior to me and was extremely considerate to me. He had asked me to become secretary [of the party]. Similarly, Sundarayya became secretary [of the party] in Andhra, E.M.S. Namboodiripad in Malabar, as it was called in those days, and, probably, Dinkar Mehta in Gujarat.

The organisational state of the Congress Socialist Party was so loose that it was not a properly organised party. We had no proper lists of our members; our meetings were not properly held. Our central office [was not properly organised]. Although, I must say, Masani as [general] secretary [of the party] was very efficient. Jayaprakash Narayan, of course, great man that he is, is well known for his inefficiency as an office worker; I don’t mean to denigrate him. He has, of course, many great qualities. In those days, he was a sort of uniting force behind the socialist movement in our country. So those of us who were working in the Congress Socialist Party in responsible positions, as secretaries of various State units or provincial units, made serious efforts to enrol new members of the party, to hold socialist study circles, forums to bring together ideologically the new Left socialist element that was developing inside the Indian National Congress.

Now there is a Persian saying: “ Ai Roshnu-Tuba to Burman Bala Shudi” – Perhaps it is an illumination of my mind which became a disaster for me. That is to say, it was because we worked hard and enrolled new members, organised socialist forums and, of course, we had a policy, which was not opposed to the socialists, [that we became suspects in the eyes of the socialists]. In our view [this] should [have been] the policy which all socialists and communists in India should [have followed]. We were working for [the acceptance of] this policy by the Congress Socialist Party in a democratic way. Now, at Lahore, the actual position was that there were elements inside the Congress Socialist Party whom I would blame for this splitting up activity, for the intrigue, for all the things which they attribute to us. Really, they were the guilty people, that is to say, Masani and with him another small group, probably Asoka Mehta and one or two others, who had all the time communist phobia of the McCarthy type. [Their attitude] was quite different from the attitude of, let us say, Jayaprakash Narayan or Acharya Narendra Deva, who were, I think, genuinely working for a united socialist movement as we were.

Now these people started this scare at Lahore, that member from U.P., member from Andhra, member from Malabar, member from Gujarat and from many other places were all communist members, and that these people had manoeuvred this and they were in a majority. So if a vote was taken in Lahore, they were going to have a majority of communists in the national executive of the Congress Socialist Party. This was the scare.

The whole thing was totally manufactured because there was no question of majority. Five or four of us, that is, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, Dinkar Mehta, Batliwala and I, were inside the Congress Socialist Party. … What we were working for was a true reflection of the newly organised Congress Socialist Party, in which we had taken a leading part. Now, these people, I mean, Masani and Asoka Mehta and one or two others, created this scare that we were going to capture the party. And then what happened in the end, we had talks with Acharyaji, with Jayaprakash Narayan and others. There were free and open discussions in our conference. And when we realised that these people were so very scared, we did not insist on this and we said, “All right, we do not want a split on this issue, let Jayaprakash Narayan and Acharyaji present a list.” In the end that list was accepted, I think, unanimously, and we withdrew our list. This, of course, was considered a big victory by the Masani group inside the leadership. But we made this conscious retreat, if you like, in order to see that the communist phobia did not take hold of the entire leadership of the party….

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Sajjad Zaheer: "Prem Chand looked at the manifesto and so did Josh Malliahabadi. They entirely approved of it, but only expressed doubt whether it was just a youthful exuberance."

Sharma: Would it be correct to say that the communist members of the Congress Socialist Party worked as a well-knit group apart from the other members, maybe because of their like-mindedness or common outlook?

Zaheer: Yes, we did occasionally, before the meetings of the national executive or during it. We used to sometimes meet informally, just as, I dare say, Masani, Asoka and Achyut Patwardhan used to meet. It was a fantastic experience for me. I had come from England and had all the goodwill and feeling of friendship for my socialist comrades and friends whom I had joined. Almost since my first meeting of the national executive, I found that there was a small group, led by Minoo Masani, which did not seem to take interest in any damn thing, except anti-communism, that is to say, in such and such a place, in such and such a group, the communists were intriguing, and how to throw out these communists from the party. They would not take interest in the building up of the party, building of the mass movement, in Kisan Sabhas, in trade unions. They would sit there sleepily and as soon as some such issue was brought up, such as the recognition of membership made in Andhra, in Kerala or in U.P., then Masani would start opposing it by saying, “All this is bogus membership. All this is not membership at all, let Jayaprakash Narayan go and find out.” And then Asoka Mehta, who would generally be half asleep on all the other issues, would wake up and with fire and thunder speak, supporting Masani. So I was so unhappy and disgusted with this show that I still, after 30 or 40 years, feel the anguish that I used to feel in those days, because there were so many other important things which we had to discuss – the problems in the Congress, the national movement as a whole, the international situation. This was what hurt me very much. So, to come back directly to your question, we did certainly occasionally consult together. But we also consulted with Jayaprakash, Narendra Deva and even with Masani. It was not a sort of properly organised group, as it were, that used to meet before or after the meetings. We would meet in the national executive, and sometimes we would sit in a corner and discuss….

When we went out of the Congress Socialist Party – we were all in prison – a rump met at Lucknow and decided to expel us from the party illegally, unconstitutionally, because the national executive of the Congress Socialist Party could not, according to the constitution of the party, expel its own members; they could only be expelled by the party conference….

Sharma: Did you organise some office of the provincial Congress Socialist Party?

THE HINDU ARCHIVES

The progressive writers' Group of young Indian writers was formed in England in 1935 and had Mulk Raj Anand (above), Promode Sen Gupta, M.D. Tasir, Sajjad Zaheer and others who were interested in literature.

Zaheer: No, I am afraid not. It was partly in the pocket of Acharya Narendra Deva and partly in my pocket.

Sharma: How did you manage the finances for your tours? Were you managing on your own?

Zaheer: Actually, in those days, I was invited to various districts for some conference, students’ conference, kisan conference, or even a Congress political rally. So our expenses were paid by the people who invited us. This was the general practice and the arrangements were not very luxurious. We used to travel in third class and stay with our friends wherever we went. I had no money of my own. I used to get a meagre allowance from my father, and, of course, this was also spent in this work. But there was no fund of the Congress Socialist Party as such at that time.

Sharma: Do you think that your party made any impact on Congress policies?

Zaheer: That is very difficult to gauge. I do think that it did. For example, the big issue in those days was office acceptance. In this, I think, one does not know because Pandit Jawaharlal himself was among those who were against office acceptance. Then, there was the question of organisation. I must say that I cannot exactly say whether it was the influence of the Congress Socialist Party. But I do think that the Congress Socialist Party working in a more or less organised way, though being a loosely organised party, did give a more radical turn to the national policies as a whole.

Progressive Writers’ Association

Sharma: You have been closely associated with the formation of the Progressive Writers’ Association. How was it first started?

THE HINDU ARCHIVES

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (left) and Sarojini Naidu. They were among others who took a keen interest in the Progressive Writers' Movement.

Zaheer: That is a long story. The first group, which called itself the Progressive Writers’ Group of young Indian writers, was formed in England in 1935, and in this there were five or six of us. Mulk Raj Anand, Promode Sen Gupta, Dr M.D. Tasir of Lahore, one or two other Indians who were in England at that time and were interested in literature, and myself. I had only written a few short stories, one or two poems, a few essays. So we got together and we said, “We should have a progressive writers’ movement in our country and we should write down our views in a manifesto.”

So after a great deal of discussion and several drafts having been made, the first manifesto of the Progressive Writers was finalised. We formed the Indian Progressive Writers’ Association in London and held several meetings. One of the earliest meetings was addressed by Dr Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, who happened to be in London in those days. Then, in subsequent meetings, we used to meet in the cellar of a Chinese restaurant near Tottenham Court Road. The proprietor was very sympathetic to Indian revolutionaries and he used to give us quite cheaply his cellar, where 30 to 40 people could meet. In our meetings, 10 to 20 people used to come. Soon after that I came back to India. But even when I had not come, we had sent copies of our manifesto to our friends in India. Then, I came back home in December 1935, and was living in Allahabad. There I discussed this idea of starting a progressive writers’ movement with some friends in the university, like Raghupati Sahai ‘Firaq’, Ahmed Ali, Bishamber Nath Pandey, Miss Shyam Kumari Nehru and some other people. And we decided to form a Progressive Writers’ Association in Allahabad. I remember, its first meeting was held in my house. When I say my house I mean my father’s house, where I was living. And for the first meeting, you will be, perhaps, amused to know, Mrs Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit also came and some other 30 or 40 people in Allahabad, who were not themselves writers but who were interested [in literature] also came.

But the real big push forward, I should think, was given to our movement by Prem Chand and from the Urdu side by Josh Malliahabadi and Maulana Abdul Haq, who also came to Allahabad to attend a conference organised by the Hindustani Academy. Now Firaq, my other friend Ahmed Ali, then some young people who were in M.A. at that time also joined – men like Shivdan Singh Chauhan, Narendra Sharma, Harash Dev Malaviya and Ramesh Sinha. So, we approached our big leaders, and to our great joy, Prem Chand looked at the manifesto and so did Josh Malliahabadi. They entirely approved of it, but only expressed doubt whether we would do anything about it, or whether it was just a youthful exuberance and the whole thing would end there. But they signed our manifesto.

I had also started working in the Congress, the Congress Socialist Party and the Communist Party. At this time, I was quite close to Pandit Nehru and I talked to him also about this and he also liked the idea. Acharya Narendra Deva, Jayaprakash Narayan and Rambriksha Benipuri of Bihar also liked it. So, naturally we started expanding, as it were, from Allahabad. At Calcutta, there was my friend Hiren Mukerjee to whom I sent the manifesto and he took it to other Bengali writers. Rabindranath Tagore was also approached; similarly Sarojini Naidu was approached; so was Maulana Hasart Mohani and in that way we contacted even some of our greatest writers as well as younger writers, who were, more or less, patriotic minded and who believed in this kind of literature. That is to say, that literature must serve the cause of the people and the biggest cause at that time was the liberation struggle of the Indian people. So we got general sympathy and support from our political leaders, I mean, the Congress leaders like Panditji, Mrs. Naidu and Maulana Azad. These were the three people who, one can say, took interest in matters of culture and literature. Then the Congress Socialist leaders, I must say with emphasis, took a deep interest in it, particularly, Jayaprakash Narayan, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Asoka Mehta and Achyut Patwardhan. So at Allahabad, we decided to hold the first conference of the All India Progressive Writers and to form an All India Progressive Writers’ Association at Lucknow at the same time as the session of the Indian National Congress. That was in April 1936. We approached Prem Chand to preside over this session at Lucknow, which was held in the Rafai-am Hall, the place where many historic meetings were held, where the non-cooperation movement and Khilafat meetings had been held.

Prem Chand presided over this meeting and he read out a brilliant address, which, I think, is still probably the best manifesto of the entire Progressive Writers’ Movement, even up to now, because it lays down clearly the main objectives of the literature generally and of the progressive writings particularly. In this conference, I remember, I specially approached Sarojini Naidu. She promised to come, but at the last moment, she could not come. So she sent a message. But Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay came and, I think, she spoke also. Asoka Mehta attended. Jayaprakash Narayan, I am not sure whether he came. Jayaprakash Narayan and Narendra Devaji were, probably, at that time either in the working committee meetings, or were very busy with other things. So that is the beginning of the Progressive Writers’ Movement.

Nov 10, 2014

Mulk Raj Anand: novelist and fighter

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"Copy" from the Journal International Socialism

For original, kindly visit the Journal webpage

by Talat Ahmed

The Indian novelist Mulk Raj Anand passed away at the grand old age of 98 last September [2004]. He was arguably the greatest exponent of Indian writing in English, whose literary output was infused with a political commitment that conveyed the lives of India’s poor in a realistic and sympathetic manner. He had been involved in India’s freedom movement, been impressed by Marx’s letters on India and his general political framework and had been a co-founder of India’s greatest literary movement in the 1930s. I had the pleasure of meeting with him at his home in Khandala, outside Bombay, in March last year. Despite illness and fraility he was able to recall some of his earlier memories of life in London and India vividly.

Born into a family of metal workers with an army background in Peshawar, he witnessed the bloody reality of colonial rule with the Jaillinwalla massacre at Amritsar in 1919. Like most Indians of his generation he threw himself into Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement. This led him into student agitation against the British for which he received 11 stripes on his back and was briefly jailed. The experience had a deep impact on the young Anand and he concluded that notions of ‘Empire’ and ‘Freedom’ were complete opposites:

I had grown up in the ferment of a great moral and political movement in which I had learnt that alien authority constricted our lives in every way. I can’t say there was no bitterness in my hatred of imperialism, because I remember how often waves of fury swept over me to see hundreds of human beings go to jail daily after being beaten up by the police for offering civil disobedience.1

It was partly to escape further arrest, but also to avoid the petty bourgeois ambitions of his soldier father, that Anand came to study at University College London in the autumn of 1925. Unlike most Indian students at the time he had to work in Indian restaurants and later for a publishing firm to earn his keep as his family were not in a position to fully finance his studies or maintenance. But he also became part of the literary crowd known as the ‘Bloomsbury group’. Here he met writers such as T S Eliot, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, E M Forster and John Strachey among many others. This literary elite both impressed him and left him feeling quite perplexed and uncomfortable. London at that time was the centre of the English-speaking intellectual world and Anand had hoped to meet with like-minded individuals who shared his anti-colonial liberal views. To his surprise he discovered that, according to Eliot, Gandhi was an ‘anarchist’ and that Indians should concentrate on cultural aspects of their society and leave the politics of governance to the British! Many of these writers had not visited India and so their impressions were formed by Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, which to Anand was typical of colonial fantasies of India. It was partly in response to these perceptions that he wanted to write.2 As an Indian student in London, Anand found himself popular with the literary set and, fortunately for him, not all writers were as parochial as Eliot. He soon found himself drawn to the Woolfs and, more importantly, E M Forster. Anand held A Passage to India to be the best fictional writing on his homeland, as this went beyond the orientalist conceptions of the ‘natives’ and attempted to depict the complex, often contradictory and mostly confrontational impact of colonial rule in India. He had wanted to write about the ordinary, the mundane, everyday life experiences of Indians who were not kings and gods.

James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man impressed Anand greatly as it was a new literature infused with Irish nationalism. In 1927 Anand went to Ireland and enjoyed the writings of Yeats because his works represented the lives of ordinary people in villages and towns.

This was to be his model as he set about writing his first novel, Untouchable, published in 1935. It is a story based on the life of the most downtrodden, despised and oppressed section of Indian society, the outcastes – those at the bottom of the caste hierarchy. This story is based on a single day in the life of Bakha, a latrine cleaner and sweeper boy. We follow him round on his daily chores cleaning up the shit of the rich and powerful, who despise him because of strict social rules governing ideas of purity and pollution. When he walks down the streets he has to signal an alarm with his voice as he approaches so that the ‘pure’ are forewarned to avoid even allowing his shadow to be cast upon them. On one occasion he does ‘pollute’ a caste Hindu and is chased, abused and attacked all day long for this defilement.

Anand was born into the kshatriya warrior caste, which is placed one below the top caste of the Brahmins priests. He had always befriended and played with the children of sweepers and as a child he had been shocked and disgusted by the suicide of a relative who had been disowned by his family for daring to share her food with a Muslim, for this too was regarded as pollution. Anand had always been disgusted with and opposed religious sectarianism, communalism and caste society. His soldier father had been involved with a Hindu reform movement, Arya Samaj. But Anand kept his distance, for despite its opposition to child marriage and the prohibition of widow remarriage, the movement was also quite evangelical in its attempts to ‘re-convert’ Muslims to the ‘true faith’. To Anand it harboured deep anti-Muslim sentiments with which he would have no truck.

With the publication of Untouchable, Anand had firmly associated himself with that brand of writers who saw ‘political, social and human causes as genuine impulses for the novel and poetry’.3

For Anand literature should be an interpretation of the truth of people’s lives. It should be written from felt experience and not books. It was for this reason that he returned to India briefly in 1929. Being influenced by Gandhi, he came to his ashram in Ahmedabad, where he showed Gandhi drafts of his novel. Gandhi was extremely critical because he claimed there was too much of the ‘Bloomsbury’ feel to it, on which he was probably right. While in Ahmedabad Anand lived like a disciple and did his share of cleaning the toilets – an act seen as defilement for a caste Hindu. In this period Anand revised his book considerably and when Forster read it his retort to those who complained about the ‘dirt’ in the novel, was that “the book seems to me indescribably clean…it has gone straight to the heart of its subject and purified it”.4

Though this is his best known and most widely read novel, it was no easy job getting it published in the 1930s. Some 19 publishers had rejected this story for ‘its dirt’. In despair Anand was on the brink of giving up when the twentieth publisher accepted the novel on the basis that E M Forster had agreed to write the preface. Anand praised Forster for his support as it was not only unusual for an Indian writer to have his central character be a latrine cleaner; many European writers would not touch a subject like this either.

Anand displays compassion for the plight of untouchables but never sentimentality. In many ways the novel represented his thinking beyond the limits of Gandhi’s idea of untouchables as harijans – children of god. For Anand this is far too patronising and it is for this reason that his fictionalised account depicts a debate between a Gandhi-type figure espousing the oneness of humanity and simple living on the land and a poet who poses a modern solution to the problems of untouchability flushing toilets!

Anand’s second novel also illustrated his compassion and concerns for the poor of India. In Coolie he portrays the life of young Munoo, kshatriya by caste but a peasant boy who travels from his mountainous village through north India and eventually finds himself in Bombay. He is an orphan and so is forced to take whatever work he can in order to survive. He works as a servant, in a mine, a factory and as a coolie – black men who empty their bowels in the fields. In each of these situations Munoo is subjected to harassment, beatings and financial exploitation at the hands of employers, moneylenders, and his so called betters. But the story is also about the development of a young boy who begins to learn about the world around him and attempt to make some sense of it. This novel was written in 1936 and has a fictionalised account of a Bombay riot, which clearly represented Anand’s thoughts on those agents who fuelled communalism in their desperate attempts to keep the country divided, but also to keep the poor and workers in their place. So the riot as witnessed by Munoo is deliberately engineered to break a potential strike through the use of communalised tensions between Hindus and Muslims.5 In some ways the failure of progressive and left forces to counter rising communal tensions left Anand feeling that perhaps partition could not be avoided after the growth of the Muslim League and the inability of Nehru to counter the right wing elements within Congress.6

While in London Anand was conscious not only of colonial racist stereotypes of Indians that were prevalent among some British intellectuals but also the contempt in which they held British workers. A year after he arrived in London the 1926 General Strike took place, and was to have a profound effect upon him. His natural sympathies were with the strikers and their supporters for he found himself comparing the position of the English worker with that of Indians under colonial rule and found ‘British democracy’ seriously lacking. He believed there to be ‘something rotten in the state of Denmark’.7 His outrage at the way the state treated the strikers was only outstripped by his astonishment at the attitudes of the majority of his fellow students who were happy to scab and volunteer to help run trains, trams and tubes. Anand saw this as treachery and he quickly associated himself with a small group of students who ‘refused to be bullied by the others’. For his pains he was attacked in Gower Street by fellow students.8 He had no regrets, stating that ‘in life there are some things worth getting beaten up for’.9

London was home to many students from India throughout the 1930s and 1940s and Anand soon found himself gravitating towards the group of writers who would meet in people’s living rooms to recite poems and short stories, and above all to discuss the struggle in India and the international crisis with the forward march of fascism in Europe. Anand was invited to represent India on the platform at the World Congress of Writers against Fascism in Madrid in 1935. Anand was acutely aware of the threat fascism represented for writers in Europe and the mortal danger it held for humanity.

After seeing the way writers and intellectuals in Europe were organising, on his return to London, along with the writer Sajjad Zaheer, an Indian Communist, he set up the All-India Progressive Writers’ Association (AIPWA) in 1935. He penned the first draft of their manifesto which with minor adjustments was adopted at the first conference of the association in Lucknow in April 1936. This was a pan-Indian organisation that represented all the major linguistic regions of India and was staunchly secular in outlook and politically committed to the project of an independent united India with social justice and equality. At its height it probably had over 30,000 members writing literature in all the Indian vernaculars. That this literary association was also a social and political movement closely aligned to the Communist Party of India and influenced by Nehruvian nationalism is in no small way to be credited to Anand. Though he never joined the Communist Party, claiming the party would never have been able to tolerate him, he was very much a ‘fellow traveller’, aligning himself with the best elements of the left tradition in India.

Anand’s anti-fascist commitment led him to travel to Spain in 1937 to fight with the Republicans in the civil war. He felt it was his duty to show physical support because he was in Europe. He returned to India briefly in 1938 to address the second AIPWA in Calcutta, where he spoke about his experiences in Spain and insisted that writers use their craft as a means of exposing injustice and exploitation.

While in Spain he drafted another novel, Across the Blackwaters. This is the middle novel of a trilogy published in 1939. It is based on the experiences of Indian sepoys who are transported to Europe to fight in the First World War. The central character is Lalu, a young Hindu boy who has already broken with strict practices of Hindus by eating at Muslim shops while at home. In Europe we see how the soldiers are treated by their English masters within the army, but Anand also depicts the strict hierarchies among the Indians themselves in terms of caste, class and rank. Lalu not only flouts Indian conventions but in having an on-off flirtation with a French girl he challenges colonial morality under the very noses of the English officers.

The novel is full of compassion and humanity as well as humour for the thousands of mostly peasants from the Punjab who died in the trenches of France and Flanders.10 The roots of this story are in Anand’s childhood. As a boy he had seen hundreds of men go off to Europe from his town and surrounding villages but only a handful returned. This novel achieved such critical acclaim that in 1998 the British Council adapted it as a play to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of the First World War.

Anand was pivotal to internationalising the experience of Indian writers to the outside world and he helped to bring an international dimension to the progressive writers’ movement in India. He is brilliant at satirising the bigotries and orthodoxies of his times, but his novels also celebrate

the spirit of human rebellion which embodies all his central characters. Today Salman Rushdie is credited with popularising Indian writing in English. But 50 years earlier Anand had pioneered the writing of Indian literature which was accessible to the English-speaking world. And unlike Rushdie his works were inspired and informed by the lives of real people in unglamorous situations, warts and all. In addition his writings demonstrate a keen desire for political change and social transformation that remained with him throughout his life. The best tribute that readers of this journal could pay Mulk Raj Anand would be to read his novels and be inspired by the dedication and commitment he had.

NOTES

1: A Anand, Apology For Heroism: A Brief Autobiography of Ideas (Kutub-Popular, 1946), pp53-54.

2: See A Anand, Conversations in Bloomsbury (OUP, 1995).

3: S Cowasjee, Author to Critic: The Letters of Mulk Raj Anand (Writers Workshop Publications, 1973), p1.

4: See Preface to Untouchable (Penguin, 1939), pv.

5: See A Anand, Coolie (Penguin, 1993).

6: Interview with Anand, 8 March 2004.

7: Apology, as above, pp32-35.

8: As above.

9: Interview with Anand, as above.

10: See A Anand, Across the Blackwaters (Orient Paperbacks, 2004), and also The Village and The Sword and the Sickle.

Nov 4, 2014

Critical Appreciation of the short story ‘An Astrologer’s Day by R.K.Narayan

Source: https://baarchana.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/critical-appreciation-of-an-astrologers-day-by-r-k-narayan/

Book: An Astrologer’s Day and Other Stories (1947)
Author: R.K.Narayan
Genre: Short stories
Story from the Collection: An Astrologer’s Day

Critical Appreciation of the short story ‘An Astrologer’s Day’

‘An Astrologer’s Day and other Stories’ are a collection of short stories written by R.K.Narayan. ‘An Astrologer’s Day’ is the first story from the collection.

Summary: The story is about an astrologer, who chose to be one not out of choice but past mysterious situations in life forced him to be one. So it goes without saying that he was a stranger to the stars as much his gullible clients, but he did know how to carry out his profession. What baffles the reader and everyone is how he could correctly read an unusual client’s past and even known his name? Had he studied the stars and mastered the art, contrary to the common belief? Did he possess some uncanny powers, which could be put to good use, when needed?

Plot:

1.Exposition: In the beginning of the story we are introduced to the astrologer. All others transacting their business nearby are there to create the right atmosphere and provide the setting necessary for the development of the plot. The crafty ways in which the astrologer transcends his work and endeared to his gullible customers is very well described.

“He was as much a stranger to the stars as were his innocent customer. But it didn’t seem to matter at all. He said things which pleased and astonished everyone: that was more a matter of study, practice and shrewd guesswork”.

The writer paints a perfect picture of an astrologer- the con men, the likes of whom we come across in the marketplace and towns. Even though we may harbour doubts about their knowledge of stars, we do feel tempted to consult them to know what future has in store for us!

2. Complication: A sense of suspense is created about the personal life or past history of the astrologer. All that we are told in the beginning of the story is that he had not in the least intended to be an astrologer when he began life.

He had left his village stealthily without any previous thought or plan. He had to leave home without telling anyone and had to cover a safe distance before he could recollect himself and his life. We are also told that astrology was not his family business. If he had continued to live in his village, he would have tilled the land and tended his cornfields like his forefathers. So this creates curiosity in the minds of the reader as to what had happened in his past that had broken this ancestral cycle and forced him to leave all of a sudden?

3. Climax: The narration continues at its normal expected pace until an unusual client appears in the scene to consult the astrologer when the astrologer was packing up his astrology paraphernalia and was ready to call it a day. This client was no usual casual client wanting temporary respite but had specific questions and challenged the astrologer to provide specific answers.

The critical scene which drives the plot ahead: As the stranger lit his cheroot, the astrologer caught a glimpse of his face by the matchlight and for some obscure reason the astrologer now felt uncomfortable and tried to wriggle out of the whole thing.

(The work place setting described in the beginning of the story is very well gelled in evolving the critical scene of the story).

The stranger won’t let go the astrologer. “Challenge is challenge”.

What the astrologer says hereafter takes the client as well as the reader by surprise. He was left for dead, a knife had passed through him once, he was pushed into a well nearby in the field. The effect is further heightened when the astrologer even gives out his correct name. Guru Nayak is completely stumped. When asked about the whereabouts of the man who stabbed him and left him for dead, the astrologer confidently tells Guru Nayak to give up the hunt because the assailant had died four months ago, crushed under a lorry in a far-off town. The astrologer also advices Guru Nayak to go home and stay up there and never travel southward again.

This episode leaves us with new-found admiration for the astrologer. How could he so correctly read the stranger’s past and even known his name? Had he studied the stars and mastered the art, contrary to the common belief? Did he possess some uncanny powers, which could be put to good use, when needed?

4.Denouement: The story takes another twist when the astrologer reaches home and confides with his wife the reason why he had run away from home, settled here, and married her. All these years he had thought that the blood of a man was on his hands. This past incidence had happened when he was a youngster, got drunk, gambled and got into a quarrel. But now the man he thought he had killed was alive. Thus a great load was off his chest.

This is the reason why the astrologer had to leave his village without any plan or preparation. And this was how he could so correctly talk of Guru Nayak’s troubled past.

The story thus ends with an incredible twist: “a murdered man” turns up to consult his “murderer”, who is now an astrologer, regarding when he will be able to have his revenge; the “murderer” recognizes him by the matchlight when the former had lit his cheroot but he cannot recognize his old enemy in his garb as an astrologer. The client is astonished to be told about his previous history by the astrologer, and meekly agrees to give up his search for his enemy declared to have been crushed under a lorry months ago. Thus the astrologer ensured for himself a safe and secure life hereafter. Convinced that his assailant had been crushed under a lorry months ago, Guru Nayak would not want to venture out of his village when it forebode gave risk to his life. Thus all the mystery begins to fall in place and the loose ends are tied into a unified whole.

Atmosphere: The author, R.K.Narayan, has an eye for detail. He creates an atmosphere of a perfect work place for the astrologer.

Illustrations:

His professional equipment consisted of “a dozen cowrie shells, a square piece of cloth with obscure mystic charts on it, a notebook, and a bundle of palmyra writing”.

The boughs of the spreading tamarind tree, the surging crowd moving up and down the narrow road morning till night, the variety of traders- medicine sellers, sellers of stolen hardware and junk, magicians, auctioneers of cheap cloth, and vendors of fried groundnut- vociferously vying with each other to attract the crowd created a remarkable work place for the astrologer.

The light and smoke of the crackling flare above the groundnut heap, enchantment of the place created by lack of lighting, hissing gaslights and bewildering criss-cross of light rays and moving shadows created the right setting for an astrologer.

Characterization:

The method of characterization adopted by the author is a combination of expository and dramatic.

There are three characters in the story:

1. The Astrologer :

The protagonist is an astrologer. The astrologer’s name is never mentioned and it doesn’t really matter that the reader knows it. He is a ‘round character’ with various facets of the personality being revealed and the character evolved with the development of the plot.

The appearance of the astrologer is very well described by the author.

“His forehead was resplendent with sacred ash and vermilion and his eyes sparkled with a sharp abnormal gleam” which his simple clients took to be prophetic light and felt comforted.
“Half-wit’s eyes would sparkle in such a setting”.
“To crown the effect he wound a saffron-coloured turban around his head. This colour scheme never failed. People were attracted to him as bees are attracted to cosmos or dahlia stalks”.

The only thing the astrologer didn’t know anything about was ‘Astrology’ but he was intelligent and had his crafty ways to go about his profession. He had a working analysis of mankind’s troubles and told the person before him, gazing at his palm:

“In many ways you are not getting the fullest results of your efforts”.
“Most of your troubles are due to your nature……Saturn……You have an impetuous nature and a rough exterior”.

These talks endeared to almost everyone’s hearts immediately.

Clever as he was, he never opened for atleast ten minutes which provided him enough stuff for “a dozen answers and advices”.

2. A prospective client of the Astrologer: The prospective client happened to be the person the astrologer had stabbed and left for being dead when they were youngsters. Therefore he was restless, furious and was searching for his assailant to take revenge. The astrologer recognized him but the he could not recognize his assailant in the garb of an astrologer. His name, ‘Guru Nayak’, is revealed when the astrologer was unraveling his past. He plays a pivotal role in the development and climax of the plot.

3. Astrologer’s wife: Though a minuscule role, the astrologer’s wife plays an important part in the denouement of the story, helping the astrologer take the great load off his chest.

Is this character absolutely required in the story? The author could have eliminated this role altogether and allowed the astrologer heave a sigh of relief by talking to his conscience but confiding and sharing his relief with his wife brings the characters to life.

Narrative Techniques:

The story builds up certain suspense in the mind of the readers regarding the circumstances that had compelled the protagonist to leave his village all of a sudden without any plan or preparation and take to astrology to eke out a living in the town. The revelation unties many knots merely hinted at earlier and weaves the parts into a unified whole. It is a logical climax reached dramatically.

Figurative Language:

Irony: The author uses ironic comment on the astrologer’s crafty ways of carrying out his profession and the gullible people who came to him for solutions and finding respite:

“He knew no more of what was going to happen to others than he knew what was going to happen to himself next minute”.
“He was as much a stranger to the stars as were his innocent customers”.
“…his eyes sparkled with a sharp abnormal gleam which was really an outcome of a continual searching look for customers, which his simple clients took to be a prophetic light and felt comforted”.

Simile: The appearance of the astrologer wearing a saffron-coloured turban is described as:

“To crown the effect he wound a saffron-coloured turban around his head. This colour scheme never failed. People were attracted to him as bees are attracted to cosmos or dahlia stalks”.

The astrologer had left his home under mysterious circumstances and did not rest till he covered a couple of hundred miles. This enormous distance covered is emphasized as:

“To a villager it is a great deal, as if an ocean flowed between”.

Catchy Phrases: The work place setting is buzzing with activities consisting different traders. I personally liked the way the groundnut seller uses catchy phrases to transact business:

“He gave a fancy name each day, calling it ‘Bombay Ice-Cream’ one day, and on the next ‘Delhi Almond’ on the next, and ‘Raja’s Delicacy’”.

Innovative catch phrases are commonly used by many street vendors in the towns of India to lure customers. This vibrant marketing style has been very vividly captured by the author.

My Point of View:

Societal Satire: I have heard many quotes dealing with the past “Past being History and Future being Mystery…” and so and so forth. This story goes on to show how past can actually affect the present and future of one’s life.

The astrologer had committed a folly by getting into a quarrel when he was a drunk youngster, the result of which changed his entire path of life. If not for the past incidence he would have continued to live in that village carried on the work of his forefathers namely, tilling the land, living, marrying, and ripening in his cornfield and ancestral home. But now he had to leave his village stealthily and take up the profession of an astrologer which he least intended to in a far away village.

There is an element of social satire in the story: What happened in the past and how it affected the lives henceforth is for all of us to see.

Astrology as a profession: The author uses irony to show how the science of astrology has been misused by these conmen in the society thereby creating distrust in the people about astrology and astrologers. Though the author uses ironic comment on the astrologer’s crafty ways of carrying out his profession and the gullible people who came to him for solutions and finding respite but he has never been judgmental and undermined astrology as a profession.

Illustration: “He was as much a stranger to the stars as were his innocent customer. Yet he said things which pleased and astonished everyone: that was more a matter of study, practice, and shrewd guesswork. All the same, it was as much an honest man’s labour as any other, and he deserved the wages he carried home at the end of a day”.

What makes the story impressive is the interesting plot, element of suspense, logical climax, figurative language, importance to details, and the underlying meaning behind the story. These elements have been artistically interwoven in the story by the author, making it an interesting read.

Nov 1, 2014

Mulk Raj Anand

Source: http://www.postcolonialweb.org/india/anand/stracuzzi1.html

The Indelible Problem: Mulk Raj Anand and the Plight of Untouchability
Andrew M. Stracuzzi, The University of Western Ontario

Mulk Raj Anand, speaking about the real test of the novelist, once said:

It may lie in the transformation of words into prophesy. Because, what is writer if he is not the fiery voice of the people, who, through his own torments, urges and exaltations, by realizing the pains, frustrations and aspirations of others, and by cultivating his incipient powers of expression, transmutes in art all feeling, all thought, all experience - thus becoming the seer of a new vision in any given situation. (qtd. in Dhawn, 14)

There is no question that Mulk Raj Anand has fashioned with Untouchable a novel that articulates the abuses of an exploited class through sheer sympathy in the traditionalist manner of the realist novel. He is, indeed, the "fiery voice" of those people who form the Untouchable caste. Yet if the goal of the writer, as Anand himself states, is to transform "words into prophecy," then the reader's struggle for meaning in the closing scenes of the novel become problematic and contestatory. It is reasonable to assume -- and as I would argue, it is implied -- that Anand has ventured to address a specific question with writingUntouchable; this is, how to alleviate the exploitation of the untouchable class in India? He then proceeds to address this question through the dramatization of Bahka, the novel's central character. Having said this -- and taking into account Anand's notion of the novel as prophesy -- I will argue that the author has failed to fully answer the question he has set before him. In fact, by posing such a question, the possibility of an altruistic solution becomes blurred. Furthermore, the three "prophecies" or solutions posited by the novel -- the rhetoric of the Christian Missionary, Mahatma Gandhi, and the poet Iqbal Nath Sarshar -- fail to present a prescription for freedom accessible to the untouchable community.

In order to articulate the meaning of the last section of Untouchable fully, it is important to analyze the construction of Bahka, the protagonist, since his own distinct and honest, though often confusing, gaze objectifies his society. The last passage in the novel is an appropriate place to begin:

he began to move. His virtues lay in his close-knit sinews and in his long breath sense. He was thinking of everything he had heard though he could not understand it all. He was calm as he walked along, though the conflict in his soul was not over, though he was torn between his enthusiasm for Gandhi and the difficulties in his own awkward naÔve self"(Untouchable, 157; italics mine).

Anand chooses to close the final scene of his novel by appropriating the inner conflict of Bakha and juxtaposing "enthusiasm" with "naiveté." There seems to be an inherent, even subtle, irony in describing Bahka in this manner. On one hand, it carries a strong sense of hope, of self-awareness, of self-appropriation of the individual within the greater scheme of Hindu society There is a strong indication that what Bahka has endured throughout his day's journey has had an enormous effect on the way he appropriates himself within his own culture The novel thus ends on a somewhat positive note, with the image of Bahka going home and telling -- actually vocalizing -- his story in the hopes that some sort of resolution, or at the very least, some emergence of understanding will occur.

Conversely, though, Anand chooses to show him as naive. This is, perhaps, where the inherent problem lies within the text, the construction of Bahka himself. Though Bakha is a young protagonist (or perhaps, anti-protagonist), he is far from being an innocent child. Yet he is constructed with such a damming perception of innocence -- an uneducated victim of his community's frustration -- that he does not fit into the confines of a traditional hero. This is primarily because for him there is no solid gratification or inner resolution gained by the obstacles he is faced with during his day. Furthermore, as E.M. Forester point outs in the novel's preface, the reader has every indication that the next day, and the day after that, will be identical to the first. If anything, then, his only heroism lies in his ability to survive the actual day's events; but that too is circumstantial. His survival does not rely so much on his inner strength as an individual, but rather it is dependent on the action of the others that surround him, namely those individuals of higher caste standing. It is a character like Charat Singh, for example, that determines his survival depending on the degree of pity he is willing to dispense at any particular moment. Anand creates a character in search of his own identity within the very structure that has eliminated the possibility of him having one. The conflict within Bakha is demonstrated repeatedly throughout the text, yet it is in the opening pages of the novel that the reader identifies with Bakha's search for an identity. Bakha clearly has trouble accepting the identity allotted to him at birth. He has a desire to be like the Tommies he sees throughout his village. The narrator tell us that "the Tommies had treated him as a human being and he had learnt to think of himself as superior to his fellow-outcasts" (9). He attempts to adopt the "fashun" of the Tommies, becoming "possessed with an overwhelming desire to live their life" (11). He naively assumes that the mere adoption of the outward sings of a Sahib will garner him respect. He proceeds through his day wearing the trousers of one of the Tommies, but this assertion of identity fails to produce the desired result. Instead, Bakha looks silly - a mere amusement for others to caste their petty jokes and insults. C.D. Narasimhaiah's The Swan and the Eagle maintains that Bakha is desperately trying to escape the connotations the title of the novel asserts over his identity. Bakha's desire to imitate the Tommies is important because "[he] can preserve his identity only to the extent that he can be conscious of his superiority"(112). However, Anand quickly dispels Bakha's consciousness of superiority when Bakha comes to the realization that "except for the English clothing there was nothing English in his life"(12). Narasimhaiah further articulates that "in the numerous episodes which he puts his character through, the novelist tries to give him his identity in the very act of our witnessing the world deny it to him or to those around us"(113).

Therefore, the importance Anand places on Bakha's quest for identity leaves the reader questioning the viability of Bakha as the most appropriate figure to challenge the abuses of untouchability. To further elaborate on this point it should be noted that Anand has taken a great risk, both professionally and socially, in writing about the untouchable class, a minority that has been underrepresented in much of the Indian-English literature produced before Untouchable. Anand has suggested himself that his novels should be read in a political context; as such, it would stand to reason that literature has a fundamental impact on the development of culture, especially in post-colonialism. We have seen the effects of such works by Kipling, Forster and Conrad, to name a few, which have been used by the oppressor in order to reinforce, and often justify their oppressive logic. It is clearly evident from Anand's novel that the untouchables are both an oppressed and exploited class.

I would argue that Anand has an obligation of sorts, in portraying this exploited class as fairly and representatively as possible. Certainly, he has successfully achieved the reader's sympathy for Bakha's exploitation via the horrendous abuses that he is subjected to as an oppressed minority. However, in choosing -- whether consciously or not -- to depict Bahka as a naÔve, uneducated, identity-seeking protagonist, Anand has significantly diminished the reader's ability (or Bakha's) to be seen as initiator of change. It seems that there is, however, evidence to suggest that this portrait of Bakha is somewhat intentional. Anand admits to having run over his manuscript with Mahatma Gandhi and making the suggested changes; he states, "I read my novel to Gandhji and he suggested that I should cut down more than a hundred pages, especially those passages in which Bakha seemed to be thinking and dreaming and brooding like a Bloomsbury intellectual"(Novels, 11). The choice to limit Bakha's intelligence further enforces his inability to fully understanding his situation. In depicting an untouchable in this way, Anand is undermining the possibility of the untouchable class taking a part in destroying their own oppression because he constructs them as incapable of intellectually identifying the systemic sources of their oppression.

If Bahka is to be seen as a representative of his class, his inability even to articulate the words of Gandhi, for example, puts him at an immediate disadvantage. In fairness to Anand, the portrayal of Bakha is complex, and he certainty allows Bakha to be rebellious. This rebellion, however, is always internal and uttered with a silent voice. After the novel's pivotal "touching" scene in the village market Bakha reacts to the event with anger: "the strength, the power of his giant body glistened with he desire for revenge in his eyes, while horror, rage, indignation swept over his frame. In a moment he lost all his humility, and he would have lost his temper too"(50), if it were not for the disappearance of the man who struck him. He is depicted as having a "smoldering rage within his soul," and then resorts to self questioning: "why was I so humble? I could have struck him!"(51). Thus we see that Bahka has the potential for rebellion, yet Anand chooses to silence this rebellion by creating a condition that does not allow for the expression of it. Bakha then comes to a self revelation a few paragraphs later: "I am an Untouchable! he said to himself, an Untouchable!"(52). Yet what good is this recognition if there is no possibility of it being overcome? This self affirmation has damaging consequences because it implies that Bahka is becoming comfortable with its implications.

Choosing the path of least resistance, Anand dismisses the possibility of social rebellion altogether. The ending of the novel stops short of adequately answering -- or justifying the reason for not answering -- the basic question the novel forces the reader to ask, how to alleviate the oppression of the untouchables? Instead, Anand chooses to address this question vis-à-vis the three choices presented to the untouchable class. In essence, Bakha's choices are conversion to Christianity, the rhetoric of Gandhi, and the flush system suggested by the poet. However, all three of these solutions prove to be inadequate primarily because they remove the option for untouchables to take action against their own oppression. R.T. Robertson pinpoints in his article "Untouchable as Archetypal Novel," the central paradox of the novel that "Bakha is both isolated from and bound to his culture; it will not allow him fully to participate in the society and cannot release him from it because of the essential service he performs for it."(101). This paradox creates an environment of stasis for Bakha and for all untouchables; the resolutions suggested within the text only perpetuate this stasis because, according to the novel, the only way to alleviate untouchability must come from the hands of either the oppressors or from something beyond the untouchables' control and understanding.

Like postcolonial novels set in other parts of the Britsh Empire, including Africa, the main character's encounter with missionary Christianity produces comedy and satire. Here Christian missionary, Colonel Hutchinson, can neither articulate Christian belief nor persuade Bakha of the benefits of conversion. Instead, the Colonel breaks into biblical song, only further confusing Bahka. He is unable to grasp the concept of original sin and so responds by reflecting, "he didn't like the idea of being called a sinner. He had committed no sin that he could remember. How could he confess his sins? Odd. He did not want to go to heaven"(130). The only point that peaks his interest is the fact that God regards all people as equal, but this is only a response to comfort him from the inequality he has encountered throughout the day. R.S. Singh in Indian Novels in English points out that while the Christian missionary persuades Bakha to change his religion, "Bakha's eyes are keen enough to see the dichotomy of the missionary's existence who is himself living a miserable life with his sensation-loving, hot-tempered wife. He comes to believe that the religion of his father is in no way inferior to Christianity"(40). Thus replacing one faith with another will not solve the problem of untouchablity but will only further complicates the matter.

The representations of both Gandhi and the poet proves also confusing alternatives for Bakha. On the one hand, Gandhi articulates that the plight of untouchability is both a "moral and religious" issue. He "regards untouchability as the greatest blot on Hinduism"(146) and asserts that it is "satanic" to assume anyone in Hinduism is born polluted. Gandhi then recounts the story of a Brahmin boy and a sweeper in his ashram and attempts to show understanding for the sweeper; he feels that if the Brahmin "wanted the ashram sweeper to do his work well he must do it himself and set an example"(148). Yet this action, while appearing to be sympathetic and understanding, only undermines the very existence of an untouchable because it assumes that the untouchable is incapable of doing such menial work well. Further, it implies and confirms an existing hierarchy of power between the untouchable and other high-caste Hindus because it suggests that they must be taught to be untouchables, which only perpetuates the cycle of oppression. Gandhi then proceeds to criticize the Untouchables by saying that they have to "cultivate habits of cleanliness," that they must get rid of their "evil habits" such as "drinking liquor, gambling and eating carrion." They must, as Gandhi says, " cease to accept leavings form the plates of high-caste Hindus, however clean they may be represented to be"(148). In essence, he advocates emancipation by purification. Yet there is an inherent dichotomy in Gandhi's rhetoric because the existing system does not allow for the untouchables to become purified primarily because their fundamental existence is rooted in the profession of filth. It is as Bakha says to his father, "they think we are mere dirt because we clean their dirt"(79). Anand, although an avid follower of Gandhi, has Bakha question the Mahatma's speech: "but now, now the Mahatma is blaming us. That is not fair! He wanted to forget the last passages that he had heard"(148). This suggests, perhaps, that Anand's view of Gandhi and his political rhetoric cannot be idealized because it too contains elements of oppression. Anand then proceeds to offer his last possible solution to the alleviation of untouchability. Through the poet Iqbal Nath Sarshar, Anand takes the chance to expressing his own Marxist inclinations: "well, we must destroy caste, we must destroy the inequalities of birth and unalterable vocations. We must recognize an inequality of rights, privileges and opportunities for everyone" (155). He advocates that a change in profession will free the Untouchables and the way to achieve this change is through the implementation of a flush system. William Walsh believes that this last option is most favored by Anand, but admits the obvious complexities in describing the change in this way:

He (Anand) is a committed artist, and what he is committed to is indicated by Bakha's mockery in Untouchable: 'greater efficiency, dictatorship of the sweepers, Marxian materialism and all that.' 'Yes, yes,' is the reply, 'all that, but no catch-words and cheap phrases, the change will be organic and not mechanical

How clearly this kind of thing confirms Anand's deficiencies as a thinker and the capacity of his Marxist enthusiasms to glide gaily across the most deeply entrenched differences. This, together with his furious indignation, unself-critical ideology and habit of undue explicitness, make him a writer whose work has to be severely sieved [Indian Literature in English, 61].

Walsh, here, pinpoints effectively the inherent dangers of relying solely on a Marxist approach to the resolution of untouchabilty. Clearly social rebellion is a viable option, but the closest Anand comes to articulating a traditional Marxist revolution in India is masked, even distorted, in the figure of the poet. Here, Anand only skims the surface of its possibilities; introducing the concept in the very last pages of his novel only weakens the poet's arguments because neither the main protagonist nor the reader has enough time to fully conceptualize its implications.

Perhaps I have shown an undue harshness in criticizing Anand? However, my purpose here is not to diminish his talent as a writer, for he is, in fact, an amazingly articulate, though-provoking novelist with considerable power. The difficulties of alleviating the stigma of untouchabilty are far too complex for one man alone to tackle, and his novel does serve as a catalyst for change. Nevertheless, as a critical response to the novel's implications, I must argue that Anand has failed to convincingly advocate the ending of untouchablity through the choices presented to the protagonist -- Bakha. His failure in achieving this goal lies not so much in any form of ineptness of his three solutions - they are clearly alternatives - however, the fault lies in the implied assumption of these choices. All three choices remove the ability of an oppressed and exploited minority to free himself from his own oppression. Clearly Bakha is a rebellious individual within, yet the stifling of this rebellious nature only further asserts the inability of untouchables to free themselves; this is in effect the classical post-colonial conundrum. This challenge is brilliantly captured -- as previously noted by E.H. McCormick in response to what he believes is the post-colonial condition, and which I have adopted here to epitomize the dilemma of the untouchables -- by Matthew Arnold in "Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse":

Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born,

With nowhere to rest my head,

Like these, on earth I wait forlorn (85-90).

What else is Bakha but this wandering figure amongst the flowing flux of oppression? He is clearly disenchanted by the confines that the class-system has imposed on him and attempts to appropriate himself amongst the ruling English-class. This produces, in effect, a state of double alienation. As a result, he is both rejected from his own culture, and repelled by the other. Bakha, therefore, exists on the periphery of both worlds. But as Forster suggests -- and what I believe Anand seems to conclude -- is that "on the surface of the earth if not in the depths of the sky, a change is at hand"(Untouchable, viii.).