Unit 4: Mulk Raj Anand: Untouchable

I. Orientation

Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable (1935) is a pioneering Indian English novel about caste oppression and the social exclusion of Dalits in colonial India. Set in a single day in an unnamed North Indian cantonment town, the novel follows Bakha, an eighteen-year-old sweeper, through ordinary experiences that reveal the violence of the caste system. Anand combines social criticism with psychological realism, presenting untouchability not as an abstract custom but as a daily system of humiliation.

• Author and period: Mulk Raj Anand (1905–2004) belonged to the first major generation of Indian English novelists, alongside R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao.
• Historical context: The novel reflects debates about caste, social reform, colonial modernity, Christian conversion, and Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign against untouchability.
• Central principle: Caste determines occupation, residence, bodily contact, access to public spaces, and the treatment of individuals.
• Narrative focus: The story concentrates on Bakha’s consciousness during one day rather than presenting a broad historical chronicle.
• Social setting: Bakha’s family lives outside the main town because sweepers are considered physically and ritually polluting.
• Ideological tension: The novel exposes oppression but also presents competing possibilities of change: Gandhian reform, technological sanitation, and religious conversion.
• Method of representation: Anand joins documentary detail with sympathy, irony, symbolism, dialogue, and close attention to Bakha’s emotions.

II. Untouchable — Synopsis and Analysis

A. Plot

The plot compresses Bakha’s experiences into one day, showing how apparently minor incidents reproduce the larger structure of caste domination.

• Morning labour: Bakha begins the day cleaning public latrines in the cantonment. His occupation is inherited and compulsory; even before he enters the town, his work establishes his low social position.
• The demand for punctuality: His father, Lakha, rebukes him for not cleaning the latrine of a high-caste official promptly. This domestic conflict shows that caste oppression operates both through external authority and within the oppressed community.
• The call of “pollution”: Bakha must announce his approach in the streets so that caste Hindus can avoid touching him. His body is treated as a source of ritual contamination rather than as the body of another human being.
• The street incident: When Bakha accidentally brushes against a caste Hindu, the man strikes and abuses him. Bakha is forced to apologize publicly, demonstrating how caste converts an accidental contact into a moral offence committed only by the untouchable.
• The temple episode: Sohini, Bakha’s sister, goes to obtain water and later seeks access to the temple compound. The priest, Pandit Kali Nath, accuses her of polluting the temple after he has behaved improperly toward her. The episode exposes the hypocrisy behind claims of ritual purity.
• The hockey episode: Bakha attends a hockey match and briefly experiences the pleasure of participation in a public activity. A quarrel follows, and he becomes involved in the confusion surrounding an injured child. Even leisure does not free him from social suspicion and hostility.
• A moment of kindness: Havildar Charat Singh, a hockey player, offers Bakha a pair of trousers and a hockey stick. These objects suggest the attraction of modern clothing and public identity, though they cannot by themselves abolish caste.
• The meeting with Gandhi: At the end of the day, Bakha hears Gandhi speak against untouchability. Gandhi describes the treatment of untouchables as a moral crime and calls for reform within Hindu society.
• The final alternatives: Bakha also hears about the flush toilet, a technological solution that could remove the need for manual scavenging, and about Christian conversion. The conclusion remains open, presenting possible futures rather than a completed social transformation.

B. Characterization

Anand characterizes Bakha as an individual consciousness shaped by oppression but not reduced to a social label.

• Bakha as protagonist: Bakha is an eighteen-year-old sweeper whose youth, physical strength, curiosity, and sensitivity conflict with the degrading occupation imposed upon him.
  • Physical presence: His body is described as vigorous and attractive, resembling the body of a soldier or athlete rather than the stereotype of a degraded outcaste.
  • Inner life: He feels shame, anger, admiration, confusion, desire, and hope; these emotions establish his full humanity.
• Bakha’s attraction to modernity: He admires the clothing and habits of British soldiers. Trousers, boots, and a jacket represent dignity and self-fashioning, although his imitation of colonial appearance does not protect him from caste abuse.
• Bakha’s divided response: He resents caste Hindus but also seeks their approval. His admiration for English manners and his desire to join public life reveal how deeply social exclusion has shaped his imagination.
• Lakha: Bakha’s father is harsh, tired, and submissive because years of humiliation have narrowed his expectations.
  • Generational contrast: Lakha accepts the inherited occupation as unavoidable, whereas Bakha imagines that life might be different.
  • Domestic authority: His anger toward Bakha shows how oppression can be reproduced among victims when survival depends on obedience.
• Sohini: Sohini is presented as gentle and vulnerable, but her experience with Pandit Kali Nath reveals the gendered dimension of caste oppression. Her purity is demanded by society while her safety is denied.
• Pandit Kali Nath: The priest embodies religious hypocrisy. He invokes pollution when Sohini is allegedly near the temple, yet his own conduct violates the moral standards he claims to defend.
• Charat Singh: His friendly gesture toward Bakha complicates the social picture. He shows that individual kindness is possible, but personal generosity remains limited within an unjust system.
• Gandhi: Gandhi appears as a public reformer whose speech gives moral language to Bakha’s suffering. However, Bakha does not fully understand the political argument; he responds more immediately to the possibility of a practical change in sanitation.

C. Themes

The novel’s themes emerge from the contrast between Bakha’s humanity and the social system that denies it.

• Untouchability as systemic violence: Caste oppression is not limited to insults. It controls where Bakha lives, what work he performs, how he walks, whom he may touch, and how others may address him.
  • Concrete pattern: The sweeper must clean human waste but is considered polluted by ordinary human contact.
  • Moral contradiction: Those who depend on his labour deny his social and physical equality.
• Dignity and humiliation: Bakha’s deepest struggle is for recognition as a human being. The street slap and the forced cry of warning turn public space into a theatre of humiliation.
• Labour and hereditary occupation: Bakha’s work is necessary to the town but socially despised. The novel questions a system that assigns occupation by birth and then condemns the worker who performs it.
• Religious hypocrisy: The temple episode exposes the gap between religious claims and actual conduct. Ritual purity protects the authority of the priest while leaving Sohini exposed to exploitation.
• Colonialism and modernity: Bakha’s admiration for English dress suggests that colonial culture appears to offer an alternative identity. Yet colonial rule does not eliminate caste; the military cantonment still depends on sweepers.
• Technology as social possibility: The flush toilet represents a practical means of ending manual scavenging. It is not merely a machine but a symbol of structural change through which degrading labour could disappear.
• Gandhian reform: Gandhi’s speech presents untouchability as a sin requiring moral transformation among caste Hindus. The novel acknowledges the importance of this message while leaving unresolved whether moral appeal alone can change institutions.
• Conversion and freedom: Christianity is mentioned as another possible escape from Hindu caste hierarchy. The possibility is attractive because it promises equality, but the novel does not present conversion as a simple or certain solution.
• Class and caste together: Bakha is economically poor and ritually excluded. The novel shows that caste intensifies poverty by making both occupation and social mobility hereditary.
• The desire for participation: Bakha wants to play hockey, wear good clothes, visit public places, and speak with dignity. These ordinary desires become politically significant because caste society denies him normal citizenship.

D. Narrative technique

Anand uses a concentrated, realistic, and psychologically informed narrative technique to make Bakha’s social experience immediate.

• Single-day structure: The novel’s action unfolds from morning to evening. This compressed time frame demonstrates that oppression does not require exceptional events; it is repeated through an ordinary day.
• Third-person limited narration: The narrator speaks in the third person but remains closely aligned with Bakha’s perceptions.
  • Effect: Readers encounter public incidents together with Bakha’s private shame, anger, fantasies, and confused hopes.
  • Example: The street encounter matters not only because a man strikes Bakha, but because Bakha internally experiences the loss of dignity and the impossibility of replying.
• Psychological realism: Anand moves between external action and Bakha’s thoughts. The narrative records the immediate changes in his mood after each encounter.
• Episodic construction: The novel consists of connected episodes—latrine cleaning, the street insult, Sohini’s temple experience, the hockey match, Charat Singh’s gesture, and Gandhi’s speech. Each episode adds another dimension to caste oppression.
• Documentary detail: Specific places, bodily movements, smells, clothing, latrines, streets, wells, and public gatherings create a tangible social environment. Physical detail makes sanitation and pollution political rather than merely symbolic.
• Irony: The strongest irony is that Bakha is considered polluted although he performs the work necessary to keep the town clean. Pandit Kali Nath’s behaviour creates a second irony: the defender of purity acts immorally.
• Symbolism:
  • Human waste: It symbolizes the degrading labour imposed on Bakha and the hypocrisy of a society that needs but despises him.
  • Clothing and boots: They signify dignity, aspiration, and the possibility of a different identity.
  • The flush toilet: It symbolizes technological liberation from manual scavenging.
  • The road and public spaces: They represent restricted citizenship because Bakha must move through them while warning others of his presence.
• Dialogue and social register: Speech reveals hierarchy. Commands, insults, apologies, and Gandhi’s public address expose who possesses authority and who must submit.
• Juxtaposition: Anand places religious ritual beside exploitation, colonial modernity beside caste tradition, and public reform speeches beside private humiliation.
• Open ending: The conclusion avoids a fully resolved transformation. Bakha receives several possible explanations and remedies, but social change remains a collective task rather than an event completed within his single day.