Treatment of Human Rights in Select Novels of

Mulk Raj Anand

Dissertation submitted to Bharathidasan University,

in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the award of the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in English

submitted by

S. Azariah Kirubakaran
Ref.No.20138/Ph.D2/English/P.T./Re-Reg./April 2012

under the guidance of

Dr. T. Jayakumar
Associate Professor of English

PG & Research Department of English

Periyar EVR College (Autonomous)
Tiruchirappalli – 620 023

April 2014
Dr. T. Jayakumar, M.A., M.Phil., B.Ed., Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
Department of English
Periyar EVR College (Autonomous)
Tiruchirappalli- 620 023.

Certificate

This is to certify that the thesis entitled Treatment of Human Rights in

Select Novels of Mulk Raj Anand submitted by S.Azariah Kirubakaran to the

Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for

the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English is his original work, based

on the investigation carried out independently by him during the period of study under

my guidance and supervision.

(Dr. T.Jayakumar)
Research Adviser
S. Azariah Kirubakaran
Ph.D. Scholar
Periyar EVR College (Autonomous)
Tiruchirappalli- 620 023.

Declaration

I, S.Azariah Kirubakaran, the Research Scholar, hereby declare that the

dissertation entitled Treatment of Human Rights in Select Novels of Mulk Raj

Anand is a record of first hand research work done by me during my course period

between 2006 and 2014, under the guidance of Dr. T. Jayakumar, M.A., M.Phil.,

B.Ed., Ph.D., Associate Professor of English, PG & Research Department of English,

Periyar EVR College (Autonomous), Tiruchirappalli – 620023 and it has not formed

the basis for any degree, diploma, associateship, fellowship or any other similar title.

Tiruchirappalli

Date: S.Azariah Kirubakaran

 Preface

Mulk Raj Anand is one of the best Indian novelists whose span covers over a

period of four decades. As a humanist and a socialist, Anand is against superstitions,

casteism, capitalism, exploitations, colonialism etc., He condemns the barriers that

disturb the happiness and comfort of human beings. According to him, all people must

have liberty and equality. Anand stresses the need for the emancipation of the ordinary

people from the clutches of untouchability and other social ills. The real humanness lies

in the treatment of all the people with compassion and pity. Anand plays the role of an

educator, reformer and crusader against exploitation and inhuman ill-treatment of a

downtrodden people. Many individuals face with gross human rights problems such as

torture, hunger, discrimination and the like. As a writer, Anand addresses the social

problems in all their aspects.

The study aims to create a link between fiction and human rights principles.

This study is to increase the education of human rights and to improve human rights

practices that are set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through the

novels of Mulk Raj Anand . The link between the literary art and human rights is

profound touching almost every epoch and every society on earth. Therefore it is high

time to learn Human Rights principles through literature.

First of all, I thank God Almighty for His blessings in my life.

With a sense of gratitude, I recall the assistance bestowed on me by many well-

wishers.

Special thanks are due to my guide Dr. T. Jayakumar, Associate Professor of

English, Periyar EVR College (Autonomous) Tiruchirappalli for his advice and

guidance in transforming the ideas into an academic piece of work. He guided my

research with critical insights and scholarly concern. I thank him for his magnanimity

and patience to go through my thesis and offer his valuable suggestions. Without his

constant encouragement and enlightenment, I may not have completed my research.

I am deeply indebted to my Principal Dr. D. Paul Dhayabaran, Bishop Heber

College for his constant support to complete my thesis.

I express my gratitude to Prof. K. Tamilmani, Principal i/c, Periyar E.V.R.

College, for granting permission to pursue my research.

I am thankful to Prof. William John Bosco, Head Department of English,

Periyar EVR college for his kind support.

I thank Dr. A. Dastageer, Associate Professor, Jamal Mohamed College, for

having encouraged me as a Doctoral Committee member.

The good advice, support and friendship of Dr. C. Dhanabal have been

invaluable at academic and personal level, for which I am extremely grateful. I am

indebted to him for his careful reading of my first draft.

I thank Prof. Baby Eliammal for her encouragement throughout my research.

The library facilities and internet facilities of Bishop Heber College have been

indispensable to my research work. I profoundly thank the Librarian of Bishop Heber

College Dr. Jesudoss Manalan for his support and the ambience of our library.

I thank Prof. D. Jayachandran, former Head of the Department of English,

Jamal Mohamed College for proof reading my thesis carefully.

I thank my colleague Mr. Kaviarasu for his timely help and support during the

final phase of my research work.

A special word of thanks to Dr. Krishnan for his direction on the right path.

I thank my student Mr.Vijay Sankar for designing the cover page.

 I am grateful to my wife J.Jeneeth who has been a great support to me

throughout. She did a lot of work on the Computer for my thesis.

My daughters Divina and Delighta always cheer me whenever I am in distress.

They have been my emotional strength at all times. They have personally endured my

long hours on the computer and at the library.

My family has eagerly awaited the completion of my thesis. I am grateful to my

parents, S. Sathia Samuel and D. Mary Anushoy for their love and unconditional

support. I am deeply touched by their love and concern.

I thank my sisters S. Plantina and S. Persis, my brothers-in-law A. Selvin and

W. Paul, for encouragement and support in one way or the other to complete the

research successfully.

I register my thanks to Uncle John and Aunt Kala for their loving support.

I extend my thanks to J. Irin sister-in-law for constantly goading me to complete this

task.

Finally, I dedicate this work to my family and well wishers.

 Contents

Chapter Title Page No.

Certificate

Declaration

Preface

A Note on Documentation

I Introduction 1

II Child Rights in Untouchable and Coolie 45

Labour Rights in Two Leaves and a Bud and The Big

III 90
Heart

Women Rights in The Old Woman and the Cow and Seven
IV 130
Summers

V Conclusion 178

Works Cited 192

 A Note on Documentation

In this process of writing the thesis on the basis of various sources, the

following abbreviations have been used. Their expansion is given below.

U Untouchable

C Coolie

TLB Two Leaves and a Bud

BH The Big Heart

OWC The Old Women and the Cow

SS Seven Summers

MF Morning Face

UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights

CRC Convention on the Rights of the Child

ILO International Labour Organization

ILS International Labour Standards

 Introduction

Man is the future of man, or as William Wordsworth averred: “The child is

the father of man”. Sartre in his defence of existentialism has said “My atheist

existentialism is rather coherent. It declares that God does not exist, yet there is still

a being in whom existence precedes essence, a being which exists before being

defined by any concept and this being is man or as Heidegger puts it, “human

reality” (Sartre n.p.). This definition of ‘man’ or ‘human reality’ propagates that

man first exists, encounters himself and emerges in the world, to be defined

afterwards. It suggests that it is man who conceives himself, who propels himself

towards existence. Man becomes nothing other than what actually he is and not what

he wants to be. If man is the future of man, he takes the responsibility for himself

i.e. his choices are responsible for all men. The personal responsibility of man is

vast, because it embraces all humanity.

Man deserves the right to exist as an independent agent of his own destiny.

However, materialism treats men as objects. Though men want to create a human

kingdom of values distinct from the material world, the demands of ‘the collective

power’, hierarchy, dominant society has conclusively shifted from being ‘human’ to

being less than ‘human’. Thus, it is not possible to find in each man the universal

essence called human nature.

Man deserves freedom. It is his right. It has become a problem because it

forces the individuals to take responsibility for their actions and to confront the

world on their own terms called as ‘individuality’. The English critic Isaiah Berlin

argues: “I think convincingly, that the cult of individuality that has evolved in the

west since the time of the Enlightenment has engendered totalitarian movements,
 2

movements that have harnessed the ‘collective power’ of the individuals against

those who seemed less than ‘human’” (Literarism n.p.).

As a consequence basic human rights have been taken away from men who

are marginalized in the social process. Marginalization is an unfair or unjust

treatment of minority or minorities and weaker individuals or groups by the majority

or stronger group of the rest of the society for the supposed benefit of the stronger

group or groups of that society concerned. On the other hand, as a result of the

industrial revolution, a few wealthy individuals who start and run a factory or own a

mine deny basic human rights to a large number of people who are employed as

labourers. The concept of human rights clearly enlarges the scope of freedom, but

the absence of human rights condemns man to marginalization in society. Human

rights always imply a social dimension because human freedom can unfold only in

relation to fellow men and women. Johnson Glen in Human Rights Theory and

Measurement sums up the different dimensions of the human right

conceptualization:

a. Whether rights claims are based on status as an individual human

being or status as a member of some community of group of

persons;

b. The extent to which differential treatment of persons is permitted

on grounds of achievements and ascription;

c. The emphasis on rights compared with duties or obligations and

the extent to which rights and duties are thought to be

independent;

d. The emphasis on so called economic and social rights compared

with the emphasis on civil and political rights, sometimes

 3

conceived as a difference between positive rights of governmental

obligation to provide economic and social well-being and the

negative rights of Governmental obligation to refrain from

abridging political and civil rights.

e. The extents to which rights are viewed as absolute or relative.

(42 - 43)

These concepts of human rights are based on dissimilar cultural contexts. As A.N.

Naim states in Human Rights in Cross Cultural Perspectives:

. . . culture is a primary force in the socialization of the individual

and a major determinant of the consciousness and experience of the

community. The impact of culture on human behaviour is often

underestimated precisely because it is so powerful and deeply

embedded in our self-identity and consciousness. ( 23)

The western culture focuses on human rights emphasizing absolute individual

political civil rights while in most non-western third world traditions the emphasis is

on the community based rights and duties, on economic and social rights and on the

relative character of human rights. As Pathak rightly points out in Introductory

Report on Universality of Human Rights:

Traditional cultures do not always view the individual as an

autonomous being possessed of rights above society. The individual

is often conceived as an integral component of a group, or the family

or class, the tribe, or the local community, which is regarded as the

basic unit of society. (8)

Literature has been the promoter of a culture of human rights. Countless

numbers of writers in their books and essays have given contours and contents to the
 4

idea of human dignity, equality and the brotherhood of all members of the human

species. Joseph Slaughter in his book Human Rights: The World Novel / Narrative

Form (2007) focuses on recent post-colonial version of novels and shows how the

promise of human rights have become legible in narrative and how the novel and the

laws are in conflict with contemporary projects of globalization. He presents

colonialism, neo-imperialism, humanitarianism and the spread of multinational

consumer capitalism. So, literature in this process not only engages itself with

human-right concepts, their vicarious possibilities, but also paves the way for

interdisciplinary readings of these two interrelated disciplines. Literary works can,

therefore, be seen as a potent resource to correlate and study the human right

concepts, as both literature and human Rights become complementary to each other.

Hence, the researcher aims to objectively analyse the treatment of human

rights by Mulk Raj Anand in his novels. The thesis foregrounds the argument that

the individual faces frequently overwhelming power of communities that is, from

the other individuals; an individual certainly needs special protection in order to

preserve some independence. The absence of human rights in the lives of the

outcast, downtrodden, enslaved and untouchables is noticed by Anand and the result

is his much celebrated masterpiece Untouchable. The humanist Anand expects the

untouchables to join the mainstream of the socio-economic, cultural, modern and

civilized society, which is focused in this thesis.

Literature is a truthful expression of life through the medium of language.

The development of English as a literary language in India is a long-term effect of

British colonialism. It functioned as the dominant political and cultural force in the

country during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Indians use English

language to express their thoughts and present their social milieu. Colonialism is
 5

mainly responsible for such writers to voice their anger against the Imperialists.

Lord Macaulay as the chairman of the Education Commission, in 1833, in his

famous “Minutes”, recommended use of the English language for educating the

Indian masses in order to bridge a communication gap. He felt that English language

was the only suitable medium to transfer technical knowledge and scientific bent of

mind to Indians. His aim was to groom a small section of Indians who could later

use English as a medium of communication and bridge the gap between India and

the western world. In spite of his efforts, for various reasons he could not bring up

full-fledged English-based educational system for Indians. In 1854, Sir Charles

Wood proposed that English could be a suitable medium at higher levels of

education, because a sound knowledge of English was a prerequisite to seek

admission into any university. Thus the British have set up an education system in

English. (Maheshwari n.p.). Thus, English was introduced in educational

institutions, courts and governmental offices. Lord William Bentinck announced in

1835 that the Government would prefer the English language only. Sir Charles

Wood, the then Secretary of the State presented a dispatch to the Directors of East

India Company. The Dispatch expressed that education in English as well as Indian

local languages should be enhanced and encouraged throughout the nation. The

Wood Dispatch of 1854 proclaimed the establishment of the universities in Bombay,

Madras and Calcutta. The Universities functioned only through the medium of

English language. Gradually, English became the language of Government.

Gradually, English became the language of literary expression besides being an

important medium of communication amongst the people of various regions. In the

arena of literary studies, English began to assert itself. Literary writings in English

began to flourish. In India, Literatures in English were widely produced.

 6

Literature can be categorized in many different ways, by the author’s

ethnicity, class, gender, or by the form of its work. Indians use the English language

because of colonialism. Otherwise India has no connection with England. Indian

literature is considered to be literature written in one of India’s many indigenous

languages. There is a new category within Indian Literature, referred to as Indian

Writing in English --a term coined by C.D.Narasimmiah. It has been called “Indo-

Anglian”, “Indo-English” and now “Indian Writing in English”. The term Indo-

Anglian literature for the Indian English writing was coined by J.H. Cousins (1993).

Indo-Anglian Literature is a literature which is a combination of Indian Literature

and Indian Literature written in English. It was subsequently used by Srinivasa

Iyengar, a pioneer in this field. However, Iyengar himself was not comfortable with

the phrase “Indo-Anglian”. Therefore in his book on Indian Writing in English he

refers to the phrase ‘Indo-Anglian’ and it was misprinted as ‘Indo-Anglican’.

At the initial stage, the term ‘Indo-Anglian’ was used to describe original

creative writing in English by Indians. According to K.R.S. Iyengar in Indian

Writing in English, there are three types of Indian writers in English:

Firstly, those who have acquired their entire education in English

schools and universities. Secondly, Indians who have settled abroad

but are constantly in touch with the changing surrounding and

tradition of their country of adoption. And finally, Indians who have

acquired English as second language. (11)

Commenting on the use of English by the Indians as the medium of writing and

expression, James H. Cousins in his book The Renaissance in India says: “… if they

(Indians) are compelled as an alternative to writing in their own mother tongue, let it
 7

be not Anglo-Indian, but Indo-Anglian, Indian in spirit, Indian in thought, Indian in

emotion, Indian in imagery and English only in words. . .” (179).

Indian English literature, in spite of its diverse cultures, races and religion,

has successfully recaptured and reflected the multi-cultural society. Now, it is a part

of commonwealth literatures in English. The word ‘Indian English Literature’ was

coined by M. K. Naik and was accepted by Sahitya Akademy. This gained

popularity, as it covered the entire body of Indian creative writing in English. The

Indian English Writing has since been growing in different dimensions, with the

entry of many Indian writers living within and beyond the geographical boundaries

of India.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1774-1833) was the pioneer of Indian Writing in

English. He fought for widow remarriage and voting rights for women. The

Renaissance in modern Indian Literature began with him. He became the bridge

between the east and the west. At a very early age, he mastered many languages. He

was very good at the use of English language. His efforts were dedicated to

regenerate India with political, cultural, educational, and spiritual awakening. The

generally accepted view is that the beginning of Indian English fiction is marked by

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife (1864). The novel was serialized in

the Indian field in 1864. But it did not appear as a book until 1985. The novel

outlines the challenges of Matangini within rural settings, against her husband

Rajmohan, remaining morally upright despite having a paramour and brother-in-law

Madhav and her abduction by Mathur. The story ends with her escape and the

retribution of all those who had done injustice to her. Thus, it reveals the long-

suffering of a typical Hindu wife, Matangani and the degradation of moral and social

values of Mathr Ghose, Rajmohan and Bikha.

 8

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s only novel in English laid down foundation for

the first generation novelists to record the rich heritage and social transformation in

India. Both the male and female novelists who emphasized their personal and

private experiences followed him. The early novels were, therefore, sketchy,

domestic and aloof to the political occurrences. The early novelists depicted rural

and domestic life filled with superstitions and religious whims with an equal

emphasis on moral and social ills. The women writers wrote about nubile romances,

nuptial bliss and marital maladjustment, and their male counterparts wrote about

social issues.

Indian Novel in English has grown by leaps and bounds in respect of

thematic variety and linguistic maturity. But compared with the recent output, most

early novels in English were almost imitative and faulty. It is assumed that Indian

Novel in English has its roots in the nineteenth century realistic tradition of English

novel. But with the passage of time, the Indian novel in English has become

thoroughly Indian in terms of the themes, techniques and the human values. In this

regard, Meenakshi Mukherjee observes in her book Realism and Reality that

The novel in India can be seen as the product of configuration, in

philosophical, aesthetic, economic and political forces in the larger

life of the country. Despite obvious, regional variation, a basic

pattern seems to emerge from shared factors like the puranic heritage,

hierarchy, social structure, colonial education, disjunction of agrarian

life and many others that affect the form of novel as well as its

content. (viii)

In the early nineteenth century, the poets Henry Derozio and Michael

Madhusudan Dutt were popular. The Bengal writers mainly dominated the period
 9

between 1864 and 1900. The famous novelists of this period were Rajlakshmi Debi,

Toru Dutt, Lal Behari Dey, K. Chakravarti, Kirubabhai Satthianadhan, Behranji

Malabari, N. V. Pai, R.K. Datt, T.C. Mookerjee, A. P. Dutta and others. In the

experimental stage, the western influence was inevitable. But the writers tried their

best to treat contemporary issues. Thus Indian writing in English is a product of the

historical encounter between the two cultures – the Eastern and the Western. The

beginning of the twentieth century saw a gradual growth of the novel form in

English in India. Romesh Chandra Dutt was an important writer of the early period.

The most famous literary figure of this era was Rabindranath Tagore (1861-

1941). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 for his collection of poems

Gitanjali. He lifted the standard of Indian Literature to the world level and gained

for modern India a place in the world literary history. Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949)

was a great poet whose spirit of romanticism and nationalism charmed the readers.

Aurobindo Gosh (1872-1950) was a poet, for whom poetry was akin to a form of

meditation.

Some other writers of this era include T. Runakvi Shna who wrote Dive for

Death and Swarna Ghoshal who wrote The Fatal Garland, Kirubabhai

Satthianadhan who wrote Kamala, A Story of Hindu Life (1894). Bal Krishna’s The

Love of Kusama (1910), Sir Joginder Singh’s Nasrin (1915), Rajam’s Iyer Vasudeo

Shastri (1905) and A. Maddhavan in Thillai Gobindan (1916) are all historically

valuable as they became the body of Indian Writing in English.

Fiction is an expression of the most intimate consciousness of life and

society. Indian English fiction reflected the thoughts, feelings and emotion of people

in a rational and interesting manner to reform the society. From its very beginning
 10

the Indian English fiction has witnessed socio-cultural, economic and political

changes which shaped the destiny of the nation.

In the book Indian Writing in English: Past and Present ,Amar Nath Prasad

consider three successive periods (i) from 1875 to 1920 ,(ii) from 1920 to 1947, and

(iii) from 1947 onwards by the Indian scholars K. R. S. Iyengar (1962), M. K. Naik

(1982) and Meenakshi Mukherjee (1985). Hence the whole corpus of Indian novel

in English may be divided into three broad groups namely, the traditional novel of

social realism before independence, the modern novel of experimentation after

Independence and a contemporary novel since 1981.

The history of Indian English Literature has the most noteworthy event in the

nineteen thirties. It was the appearance on the scene of the major trio Mulk Raj

Anand, R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao. The Big Trio of Indo-English fiction published

their first novels, the first two in 1935 and the third in 1938. They were labelled by

William Walsh in his book Indian Literature in English as “The founding fathers”,

“the genuine novelists”, “the inaugurators of the form” (62). They made their

appearance in the thirties with the publication of Untouchable by Anand (1935),

Swami and Friends by Narayan (1935) and Kanthapura by Raja Rao (1938) and

established the tradition of Indian English Fiction. Indian novel in English around

1930s needed the novelists who could grasp the social scene with an insight into the

human consciousness and who could interpret the real Indian world, distinctive in

themes, issues and treatment in their fiction.

These writers continued to creatively express the social, political and

spiritual aspects of India. The freedom struggle resulted in a revolutionary brand of

writing. It voiced protest against the British Empire. Several political leaders from
 11

different parts of the country emerged as literary figures such as Bal Gangadhar

Tilak, Lala Lajpath Rai, Kasturi Ranga Iyengar and T. Prakasham.

Mahatma Gandhiji used the English language as a strong instrument.

Gandhiji was so much part and parcel of any literary genre of that period that he

made appearance in many dramas, novels, stories and poems. He published the

newspapers “Young India” and “Harijan”. He also wrote his autobiography, My

Experiments with Truth. They are known for his literary flair. The writers

working in different languages in those days were mostly persons who had come

either directly under Gandhiji’s influence, or highly influenced by his ideals.

Their writings were immensely influenced by Gandhian idealism, his lifestyle,

his teachings and anti-colonial stances.

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), the first Prime Minister of Independent India

was one of the greatest statesmen of the world. He was also one of the chief

architects of modern India. Apart from being a politician and statesman, Nehru

was a great writer and thinker. His works, such as Letters from a Father to His

Daughter which were published as, Glimpses of World History (1934), An

Autobiography (1936) and The Discovery of India (1946), bear ample evidence of

his originality of thought and his command over the English language. His prose

style with his choice of the right word, apt phrases, and elegance has earned him a

permanent place among the best known writers in the language. Nehru came under

the magnetic influence of Mahatma Gandhi.

During this period, the Indian English novelists started focusing their

attention largely on contemporary issues. They presented the social evils like

casteism, child marriage, poverty, exploitation, disparity, cultural-conflict and

historical happenings in their novels.

 12

The Indian novelists before Independence were mainly interested in social,

political and historical concerns. But later in the 1950s a new kind of novel dealing

with contemporary issues appeared on the Indian Literary scene. The psychological

novel depicting the human personality and inner realities of life replaced the realistic

novel. The novels written in the post-independence period successfully rendered

this Indian reality. A number of novelists like Arun Joshi and Anita Desai have

explored the psychological and sociological conflicts in the individual’s life and in

the life of the whole society. Many modern novels deal with man’s alienation from

his self, his class, his society and humanity at large. Unlike 1930s and 1950s, the

1980s marks the significant stage in the growth and development of Indian English

novel and the novels earned great honours and distinction in the western world.

In the recent years, Indian fiction writers have been widely recognized by the

west. Writers like Salmon Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Shashi Tharoor, Amitav Ghosh,

Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Laheri have won prestigious literary prizes.

Indian writing in English has come quite a long way from the mere use of the

English language for the personal gain to the authentic tool for expressing one’s

ideas, thoughts, concepts and imagination. It has not suddenly emerged from

nowhere but has gradually evolved as a powerful vehicle of literary expression.

The first phase of writing was romantic and historical, and often it dealt

with India’s political movement for freedom. It reflected the social and educational

reforms of the 1830s in England and the Indian Revolt in 1857. The British people

increasingly viewed Hindu religion and culture with contempt. Therefore Indians

had to establish and develop a new sense of self-awareness and confidence.

Rabindranath Tagore and Aurobindo Ghose belonged to the early phase of Indian

Writing in English. Towards the end of this phase, the writings became increasingly
 13

nationalistic. As M.K. Naik says in The Ironic Vision: A Study of the Fiction of

R.K.Narayan: “Fiction became a weapon they used to combat feelings of injustice”

(29).

The second phase (1920 - 1947) began when the civil disobedience

movement led by Mahatma Gandhi was launched in India and a national

consciousness was awakened. Themes during this phase include the freedom

struggle, East-West relations, economic problems and communal problems. The trio

Mulk Raj Anand, R.K.Narayan and Raja Rao were the founders of true Indo-English

novel. They portrayed the village life and the concomitant effect of freedom

movement. They could not keep themselves away from the Gandhian Philosophy.

Mulk Raj Anand is the most westernized of the trio. His vast range of themes,

wealth of characters, realism and his treatment of human rights are strong claim.

Raja Rao, one of the Big Three of Indian English Literature, was known for

his distinctive writing style. Though Raja Rao was writing in English and using the

genre of the novel, his roots were in Sanskrit culture. Rao’s work leads to a

metaphysical exploration that gives an insight into the ideological foundations of

India, the spiritual Mother. Raja Rao’s first novel Kanthapura published in the

United States in 1938 is about a village in South India affected by the spirit of

Gandhi. The Serpent and the Rope too was published in the U.S. in 1960. Other

works include a collection of stories written earlier, The Cow of the Barricades, but

published in 1947; The Cat and Shakespeare in 1965; Comrade Kirillov in 1976;

The Chessmaster and His Moves in 1988. A year later, On the Ganga Ghat was

published in India. The Meaning of India was published in 1996. Since then, Rao

has been working on a sequel to this last novel, which has Indian Vedantic

philosophy at its core. Rao’s themes include the metaphysical apprehension of God,
 14

the nature of death, immortality, illusion and reality, duality and non-duality, good

and evil, existence and destiny, Karma and Dharma; the quest for self-knowledge,

the place of the guru, the influence of religion on social concepts and patterns;

prejudices on individual and group behaviour; the ideal meaning of love and

marriage; the impact of tradition on the individual and collective life and the

meaning of India’s real and symbolic content; historical or contemporary meeting of

East and West in religious, political, and psychological terms.

Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan is considered one of the founding fathers

of Indian Writing in English. He is credited with taking Indian literature in English

to the rest of the world. The setting for most of Narayan’s stories is the fictional

town of Malgudi. His narratives highlight social context and provide a feel for his

characters drawn from everyday life. His works mainly deal with ordinary people

who can be referred to as ‘the common men and women’ of India. The characters of

his works belong to the Indian middle class. One can herself or himself easily relate

to any one of his characters. The intricacies in the Indian society are also dealt with

in a subtle manner with a touch of humour. His literary output in his long career as a

novelist is quite prolific. Some of his best known works are The Bachelor of Arts,

The Dark Room, The English Teacher, Mr. Sampath, and The Financial Expert,

Waiting for the Mahatma, The Guide, The Man-eater of Malgudi, The Talkative Men

and Malgudi Days.

Among the trio, Mulk Raj Anand focuses on the social reality of suppressed

people of India. Mulk Raj Anand is a humanist and a novelist with a purpose. He

writes from his personal experience and the experiences of real people. For Mulk

Raj Anand, the novel is “the creative weapon for attaining humanness – it is the

weapon of humanism” (Cowasjee 121-122). He writes basically about the lower

 15

class life. He follows the ancient Indian tradition of storytelling but his approach to

themes and events is of a social realism. Therefore his novels are the novels of

protest and social realism.

His social concern drove him to voice his protest against human rights

violation. Mulk Raj Anand was born on 12th December 1905 in Peshawar. His

father, Lal Chand was a coppersmith and soldier. His mother Ishwar Kaur belonged

to an agricultural family. Anand graduated with honours from Khalsa College,

Amritsar in 1924. He witnessed the bloody reality of colonial rule in the Jallianwalla

Bagh massacre at Amritsar in 1919. He took part in Gandhi’s non-cooperation

movement. He involved himself in the students’ agitation against the British for

which he received eleven stripes on his back and was briefly jailed. This experience

had a deep impact on him.

Anand inherited the typical qualities of both his parents. His early life was

lived in the midst of poverty and misfortune. Anand had miserable childhood that

naturally influenced his works and ideology. Anand was born in the Kshatriya

Warrior caste. He had always befriended and played with the children of sweepers.

He had always been disgusted with religious sectarianism, communalism and caste

society and he stood strongly against them. His soldier father had been involved in

the Hindu reform movement, Arya Samaj. But Anand kept his distance, despite its

opposition to child marriage and the prohibition of widow remarriage. And this

movement was also quite evangelical in its attempt to’re-convert’ Muslims. This

alienated him from his father.

Anand went to England and studied at University College, London and

Cambridge University for his Ph.D. in 1929. Unlike most Indian students at the

time he had to work in Indian restaurants and later for a publishing firm to earn his
 16

money as his family was not in a position to fully finance his studies or

maintenance. He also became part of the literary crowd known as the ‘Bloomsbury

Group’. Here he met writers like T. S. Eliot, Leonard, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster,

John Strachey and many others. This literary elite group 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. 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. As an Indian student in

London, Anand found himself popular with the literary set. 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 on India. In A

Passage to India, Forster depicts Indian men and women in an unprejudiced way.

Forster did not believe in the superiority of the white race. For these reasons Anand

liked E.M.Forster. Anand had wanted to write about the ordinary, the mundane,

everyday life experiences of Indians who were not kings or gods. His enthusiasm

helped him to form a Progressive Writers Association. It made considerable

influence during India’s freedom struggle. William Walsh admires in his book

R.K.Narayan: A Critical Appreciation “If Anand is the novelist as reformer, Raja

Rao as Metaphysical poet, Narayan is simply the novelist as novelist” ( 6).

Anand became politically active in India’s struggle for Independence and

shortly thereafter wrote a series of books on aspects of South Asian culture

 17

including Persian Painting (1930), Curries and other Indian Dishes (1932), The

Hindu View of Art (1933), The Indian Theatre (1950), and Seven Little-known Birds

of the Inner Eye (1978). M. K. Naik rightly says in Ironic Vision: “R.K. Narayan is

the novelist of the individual just like as Mulk Raj Anand is the novelist of the social

man” (1).

Anand’s first novel Untouchable was published in 1935. The novel gained

popularity among the western readers. He shows the oppression, injustice and

humiliation done to the whole community of the outcaste children in India.

Untouchable is an account of a day in the life of its protagonist – Bakha, an

untouchable sweeper boy. The life of untouchable children is a continuous and

never-ending experience of violation on human rights. The upper class just exploits

them for their own sake.

Anand’s second novel Coolie was written within three months and published

in 1936. It is also a masterpiece depicting the reality of life. The novel revolves

round a boy named Munoo, who comes from his village to city centre in order to

come out of his poverty and works at various places. The novel is the story of a

fifteen year old child labourer who dies of tuberculosis. Munoo universally

symbolizes the suffering of the oppressed child labour.

Two Leaves and a Bud is the third novel which deals with the story of a

coolie, named Ganga. Anand portrays the miserable condition of labourers in the tea

plantation and how they are trapped by the planters. The labourers are suppressed in

the hands of Indians as well as Europeans. This novel makes an aggressive attack on

the dehumanizing effects of imperialism, of capitalist economy and its results such

as exploitation and harassment of helpless labourers. This story takes place in the

luxuriant forests of Assam and reveals the horrid plight of labourers in a tea
 18

plantation. The central character, Ganga faced many problems like debt, hunger,

malaria, insult and finally death.

Anand turns to his familiar Punjab villages. His other novels such as The

Village (1939), Across the Black Waters (1940) and The Sword and the Sickle

(1942) were strong protests against social injustices. These three novels give a

picture of the life of a Sikh peasant Lal Singh, covering his boyhood, youth and

early manhood. The story follows the life of Lal Singh from his adolescence through

his experience in World War I, to his home coming and revolutionary activities. It

exposes the destruction of traditional agricultural systems under colonial rule and

the absorption of the agricultural goods and human labour of India into a global

economic system. Anand chronicles the life of early and mid-twentieth-century

India and acts as a spokesman for the downtrodden. He does not stop there. He

aspires for a new social order that would grant equal opportunity to all.

The Village deals primarily with the oppression of the Indian landholders

over the peasants emphasizing the hanging of Sharm Singh, Lalu’s brother, over the

murder of a landlord that ruined Nihal Singh’s family. Across the Black Waters

begins with Lalu’s questioning of the English rule of India. It is a fascinating

account of colonialism and the First World War. In The Sword and the Sickle Lal

returns to Nandpur, marries and becomes active in socialist politics, trying to chart a

new way for the peasants of the Punjab. Anand wrote the trilogy to vindicate his

concern for the peasantry. It is a chronicle of Indian peasantry during the British

colonial rule in India. In the three novels, Anand presents Lalu’s problems in a

completely different way but his portrayal always remains sympathetic. The Punjab

trilogy traces the life of a character searching for another India, an India free from

oppression, misery and class distinctions.

 19

In The Big Heart, Anand sympathetically portrays the miserable condition of

the coppersmiths of Amritsar who suddenly face a new machine civilization when a

small factory is planted in their midst. In this novel, Anand supports the demand for

industrialization made by the progressive social and political groups in India but he

is aware of the disastrous consequences of industrialization. He does not want to

ignore the welfare of the traditional village artisans.

The Old Woman and the Cow is a unique novel as it is his only novel with a

woman protagonist. It reveals his ambivalent humanism in the treatment of the

women question. The novel is a powerful indictment on the brutal rigidity and

authority of the Hindu social ethos that reduce women into hapless victims.

The Road throws light on how Bhikhu struggles to live with dignity. The

Road is set in free India and deals with the issues of untouchability because he finds

no improvement in the life of the rural outcastes even after Independence. The Death

of a Hero is based on the life of a Kashmiri freedom fighter. The novel presents the

last phase of the life of Maqbool who is well educated yet his education does not

liberate him from the clutches of the evils.

A close study of Anand’s life reveals the fact that the seeds of the social

concerns which were to preoccupy him in his novels were sown in his heart in his

sensitive childhood and impressionable youth. Through these powerful literary

works, he makes a fervent appeal to his readers to respect humanity and the equal

rights of all people and move towards an ideal democratic system.

Anand is a novelist with a mission. He has a keen desire to preach, to instruct

and to change. Through his novels, he preaches the principles of fundamental human

rights like equality and dignity. H. M. Williams aptly observes in Indo-Anglican

Literature 1800-1970: A Survey that Anand’s novels are “deliberate attempts to

 20

expose the distress of the lower castes and classes of India, They are undisguised in

their plea for social change, and are motivated by intense anger and pity” (36).

Anand insists upon the dignity of man – one of the most important

fundamental values – irrespective of caste, creed or colour, and makes a fervent

appeal for the practice of compassion in human relations, attaches great significance

to art as a potent instrument for developing whole men and launches an attack on the

evils like superstitions, feudalism, imperialism, casteism, religious fanaticism and

fascism. His commitment to humanist philosophy urges him to write ‘of the people,

for the people, and as a man of the people’. His theory of literature derives mainly

from his socialist and humanist preoccupations. He charges the creative writer with

the sacred responsibility of dedicated service to his fellow men through literature.

Showering praise on Anand as a humanist Jack Lindsay aptly observes in The

Elephant and the Lotus: A Study of the Novels of Mulk Raj Anand:

Anand has brought powerful new energies into Indian culture;

he has brought something precious into our literature,

something which at this phase we badly need. An

unquenchable faith in the goodness of man and the power of

life, a faith which has had all falsity and sentimentality burned

out of it by the fires of intense suffering. Here, in the

unforgettable picture of men and women, often forced down

into bestial conditions of living by a stupid and ruthless

tyranny, we touch the spring of human renewal. A phial of

almost intolerable sweetness is broken. (34)

Mulk Raj Anand is chiefly interested in human values. The defilement of

human values is the violation of human rights. Anand uses his art as an effective tool
 21

to reform the society. As a writer, he plays a vital role in reconstructing the society.

Anand’s close examination of life springs as much from inquisitiveness as from his

preoccupation with human needs and interests. Anand is deeply pained to see the

misery of the disease-ridden, underfed, illiterate people of the society. He wants to

raise the untouchables, the peasants, the serfs, the coolies and other suppressed

members of society to human dignity and self-awareness in view of the utter

abjectness, apathy and deep despair to which they have been cruelly condemned. He

always takes sides with the poor folk and depicts their miseries with social anger. So

his novels and short stories become a vehicle of his philosophy of human rights in

the absence of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). He has all along

written novels and short stories with a view to teaching men to recognise the

fundamental principles of human rights.

P. P. Mehta aptly comments in Indo-Anglican Fiction: An Assessment:

“Dr. Anand in all his novels emphasises the fact that nobility and dignity are not the

monopoly of the rich. The poor have their greatness, honour as well as the rich”

(166). Anand not only establishes that poor are human but also insists that they are

entitled to all the rights as the rich have. As Balaram Gupta observes in Mulk Raj

Anand: A Study in his Fiction in Humanistic Perspective:

Anand’s abhorrence of superstition and fatalism, poverty and

cruelty, his denunciation of God and religiosity, imperialism

and imperfect education, his defence of women’s rights and

lastly his advocacy of the cause of the lowly and the lost – all

these humanist ideas are shown as points of faith which

Anand or the hero of ‘The Seven Ages of Man’ develops as a

result of his actual experiences in life. This is a significant

 22

fact from which we can safely infer that the humanism that

pervades all of Anand’s novels or stories is not a mere slogan

or a shibboleth, but a burning faith, a radiant philosophy

which forms the very core of Anand’s personality as well as

fiction. (44-45)

Anand’s fiction is the expression of truth and explores the facts of the

dehumanization of the ruthlessly marginalized society S. Lakshman Shastry writes

in A Few Words about this Issue. Contemporary Indian Literature: “He [Anand] is

also a ruthless critic of all that is worn out and decaying – dehumanising and

degrading customs, manners, outdated social and political institutions, reactionary

thoughts and ideologies” (10). Verghese comments in Problems of the Indian

Creative Writers in English:

A novelist writing with the avowed purpose of bringing about

social change and reform commits an act of transgression.

Perhaps one of the drawbacks of Mulk Raj Anand’s novels

arises from the missionary zeal with which he pleads in them

for the amelioration of the lot of the have-nots. (126)

Verghese also holds that Anand’s heavy emphasis on the didactic quality of art

stands in the way of his attainment as a novelist. He finds this defect in his

proletarian novels.

The Indian society is infested with social ills. Anand is committed to the

eradication of those evils which modern society is infested with. He is a novelist of

humanity, capable of combining social realism with fervent didacticism. He speaks

of man, his miserable condition, the social forces affecting his happiness. He is

indeed the Maxim Gorky of India. His realization of the responsibilities of the writer
 23

as a citizen makes him a committed writer. He takes much care not to distort, falsify

or exaggerate truth.

Emphasizing the revolutionary aspect of art, he stresses the need for a truly

humanist art commensurate with the needs of time. Anand is an artist with a vision

of a new humanity. He has portrayed the longing of the oppressed for freedom from

the violation of human rights. He envisages the self-assertion of the toiling masses

as one of the ways of ensuring their fundamental right for self-dignity. Therefore,

among the trio, Anand occupies a distinctive place.

Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao are celebrated pioneers of

Indian English fiction. Anand has won a place in history as a political activist,

apostle of peace and social reformer. The career of Anand synchronized with the

most turbulent phase in the history of Modern India. It was a period of trials and

tribulations, colonial rule and postcolonial struggle, social awakening and cultural

transformation. His fiction is a sensitive and imaginative rendering of the dynamics

of the age as it impressed a creative mind sharing the protests and anguish, the hopes

and fears, the sorrows and joys of his generation. He was a member of all the three

national Akademies of India established for the promotion of Fine Arts Sahithya

Akademy, Lalitkala Akademy and Sangeeta Nataka Akademy. As one of the

founders of the widely admired art magazine MARG, he had been its editor for over

four decades.

Human beings are born equal in dignity and rights. Human Rights are rights

and freedom that belong to all individuals regardless of their nationality and

citizenship. The rights are fundamentally important in maintaining a fair and

civilized society. A civilized society protects personal freedom, ensures equal

treatment for all people and leaves behind positive legacies for future generations to
 24

practice. It is said that “Man is a social animal”. In the natural world of plants and

animals, it seems that most species live independently. Humans spend their time

roaming the lands, drinking from springs and streams, eating fruits, vegetables, any

insects, birds and or fish they can catch. This wandering life and exchange of goods

resulted in information of a disciplined cooperative society. So an autonomous

existence remained non-viable. Humans were grouped together in small societies

such as bands and gained their subsistence from gathering plants and hunting

animals. They were no longer masters of their own lives, but part of a community in

which they had their own rights and duties. Individuals had to learn to keep

promises and to obey orders in the society. Thus there is implied a hierarchical

system of society. As Plato observes in his book Laws:

Man is a tame or civilized animal; nevertheless, he requires proper

instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes

the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill

educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures. (765)

Thus, awareness of the rights of the human beings gradually evolved over hundreds

of years. Human rights have been defined by Nickel in Making Sense of Human

Rights:

. . . basic moral guarantees that people in all countries and cultures

allegedly have simply because they are people. Calling these

guarantees “rights” suggests that they attach to particular individuals

who can invoke them, that they are of high priority, and that

compliance with them is mandatory rather than discretionary. Human

rights are frequently held to be universal in the sense that all people

have and should enjoy them, and to be independent in the sense that
 25

they exist and are available as standards of justification and criticism

whether or not they are recognized and implemented by the legal

system or officials of a country. (561-562)

In the modern emerging society, there has been revolutionary changes on

account of many factors: the influence of modern culture, industrialization,

urbanization, liberalisation, privatisation, globalization, and multinationals. Values

are usually influenced by the changing philosophical ideologies, cultural and

religious perspectives, social, political and geographical conditions. A society which

is endowed with lofty values makes progress. On the other hand, a society which has

degenerating values deteriorates. The moral values should be inculcated in

individuals for social development. In every sphere, the relevant virtues must be

practised. Problems arise when different values are indiscriminately mixed up. The

values of dignity and equality of the members of human race, and other basic

principles which are called human rights, can be found in virtually every culture,

religion and tradition. So ‘the natural law’ prevails in society and it is accepted by

the society. But discrimination continues to exist due to ignorance, prejudice and

erroneous doctrines by which certain groups try to justify inequality. Such doctrines

are used to defend slavery and discrimination on the grounds of sex, race, colour,

descent, national or ethnic origin or religious belief, or on the basis of class or caste

systems, throughout history and unfortunately they are here still in modern times.

Slavery has been commonly practiced throughout history. It is an extreme

form of inequality in which individuals are owned by others as their property. The

slaves have no rights. These slaves were brought and sold in the slave market.

Socially the slaves were despised. The basis of slavery is always economic.

Therefore different cultures have emerged; they have brought forward a set of
 26

humanistic values. In order to reach this ideal state what is needed is to grant each

person a space to develop freely. Freedom and equality, equal rights, equal

possessions, are the goal of man’s striving, the attainment of which will eradicate

poverty and suffering from this earth.

Literature is a part of the growth of civilization. All literary works show the

various aspects of society such as politics, economics and culture. Thus literature

mirrors the ups and downs of society. Literature is the only aspect of life that

embodies the collective experience of the people. It documents man’s struggles and

victories of the past and it inspires readers to protect the individual rights. However

the expressions of personal ideas have long been oppressed throughout history. As

works of literature have become available, the ideologies and beliefs of people have

slowly evolved. The study of Literature is the study of man’s struggles and

aspirations.

The statement “I think, therefore I am” is a declaration made by the

philosopher cum mathematician, Rene Descartes, in his “Discourse” first published

in 1637, and later amplified in his Meditations on First Philosophy. So humans are

forced to think to react upon the atrocities against them. Wordsworth has always

been considered a poet dedicated to the cause of freedom. The concept of freedom

though admirably expressed and fought for in generations past, past be re-expressed

and re-interpreted in each succeeding generation. Literature is a vehicle to transform

the thoughts of one generation to the next. A search through literature for the

concept of freedom is most useful in that it provides characters whose thoughts can

be experienced vicariously as they lead to be free. A free society is determined by

the personal freedom of all the individuals in that society.

 27

The concept of freedom, according to Thomas Hobbes, is based on two

fundamentals: (i) the right of nature and (ii) the law of nature. The right of nature is

the right each man has to preserve his own life. The law of nature is a general rule

discovered by reason which forbids man to violate the preservation of his life. The

most basic right of all is one that we are born with the right to self-ownership. All

legitimate human rights emerge out of this. If we own ourselves, we obviously have

the right to life, and to live as we please. Our thoughts and speech belong to us--

thus, the right to free speech. Our labour, and the fruits of our labour, belong to us--

thus, all property rights. As Plato says:

Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct

them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and

partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit

cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.

(qtd. in Merson 65)

The ideas of protection of rights of human beings have been gradually

transformed into written forms such as Magna Carta (1215), the Petition of Rights

(1628), and the Bill of Rights (1689). The Magna Carta is signed in June 1215

between the barons of Medieval England and King John at Runnymede near

Windsor Castle. “Magna Carta” in Latin and means “Great Charter”. The Magna

Carta is one of the most important documents of Medieval England. The document

is a series of written promises between the king and his subjects that he, the king,

would govern England and deal with its people according to the customs of feudal

law. Magna Carta is an attempt by the barons to stop a king - in this case King John

– from abusing his power with the people of England. Magna Carta promised laws

that were good and fair. It states that everyone shall have access to courts and that
 28

costs and money should not be an issue if someone wanted to take a problem to the

law courts. It also states that no freeman will be imprisoned or punished without first

going through the proper legal system.

The advances in technology and changes in social structures became a threat

to the continued existence of the human race. A large number of people in many

countries lived under the control of tyrants, having no recourse but war to relieve

often intolerable living conditions. Unless a way was found to relieve the lot of these

people, they could revolt and create war. So representatives from the majority of

governments in the world came to the conclusion that basic human rights must be

protected, not only for the sake of the individuals and countries involved but to

safeguard the human race. The government alone cannot safeguard human rights. It

requires international guarantee after the First World War. The Second World War

brought about massive abuse of human life and dignity and attempts were made to

destroy entire groups of people because of their race, religion and nationality. Until

the Second World War, several countries had proclaimed declarations concerning

human rights (e.g. Bill of Rights, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the

Citizen, etc.) but no universal declaration has been made. The reflections of the

Second World War atrocities highlighted the need for a universal declaration.

Consequently, two years after the creation of United Nation (UN) the UN’s

Secretary-General Trygve Lie requested a declaration draft from UN’s Economic

and Social Council’s, who delegated the task to the Commission on Human Rights.

John Peters Humphrey, the director of the UN Human Rights Division, was

assigned to produce a first draft. While he conducted the background reading and

suggested articles to be included, René Cassin (a French expert in constitutional

law) contributed by writing the preamble and structuring the draft according to civil
 29

law practice. Charles Malik, and P. C. Chang worked to ensure that the document

would be acceptable across the world’s religions and cultures. Other main

contributors were Jacques Maritain and Eleanor Roosevelt. The final draft was

submitted to the General Assembly’s Third Committee on Social, Humanitarian, and

Cultural Affairs. After numerous meetings and amendments it was finally approved

on 10th December 1948 at Palais de Chaillot in Paris. The document was named

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and consists of a preamble

followed by thirty articles. As Donnelly puts it in his book International Human

Rights:

They are the rights that one has simply because one is human.

They are held by all human beings, irrespective of any rights

or duties individuals may (or may not) have as citizens,

members of families, workers or parts of any public or private

organisation or association. They are universal rights. If all

human beings have them simply because they are human,

human rights are held equally by all. And because being

human cannot be renounced, lost or forfeited, human rights

are inalienable. Even the cruellest torturer and the most

debased victims are still human beings. In practice, not all

people enjoy all their human rights, let alone enjoy them

equally. Nonetheless, all human beings have the same human

rights and hold them equally and inalienably. (18)

In English language, ‘right’ has two senses: one is moral and the other is

political or legal. In the moral sense, right refers to what it is ‘right’ to do from a

moral perspective: for instance, to assert that it is wrong to steal, is to assert, in part,
 30

that it is morally wrong to deprive people of their property without a compelling

reason. The second sense of the word refers to a relationship between right and duty

or obligation in the context of the law. In this second sense, the meaning of right is

stronger than in the former, in that a right holder can compel a duty bearer to honour

that right by calling on the court to compel respect for the right.

The rights which are enshrined in the Constitution are called ‘Fundamental

Rights’. These rights ensure the fullest physical, mental and moral development of

every citizen. They include those basic freedoms and conditions which alone can

make life worth living. Fundamental Rights generate a feeling of security amongst

the minorities in the country. They establish the framework of ‘democratic

legitimacy’ for the rule of the majority. No democracy can function in the absence

of basic rights such as freedom of speech and expression.

Fundamental Rights provide standards of conduct, citizenship, justice and

fair play. They serve as a check on the government. Various social, religious,

economic and political problems in a country make Fundamental Rights important.

In Indian Constitution, Fundamental Rights are enumerated in Part III from Article

14 to 32. Indian Constitution does not permit the legislature and the executive to

curb these rights either by law or by an executive order. The Supreme Court or the

High Courts can set aside any law that is found to be infringing or abridging the

Fundamental Rights. Some of the Fundamental Rights are also enjoyed by

foreigners, for example, the Right to Equality before Law and Right to Freedom of

Religion are enjoyed by both i.e. citizens as well as foreigners. The Fundamental

Rights though justifiable are not absolute. The Constitution empowers the

government to impose certain restrictions on the enjoyment of our rights in the

interest of the public.

 31

Seven Fundamental Rights are enshrined in the Constitution of India.

However, the Right to Property was removed from the list of Fundamental Rights by

the 44th Amendment Act of the Constitution in the year 1976. Since then, it has

been made a legal right. There are now six Fundamental Rights. They are

(i) Right to Equality,

(ii) Right to Freedom,

(iii) Right against Exploitation,

(iv) Right to Freedom of Religion,

(v) Cultural and Educational Rights, and

(vi) Right to Constitutional Remedies.

Recently, the 86th Amendment Act, the Right to Education has been included in the

list of Fundamental Rights as part of the Right to Freedom by adding Article 21(A).

With the concept of Fundamental Rights, the Rights are divided as follows:

the First generation consists of civil and political rights and derives primarily from

the seventeenth and eighteenth-century political theories which are associated with

the English, American, and French revolutions. They mainly focused on life, liberty,

and the pursuit of happiness. The rights set forth in Articles 2-21 of the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights include freedom from discrimination; freedom from

slavery; freedom from torture and from cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment;

freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention; the right to a fair and public trial;

freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; freedom of opinion and expression;

and the right to participate in government through free elections.

The Second Generation human rights correspond to the protection of

economic, social and cultural rights. They are called security- oriented as they

provide for social, economic and cultural security. This view originates primarily
 32

from the socialist traditions of Marx and Lenin. According to this view, rights are

conceived more in positive rather than negative terms, and thus encourage the

intervention of the state. Illustrative of these rights are Articles 22-27 of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They include the right to social security;

the right to work; the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-

being of self and family; and the right to education.

The Third Generation human rights are concerned with the rights of groups

and people, rather than of individuals. They are not universally accepted in the

international community as such. These views are a product of the rise and decline

of the nation-state in the last half of the twentieth century. These rights have been

championed by the Third World and remain somewhat controversial and debated.

The specific rights include the right to political, economic, social, and cultural self-

determination; the right to economic and social development; and the right to

participate in and benefit from the common heritage of mankind. The use of the term

‘generation’ was never meant to imply any distinct historical difference or hierarchy

of one generation over another. This is largely due to interrelatedness of all human

rights.

To understand the basis and potential application of human rights, it has been

categorized into moral rights and legal rights. Human Rights originate as moral

rights and their legitimacy is necessarily dependent upon the legitimacy of the

concept of moral rights. Moral rights refer to an individual’s acts according to his or

her conscience – to do a right thing or commit a crime. Legal rights refer to all those

rights found within existing legal codes. A legal right is a right that enjoys the

recognition and protection of the law. The development of the idea of human rights

in India is examined with reference to the major religious traditions, and the
 33

contributions of some national leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar. It is

argued that the demand for civil and political rights, first raised by the Western

educated elite, grew as a response to changes in the political system during the

British rule, and was incorporated in the nationalist ideology, championed by the

Congress party. The first human rights organization, established in 1936, became a

model for various organizations that were formed in the post-independent period.

Political developments towards the end of the 1960s and early 1970s gave rise to a

set of organizations with limited agendas. After the period of National Emergency

(June 1975-March 1977), as the organizations reconstituted themselves, they also

diversified and expanded their agendas. The protection of human rights is an

international responsibility, transcending the boundaries of nations and ideologies.

This is the fundamental belief upon which the work of Amnesty International, an

independent voluntary movement is based. It attaches great importance to impartial

and accurate reporting of facts.

The word ‘Human Rights’ was brought into usage in 1766 by America in

their “Declaration of Independence”. The major milestones in the history of human

rights are as follow:

1. Magna Carta in 1215 – petitions to British King John

2. Dutch Philosopher Crotious in 1650 – about globalization of

Natural Rights of human beings.

3. Bills of Rights in 1688 – implemented in England

4. French Revolution in 1789 – through Declaration of Rights of

Human

5. Philosopher Carl Marx in nineteenth Century for relieving humans

from any abduction and seizure.

 34

6. In 1848 – Women’s education by Shri Jyotiba Bhooley and Kabhir

Dass. Previously, great thinkers Chaitanya,Thiruvalluvar,

Thirumoolar, Shri Ramalingar, of yester years and Bharathiyar,

Bharathidasan of twentieth century gave their voice through their

poems and took part in the growth towards Human Rights.

7. 1886 – Chicago Convention and May Day was implemented

8. 1914 – Russian Revolution of fundamental rights

9. On 10th December 1948 United Nation announced the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights.

10. In1936 – ‘All India Human Rights Commission’ was founded by

Jawaharlal Nehru and Tagore was the leader. Even the fight for

Indian independence was also a part of fight for Human Rights.

11. In 1937 – Muthuramalinga Devar for the Tribes towards the Act

implement by British Government (Understanding Human Rights An

Overview)

To empower India, protection and promotion of civil or political rights is not

enough as disparities in economic, social and cultural areas have reduced a large

number of citizens to the margins of human existence. Thus all rights whether

political, civil or economic or social or cultural are inter-independent. These should

be effectively exercised by anyone. The commission has been making efforts to re-

affirm the integrity and unity of every citizen of India.

Human rights provide rights relating to life, liberty, equality and dignity of

the individual, guaranteed by the Constitution, or embodied in the international

covenants and enforceable by courts in India.

 35

1. Equality

2. Discrimination among the people/citizen as per religion,

community or sex

3. Every citizen has right to reveal or express his/her ideas with

- Right to join together with peace and without any weapons

- Right to found association or union

- Right to stay or reside anywhere in the country

- Right to buy or sell or enjoy their properties within India

- Right to work, do business, form industries

4. One should not be convicted or punished for the same offence

more than once.

- As per law one should not lose his life or personal liberty

5. One should not be arrested without any reason. An

opportunity should be given to consult or counter argue

6. One should not be kept under remand for over three months

7. Government should keep a track of banning products which

will ruin the life of people. (O.P.Dhiman 251)

As per Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, National Human Rights

Commission was established in India to restore the international reputation of the

Indian Government to safeguard human rights. The Commission was formed with a

Chairperson and four members from Supreme Court and High Courts. The

Commission has a wide mandate including political rights, economic, social and

cultural rights, and group rights. The Commission has got the power to intervene in

any proceedings involving any allegation or violation of human rights pending

before a court, with the approval of such Courts. States are authorised to establish
 36

their own Commission to protect the Human Rights Act. It consists of a Chairperson

who is the Chief Justice of a High Court in India. Two members who are justices of

District Magistrate Courts and who have wide knowledge of human rights. Like

National Commission even the State Commission takes up the complaints when

there is a prima facie evidence, makes inquiries and takes necessary steps to resolve

the problems.

Some of the major issues in the history of India were redressed as a result of

steps taken by the government.

1829 - The practice of sati was formally abolished in British India

after years of campaigning by Raja Ram Mohan Roy against this

Hindu funeral custom of self-immolation of widows after the death of

their husbands.

1929 - Child Marriage Restraint Act, prohibiting marriage of minors

was passed.

1947 - India achieves political independence.

1950 - Constitution of India establishes a democratic republic with

universal adult franchise. Part 3 of the Constitution contains a Bill of

Fundamental Rights enforceable by the Supreme Court and the High

Courts. It also provides for reservations for previously disadvantaged

sections in education, employment and political representation.

1955 - Reform of family law concerning Hindus gives more rights to

Hindu women.

1973 - Supreme Court of India rules in Kesavananda Bharati that the

basic
 37

structure of the Constitution (including many fundamental rights) is

unalterable by a constitutional amendment.

1975-1977- State of Emergency in India - extensive rights violations

took place.

1985-86 - The Shah Bano case, where the Supreme Court recognized

the Muslim woman’s right to maintenance upon divorce, sparked

protests from Muslim clergy.

1989 - Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of

Atrocities) Act, 1989 was passed.

1989- Kashmiri insurgency sees increasing violence between

militants and security forces, resulting in heavy loss of lives.

1992 - A constitutional amendment establishes Local Self-

Government (Panchayat Raj) as a third tier of governance at the

village level, with one-third of the seats reserved for women.

Reservations were provided for scheduled castes and tribes as well.

1993– Demolition of Babri Masjid, resulting in riots across the

country.

1993 - National Human Rights Commission is established under the

Protection of Human Rights Act.

2001 - Supreme Court passes extensive orders to implement the right

to food.

2002 - Violence in Gujarat, chiefly targeting its Muslim minority,

claims many lives.

2005 - A powerful Right to Information Act is passed to give

citizen’s access to information held by public authorities.

 38

2005 - National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA)

guarantees universal right to employment.

2006 - Supreme Court orders police reforms in response to the poor

human rights record of Indian police. (Understanding Human Rights

An Overview 244 - 246)

The National Human Rights Commission is concerned with the protection

and promotion of human rights. It came into existence in October, 1993. Every year

International Human Rights Day is observed on 10th of December across the world.

Human rights are always natural. So these need to be protected for peaceful

existence of human life. So, there is a need for celebrating Human Rights Day.

The civil and democratic rights movement in India, with its very obvious

influences drawn from western democracies, had rather fortuitous beginnings in

India. From a largely limited activist base from the emergency period of the 1970s,

it has since moved into newer areas with newer sources of support especially among

more marginalised sections. But the movement, unlike its counterpart in the West,

remains constantly challenged by prevailing complexities of the political process.

The emergence of newer identities and shifting quality of these identities shaped by

the very nature of politics and electoral processes in India coupled with the paucity

of similar experiences in western liberal democracies, ensures civil and democratic

rights. The movement has to formulate its own responses, make its own theoretical

and conceptual framework to meet such challenges.

Many people renowned in the field of literature have been contributing to the

notion and understanding of human Rights through the ages. Plato believed in

universal truth and virtue. The main focus of the arguments presented in The

Republic seeks to determine the nature of the just life. As an idealistic philosopher
 39

Plato begins The Republic by addressing the major theme of his entire work: should

man be just or unjust? To discuss this issue, Plato uses a variety of surrounding

characters to give their opinions. Yet he proves each of them wrong in turn. Later,

he decides that an answer to the above question can be better found if he first defines

the word justice. Aristotle is generally regarded as one of the most influential

ancient thinkers. His Politics is intended to guide rulers and statesmen, reflecting the

high political circles in which he moved. Wordsworth has always been considered a

poet dedicated to the cause of freedom. In his famous essay, In Defence of Poetry,

Percy Bysshe Shelley penned his famous line, “Poets are the unacknowledged

legislators of the world.” They have the gift of being able to express in a few words

whole truths of humanity and nature. Anand is grouped in this line.

Anand is called the Dickens of India. Dickens is renowned for his portrayal

of the social evils of Victorian England. He describes the exploitation of children by

factory owners; he also portrays the brutal living conditions of the masses. Like

Dickens, Anand is a novelist of the lower, and the downtrodden whose rights are

denied by the society. Anand deals with the ills and inequalities of Indian society.

Both Anand and Dickens insist upon the human values of the society. They celebrate

the triumph of human values against the violation of human rights.

Literature has been the great promoter of a culture of human rights. Fiction

has a unique capacity to bring difficult issues to a broad readership on a personal

level, creating empathy in a reader’s mind for social changes. Its capacity for

invoking moral and social responsibility is enormous. Throughout history, every

movement towards a more peaceful and humane world has begun with those who

imagined the possibilities. The ideas of human rights are introduced to bring themes

of equality, dignity, and racial discrimination. Stories like Mark Twain’s

 40

Huckleberry Finn, the French novel by Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, A.A. Milne’s

The Ugly Duckling, or Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl all have elements of

human rights within their storylines. Set in Burundi, The True Sources of the Nile by

Sarah Stone discusses issues of tribal loyalty following the genocide in Rwanda.

Cry, the Beloved Country by Allan Baton deals with apartheid in South Africa. Mulk

Raj Anand’s Untouchables focuses on the Indian caste system. In the Time of the

Butterflies, a historical novel, Julia Alvarez, the author deals with dictatorship and

violence in the Dominican Republic. These examples are intended to demonstrate

that the emancipatory claim to equal freedom that underlies human rights does not

entail the dissolution of communitarian bonds. However, it does challenge

authoritarian traditions with communities. Undoubtedly, human rights are

incompatible with some traditional practices such as child marriage, the persecution

of religions dissenters, and the social ostracism of political dissidents. To put it in a

different way, human rights can reshape communities and societies critically in

accordance with the equal respect due to every person.

There is a considerable variety of research in the novels of Mulk Raj Anand.

Anand is very special in the history of Indian English literature. Following is the list

of a few research works done on Anand. Social Realism in Select Novels of Mulk Raj

Anand, U. R. Anantha Murthy and Arundhati Roy: A Study (2013) by Rama Rao

Kasi, It studies the novels of Mulk Raj Anand, U.R. Anantha Murthy and Arundhati

Roy in general and the theme of Social Realism. It also deals with the contemporary

Indian societal problems. Gender, Female Sexuality, Power and Family

Relationships in the Novels of Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao: A

Critical Study (2013) by Reshma Tabassum, It analyses issues related to gender,

female sexuality, power and family relationships in the fiction of Anand, Narayan
 41

and Rao. Liberation Motif in Select Novels of Mulk Raj Anand and Chlnua Achebe:

Search for a New Paradigm in Terms of Relevant Third World Fictional Strategies

(2010) by Leo Antony Tagore, This study aims at investigating the fictional writings

of Mulk Raj Anand and Chinua Achebe from the perspective of social justice and

liberation

The list of other research follows: The Fiction of Mulk Raj Anand: A Study

in Social Discrimination and Exploitation by Chetna Tiwari, Themes of Poverty,

Hunger and Exploitation in the Novels of Mulk Raj Anand, Bhabani Bhattacharaya

and Kamala Markandaya (2012) by V. Nagesh Nalawade, Social Realism in Major

Novels of Mulk Raj Anand: A Study (2010) by Khuman, Nationalist Consciousness

in the Novels of Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, Amitav Ghosh & Upamanyu

Chatterjee (2006) by K. K. Abu Bakr, A Comparative Study of Social Perspective of

Rohintan Mistry and Mulk Raj Anand (2008) by Nikita U. Mishra, The Construction

of Self in Selected Novels of Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, and Raja Rao (1996)

by Uppinder Mehan. After having read a few books and articles on Anand, the

present researcher made a choice to study the novels of Anand and the principles of

human rights in his novels. Though many researchers have studied other aspects of

his novel such as social realism, humanism, exploitation of poor, social

discrimination, not much has been done on the violation of human rights. His novels

are an excellent medium for reviving the principles of human rights. The present

work not only deals with treatment of human rights in his novels but also applies the

available principles of human rights sanctioned and accorded by United Nations.

The universal character of human rights is based on the belief that human

rights are natural attributes of human beings. The abstract idea of inherent existence

of rights in all human beings is the key reason why human rights are possessed by
 42

all people, and thus their universality. Human rights therefore cannot be seen as

valid only in certain contexts. Their validity is derived from the very source of their

existence, the nature of human beings. The socio-economic-cultural and political

conditions of peoples do not define human rights.

Clarence J Dias identifies the main sources of attack on the universality of

human rights:

a. Justify the denial of human rights to some section of their

people.

b. To deny new assertions of human rights by excluded groups

such as women and indigenous peoples;

c. to negate and destroy cultural pluralism;

d. to impose disabilities on culture, religion, ethnicity, etc. upon

minorities (44-45).

Exploration of these three main attacks on the human rights of certain

societies in the Indian culture in the novels the Mulk Raj Anand is the main aim of

the present researcher. Thus, there are reasons to rethink that novels do relate to the

Universal issues with Human Rights. The focus of this thesis is on how human

rights are treated in the community and how it is totally absent in some

communities.

The aim of the present research work is to study select novels of Mulk Raj

Anand in the light of human rights. It further aims at examining the child rights,

labour rights and women rights. The study endeavours to propagate and spread the

awareness of human rights. So the researcher has introduced the concepts of human

rights and how it is intertwined with literature in the first chapter. The first chapter
 43

traces the history of ‘Indian English Literature’ with reference to Mulk Raj Anand’s

achievement, as social reformer with his zeal for humanistic vision.

The second chapter investigates the two novels of Mulk Raj Anand

Untouchable and Coolie to document the treatment of child rights by the dominant

society. The protagonist of Untouchable is a sweeper who is denied his rights to

education, sports and entertainment by his father Bakha who always forces him to

labour and the dominant society who denies him sweets and any relationship with

their children. In Coolie, the plight of a fifteen year old boy, Munoo a child labourer

is pictured.

The third chapter focuses on the denied ‘Labour Rights’ in the novels Two

Leaves and a Bud and The Big Heart. These novels are the records of Anand’s

concern for the labourers and how they are treated with contempt. The novels reveal

the absence of human rights in labourers’ community. The protagonists feel that

industrialization in India is not their enemy but the masters of those industries are

their real enemies. The masters of the dominant society forget the human rights of

labourers in the process of marginalization. So this chapter includes the imposition

on labourers without respecting their rights.

The fourth chapter deals with how human rights are denied to the excluded

group like women. This is disclosed by examining the novels The Old Woman and

the Cow and Seven Summers. The post-colonial women in India do not enjoy any

perfect equality with man. Though the constitution of India has done away with all

the differences based on religion, race or sex, women suffer under several

oppressive forces. So Anand who is very familiar with the feelings of women and

how they are trampled by society pleads for their recognition and acceptance.
 44

The treatment of the universal human rights and how they are attacked by the

hierarchy of society and also within the society is to be focused in the fourth coming

chapter. The fifth chapter, besides summing up the findings of the previous ones,

presents some solutions for ending the human rights violations. This chapter also

provides some scope for further research on either human rights or on the novels of

Anand and or both with different aspects and themes.

 Chapter -II

Treatment of Child Rights in Untouchable and Coolie

Colonial and postcolonial literatures reveal and discuss discrimination,

injustice and inhumanity operated by the processes of decolonization. The down

trodden have to struggle with past legacies. “Human rights” is interpreted as

principles of moral propriety, a set of objectives toward achieving a better world. It

helps to advance mostly in legal, sociological, psychological, philosophical and

political discourses. Anand’s writings raise fundamental issues which are

particularly interesting when examined in the context of the human rights. Human

nature and thus human rights cannot be understood merely by logic. Literature

illuminates human nature and existence in its fullness – either with or without its

logic. Therefore it has a crucial role in understanding humanity and consequently the

principles of moral propriety defined in human rights. Anand believes that art and

literature are instruments of humanism. In Apology for Humanism, he expresses his

passion as a humanist:

The humanism which I prefer not to rest on a divine sanction .

. . but puts its faith in the creative imagination of man, in his

capacity to transform himself, in the tireless mental and

physical energy with which he can often in the face of great

odds, raise himself to tremendous heights of dignity and

redeem the world from its misery and pain. (141)

Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable (1935) is a novel of social purpose.

During 1930 to 1940, poverty, slavery and the inhuman exploitation of the masses

were at the peak. It was Gandhi who had waged a war against the forces behind
 46

these evils. The novel describes a single day in the life of the protagonist Bakha, a

scavenger boy. The entire action takes place within a period of less than twenty four

hours. Though the scene takes place in a small, interior town of the Punjab,

Bulandshehar, with an outcaste colony and in the streets of the small town the

happenings are pan-indian in essence.

Mulk Raj Anand’s second novel Coolie was written in three months and was

published without much difficulty in 1936, within a year after the publication of

Untouchable. It moves from hills to plain, village to city from the north to the west

and again to the north. Anand shows that exploitation in all its varied nuances is the

same everywhere. It is not religion, race or caste but only cash and class that matter.

In exploiting the poor, all join hands. Munoo, a naïve hill boy of hardly fourteen is

compelled to move from one place to another against his will--just for his survival.

His father dies of the feudal exploitation, and his mother of poverty and hunger. The

orphan faces domestic exploitation at the hands of his uncle and aunt. They find

their nephew, fourteen year old boy, bold enough not only to earn his own living but

also to support his uncle, who works as a chaprasi in one of the banks in the town.

They send him to work as a servant in a middle class family in a small town where

he is exploited by the wife of his master. She treats him like an animal and other

members of family treat him like a monkey, an instrument of amusement. In one of

such entertaining acts in the role of a monkey he bites the daughter of his master,

Nathoo Ram. The master considers it as a sexual assault on his daughter and beats

him mercilessly. Munoo can no longer bear the cruelty and slips out of the house.

Munoo later works as a coolie not only to earn his living but also to help his master.

As a result of the strenuous work his health deteriorates. The disease turns out to be
 47

tuberculosis. Despite all the possible treatments, one day, he dies on the lap of his

friend.

A well-known critic of Indian writing in English, K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar

says: “If Untouchable is microcosm, Coolie is macrocosm” (265). The place of

‘caste’ is taken by ‘class’. Anand explores the stresses and strains generated in the

Indian society as the result of the commercial capitalistic forces from Europe. They

brought into existence a new class arrangement in the Indian society. In

Untouchable he deals with the Indian problem but in Coolie he takes into

consideration a universal problem. As K. D. Verma in her article “The Metaphors

of Untouchable and Coolie in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable and Coolie and this

Sense of Social Justice” points out this universal problem:

The fact remains that both Bakha and Munoo are helpless labourers

whose work has been permanently devalued and misappropriated.

However Anand stretches the metaphors of untouchable and coolie to

suggest that we all are universal metaphors of the sociology, history

and metaphysics of human suffering and of man’s inhumanity to fellow

man. Can art fully address the moral problem of human slavery,

indignity and suffering? I further argue that Anand elevates the level to

a moral essay on humanism where act is concerned with the truth of the

human condition. (32-33)

The present chapter is the study of absence of the Child Rights in

Untouchable and Coolie. Children are an integral part of society. Therefore, they

deserve the childhood rights as it is their born human right. UN convention on the

rights of the child has ensured that every child in the world has right to survival,

development, protection, and participation. This ensures the right to protection from
 48

every sort of exploitation and harm. Children are regarded as a source of hope and

inspiration for future. However, an overwhelming majority of children in the world

are deprived of their fundamental rights. This situation is particularly alarming in

the third world countries, where a majority of children are living and working in the

most difficult circumstances. Children in this part of the world are not only

suffering of hunger, malnutrition and exploitation, but are also subjected to

exploitation and abuses and ultimately, they live a painful life. Child labour is the

state where children are physically, economically and socially exploited and abused.

Worldwide, children face different problems in different conditions. International

and national laws set minimum age for different kinds of work. But such laws have

been violated everywhere. The way in which child workers are treated is often

unethical.Mulk Raj Anand is aware of the immense suffering of people especially

children from poverty and humiliation due to the political and social system. The

novels Untouchable and Coolie bring us closer to the violation of child rights.

Children are not always in the Human Rights agenda. They have not been

considered a separate group but are traditionally thought of as property of their

parents. Early ideas of children’s rights put emphasis on their need for special

protection.

Children are mentioned in the U. N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights

as: “Motherhood and Children are entitled to special care and assistance. All

children whether born in or out of wedlock shall enjoy the same social protection”

(Article 25 Paragraph 2). Other declarations and covenants have also recorded this

concern. During the twentieth century, universal concern for childhood has grown

alongside the ideas of human rights. Human rights are today understood more in the

form of the individual civil rights within a nation state than with the universal truths
 49

of brotherhood and humanity. Thus, the concern for children which initially started

as part of the concern for the future of individual nation states has grown over the

boundaries of the nation states and becomes a universal concern. This will be further

borne out while going through the whole process of evolution of the Convention on

the Rights of the Child.

It is commonly held that all children are born free and equal -- a child is

conceived and born in a social context. Hence, the prevalent social conditions have

their effect on the child’s rights from the birth and may be even earlier. Every child

that is born is a link in the civilization. This link always has continuity with the past

and it can also muster the powers to break with the past within certain limits. Rights

of the child become relevant within the social context of here and now but also in

relation to the past and the future.

It is in this context that various steps are being taken for the protection of the

interests of the child. In this regard the most significant one is “Declaration of

Geneva” which was promulgated in 1924 by the “Save the Children Fund

International Union”. This declaration puts forward five basic principles of child

welfare and protection. The League of Nations endorsed this declaration in the same

year. There was a devastating Second World War after which the U. N. O. was set

up on 24th October 1945. The Declaration of Geneva was further revised and

extended in 1948 and in 1959 by the U. N. The Declaration on the Rights of the

Child was adopted unanimously by the General Assembly of the United Nations on

20th November 1959.

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights was made in 1948. Children’s

Rights are an integral part of this declaration. But as the situation of children is
 50

specific, protection of the rights of the children calls for a specific international

convention which is binding on the parties to the convention.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC 1989) is the most

complete human rights treaty. It sets forth a wide range of provisions that encompass

civil rights and freedoms, family environment, basic health and welfare, education,

leisure and cultural activities and special protection measures. The UN CRC

emphasizes that children are holders of rights and their rights cover all aspects of

their lives. It applies to all human beings under the age of eighteen. The Convention

provides a universal set of standards to be adhered to by all the countries. It reflects

a new vision of the child. Children are neither the property of their parents nor are

they helpless objects of charity. They are human beings and are the subjects of their

own rights. The Convention offers a vision of the child as an individual and a

member of a family and a community, with rights and responsibilities appropriate to

his or her age and stage of development. Recognizing children’s rights in this way

firmly sets a focus on the whole child.

Children are innocent, trusting and full of hope. Their childhood should be

happy and loving. They mature gradually as they gain new experiences. But in

reality the situation is altogether different. Children have been abused and exploited.

They suffer from hunger and homelessness; work in harmful conditions; there is

high infant mortality; and health care is deficient; and opportunities for basic

education are lacking. Children should have the right to be protected to survive,

develop, and participate in decisions that impact on their lives. Girls should be given

the same opportunities as boys. All children should have the same rights and should

be given the same opportunity to enjoy an adequate standard of living.

 51

The Charter of Child Rights (CRC) is built on the principle that “All children

are born with fundamental freedoms and all human beings have some inherent

rights”. The Charter confers the following basic rights on all the children across the

world: The Right to Survival – to life, health, nutrition, name and nationality. The

Right to Development – to education, care, leisure, recreation. The Right to

Protection - from exploitation, abuse, neglect, and The Right to Participation - to

expression, information, thought and religion.

India is a party to the UN declaration on the Rights of the Child in 1959.

Accordingly, it adopted a National Policy on Children in 1974. The policy reaffirms

the constitutional provisions for adequate services to children, both before and after

birth and through the period of growth to ensure their full physical, mental and

social development. Accordingly, the government takes action to review the national

and state legislation and brings it in line with the provisions of the Convention. It

has also developed appropriate monitoring procedures to assess progress in

implementing the Convention involving various stakeholders in society.

India is a signatory to the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and

Development of Children. In pursuance of the commitment made at the World

Summit, the Department of Women and Child Development under the Ministry of

Human Resource Development has formulated a National Plan of Action for

Children. Most of the recommendations of the World Summit Action Plan are

reflected in India’s National Plan of Action keeping in mind the needs, rights and

aspirations of children in the country.

Untouchable is Anand’s first novel in which he is concerned with the evil of

violation of child rights in Indian society. Untouchable strongly suggests more of

the human rights practices. His work was published thirteen years before the
 52

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Anand is the first Indian novelist to have

depicted the stigma of untouchability which isolates man from the rest of his own

society. This novel portrays an individual’s struggle to release himself from the

customs and beliefs of the community he belongs to. However, the individual, a

victim of his traditional Hindu culture, fails to do so. The novel’s emphasis is on an

individual’s attempt to emancipate him from the age-old evil of untouchability.

In Untouchable, referring to Bakha Anand declares: “I meant to recreate the

lives of the millions of untouchables through a single person” (qtd. in Rajan 102).

The novel is a bleak reflection of the day-to-day life of a child of India’s

untouchable caste. The novel deals with a day in the life of Bakha an unclean

outcaste of the society -- a sweeper boy in a small town in Punjab. Bakha is a victim

of the caste-ridden society. The novel focuses on his inner as well as his outer world.

Anand narrates a series of the events from dawn to dusk. As a child Anand had

played with the children of the sweepers attached to the regiment in which his father

was employed. The sufferings of Bakha, brother Rakha and sister Sohini are the

sufferings of the millions of the children through the ages.

The novel epitomizes the outcaste colony, how their squalid routine starts,

and what it is like living in mud-walled hovels. The author gives a vivid picture of

the scene:

The outcastes’ colony was a group of mud-walled houses that

clustered together in two rows, under the shadow both of the

town and the cantonment, but outside their boundaries and

separated from them. There lived the scavengers, the leather

workers, the washerman, the barbers, the water carriers, the

grass-cutters and other outcastes from Hindu society. A brook

 53

ran near the lane, once with crystal clear water, now soiled by

the dirt and filth of the public latrines situated about it, the

odour of the hides and skins of dead carcasses left to dry on

its banks, the dung of donkeys, sheep, horses, cows and

buffaloes heaped up to be made into fuel cakes. (U 11)

The description of the outcaste colony brings out the sub-human level of the

untouchables’ existence. It holds up a mirror to the inhumanity of Hindu social

structure. Bakha, son of Lakha, is shortly going to experience a series of socially

demeaning and personally painful crises. The first page of the novel pinpoints the

social structure in which such inhuman treatment of an individual is a fact. But for

Bakha, the place where “. . . the ramparts of human and animal refuse that lay on

the outskirts of this little colony, and the ugliness, the squalor and the misery that lay

within it, made it an uncongenial place to live in” (U 9). Anand is a strong believer

in the dignity of man and equality of all men. Like all the true social reformers,

Anand too is aware of the fundamental rights of the children, particularly the

ostracized downtrodden children.

The children rights include non-discrimination; best interests of the child;

right to survival and development; and views of the child. Article 27 states Parties

recognize the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child’s

physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development. But the condition of

Bakha is far from the ideal. As a child, Bakha starts his work early in the morning

and cleans the rows of latrines. By noon he completes the fourth round. As Anand

describes:

Bakha thought of the uncongeniality of his home as he lay

half-awake in the morning of an autumn day, covered by a

 54

worn-out, greasy blanket, on a faded blue carpet which was

spread on the floor in a corner of the cave-like, dingy, dank,

one-roomed mud house. His sister slept on a cot next to him

and his father and brother snored from under a patched,

ochre-coloured quilt, on a broken string bed, on the other side.

(U 12)

Bakha has many human qualities. He looks upon work as worship and does

all his dull, drab, dreary and dirty work with deep devotion to keep society clean, but

the high-caste people look down upon him as unclean, untouchable and keep him at

an arm’s distance. He is debarred from all social intercourses and the consolations of

religion. He has no right to enter the precincts of the temple, even a coin he offers to

buy a thing is polluted and a high caste Hindu has to sprinkle holy water on it before

touching it. This supercilious attitude of the so called high caste people has a

pernicious effect on Bakha. He suffers from a sense of inferiority which warps his

personality. Anand finds no justification for this hollow pretension of the high caste

people to superiority over the large section of the so called untouchable children.

The novel presents a realistic picture of the miseries and woes of the

children. Children in India are vulnerable to discrimination, exploitation and

violence simply because of the caste into which they were born. The caste system

relegates Dalits, formerly known as ‘untouchables’, to a lifetime of segregation and

abuse. Caste-based divisions dominate in housing, marriage, employment,

education, and general social interaction -- divisions that are reinforced through

economic boycotts and physical violence. Dalits are forced to perform tasks deemed

to “polluting” or degrading for non-Dalits. Dalit children are employed as manual

scavengers to clear human waste from dry pit latrines, often with their bare hands
 55

without protective gloves. Manual scavengers are considered to be at the very

bottom of the caste hierarchy and are treated as untouchables even by other Dalits.

The children of manual scavengers are particularly vulnerable to

discrimination in their schools, where they are forced to perform cleaning and

scavenging work, and where discrimination undermines all aspects of their

education and often causes them to drop out of school altogether. The Indian

constitution outlaws caste discrimination and the practice of ‘untouchability’.

The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities)

Act 1989, provides that any person who is not a member of a scheduled caste or

tribe and who “compels or entices a member of a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled

Tribe to do ‘beggar’ or other similar forms of forced or bonded labour other than

any compulsory service for public purposes imposed by Government” shall be

punished with imprisonment and a fine. The same Act Section 3(1) (vi) prohibits a

person who is not a member of a scheduled tribe or caste from intentionally

insulting, or intimidating with the intent to humiliate, a member of a scheduled caste

or tribe. Numerous international human rights bodies forbid discrimination on the

basis of caste and that India is obliged to prevent, prohibit, and eliminate such

discrimination - Section 3(1) (x). Many of the children were being treated as

“untouchable” by teachers and other students. It means segregation in classrooms

and at mealtimes, exclusion from school ceremonies, and being forced to use

different water cups or being denied access to school water supplies.

There are many children under the age of fourteen working like Bakha.

Bakha’s duty is to clean three rows of public latrines. Some common causes of

child labour are poverty, parental illiteracy, ignorance and lack of education. In

India, the practice of family is in children to inculcate the family’s traditional skills.
 56

Parents are forced to send little children to do hazardous jobs in order to feed the

entire family members,

Manual scavenging is officially prohibited in India. Article 32 (1) of The

Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) recognises the right of all children to

be protected from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere

with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental,

spiritual, moral or social development. Nevertheless, a large number of children

accompany their parents to work and work with them, or labour on their own in

dangerous jobs such as sanitation and disposal of animals. In addition, many of the

children report that teachers or community members require them to clean toilets or

pit latrines.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

(ICESCR) recognises the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest

attainable standard of physical and mental health. Teachers and community

members deny Dalit children their equal right to health by forcing them into

hazardous work that includes cleaning human excrement and disposing of dead

animals. Discrimination against Dalits in the educational system is a widespread

problem in caste-ridden countries. Alienation, social exclusion, and physical abuse

exist at all levels of education, from primary education to university. The high rates

of illiteracy and drop-out among Dalits are due to a number of social and physical

factors. Legislation on the area is limited, and measures that have been taken are

often inadequate and usually not strictly implemented. In addition, Dalit children

face discriminatory attitudes from fellow students and the community as a whole, in

particular from higher caste members who perceive education for Dalits as a threat
 57

to village hierarchies and power relations. Therefore, hundreds and thousands of

children like Bakha are not able to go to school.

Anand’s humanism offers reverence to childhood not because of those false

conceptions of dignity which only makes the rich, the powerful and the greatly

gifted individuals the object of adoration, or considers them worthy because he

belongs to some superior race, religion or colour. A potentially creative person even

if he is low in the hierarchy of the conventional structure of the society should be

equally treated. Thus Anand emphasizes the need for a reverent attitude towards all,

even the untouchable children in society. Anand goes to the lowest dregs of

humanity in search of his character and in his first novel Untouchable makes a

sweeper boy, Bakha, the hero.

His sensitivity makes it possible for Anand to retain Bakha as the character

whose consciousness records and reacts to the experience. The author expresses how

the right to education (CRC: Article 28) is violated by mentioning Bakha’s inability

to go to school and his impulse for paying a boy an anna per lesson as he is always

desirous to learn how to read and write. As he muses:

The anxiety of going to school! How beautiful it felt!

How nice it must be to be able to read and write!

One could read the papers after having been to school.

One could talk to the Sahibs. One wouldn’t have to run to the scribe

every time a letter came. (U 42)

What a longing to go to school and learn to read and write!

Every local authority ensures that children belonging to disadvantaged

groups are not discriminated against and prevented from pursuing and completing
 58

elementary education on any grounds. International treaties also protect the right to

education and prohibit discrimination in access to education.

Anand brings out Bakha’s desire to look at Britishers. Children’s ability to

understand other people’s likes and dislikes develops in this age. Bakha dreams to

have everything like Britishers.

Bakha had looked at the Tommies, stared at them with

wonder and amazement when he first went to live at the

British regimental barracks with his uncle. He had had

glimpses, during his sojourn there, of the life the Tommies

lived: sleeping on strange, low canvas beds covered tightly

with blankets; eating eggs, drinking tea and wine into mugs;

going to parade and then walking down to the bazaar with

cigarettes in their mouths and small silver-mounted canes in

their hands. And he had soon become possessed with an

overwhelming desire to live their life. (U 13)

Bakha comes before the reader as the symbol of all the suppressed urges of the

untouchable class, which manifest themselves as exquisite, and steel-like, in a

human frame. The vigour he applies to his work brings self-effacement to his

existence:

He hardly realized that he had lapsed into activity, so

vigorously did he attack his job. And he was completely

oblivious during the quarter of an hour he took to finish a

fourth round of the latrines, oblivious alike of the time and of

the sweat trickling down his forehead, of the warmth in his

 59

body and of the sense of power that he felt as he ended up.

(U 21)

In order to supplement the family income, the children work hard and beg food from

the upper caste people. The meal the upper class people give is also frugal and the

children are ill nourished. He gets very little and comes home broken-hearted. As

the day rolls down his cup of misery fills to overflowing. Still he takes all as it

comes. After his work, he goes with his basket out, begging for bits of chapatis:

‘Bread for the sweeper, mother. Bread for the sweeper’

he called standing at the door of the first house.

‘The sweeper has come for bread, mother. The sweeper

has come for bread’, he shouted a little louder. (U 78)

The characters in Untouchable bring out the miserable plight of the children,

a neglected section of society. Bakha’s brother, Rakha, symbolizes the unclean life

of the untouchables. Anand calls him “a true child of the out-caste colony which is

so very dirty and unhygienic” (U 11). His father is incapable of any revolt for the

rights of his children. Centuries of dependence have rendered him tame and docile.

He does not have in him a fire for self-respect and dignity which burns in Bakha’s

heart. A picture of helplessness, he knows that he has neither strength nor the means

to protest. He is indeed a typical oppressed untouchable father. His son Rakha also

passively accepts his lot, without ever dreaming of changing it. He is a true

representative of the forces of tradition and conservatism. However he is not to be

blamed. Centuries of injustice have warped his personality and made him a novice

and simpleton. Incidentally, Anand makes Lakha narrate an episode to Bakha, to

prove that all the caste Hindus are not bad and devoid of pity. Some of them are

noble and considerate .To substantiate the sympathy and nobility in some caste-
 60

Hindus, Anand gives an incident: once Bakha was critically ill, almost on the death-

bed. Lakha immediately rushed to Hakim Bhagwan Dasji. But as an untouchable,

he could not enter Hakim’s clinic. So he stood outside praying with folded hands to

several persons why he had come there to consult the doctor. He requested them to

inform Hakim of the critical illness of his son. But nobody paid heed to his

entreaties. A little later, growing restless, he went inside, thereby breaking the

convention. After delivering some mild reprimands, the good-hearted Hakim went to

Lakha’s cottage to save the child from the jaws of death. This episode serves a two-

fold purpose. On the one hand, it shows the callousness and cruelty of the majority

of the high caste people and on the other, the large heartedness of one of them. This

sole instance of sympathetic attitude indicates that the time is not far away when the

untouchables will have a better deal.

The degradation and humiliation inflicted on the unfortunate sections of

society is highlighted through the oft-repeated refrain of Bakha “Posh, posh,

sweeper coming” (U 59). In the Indian caste system, there are four castes in Hindu

society and each caste has assigned duties, responsibilities and privileges. The

Brahmins are the learned, the Kshatriyas the warriors, the Vaishyas the traders, and

the Sudras supposed to perform menial tasks and physical labour. Brahmins are on

the highest rung of the ladder of social hierarchy, and Sudras are on the lowest. For

thousands of years the relations amongst the castes and their sub-castes have been

governed by religious and moral laws. The most influential of them is a compilation

called Manu Dharma Sastra or Manu Smriti, believed to have been written around

the beginning of the Common Era.

The Manu Smriti states that the first part of a Brahmin’s name should denote

something auspicious, that a Kshatriya’s name should be connected with power, and
 61

the Vaishya’s name should denote wealth. The first part of a Sudra’s name should

express something contemptible and the second part should denote service and

humility, because of the Sudra’s low origin. According to Hindu practice, only the

upper caste have the right to study the Vedas. The upper caste alone have the right to

the thread ceremony which is performed as a rite of passage, allowing them to be

termed twice-born. If the Sudra intentionally listens to or memorise the Vedas, his

ears should be filled with molten lead and lac; if he utters the Vedas, then his tongue

should be cut off, if he has mastered the Veda his body should be cut to pieces

(Cheutharassery 73) .

In the 1500s, during the rule of the Marathas and the Peshawas in today’s

Maharastra state, ‘untouchables’ were not allowed within the gates of the capital city

Poona. The reason was that during this time their bodies were likely to cast long

shadows, with the attendant danger that the shadow of an ‘untouchable’ might fall

on a Brahmin and pollute him. An ‘untouchable’ had to carry an earthen pot around

his neck so his spittle may not pollute the earth. In Maharashtra an ‘untouchable’

wore a black thread either around his neck or on his wrist for ready identification,

while in Gujarat a horn had to be worn for identification. (Bombay Gazetteer.

Vol.xii, 175)

There are many theories about how there came to be ‘untouchable

communities’. One theory is that the warrior-like Aryans came in from Central Asia

through Iran and that they conquered the more peaceful and better settled indigenous

inhabitants of the sub-continent. The conquered became slaves, and later

untouchables. Another theory speculates that the off-spring born of relations

prohibited by the caste system were considered untouchable. Since the Aryans were
 62

fair skinned and the Dravidians were dark skinned, the Varna system -- or system of

colour -- came to be established as the basis of graded inequality.

Concepts of purity and pollution have had a role to play: a washer man

handles items polluted by blood or human waste; a leatherworker works with animal

skins; a weaver creates cloth; a person cremates or buries the dead; a manual

scavenger is a carrier of the night soil; an executioner implements a capital

punishment, and fisher folk in some parts of the country are all considered

untouchable. Some ‘untouchables’ eat beef, others eat rats and snakes -- a dietary

habit considered disgusting by the rest of the population. Under the untouchability

system certain religious and social disabilities are imposed on the members of the

untouchable; they cannot enter the temple of the upper and middle castes. In some

parts of India, the members of the untouchable community cannot enter the temples

of the other lower castes. As a result, most of the untouchable castes have their own

temples. Many untouchable castes have their own gods and goddesses. A member

of the untouchable caste cannot be allowed to take water from a well being used by

the members of the upper and middle castes. The members of untouchable castes

must not live or even walk in the streets where the upper and middle castes live. The

members of the untouchable castes are not allowed to sit equally with the members

of the upper and middle caste in the village restaurants. Inter-caste marriages are

strictly prohibited by caste norms.

The high-brow woman heaps abuses on poor Bakha for having defiled the

wooden platform outside her house. “May the vessel of your life never float in the

sea of existence. May you perish and die! You have defiled my house: Go! Get up!

Eater of your masters!” (U 78). However, another woman hands him a ‘chapati’,
 63

saying kindly, “My child, you should not sit on people’s door-steps like this”

(U 130).

One day he goes to meet the good Havildar Charat Singh who presents him

with a hockey stick. Yet he could not play with him. Bakha wanted to help as he had

slipped on the ground and was bleeding. He should not ‘pollute’ a boy. With sunken

heart he goes away from the scene; he was not a son born to man, but to an outcaste.

An outcaste is not even treated on par with one’s pet animals.

The outcastes are always at the mercy of Brahmins. Even for an essential

commodity like water, the outcaste should depend on the mercy of the upper class

people. But Bakha’s worst ignominy is yet to come when he goes to the town to

clean the streets. He is insulted and beaten in the market place by a Hindu Lalla

whom by chance Bakha happens to touch. Anand’s focus is to show the irrationality

and callousness of a society where purity and impurity depend on pollution by

touch:

Keep to the side of the road, oh low-caste vermin!

He suddenly heard someone shouting at him.

Why don’t you call, you swine, and announce your approach!

Do you know you have touched me and defiled me, cock-

eyed son of a bow-legged scorpion! Now I will have to go

and take a bath to purify myself. (U 50-51)

This incident makes Bakha conscious of his plight as an untouchable. The

picture of the ‘touched’ man, and his own helplessness to strike the Ialla back

puzzles him. Very soon a realization dawns on him: “It is only the Hindus and the

outcastes who are not sweepers. For them I am a sweeper, sweeper-untouchable!

 64

Untouchable! Untouchable! That is the word! Untouchable! I am an untouchable!”

(U 57).

Aware of his position, he begins to shout aloud the warning word, to

announce his approach: ‘posh, posh’ sweeper coming! (U 59). Anand is piling

incident upon incident as if to hammer his point. Bakha is again disturbed by the

temple priest’s shouting “polluted! Polluted! Polluted!” (U 66). This same priest had

tried to molest Sohini when her cry for help invited the attention of the people. He

tries to create a scene saying that he has been “defiled by contact” (U 68). This has

finally killed Bakha inside. He is incapacitated by his culture against which he wants

to rise above in the hypocritical system.

From this point onwards, Bakha’s spiritual agony centres around his phobia

of being an untouchable. He has become incapable of mixing openly with his

playmates, Chotu and Ramcharan. He is afraid to touch Ramcharan when he offers

him sweets, As Anand describes:

‘Here is your portion,’ said Ramcharan

unfolding the handkerchief which he carried.

‘Throw me one,’ said Bakha.

‘Take it,’ said Ramcharan.

But Bakha hesitated and did not hold his hands out.

‘Take it, why don’t you take it?’ Rancharan grumbled.

‘No, give it to me, throw it,’ Bakha said. (U 105)

The process of his alienation from his own milieu reaches a climax when his own

father pushes him outside his house. But before Bakha finishes his journey, he is

made to have three encounters one with Col. Hutchinson of the Salvation Army, the

second with Gandhi, and the third with a poet-editor Iqbal Nath Sarashar.
 65

It is important to see his reaction to each of the three different solutions of

the narrator of the novel offered by these three persons. The first one is provided by

the Salvationist missionary Hutchinson. Conversion to Christianity is his advice.

The second method suggested is the Gandhian approach and its concomitant belief

that untouchability is the greatest evil of Hinduism. The third one is proposed by

Iqbal Nath Sarshar the poet. He believes that if the ‘untouchable’ sweepers give up

their traditional calling and go in search of other jobs, the discrimination against

them will end. Hutchinson’s words create more confusion to Bakha. He cannot

perceive himself as a sinner. Bakha, as the narrator of the novel reports that he is

afraid of embracing any religion in order to escape from the untouchability. He feels

that conversion to another religion will not solve the social ills. Anand seems to

suggest another solution that refers to the efforts being made by the Christian

missionaries through their local Salvation Army, the head of which is one Col.

Hutchinson. According to him, Christianity and Christ stand for equality of all

human beings. He cannot bring himself to accepting conversion to Christianity for

the sake of equality. Article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child requires

to take:

. . . all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational

measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental

violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment,

maltreatment or exploitation including sexual abuse, while in the care

of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of

the child . . . . (United Nations Human Rights)

Child Rights are fundamental freedom and the inherent rights of all human

beings below the age of eighteen. These rights apply to every child, irrespective of
 66

the child’s, parent’s / legal guardian’s race, colour, sex, creed or other status.

Through Bakha, Anand tries to bring a change in bringing up the children in the

society. Thus Anand becomes a voice of the voiceless.

Bakha knows that English clothes alone would not make a gentleman of him.

He must learn English and educate himself. ‘How nice it must be to be able to read

and write!’ (U 6). Bakha has this burning desire. But his father makes him realize

the bitter fact that schools are not meant for untouchables. No school would admit

him. His strong and sincere yearning for education, makes him devise a way to

overcome the difficulty. Finding that his self-education cannot proceed beyond the

alphabet, he persuades Bara Babu’s sons to teach him. He would pay an anna per

lesson. It is a pity that his dream of receiving education does not come true.

Uneducated Bakha shows love for learning, passion for education – a dim awareness

of the true value of education included in the Article 28 (Right to Education):

All children have the right to primary education, which should be

free. Wealthy countries should help poorer countries achieve this

right. Discipline in schools should respect children’s dignity. To

benefit the children, schools must be run in an orderly way – without

the use of violence. Any form of school discipline should take into

account the child’s human dignity. Therefore, governments must

ensure that school administrators review their discipline policies and

eliminate discriminating disciplinary practices involving physical or

mental violence, abuse or neglect. The Convention places a high

value on education. Young people should be encouraged to reach the

highest level of education of which they are capable. (n .p.)

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While Anand deals with the gap between the high castes and the

untouchables, in Untouchable he delineates the widening gap between the haves and

haves-not. The class conscious society is shown more complex and monstrous than

the caste ridden society. In the former the novelist explores religious, sexual and

domestic exploitation and in the latter, he investigates into the feudal, capitalistic

and industrial exploitations. P. K. Rajan in his “Comparative Study of Untouchable

and Coolie” says that the theme of both the novels is the same. As he observes:

It is an individual’s quest for freedom in a social system of ruthless

exploitation… The society of coolie is one in which chief form of

exploitation is capitalist though the feudal exploitation still remains,

Munoo, in his quest for freedom, is squeezed dry by the machinery of

capitalist exploitation until he meets his tragic end. (15)

Coolie one of the most outstanding novels of Anand; it revolves around a

child-protagonist Munoo. It portrays the pathetic plight of Munoo, a fourteen year

old orphaned hill boy at the hands of exploiters. They exhibit their greed and

mercilessly devastate Munoo’s childhood innocence and zest for life. He moves

from place to place in search of livelihood. At fourteen, he starts from the Kangra

hills in search of a new life. The exodus of the village population to urban centres in

search of a living is a major aspect of the modern Indian experience. The novel

presents the various experiences of Munoo at the hands of different exploiters. He

has to move on from place to place: as a domestic servant in an urban middle class

family in Sham Nagar; as a worker in a small pickle factory ; as a coolie fighting for

work in the city market in Daulatpur; as a labourer in a cotton mill in Bombay; and

as a rickshaw puller in Shimla.

 68

The importance of the childhood and boyhood is well known. These years

are a time when the brain develops. The experiences and relationships a child has,

along with nutrition and health, can actually affect this enormously. Positive

experiences help the brain to develop healthy attitudes. Seriously negative

experiences such as neglect and abuse, on the other hand, affect brain development

in more harmful ways, and contribute to abnormality and behavioural problems later

in life.

Coolie contains Anand’s fervent plea for the abolition of child labour and

class system. The focal point in all the phases is the innocence of Munoo. Anand’s

prime concern is the issue of innocent children suffering in an immoral world. The

Universal Declaration of Human Rights has pointed out that childhood is entitled to

special care and assistance. The society should afford the growth and well-being of

the children in establishing a conducive environment.

Coolie opens with the social evils of child labour. Munoo lives in a village

with his uncle and aunt because his father had died when Munoo was a child.

Munoo is a victim of his aunt’s harshness. The novel opens with the shrill voice of

Munoo’s aunt resounding through the valleys.

Munooo he Munooe oh Mundu! - Where have you died? Where have

you drifted, you of the evil star? Come back! Your uncle is leaving

soon. You must go to the town . . . . Where have you gone you

ominous orphan? Come back and begone! (C 9)

Munoo is often beaten by his aunt. Whenever her aunt maltreats him, his

mind is haunted by the death of his parents. Many parents and elders think that

beating, slapping or hitting is the correct way to prevent undesirable behaviour

among children. Hitting a child is not an effective method of parenting. It is a

 69

violation of child Rights. It only reinforces violence. The physical punishment

teaches that violence is an acceptable way of solving a problem. As part of their

daily lives, children are spanked, slapped, hit, smacked, shaken, kicked, pinched,

punched, caned, flogged, belted, beaten and battered by adults - mainly by those

whom they trust most. This violence may be a deliberate act of punishment or just

the impulsive reaction of an irritated adult. In every case, it is a breach of

fundamental human rights. Respect for human dignity and the right to physical

integrity are universal principles. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of

the Child (CRC) is the most ratified human rights treaty. It has been ratified by all

Member States of the Council of Europe. It is the first international human rights

binding instrument to expressly address the protection of children from violence.

Article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states:

All appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational

measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental

violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment,

maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the

care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the

care of the child .(United Nations Human Rights n.p.)

In Munoo’s case, his aunt and Uncle Daya Ram are the only hope. But he is

often ill-treated by them. The harsh reality of children is carefully pictured by Anand

in order to bring out the Rights of the Children.

As a young boy, Munoo is full of high spirits. He enjoys a carefree life

amidst the Kangra hills. Anand describes his playful life of childhood. The child’s

right is recognized in Article 31 of UNCRC. “Children have the right to relax and
 70

play, and to join in a wide range of cultural, artistic and other recreational activities”

(n.p.).

It is often described in the article that most wholly represents the child’s

right to be a child. The importance of play in children’s day to day lives for their

health and well-being is increasingly recognized now. Anand pictures the world of

childhood thus:

. . . and Munoo was a genius at climbing trees. He would hop

on to the trunk like a monkey, climb the bigger branches on

all fours, swing himself to the thinner off shoots as if he were

dancing on a trapeze, and then, diving dangerously into space,

he would jump from one tree to another. (C 12)

His uncle Daya Ram takes him to Sham Nagar. There Munoo works as a servant in

the house of Babu Nathooram, Sub-Accountant, Imperial Bank in Sham Nagar. The

different phases of Munoo’s experiences are apprenticed to life at the tender age of

fourteen. He walks on his barefoot for miles to Sham Nagar. Migration from rural

areas to big cities typically occurs due to debt, poverty, sudden death in the family.

In the case of Munoo, his father died as a victim of mortgage and usury. The

landlord snatched their five acres of land. His mother died of hard labour. Therefore,

he sets out to earn his livelihood. He earns five rupees a month. But Bibi

Uttamkumar says: “More money, in fact, than your father and mother ever saw”

(C 27). Migration is another determinant for child labour.

Child labour is a source of income for poor families. Since its independence,

India has made a commitment to work against child labour and government laws do

not allow children to work under the age of 14 (Constitution of India cited in HRW

1996, 29). The Bonded Labour System Act of 1976 also ended forced labour by law
 71

and freed all bonded labourers (HRW 1996, 30). In 1994 the Elimination of Child

Labour Programme was designed which promised to end child labour by the year

2000. All the policies of Indian government support the eradication of Child

Labour, but still the problem remains. Anand rightly analyses the miserable life of a

domestic servant even before the enactment of this Act. Child domestic workers are

frequently subjected to verbal and physical abuse by their employers.

Munoo leads a miserable life in the house of a minor bank clerk. He has to

work very hard, raking out the ashes in the fire place, scrubbing soiled utensils,

peeling vegetables, sweeping floors, arranging beds, drawing water from the well,

etc. As a young boy, he is not able to adopt to the routine life of domestic slavery.

He gradually accepts this type of life from morning to night. When Munoo comforts

himself at the doorstep, the lady of the house, Bibi Uttam Kaur, a snobbish and

suspicious woman ill-treats and humiliates him. Anand describes how Bibi insults

him:

Vay, you eater of your masters! Vay, you shameless brute!

You pig! You dog! The storm burst on his head as, hearing no

response to her call, she appeared at the door, saw him, and

unable to bear the sight, withdrew. Vay, you shameless,

shameless, vulgar, stupid hill boy! May the vessel of your life

never float in the sea of existence! May you die! What have

you done! Why didn’t you ask me where to go? May you fade

away! May you burn! We didn’t know we were taking on an

animal in our employ, an utter brute, a savage! What will the

Sahib think who pass by our doors every morning and

afternoon! The Babuji has his prestige to keep up with the

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Sahibs. Hai! What a horrible, horrible mess he has made

outside my door! (C 17)

Nathu Ram invites Mr. England as he wants him to recommend his

promotion and a rise in salary. Nathu Ram’s attempts to please the white man end in

a misfortune as Munoo drops the tea set. This ruinous incident troubles both the

master and the servant. Munoo is also slapped for the carelessness as he is “a slave,

a servant who should do the work ,all the odd jobs, someone to be abused, even

beaten” (C 245). Employers look for children as they are more compliant and less

aware of their rights than adults. As a child, Munoo can neither rebel nor escape

from the dependence. Child dependency needs assistance or placement because the

child has no parent, guardian, or custodian responsible for care or supervision.

Labour often harms the physical, mental or social development of children.

Children who work in depressing environments often endure emotional abuse. They

lack opportunities to properly socialize with their peers. Child labourers also often

miss intellectual stimulation. Overall, their self-esteem and activities are

compromised. Coolie is a tragic drama of the exploitation of the children by the

upper classes. It shows how the callous class consciousness of Indian society makes

a coolie’s life a sad story of bitter sufferings. A prose-epic of modern India and a

deeply moving social tragedy, Coolie expresses Anand’s unshakable belief in the

essential dignity of man. Munoo’s tragic fate is typical of the millions of children

whose distinguishing badge is patient sufffering. Anand describes the horrendous

experience of Munoo.

One day Munoo quarrels with Varma, the servant of the sub-judge, at the

water pump. He is beaten black and blue by Varma. He goes home with his face

covered with blood. Thus he suffers at the hands of his fellow underdog of the
 73

society. His injury is treated by Dr. Prem Chand, the Chhota Babu. During the days

of illness, he falls to thinking, “Money is, indeed, everything” (C 4). His mind

dwells for the first time on the difference between himself, the poor boy, and his

masters, the rich people. He recalls the poor people of his village and contrasts their

plight with the comfortable life of Jaysingh’s father, the landlord. He recalls the

shrivelled-up skeleton of old Gangu who worked as a labourer on the fields of

anyone who could employ him, the lean face of Bishamber’s mother, who went

charring in the house of the landlord, his mother who moved the mill-stone round

and round. He now comes to understand but not quite clearly, that life is nothing but

a tragic drama of exploitation and money is the root of all goodness and happiness.

“But there were so many people, so many poor people, and only one or two rich

people in his village. . . .” (C 5), says Munoo to himself. He wonders whether all

these poor people would die like his parents. Anand employs the literary device

stream of consciousness extraordinarily. Then he writes, “But then he had been told

in school, there were hundreds of villages for one town, and if there were as many

poor people in all the villages as there were in his, surely there were many poor

people in the world than rich” (C 6). Thus a dim realisation of the exploitation of

the few by the many dawns on Munoo.

Coolie crystallizes an important issue – the concept of social inequality born

of poverty and wealth. Bakha, suffered because of social inequality born of the

feeling of ‘high-and-low’ ness the binary opposite created by religion. Munoo,

functions under a more rigid system. He belongs by birth to the second highest

order. Even then he suffers because he occupies economically a low place.

Unschooled by all the abuses to which he had been subjected, he defies his

mistress’s stern command of not playing with her children, unmindful of the unjust
 74

restraints imposed on the lower orders by the callous society. Munoo, one day, joins

the children’s game. Sheila, Nathuram’s daughter, sets up a barrier refusing to play

with him as her mother’s advice has been imprinted in her. She has accepted the

prejudices of her mother unquestioningly. To entertain her, Munoo begins to prance

on all fours like a monkey. With a view to bringing naturalness into his role of a

dancing monkey, he springs upon her, and bites her on the cheek. This brings down

upon Munoo the traumatic disaster of much physical pain. His mistress rushes to the

scene of occurence and pulls him up:

What is your status that you should mix with the children of

your superiors? . . . Didn’t I tell you that my children are not

your class! You, you were born I don’t know on what

rubbish-heap! Think of our reputation! Our prestige! (C 72)

Babu Nathu Ram too slaps and kicks “this son of a dog” (C 73). For Munoo, this

house is not a true house. He is treated neither as a member of the family nor as a

worker. He is treated as the property of Babu Nathu Ram. Child workers are used

according to the employer’s whims and fancies.

Here law acts as a guardian against the inevitable anarchy that would engulf

childhood. Article 2 (Non-discrimination) rightly points out:

The Convention applies to all children, whatever their race, religion

or abilities; whatever they think or say, whatever type of family they

come from. It doesn’t matter where children live, what language they

speak, what their parents do, whether they are boys or girls, what

their culture is, whether they have a disability or whether they are

rich or poor. No child should be treated unfairly on any basis. (United

Nations Human Rights)

 75

Anand studies the miserable condition of child labour through a servant like

Munoo. He explores the existing relationship between Nathoo Ram and Munoo or

between Mr. W.P. England and Nathoo Ram. Anand expresses his contempt for all

relationships that are inhuman, unhealthy and meanly submissive. As Philip

Henderson observes in The Novel Today:

Coolie takes us into a world in which the comradeship of man

for man exists only among the very poorest people; with

nothing to hope for their common humanity is all they

possess. (256)

Munoo is crushed every way under the heavy clutches of society. The relationship

between the colonialists and colonized is a form of master-servant relationship and

Munoo’s suffering is mostly due to such established social order. It appears clearly

when Daya Ram, Munoo’s uncle, said to his master Babu Nathoo Mal:

I bow my forehead to you, Babuji, he said,

joining his hands and dusting his feet as he entered.

He also ordered to Munoo; ‘Join your hands to

The Babuji, you rustic’. (C 30)

In Babu Nathoo Ram’s house, Munoo is treated very cruelly. Bibiji makes

him do over-work from morning to night, constantly lashes at him with her tongue

and he is beaten mercilessly for even the least fault. Anand puts the following

words into the mouth of Chota Babu, Dr. Premchand (the younger brother of Babu

Natthu Ram) who has a sympathetic feeling for Munoo, the waif who becomes

scapegoat after the China tray falls from his hold:

How is he responsible for that monkey faced man’s bad taste?

asked Premchand, and how is he to blame for all this junk in

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your house which apparently annoyed Sahib ?” – ‘come here,

you fool’, shouted the Doctor, laughing. ‘The wound will

become septic with those filthy ashes. Come and show in to

me’. Munoo submitted to the diagnosis. The doctor found that

it was a dangerous out, reaching almost to the skull. (C 45)

The innocent girl child Sheila is deliberately exploited by her mother Bibiji

.She is butchered the moment she is plucked from mixing with the children of the

lower class families. As Anand writes vividly,

Oh, go away, cried Kausalya timidly. We don’t want you to

play with us, said Sheila (Mother said we are not to play with

you. She really liked him and was amused by his funny dance.

She wanted him to play with her, but her mother’s advice had

sunk into her and set up a barrier. She liked to touch him. She

came towards him and, catching him by the ear, dragged him

about. (C 57)

Anand is passionately concerned with the villages which are caught with poverty-

striken life and the cruelties of caste, filled with orphans, untouchables, and urban

labourers. As William Walsh observers in his book R. K. Narayan: A Critical

Appreciation,

It is a quality working right through Coolie, where Anand

shows himself one of the first Indian writers to look on the

savagely neglected, despised and maltreated power with an

angry lack of resignation. The novel combines an acrid

indignation at the condition of the poor together with a

Dickensian vivacity in physical registration and a delicate

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sense of the psychology of Munoo, the walf-hero, in

particular of the rhythms of his growth from boy to

adolescent. (69)

At last Munoo realises that the root cause of his tragedy is poverty. As he laments:

I am a Kshatriya and I am poor, and Verma, a Brahmin, is a

servant boy, a menial, because he is poor. No, caste does not

matter. The Babus are like the Sahiblogs, and all servants look

alike: There must only be two kinds of people in the world;

the rich and the poor. (C 55)

In this connection, Saros Cowasjee writes in his So Many Freedom: A Study

of the Major Fiction of Mulk Raj Anand:

What Munoo suffers at the hands of his master is no more

than what he suffers at the hands of fellow workers as

downtrodden as himself who are capable of cruelty and

callousness born out of a savage struggle for survival. (68)

Coolie explores the misery of an orphan whose life is spoilt due to the violation of

child rights. The poor are the victims of social, colonial, capitalistic, and communal

exploitation. The character of Munoo stresses the need for the declaration of human

rights. Hoping against hope, Munoo seeks a shelter in life:

If we go further, there might be a place for us somewhere,

Munoo said, urged by the cool breeze that came like a snake

swishing from the darkness of the sea on his right. And he

bravely led the way. (C 162)

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Many characteristic features developed and built in childhood last one’s lifetime.

Munoo’s remarks on his own life are the clear instance of the pathetic and

compassionate statement: “We belong to suffering! We belong to suffering!”

(C 207). Munoo passes through his journey of life before achieving destiny, which

is merely survival. With regard to Coolie, M. K. Naik observes in his book Mulk Raj

Anand:

The central theme of the novel is the tragic denial to a simple

landless peasant of the fundamental right to happiness. The

terrible destiny of being a victim of exploitation is indeed

Munoo’s dubious birthright. (46)

Coolie primarily concerns itself with the consequences of sensitized children

by the society. The evils of the society exploit the child like Munoo. Anand is

impelled by a passionate sense of social justice in the context of his keen awareness

of the predicament of the child like Munoo. As the Article 4 (Protection of Rights)

directs the government:

Governments have a responsibility to take all available measures to

make sure children’s rights are respected, protected and fulfilled.

When countries ratify the Convention, they agree to review their laws

relating to children. This involves assessing their social services,

legal, health and educational systems, as well as levels of funding for

these services. Governments are then obliged to take all necessary

steps to ensure that the minimum standards set by the Convention in

these areas are being met. They must help families protect children’s

rights and create an environment where they can grow and reach their

potential. In some instances, this may involve changing existing laws

 79

or creating new ones. Such legislative changes are not imposed, but

come about through the same process by which any law is created or

reformed within a country. (n.p.)

Article 41 of the Convention points out that when a country already has higher legal

standards than those seen in the Convention, the higher standards always prevail.

In the next phase, Munoo seeks escape. Fleeing from the hellish place, he

finds himself at a primitive pickle and jam factory in the feudal city of Daulatpur.

There too he is shocked to see poor labourers being ill-treated by Ganpat, one of the

partners of the factory. He sees in Ganpat, a true representative of the exploiting,

cruel capitalists, picking up a log of fuel wood to beat and rouse the tired, sleeping

labourer.’We need a log of wood to awaken a log of wood,’ said Ganpat (C 94).

Fortunately, Seth Prabha Dayal, the other partner in the factory, treats him kindly.

He is gentle towards the boy. He sees his own image in the boy when he recalls the

images of his own father and mother, who had died at Hamirpur during his absence

in the city of Daulatpur. Seth Prabha Dayal is introduced by Anand to show that all

capitalists are not bad and cruel. It is heartening to note that here are a few

capitalists with compassionate hearts even in the exploiting capitalistic system in the

society.

A clash between Prabha and Ganpat, his employers, dooms Munoo’s fate

and drives him to work as a coolie in the grain market and then in the vegetable

market. There, Munoo realises that there is a keen competition for earning bread.

One of the greatest misfortunes of the labour class is that inspite of willingness to

work, they get no work. Blood and sweat, indeed, are very cheap, and bread very

dear.
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The novel Coolie brings its child protagonist Munoo in contact with people

of various sections of Indian society. In the first phase, Munoo is with his Uncle at

Bilaspur. In the second phase he works as a domestic servant at Babu’s house at

Shamnagar. His tenure as a servant shatters his dreams. His escape from Babu’s

house lands him in subsequent troubles. In the third phase, Munoo happens to meet

Seth Prabhu Dayal who partly owns a pickle factory at Daulatpur. Munoo’s initial

contact with industry is Prabha’s pickle factory where:

It was a dark, evil life. He rose early at dawn before he had

his full sleep out, having gone to bed long after mid-night. He

descended to work in the factory, tired, heavy-lidded, hot and

limp, as if all the strength had gone out of his body and left

him a spineless ghost of his former self. (C 81)

Then a chance meeting with a kind-hearted elephant trainer in a circus helps Munoo

to reach Bombay in search of work. In Bombay, another meeting, this time with a

worker in a factory, Hari, helps him to get a job in Sir George White Cotton Mills.

Very soon he realises the truth of the statement – ‘the bigger the city is, the more

cruel it is to the sons of Adam’ – made by the elephant-driver while bidding him

adieu. Here too he toils and moils to earn his bread.

Anand observes the glaring contrast between wealthy merchants, wearing

starched muslin and poor coolies, wearing tattered clothes. The imposing bungalows

of the English residents look down upon the congested hovels in which the poor

coolies have to live. The foreman, Jimmi Thomas, cousin to Ganpat, rents out a

straw hut to Hari and Munoo. One has to lift the sack which hangs at the low

doorway, stoop and have a look at this hut – “the roof of the clumsy straw mats,

which drooped dangerously at the sides from the cracked beams supporting it in the
 81

middle, was not high enough for Munoo to stand in” Anand continues his

description of environs:

The mud floor was at a lower level than the pathway outside,

overgrown with grass which was nourished the inflow of rain

water. The cottage boasted not a window nor a chimney to let

in the air or light. . . . (C 202)

Anand shows how the unsanitary tenements provided by the employers make

the lives of the coolies miserable. He also describes the appalling working

conditions:

There was nowhere for the coolies working in the factories to

wash, except at a pump in the grounds at the back, among

huge drums of oils and bales of cotton, where a hundred men

crowd round to get a drink. There was nowhere to go for a

meal, not a canteen, nor a cook shop. . . . (C 215)

Hari’s little son grazes his right arm by ignorantly touching the belt of a machine.

There is no doctor at the mill to attend to him. The factory always gives the workers

the feeling of being shut in a cage. The workers always find the air there

suffocatingly hot. A queer smell of cotton and oil comes heavily upto their nostrills.

Jimmi Thomas, the foreman, demeans the poor coolies--Munoo, Hari and his family.

For the whole day’s job Thomas offers them all “. . . thirty rupees a month

altogether . . . ten for you, ten for that boy, five for your wife, two and a half each

for those children” (C 157).

Anand draws the attention to the various extortionate forces mercilessly ill-

treating the humble, poor coolies: foreman Jiy alias Chimta Sahib extracting regular

monthly commission from the poor coolies, always bullying them, standing by the
 82

door of the preparing-shed every morning to exact salutes and other forms of respect

from the coolies, Nadir Khan, the warder charging exorbitant rate of interest on the

money he lends to the needy coolies, a Sikh grocer beating poor Shabhu for asking a

greater (and fair) amount of money for his fowl, and a tall Pathan, showing off his

strength, threatening factory workers with loud abuses, demanding heavy interest on

the loans given to them. Even when the pay is doled out to the workers, many unjust

cuts are effected. While handing over the light pay-packet to Hari, the foreman says,

“Ten rupees you owe me in cash. A rupee interest on the loan. Three rupees rent on

the hut for one month. One rupee for repair of hut. Four rupees cut for damaged

cloth. . .” (C 234).

The exploited worker knows these phrases well from their long experience:

‘Loan interest, rent, damaged cloth!’ Though they resent them, they have learnt to

respect them. They accept the cut meekly, salute the foreman and withdraw. But

their sad faces tell the grim tale. Ratan, a wrestler worker, who defies the foreman,

has to pay a heavy price for lifting up his head – he is sacked.

Munoo, the sufferer-in-chief in, represents the exploited child of India.

Anand, an apostle of humanity, feels great sympathy for these eternally homeless

coolies who squat, moan and gossip, outside closed shops at night, pale and ghastly

under the glare of gas-lights. All the workers who hear of Ratan’s discharge

sympathize with him, but most of them are meek and docile. They only mumble a

conventional phrase: “Never mind, brother, this is the will of God”. The misery of

their lives has completely robbed them of all their energy. Sauda, an Anand persona,

addresses the workers thus: “Do not all the insults you people suffer rouse you from

apathy to which you have succumbed? . . . I tell you that they have ground you

down, they have fleeced and sweated you. . . “ (C 250).

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The coolies listen to him with rapt attention, sitting bent with their curved

spines. Sauda’s powerful speech descries the miseries of the coolies and workers.

Before the workers can implement their decision of going on strike, the mill goes on

short time. The announcement creates a chaos among the coolies. The coolies attend

the meeting addressed by the union leaders. The leaders seem to be interested in the

welfare of the labourers but there seems to be no homogeneity among them. But

before the strike commences, the capitalists succeed in diverting the fury of the

congregation into communal conflict, leading to a violent riot.

Munoo flees from the scene of communal hatred, gets involved in an

accident and finally reaches Simla as a servant of an Anglo-Indian Lady, Mrs.

Mainwaring. He pulls his mistress’s rickshaw, seeing the world of the upper class

society. He daydreams that he too could belong to this society. The hard work

corrodes his vitality. Eventually, he falls a prey to tuberculosis.

The novel establishes Anand as a revolutionary writer of his time. The vivid

account of the miseries of the coolies, beasts of burden, moves to pity. Saros

Cowasji aptly puts it: “He (Anand) certainly shows some of Dickens’ remarkable

facility for portraying slum life and to present a host of details to make his picture

convincing” (73). The faithful picture of the deplorable conditions under which the

coolies in the factory toil exposes the callous and cruel attitude of the exploiting

capitalists. Bakha, in Untouchable, suffers because of his lower place in the caste-

system, while Munoo suffers because of his lower place in the class-system. Coolie

is thus a story of waifs and strays, full of ambitions and hopes, crushed under the

wheels of capitalism. It is a story of the economic exploitation of the young child by

capitalism.
 84

Anand describes touchingly and convincingly the plight of the child – the

rejected, maltreated, explioted and cast away- -as one in perpetual conflict with

injustice and cruelty. This novel finds exploitation of the many by the few in full

swing at many levels: village, family, factory and mill. Prof. M. K. Naik rightly calls

Coolie ‘a tragic drama of exploitation’. This exploitation begins even from his

childhood. Thus Munoo is forced to reach a premature state of adulthood. He has to

discontinue his education due to poverty. The uneducated heroes, Bakha, Munoo

and Bikhu have passion for education which remains unfulfilled because of their low

social status. Anand holds the view that man is the master of his destiny and thus he

writes:

We put too much emphasis on the unknown fate and

prostrated ourselves towards the deity, under the guidance of

our priestly mentors. We enslaved ourselves in hierarchies,

under those who said they could renounce more and achieve

salvation by doing good deeds on our behalf. We became

bound in the cycles of Karma. (117)

This doctrine of Karma, the theory of inevitable consequence, has been used as an

instrument of exploitation by the clever privileged classes and limitless blind faith in

it has been the root-cause of the sufferings of the underdogs of the society. Anand

condemns the muddled society where life

. . . lay buried beneath the thick crust of mendacity and superstition,

of dogma and unreasoned belief, where knowledge had been

sedulously built up only in the interests of the few . . . in order to

avert a change of current social order. (112)

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In his creative writings Anand gives ample illustrations to show how the

theory of Karma, based on unreasoned belief, is cleverly built up by the upper orders

to maintain a firm hold on the lower sections of the society. He presents a picture of

many victims of the unknown fate, the Karma of good and bad deeds in the past. He

holds that human mind must emerge from the morass of fatalism into which it has

fallen. He therefore abhors those who maintain that everyone is born to his position

and has to accept his lot through the cycle of birth to rebirth. These people really

consign a large section of humanity to the inequities of hell on earth. The sufferers

lick their sores and use fatalistic phrases about the utter helplessness of their lot.

Anand wants these fatalists to get to grips with realities. He has boundless faith in

man in spite of all the adverse circumstances that keep him bogged in the mire.

The Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, the two upper castes in Hindu society, justify

their superiority by asserting that they have earned their position by good deeds of

multiple lives. Anand criticizes them for holding such unreasonable belief. He holds

that no man, irrespective of his caste or position in life, should be denied the

fundamental rights.

The lowly workers are equally the victims of fatalism. This is illustrated in

the attitude of Munoo. He is passive while society is active. He does not build his

own life. Life is built for him. He is too much bound to his low-caste status. So

brutality goes rather unquestioned. Munoo, unlike Bakha and Bikhu, accepts

everything abjectly, and yields to pressures. Content to be a slave, he submits to

injustice unquestioningly. His belief in Karma leads him to this unquestioning

submission to fate. He has inherited a traditional sense of inferiority. He is a true

representative of the oppressed sections of the society and gets accustomed to the
 86

sufferings and becomes fatalists. The novelist shows the illiterate coolies’ meek

submission to fatalism.

Child labour is a multidimensional problem. The factors primarily

responsible for it are poverty, caste tradition, size of the family, labour scarcity,

illiteracy, ignorance, unavailable schooling facilities etc. The low income of parents

which is not adequate to meet the basic needs of the family, force the children to

work and supplement the family income. Poverty is a common feature of devel-

oping countries wherein a considerable proportion of population lives below poverty

line. In the rural areas the people have to sell the labour of their children to eke out a

bare subsistence.

Besides poverty, one major factor, which has a strong relationship with child

labour is caste. If one compares the child with the caste structure of the country, it

would be evident that a comparatively higher proportion of Scheduled Caste chil-

dren work at a younger age for their own and their families. Lower caste children

tend to be pushed in to child labour because of their family’s poverty. The

combination of poverty and the lack of social security network is also responsible

for bonded child labour. Children are exploited, exposed to hazardous work con-

ditions and paid a pittance for their long hours of work. They are forced to leave

schooling, shouldering responsibilities far beyond their years. Despite planning

welfare programmes, legislation and administrative action in the past few decades, a

large majority of children continue to remain in distress and turmoil.

The focal point in all the five phases (Bilaspur, Sham Nagar, Daulatpur,

Bombay, Simla) is the innocence of Munoo pitted against the merciless society.

Anand’s prime concern is the issue of innocent children suffering in an immoral

world. At the same time Anand also underlines that poverty, illiteracy and
 87

innocence are the roots of his ruin. Munoo is underprivileged from the beginning

and remains so till the end of his life because society acts upon him, offers him a

rootless existence, keeps him under a perpetual threat and ruthlessly pushes him

towards his tragic end. Thus the novel is a tool to advocate the necessity of the child

rights.

If the end of coolie is compared with that of Untouchable, it can be

interpreted that the survival of the protagonist in Untouchable is in sharp contrast to

that of Coolie. Anand wants to show the comparative destructive power of the two

evils and suggests that one can survive the severity of caste but not that of money.

Anand has used his protagonist in most of the novels as his spokesperson but in

Coolie he uses a minor character as his spokesperson. Munoo, being a child of

fourteen serves as the writer’s mouthpiece. Anand instead uses a union leader Sarda

to give way to his views on the plight of the labourers. The expectation of the

workers from the owners of the factory are given in the charter. He tries to show the

difference between the rules and the realities. The charter says that the workers are

human beings and not machines. They should be saved from the clutches of the

money lenders. But exactly opposite things happen. Though there are laws against

such exploitation the rulers are always on the side of the exploiters. Though there is

a law against child labour, children are openly exploited in the capitalistic society.

When Anand was asked by Girija Priyadarshini in her interview with Anand in 1988

about the solution to the problem, Anand answered that labour problem can be

solved neither in the British capitalistic manner nor by resorting to communism. It

can be solved only by democratic socialism.

Untouchable and Coolie are powerful social tragedies of Bhaka and Munoo

respectively. Both are hounded by the cruel and inhuman social force around them.
 88

Anand universalises the individual tragedy of Bhaka and Munoo. Their love, pain ,

despair, and longings are traumatic. The literature of the colonised countries records

the imposition of the imported and imperial culture or a colonised. The drown

trodden had to endure the havoc created by the upper class people. The subalterns

desperately voice their plea for treating them also as humans. In his scathing attacks

and criticism on the society that crushes the individuals, Anand divulges the fact he

is equally a defender of human dignity and rights, and reformer of society.

 Chapter III

Treatment of Labour Rights in Two Leaves and a Bud and The Big Heart

From the historical perspective, Indian English Literature has passed through

several phases such as Indo-Anglian, Indo-English, Indian Writing in English and

recently Indian English Literature. Fiction is the genre by which Indian writers in

English have made their most significant contribution. It is undoubtedly the most

popular vehicle of transmission of Indian ideas to the wider English- speaking

world. It is assumed that Indian novel in English has its roots in the nineteenth

century realistic tradition of English novel. But with the passage of time the Indian

novel in English has become thoroughly Indian in terms of the themes and

techniques. The novelists of around 1930s grasped the social scene with an insight

into the human consciousness and who could interpret the real Indian world,

distinctive in treatment of issues in their fiction. Widely- read novelist Mulk Raj

Anand is interested in writing obviously about the lower class life. He is influenced

by Charles Dickens, H. G. Wells and Tolstoy in both form and characterization. He

follows the ancient Indian tradition of story-telling, but his approach towards themes

and events is that of a social realist. Therefore, his novels are the novels of protest

and social realism. Anand is influenced by the themes related to human predicament

such as protest against social and industrial evils, the status of women in India,

exploitation caused by caste system, class system and imperialism. As G. S . Balram

Gupta aptly says in his book Towards a Closer Understanding of Anand, Indo

English Literature: A Collection of Critical Essays

The moot point to be noted about Anand is that he has firmly

believed in the role of a writer as essentially a crusader in the cause

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of humanity: no hotch potch of vedanta’s, no hazy mysticism, but

inalienable faith in man. (115)

Anand’s early novels Two Leaves and a Bud (1940) and The Big Heart

(1942) justify this point. Anand has brought in them the lower class down trodden

people who form the majority of Indian society.

This present chapter analyses the problems of the treatment of labourers in

the two novels Two Leaves and a Bud and The Big Heart to fecundate how Anand’s

writings go straight to the heart of the problems of our time, the problems of human

sensibility in the present context of the tragedy of the modern man too. Anand

focused his attention on the suffering, misery and wretchedness of the poor as a

result of the exploitation by the moneyed people in the Indian society. Religious

hypocrisy, feudal system, east-west encounter, the place of women in the society,

superstition, poverty, hunger and exploitation are his common themes. In his novels

Two Leaves and a Bud and The Big Heart, he has focused on literary representation

of the culture of ill- treatment of the labourers by the dominant masters. Literature

has been and will continue to be the great promoter of a culture of human rights.

Two Leaves and a Bud, shares much with the publications of the 1940s’ in Britain

and United States which also deal with the down-trodden. Anand’s voice for the

exploited acquires greater momentum and stronger intensity in this novel. It is a

faithful record of inhuman behaviour and the exploitation of the poor peasant. The

locale of the novel is a tea-plantation in Assam to which Gangu, a poor Punjabi

peasant is lured by many promises. Gangu is compelled to work in unhygienic

conditions with starvation. After his wife’s death, Gangu’s life centres around his

daughter. When Reggie Hunt, the Assistant Manager of Tea Estate, tries to rape

Gangu’s daughter Gangu comes to her rescue but he is shot dead.

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The Big Heart (1945) is Anand’s last novel before independence. The fight

between the individual and the society is again presented in this novel. The

protagonist experiences the severity of all kinds. There is a fight between social

reality and fantasy. The protagonist Ananta in symbolizes the new upsurge in

opposition to orthodoxy. Ananta is a big revolutionary who stands against these

kinds of social issues in which a prevailing problem is dramatized through its effects

on the characters of the novel. The protest novel places an emphasis on the idea of

gradual social change, while the proletarian novel may emphasize revolution.

The proletarian novel, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica comes out

of the direct experience of working class life and is essentially an intended device of

revolution. Charles Dickens’ Hard Times though it is sympathetic towards the

workers who experience hardships is more concerned with the imposition of reform

from above than with revolution from within. In England during the 1830s and

1840s the social novel arose out of the social and political upheavals. This was in

many ways a reaction to rapid industrialization and the social, political and

economic issues associated with it; a means of commenting on the abuses of

government and industry and the suffering of the poor. Also, it was a means of

commenting on the suffering of the poor, who were not profiting from England’s

economic prosperity. To understand the origin of labour rights and its impact it is

important to discuss the industrial revolution in England.

The Industrial Revolution was a period from the eighteenth to the nineteenth

century. The major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transport, and

technology had a profound impact on the socio-economic and cultural activities in

the United Kingdom. Subsequently, it spread throughout Europe, North America,

and eventually all over the world. A new class of factory workers emerged in the
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world economy. There were many advances in agricultural techniques and

practices. They resulted in an increased supply of food and raw materials. Industrial

revolution increased production, efficiency and profits, and there was an increase in

commerce, foreign and domestic supply. It moved the people from the countryside

into rapidly expanding towns. A lot of disciplined indoor activities, was

commenced. Simultaneously, a sharp distinction arose between owners, employers

and managers on the one side and the workers on the other. The Industrial and

agricultural revolutions marked a new era in the history of human kind. The impact

of this change on society is obvious and enormous.

Life in the countryside of England depended on nature in many ways.

Farming was the primary livelihood of people. If the crops failed to provide

expected food, they had to starve. To begin with, cottage industry emerged. It was

an industry whose labour force consisted of family units or individuals working at

home with their own equipment. The cotton industry proved to be profitable for the

urban merchants. So the cottage industry was developed to take advantage of the

farmers’ free time and use it to produce quality textiles for a reasonable price. The

cottage industry helped the individual to prepare the country for the industrial

revolution. It enhanced the English economy through the increase of trade. So there

was an enormous expansion in Britain’s trade in overseas markets. Trade expansion

enabled the country to improve their economy. Britain had established an extensive

colonial empire and successfully excluded the other powers like Spain, Holland and

France from their markets. The growing demand for the British coals on these

markets gave an incitement to the British manufacturers. The mechanical inventions

of the eighteenth century were helpful in increasing the output of the product. It

fulfilled the changing needs of the society. But smaller farmers were forced out of
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rural lands by the owners. Agricultural revolution caused a lot of people to move to

the cities looking for jobs. Due to cotton industry, many people had gained

experience in small-scale textile manufacturing. Entrepreneurs began to invest in

business and opened up new factories. The successful merchants sold their products

throughout Britain and the rest of the world. Consequently labour forces emerged in

society.

The industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism from about 1750

destroyed the existing networks of social support. Individuals now had to sell their

labour on the labour markets at the prevailing market rate. These workers and their

families were completely dependent for their livelihood on the regular payment of

wages. Large numbers of labourers were frequently unemployed for long periods

without any form of insurance against the risks of work injuries, sickness or

unemployment. Families often ended up living in slums in unsanitary and im-

poverished conditions.

Social security is a fundamental right of labourers. In terms of social

security, the French Revolution made a beginning. The Declaration of the Rights of

Man and of the Citizen is a fundamental document of the French Revolution. The

declaration of “the rights of man and of citizens” by the French Constituent

Assembly on August 26, 1789, was one of the most significant events of the French

Revolution. It defined the individual and collective rights of all the estates of the

realm as universal. The Assembly believed that the rights of man were being

ignored and neglected. It believed the rights of man were natural, unalienable and

sacred. Some of those rights were freedom of religion, speech and press. The

declaration was a summary of the ideals and principles of the French Revolution. It

also justified the destruction of a government based upon absolutism and privilege.
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It offered a new vision of government in which natural rights replaced the will of the

king as the justification for authority. It would become the preamble to the

constitution in 1791.

When the French revolutionaries drew up the Declaration of the Rights of

Man and Citizen in August 1789, they aimed to topple the institutions surrounding

hereditary monarchy and establish new ones based on the principles of the

Enlightenment, a philosophical movement gathering steam in the eighteenth century.

The goal of the Enlightenment’s proponents was to apply the methods learned from

the scientific revolution to the problems of society. Further, it advocates

commitment to “reason” and “liberty.” Knowledge, its followers believed, could

only come from the careful study of actual conditions and the application of an

individual’s reason, not from religious inspiration or traditional beliefs. Liberty

meant freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom from unreasonable

government authority or power. Enlightenment writers, such as Voltaire,

Montesquieu, and Rousseau, influenced ordinary readers, politicians, and even

heads of states all over the Western world. The kings and queens consulted them,

government ministers joined their cause, and in the British North American

colonies, American revolutionaries put some of their ideas into practice which are

stated in the Declaration of Independence and the new Constitution of the United

States.

The enlightenment helped with the transition of France from an absolute to a

constitutional monarchy. The basic principle was that all men are born and remain

free and equal in rights. It guaranteed liberty, property, security and resistance to

oppression, to all citizens. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948

(UDHR) incorporates a number of components understood as labour rights such as

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prohibition of slavery and servitude; the right to freely choose work, equal pay for

equal work; decent remuneration for work performed; a dignified life for a worker

and his/her family; right to form and join trade unions; right to rest and have leisure,

reasonable limitations of working hours, as well as holidays with pay. Subsequently,

labour rights get separated into civil and political rights (International Covenant on

Civil and Political Rights, 1966), and as economic and social rights (International

Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966). According to Article 22

of the UDHR, every member of society has a right to social security.

Labour laws were pathetically absent in the beginning of the industrial

revolution in England in the eighteenth nearly nineteenth centuries onward. The

First World War and the revolutionary wave which swept over Russia and elsewhere

paved the way for the founding of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in

1919. There was a growing understanding that social justice, in particular by

improving labour conditions, was an essential precondition for universal peace. ILO

sought the promotion of social justice and internationally recognized human and

labour rights. ILO was founded in 1919 and it became the first specialized agency of

the UN in 1946. The ILO formulated international labour standards of basic labour

rights: freedom of association, the right to organize collective bargaining, abolition

of forced labour, equality of opportunity and treatment and other norms. It focused

on the entire spectrum of work related issues. The ILO is the only tripartite United

Nations agency.

The ILO has formulated international labour standards at various

conferences. It has played a significant role in promoting International Labour

Standards (ILS). In 1944, the conference of Philadelphia adopted the Declaration of

Philadelphia, which restated the fundamental aims and purposes of the ILO. It
 96

prescribes labour standards such as fair labour standards, minimum labour standards,

basic or core labour standards etc. Several factors have also been attributed to non-

observance of labour standards such as unfair trade and labour practice, state of

underdevelopment, absence of work place co-operation and so on .With a view to

improving labour conditions through the forum of several committees, the

International Labour Organization (ILO) passed the convention in June 1976. The

preamble of the last ACP-EEC (African Caribbean and Pacific States) convention

was signed at Lome in 1984. Besides, the world summit on social development held

at Copenhagen in March 1995 had tried to establish the basis for such a minimum

level of social protection by creating an international consensus on fundamental

minimum labour standards. Since its inception the ILO has adopted one hundred and

eighty one legally binding conventions and one hundred and eighty eight

recommendations aimed at improving labour standards across the globe. There are

eight core labour standards. Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to

Organize (1948), Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining (1949), Forced

Labour (1930), Abolition of Forced Labour (1959), Minimum Age (1973), Worst

Forms of Child Labour (1999), Equal Remuneration (1951), Discrimination (1958).

There are seven important conventions. (Convention No. 29, 87, 98, 100,

105, 111, and 138). These Conventions are also known as social clauses, labour

clauses, social concerns, etc. These are the instruments in the hands of ILO to

improve the living and working conditions of working class in the third world. The

ILO provides a tripartite arrangements between employers, workers and state to

legislate and execute the international labour standards in the member countries. The

international labour standards protect workers in various sectors. They include

freedom of association, equal pay for equal work, safe working conditions, abolition
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of forced labour and sex based discrimination, employment protection, provision of

social security, protection of migrant workers, and elimination of sexual harassment

of women at work places. These international labour standards were formulated and

few of them were amended by the ILO between 1919 and 1978 with a view to

protecting the material and moral interests of the workers.

India is a founder member of the ILO. India has ratified thirty seven of the

one hundred and eighty one conventions. The constitution of India upholds all the

fundamental principles envisaged in the seven core international labour standards.

Out of the seven core labour conventions, India has ratified three, they are (i) forced

labour No.29, (ii) equal remuneration No.100. and (iii) discrimination No.111.The

government of India has ratified some conventions such as hours of work industry

convention 1919, night work (women ) convention 1919 , minimum age convention

1919 , Right to Association ( Agricultural workers ), workmen’s compensation,1925

and Equal Remuneration convention1951, However, freedom of association and

right to collective bargaining (convention No.87 and 98 ) were not ratified by India

due to technical difficulties involving trade union rights for civil servants. Freedom

of Association is guaranteed as a fundamental right in the Indian constitution as the

Trade Union Act 1926 meets with part of the objectives of the convention.

The Indian Constitution upholds the principle of equality between men and

women. Laws have been enacted for fixing the hours and minimum wages of

labourers and to improve their living conditions. Various security schemes have

been framed. Besides, there are various labour laws, like Trade Union Act 1926, The

Minimum Wages Act 1948, Employees State Insurance Act 1948, Industrial

Disputes Act 1949, Industrial Disputes Decision Act 1955, Payment of Bonus Act

1955, Personal Injuries, (compensation insurance ) Act 1963, Maternity Benefits Act
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1967, Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition ) Act1970, Bonded Labour

Systems (Abolition ) Act 1976, Equal Remuneration Act 1976, Interstate Migrant

Workmen (Regulation of Employment ) Conditions of Service Act 1979, The Child

Labour (Prohibition and Regulation ) Act 1986, etc. However, these labour laws and

policies are applicable for workers in the organized sector only. What is the present

position of unorganized workers in India? Have they got basic rights of labour as per

labour standards? Have they been protected by various labour laws? What is the

status of migrant workers? These are main issues of unorganized workers. They

constitute ninety two percent of the total workforce in the country. As against this an

estimated eight percent of the labour force in India falls in the formal or organized

sector, which is protected by compressive labour laws covering Industrial Disputes,

unfair dismissal trade union rights, wage and working conditions, health insurance,

security schemes etc.

Literature emerges out of life and records people’s dreams ideas, hopes and

aspirations, failures and disappointments, motives and passions, and experiences and

observations. Over the years, literature has reflected the prevailing social issues of

each era. The proletarian trend in literature began in the early twentieth century, in

places such as Britain, the USSR, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, China and India.

Proletarian literature is literary writing by or about working-class people

with anti-capitalist or pro socialist themes. Proletarian literature emerged

internationally on the socialist and communist Left after the Russian Revolution. It

deals with every aspect of society from the standpoint of the working class,

presenting a complete picture of the class struggle and their aspirations. Workers

and intellectuals committed to highlighting labour issues, produced poems, plays,

novels and short stories on subjects related to the class struggle.

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Fiction provides the specific examples of social problems such as poverty,

appalling conditions in factories and mines, the plight of child labour, violence

against women, rising criminality, and epidemics because of overcrowding and poor

sanitation in cities.

A few literary works are directed at the middle class people in order to create

sympathy for the working class, and change their mind set. This kind of novel is

referred to as the ‘Condition of England Novel’. The phrase, the ‘condition of

England question’, was first used by Thomas Carlyle in Chartism (1839), and

‘condition of England novels sought to engage directly with the contemporary

social and political issues with a focus on the representation of class, gender and

labour as well as on social unrest and the growing antagonism between the rich and

the poor. A significant early example of this genre is Sybil, or The Two Nations, a

novel by Benjamin Disraeli. Disraeli is interested in dealing with the horrific

conditions in which the majority of England’s working classes lives. Another early

example of this social novel is Charles Kingsley’s Alton Locke (1849) which sets out

to expose the social injustice suffered by workers in the clothing trade as well as the

trials and tribulations of agricultural labourers. Social problems are also an

important concern in the novels of Charles Dickens. He pictures the poverty and

unhealthy living conditions associated with it, the exploitation of ordinary people by

money lenders, the corruption and incompetence of the legal system as well as of the

poor law.

Charles Dicken’s Hard Times (1854) is set in a small Midlands industrial

town. It particularly criticizes the effect of utilitarianism on the life of the working

class. There are many writers who heralded a touch of life and labouring conditions

of the working class, such as Ivan Vazor of Bulgaria, Garcia Lorca of Spain, Louis
 100

Aragon of France, Bertolt Brecht of Germany, Nazim Hikmet of Turkey, Pablo

Neruda of Chille and Vladimir Mayakovsky and Maxim Gorky of Russia. The wave

of Western proletarian literary tradition gradually came to India. It focuses on the

then prevailing social, economic and political upheaval of the country. Many Indian

writers were triggered by the spirit. Their novels and dramas throw light on the

working class. The regional writers started producing their literary creations in their

regional languages like Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi,

Punjabi, and Gujarati. But at the same time a large number of writers use the English

language to pen their thoughts.

The first ever novelist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is

Sarat Chandra Chatterjee. His novel Mahesh revolves around the life of a Muslim

tenant farmer under a Hindu Zamindar. It deals with the agrarian problems of rural

India. In Tamil, Kuruthippunal is a novel by Indira Parthasarathy. It is based on a

true carnage of 1967 in which forty two Harijans were burnt to death in a clash

between a landlord and the peasants. The novel probes agrarian problems and

untouchability. It exposes the stigma of social exclusion, inherent in the economic

engagements of dalits, who have always been at the lower strata of the labour

hierarchy. Pattabaki (Rental Arrears 1936) by K. Damodaran is a famous

agitational play originally in Malayalam but translated into most major Indian

languages. It deals with tenant farmers evicted by wrack-renting landlord. Godan

(1936) is a Hindi novel by Prem Chand. This novel explores the lives of farmers and

agricultural labourers in rural India. It successfully exhibits their pathetic life stuck

in utter poverty and helplessness. Kalicharan Pattnayak’s Rice (Bhata 1944) is a

play about the exploitation of tenant farmers in Orissa. Anand also belongs to

Proletarian writers.
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Anand’s Two Leaves and a Bud is based on an actual report of the racial or

imperial exploitation penetrated by the British rulers in the early period of their

regime. Mulk Raj Anand in his letter to J. F. Power says that he conceived this

novel as a poem in suffering. He also admits that it is the most bitter of his novels

but it is poetic. In the preface to the second edition of Two leaves and a Bud, Anand

recalls,

What I to say in it was deep in me from the days when I lived for a

while near plantation in Assam and visited Ceylon and saw the

inhumanity and barbarism prevalent there with the consequent

dehumanization of the colonials involved in the process… I would

say the descriptions in Two leaves and a Bud are comparative under

estimate. Only decent English men at home will not easily believe

that their representatives in the empire could be guilty of such

excesses as are familiar to most of the subject races. (qtd. in Geogre

71)

The title of the novel is taken from the refrain sung by the coolies while they

work on tea plantation.

I will make a good sheaf

plucking, plucking, plucking

Two leaves and a Bud

Two leaves and a Bud. (TLB 110)

The song is crisp and suggestive. Though the workers find a tilt and swing in

it, it throws light on the monotonous routine of the work. They sing it for relaxation

but uncover their own drabness. “The little hands clipped the leaves more eagerly

and more nervously, two leaves and a bud” (TLB 50).

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The novel is set in one of the tea estates, a symbol of colonial exploitation in

the British Empire situated on Assam hills in the north-east India. The entire drama

takes place on the tea-estate. Mulk Raj Anand’s novels focus on the basic conditions

in which man is living. Each one of his novels deals with a social problem. In Two

Leaves and a Bud (1937) the problem of the exploitation of indentured labour in tea

plantations,and the high-handedness and injustice of the White ruling class is

discussed. The Big Heart is about village artisans in South India in the early 1940s

whose livelihood is destroyed by the establishment of a factory producing copper

utensils. This chapter examines the violation of labour rights as presented in Two

Leaves and a Bud and The Big Heart.

The inhumanity of capitalism with colonialism has exploited the landless

peasant-labourers at a British-owned tea plantation in Assam. In the preface of Two

Leaves and a Bud, Anand says that his characters are real. The exploitation of the

labourers and poor forced him to write about them. As he says in the preface:

All these heroes, as the other men and women who had emerged in

my novels and short stories, were dear to me, because they were the

reflections of the real people I had known during my childhood and

youth. And I was repaying the debt of gratitude I owed them for

much of the inspiration they had given to me to mature into

manhood, when I began to interpret their lives in my writings. They

were not mere phantoms . . . they were the flesh of my flesh and

blood of my blood, and obsessed me in the way in which certain

human beings obsess an artist’s soul. And I was doing no

more than what a writer does when he seeks to interpret the truth

from the realities of life. (TLB vi)

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Plantation industry in India is an enduring legacy of the colonial period,

which was initiated in the early nineteenth century, with the establishment of

indigo plantations. Gradually several new commodities came to form the staple of

Indian exports in the nineteenth century. Tea plantations were established in

Assam in 1834 and rapidly grew in size and value to become the major exporting

industry of India. At its height, not less than a million workers were employed in

the tea plantations of Assam, Darjeeling, Bengal Dooars and in the Western Ghats

of South India. The labour force to these remote regions were imported over a long

distance and were employed under stipulated contractual provisions regulating

wages and working conditions under a severe work regime. The history of labour

relations that developed as a result of the incessant drive to increase production

under global economic pressures is a fascinating part of Indian labour history.

Many scholars argue that the plantation employment conditions provided a model

for development of the broader industrial relations regime in the colonial period.

By its sheer size and spread, plantations have deeply imprinted themselves

on the labour landscape of India and the patterns developed in the colonial period

continue to influence the structure of labour relations long after Independence even

with major changes in the pattern of ownership and various welfare measures of the

Government of India. A key feature of the plantation industry was the strict control

over the wage component as it formed a large part of the cost of production. This

was necessitated largely by the fluctuations in the international demand and

consequent price instability. These relations had direct effect on the living condition

of the largely immigrant labour force.

The novel Two Leaves and a Bud gives an impression that the exploitation in

the British-run Macpherson Tea Estate in Assam is an extension of the industrial

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exploitation of the English working class by the ruling classes in England of 1820s

and 1830s. Here the exploited are the Indian labourers. The novel exhibits the

social condition of labourers in pre-independent India. It deals with the suffering

and misery of the workers on the tea plantations of Assam. The labourers are

actually treated as indentured coolies and are subjected to a colonial, oppressive and

militaristic authority as though they are not even eligible to possess fundamental

establishments in India, owned and managed by colonial planters the product of

which was mainly for international consumption.

Tea is a labour oriented enterprise as it is agro-based. It requires labour at

every stage of its work -- clearance of jungle, making the land suitable for

plantation, work for the nursery, giving manure both in the nursery and in the

plantation area, spraying of pesticides, drain cutting, path making, plucking,

manufacturing and then finally dispatching it to different destinations. Hence labour

is the heart and soul of tea plantation. Without labour not a single tea plant can

survive. But unfortunately the life of the tea labourers is not as good as it should be

in Assam. A tea labourer hardly gets a chance to lead a good life. These estates are

located in interior places and this contributes to the backwardness and exploitation

of them by the tea planters. The workers devoid of the basic amenities of life live in

impoverishment and die in obscurity. The tea planters usually exploit the tea

pluckers in every possible way. Non-education, poverty, poor standard of living and

health facilities are the immutable problems in their life.

The novel begins with the tragic journey of Gangu, a landless peasant from

a village near Hoshiarpur in Punjab. He is compelled to leave his native place on

account of the loan his brother had taken from the money lender against their

ancestral land and the house. The tea estate agent Buta takes Gangu to the tea estate
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by creating an encouraging picture of the future. He moves to the naturally beautiful

Assam with his wife Sajani, with their daughter Leila and son Buddhu. This journey

has been arranged by Buta, the Sardar and tout of Macpherson Tea Estate, Assam.

While travelling in the train, Gangu thinks that “Life is a journey into the unknown”

(TLB 5). But the experiences of Gangu lead him ultimately towards an impending

doom. The conversation between Gangu and Buta about the rate of interest, the

sahib’s charge, made Gangu more suspicious about the life in the estate. Soon he

discovers that the promises made to him were all false. His only hope is to get a

piece of land that would ensure a decent and dignified living.

Gangu and his family reach the steaming valley of tea plantations. Anand

describes the sunrise on the Assam tea-plantations:

The morning mist had risen over the valley and evaporated with the

dazzling burst of sunlight. The air was still under the clear even sky.

The welter of leafage was tense beneath the world’s hollow cup.

There was a concentrated lull in the slow heart of the day, as if India

missed a heartbeat of the day, in the march of time. (TLB 12)

Gangu realizes that he is lured by the false promises of the agent. He begins

to experience “a vague perturbation in his soul”, “the ache of an unapprehended

doom” (TLB 12). On the tea estate De-la-Harve, the doctor visits the house of the

planter Charles-Craft Gook. He talks ironically and expresses his view about the

British rule in India. His view is that the British should allow the Indian to run their

own country. Gangu and his family are given a tiny tin hut to live in. They start

working under the supervision of Reggie Hunt, the assistant planter, a symbol of evil

and lust. Narain a coolie describes him rightly when he says “He is very Badmash

sahib and he has no consideration for any one’s mother or sister. He is openly living
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with three coolie women!” (TLB 42). They are provided a hut without any safety.

The hygienic conditions of the occupants are very poor. A tea plantation is like a

prison house. “The prison has no bars, but it is nevertheless an unbreakable jail”

(TLB 32). These labourers have left their native places and have come to the tea

plantations for the sake of livelihood. Anand remarks:

He had wished to believe that it was true that it was possible for a

man and woman to be companions in life and death together; whom

everyone had to face alone, but even in life, unfortunately, people

usually travelled very much by themselves, unless they accepted each

other. (TLB 2)

The estate labourers have always lived inside the plantations and housing has

been used as an effective means of enslavement of workers by the plantation

owners. Narain says that “the chowkidars go round at night with a lamp and open

every door to see if we are all at home. There used to be roll call every night before

I came” (TLB 38). The middle men are under human rights law, people have a right

to work under just and favourable conditions of work. Article 23 of the UDHR

states: “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment to just and

favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment”. This

article clearly assures the workers ‘just and favourable’ healthy and safe conditions

of work. Their working conditions should ensure their physical and psychological

safety. Article 6 (1) of the ICESCR provides clear support for Article 23 of the

UDHR through the following provision:

The states parties to the present covenant recognize the right to work,

which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his

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living by work. Which he freely chooses or accepts, and will take

appropriate steps to safeguard this right. (n. p.)

The intention of the right to work is to improve labourers’ lives. Also it

provides social security. The social security system ensures that people do not

starve to death and provides the minimal income required for life.

In pre-independent India, the British exploited the Indian labourers. They

were exploited by every superior. Narain briefs Gangu of the fate of coolies in the

estate: “Nobody knows what may or may not happen here, brother,” said Narain.

“Nobody’s mother or sister is safe in this place” (TLB 35).The right to work

includes a right to work in safe and healthy conditions. The plantation workers

often work in poor and unsafe conditions. They have no representation and their

rights are not acknowledged. The pay is very low.

After a week while going to the Bazaar, Gangu realizes that they are paid

less than what he used to get alone by working on the fields at his village. He

censures the white for the exploitation of the poor villages. Even at the Bazaar the

farmers are compelled to sell their products at cheap rates and buy the essential

commodities at high rates. Gangu returns with high fever. Gangu gets eight annas

for his whole family’s hard labour of one full week. But in his village, he alone

used to earn eight annas a day. Though the coolies work hard, they are paid barely

eight annas a day. Once in a week, they visit the market to buy essentials, where the

merchants sell things at an exorbitant rate that make things worse. The Constitution

of India envisages a just and humane society and accordingly gives place to the

concept of minimum wage in the Chapter on Directive Principles of State Policy.

The Minimum Wages Act, 1948 is based on Article 43 of the Constitution of India

which states,
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The State shall endeavour to secure by suitable legislation or

Economic organisation or in any other way to all workers,

agricultural, industrial or otherwise, work, a living wage

conditions of work ensuring a decent standard of life and full

enjoyment of leisure and social and cultural opportunities. (n.p.)

Gangu who dreamt of a house and land, was living in a tin-roofed shed and

little he got as possessions. Besides, the coolies were not provided with adequate

water supply and sanitation facilities which made them vulnerable to dreadful

diseases. He realizes that Bata has pulled him into an inescapable trap. So often

Gangu repeates the proverb:

Never believe a barber or a Brahmin, for the one arranges

marriages, and has to describe an ugly girl as a fairy, and

the other draws horoscopes; and must make the

evil stars appear the luckiest. (TLB 8)

Gangu ignorantly listens to the words of a selfish barbar, Buta Ram. Buta talks

about high wages and about the free land so on. Therefore The Minimum Wages

Act, 1948 was implemented. It aims at making provision for statutory fixation of

minimum rates.

Due to unhygienic conditions, cholera spreads in their locality. They are

further frightened by the news about the death toll of cholera. Gangu suffers from

malaria after a week of his arrival. He muttered as ‘I shouldn’t die’ he muttered

under his breath, till Leila is married, and Buddhu has grown up’ (TLB 83). As a

responsible father, he wants his son and daughter to settle down safely. His wife

who represents “the fast down village women whose life had been spent cleaning
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and washing and cooking and cleaning again” (TLB 36) is infected. The epidemic

of malaria spreads.

The families of British officers gathers in the club to talk about the epidemic,

Doctor John Dela Harve is the medical office. He comes with Doctor Chunilal.

Hunt insults Chunilal for his being a black doctor and orders the bearer to turn him

out. He embodies the racial superiority of the white. Other English officers Ralf,

Hitchcock and Twitee support him. But Harve is a different kind of man. He does

not hate Indians. He promptly visits Gangu’s hut. Anand describes his visit.

As he bent down to put the thermometer into Sajani’s mouth, her

eyes glared at him, lusterless and cold. He put his hand to her head,

groped for her pulse, sounded her heart. There was no answer.

“Dead”, he whispered and stood dumb and listless, exploring for a

ray of a light to illumine the darkness that enveloped his head.

(TLB 88)

The sanitary condition plays a key role in spreading cholera. The doctor asks

the manager Croft Cooke to take some precautionary measures. But the manager

remarks “These coolies are subhuman, and do not all together value the benefits of

hygiene” (TLB 29). Sajani dies of Cholera. Gangu is not in a position to dispose the

body because he does not have enough money for the funeral expenses. They are far

away from their land. He has no money to buy a red cloth to make a bamboo hearse.

As Gangu says:

Babuji, I promise to give you some of the money

which the sahib may give me if you talk to him in ‘angrezi’ and get

me the loan I want . . . my wife died last night. And I have been ill.

Take pity on me. (TLB 112)

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The attempt to get money goes in vain. But the farmers are bound to the middle

men by their debt. It is a never-ending cycle of poverty. The manager of the estate,

Croft Cook humiliates Gangu. As he exclaims angrily:

Get-out! Get-out! exclaimed Croft-Cooke, turning purple with rage,

and staring at the coolie. You bloody fool, get out! Get out! You have

been spreading infection all over the place! Didn’t you know that you

were under segregation? By whose orders did come here? (TLB 114)

Gangu goes to Bura Sahib to borrow money for the funeral of his wife. But due to

the fear of infection he orders Gangu to leave at once. Though he is the head of the

estate he has neither any plan to mitigate the sufferings of the coolies nor any

sympathy to understand their problems. Gangu borrows money from the baniya and

cremates his wife.

Tea plantations are characterized by a rigid hierarchy. The plantation is

divided into two classes: the Europeans and the coolies. Race relations and

hierarchies are also an engaging theme. Whereas Croft-Cooke and Reggie Hunt

represent the average English mentality of superior birth La Havre stands for the

other side of the British mentality of treating the Indians as equals. Sashi Bhushan

Bhattacharya and Chuni Lal exhibit the typical Indian mentality of inferiority

before the white master. The hierarchy is also reflected in a plantation culture

characterized by a strong sense of superiority and inferiority. The relationship

between a master and a servant is cruel. These tea estates are commercial

enterprises, not inclined to give top priority to welfare of the workers. As Naik

comments in Mulk Raj Anand : “The Indian labourer is just a piece of property, a

sub-human being with no rights and all duty, whose only utility is to be a serviceable

tool in the vast machine of the plantation” (47). John de la Havre, the medical
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officer; helps him for the funeral of Sajani. Gangu says that she has attained death

happily. C.D. Narasimhiah comments on his death: “Death has ceased to frighten

these poor, they are past all fright; it is life that is a threat, and death is a release”

(126).

One of the most remarkable features of tea plantations is the large number of

female workers. The feeding mothers leave their babies in cradle. When the mother

returns, her baby is in the dust. The women are not even allowed to feed their

children.

And they were really no trouble because they did not have to be left

at home. No sooner were they born than they could come with their

mother to the babies and sleep on the wayside. A whole gang of

suckling humanity lay there under the torrid sun upon the Mother

Earth. (TLB 188)

Women face the burden of responsibility for the housework and childcare in

addition to their employment. They rise before dawn to tend to their households and

then set out to spend all day labouring in the fields. The children of tea workers in

Assam suffer due to their parents’ low wages and miserable living conditions.

Health security is a major component of social security. Health security includes

health care facilities such as a dispensary, drainage, water supply and sanitation.

Women who are a major workforce in the estate continue to face increased

discrimination. Women labourers are physically exploited and molested.

Sexual exploitation is portrayed as a very common feature of the tea

plantation. Nobody’s mother or sister or even wife is safe on the tea estate. The

women coolies are compelled to work on the wages less than those of the male

coolies. They leave their children in the baskets while going to the tea gardens.
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When they return they find many of them lying in the dust or a drain or even dead

by the wayside. Motherhood seems to be a bane for the women because many

children die of malnutrition and lack of proper sanitary conditions. But they keep on

giving birth to the babies in order to increase hands to earn the living.

The women coolies are compelled to work as rigorously as male coolies.

The supervisors do not hesitate to punish women. The picture of a mother who is

chased to the work spot even while she is suckling her child shows how inhuman the

rulers are even towards women. The white compel the coolies to hand over their

wives and daughters to them for the sake of fun and frolic and many a time to satisfy

their sexual passion. Being the masters, they expect that their slaves should offer

their wives and daughters to them willingly.

Sometimes they bribe the poor husbands by ‘bashish’ to win their wives. If

they protest they use their guns to terrify them. In urban areas the British behave

like cunning imposters. But in the remote parts like the valley of Assam they behave

like wild animals. In such conditions labourers do not claim any labour rights and

not even raise either their voice against such exploitation by their masters. The

British officials do not believe these poor labourers. Croft-Cooke is a hard-hearted

business man. John De La Havre, a white man is a humanitarian. He is a physician

and unlike other whites, he always stands for the rights of coolies. He is insulted by

his fellow white man.

Anand pictures the violation of labour rights and physical molestation of

women. In tea plantation, sexual harassment is a serious problem because all the

higher officials are men. If the women labourers fail to satisfy their sexual needs,

they fake other charges and give them too much work. Reggie Hunt, the assistant

manager of the tea estate treats all labourers cruelly. A discontent spreads in the
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plantation because of Reggie Hunt’s brutal behaviour. Hunt succeeds in keeping the

wife of Sardar Niogi, the supervisor, as his mistress. Chambeli, a dark woman, ex-

mistress of Hunt, quarrels with the wife of Niogi. He lathicharges the coolies

gathered to watch the show. Hunt arrives on the spot and orders his supervisors to

attack the coolies. Supervisors beat the coolies so mercilessly that one among them

dies and a number of others are seriously injured. All of the coolies are provoked.

The angry but frightened group of coolies marches towards the office with Gangu as

their leader. But Hunt and Crock stop them on their way and compel them to return.

Gangu visits his neighbour Narain to express his wish to return home.

Narain makes him realize how impossible it is even to think about it. He convinces

Gangu and others that they have to settle there forever. Craft is disturbed with the

unrest among the coolies. He sends for arms and ammunition. The arrival of the

plane disturbs the agitators. They run helter-skelter to save themselves from the

possible air- raid. The doctor comes to help them but realizes that mutiny has been

crushed. He decides to leave India. His economic condition worsens with the

interest he has to pay to the Baniya.

Like most of the coolies and peasants, Gangu considers his exploitation as

one more reward for the misdeeds of his past life. But when the exploitations of all

sorts weigh heavier on his soul his faith shatters. Some critics say that it is the tragic

flaw in the character of Gangu. A peasant who is superstitious suddenly denies the

presence of god. But through the pessimistic words of Gangu, Anand shows the

strong impact of the colonial exploitation that crushes the faith in god among the

exploited people. Though Gangu is the central character, Anand does not make him

rebellious. He shows that courage leads the march of the labourers but ‘a tremor of

weakness travelled down his spine” (TLB 151). His instinct makes him lead the
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march but his experience makes him surrender to the exploiters. He cries, “Lord,

God, deliver me save me from the math of my enemies. My children are young and

my heart is weeping” (TLB 183).

In the end Gangu dies at the hand of the exploiter for no fault of his own.

However, he does not die the death of a hero. He on the contrary dies like one of the

millions of coolies who die of poverty, hunger and exploitation. An unexpected

untimely death of the hero creates anguish in the mind of the readers. The trial

which follows the murder of the hero creates intense anger against the colonial,

capitalist, exploiters, which seem to be the very aim of the novelist. If Gangu

embodies the inferiority of the ruled, Reggie Hunt, the assistant Manager embodies

the racial superiority of the ruler. He flosses the coolies almost regularly. He calls

Indians “craning black men diseased and rotten” (TLB 269). He tries to seduce

almost every woman on the plantation. The plantation can be called a symbol of

capitalistic exploitation. Narain, though an Indian as a leader ill-treats Gangu.

Though he leads the coolies he knows how futile their revolt against the ruler is.

As the central theme of the novel is colonial exploitation, Anand portrays

two types of characters; the rulers and the ruled. Most of the rulers are exploiters.

They cruel hearted businessmen. Most of the characters are life- like but somehow

the British persons represented here are not as true to reality as are the Indians.

However, not a single character is developed thoroughly. Most of the English

characters are shallow. Due to the absence of psychological insight into the Indian

characters they are also not so convincingly projected. The British characters are

always conscious of their power and racial superiority. There is somewhat a

uniform behavioural pattern in them throughout India.

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The Indian characters, on the contrary suffer meekly due to their inferiority

complex and they surrender to their rulers in order to save themselves from hunger.

The central character Gangu is a middle aged person who can be called a symbol of

all the coolies in the early stage of the British colonialism who are lured away from

their native places. As a victim of the feudal exploitation at the hands of the

landlord in his native place, he is brought into the valley of Assam. Here too he

becomes the victim of the colonial and capitalistic exploitation. Through Dr.Harwe’s

speech Anand expresses his views about the capitalist rule:

Why do these swarming, undernourished, bleary, worm eaten

millions of India suffer so? Is it because of the festering swamps of

the tropic breed disease and that they cannot check the tribulations of

destiny? Certainly it seemed to me so; at first that fate had here

conspired with the seasons to obliterate everything capriciously. And

it seemed an old civilization in decay. . . . There is lies the necessity

of revolution in this country. On the one hand, the vast masses,

prisoners of so many chairs, bearing the physical signs of grief of

lassitude even of death and on the other hand, the supercilious rich,

wrapped up in their self-assurance and complacency, never one

questioning the ideals of glory and power and wealth . . . (TLB 123-

124)

The theme of Anand’s earlier novels Coolie and of Two leaves and a Bud are

the same. By shifting the act of the colonial exploitation from the cotton mill in

Bombay to the tea plantation in Assam, by replacing innocent child Munoo by an

experienced middle aged man Gangu, replacing the foreman of the cotton mill by

the assistant planter of the tea-estate, Anand succeeds in making the point that with a
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slight difference in the quality and the quantity, the colonial and the capitalistic

exploitation is more or less the same everywhere in India. In fact the harassment of

the coolies in the tea plantation is more gruesome than that of the cotton mills of the

big cities. So Anand is more aggressive and bitter while attacking the dehumanizing

effects of colonialism and capitalism in Two Leaves and a Bud.

Gangu gets involved in the strife and is beaten when workers stage a

peaceful demonstration to get their grievances redressed. The army is called in to

repress them by show of force. Workers are not even free to leave the Estate job

once they are brought here by fraud. It turns into a virtual prison house where white

men forcibly molest workers’ wives and daughters. Hunt is always drunk and he

openly lives with three coolie women. He is fascinated by Leila’s “slim young body

defined by the narrow girth of her skirt and the fine stretch of her bodice, her whole

demeanor like a bird that would flutter in the hands of the shikari” (TLB 121). It

shows the lustful character of Raggie. He asks her to come to his Bungalow as if it

is his right. Leila knows about his lustful behaviour. Leila refuses and enters her

hut. Reggie follows and seduces her. Buddhu, her brother is frightened and shouts

to his father to rescue Leila. Gangu arrives and tries to save his daughter from

Reggie. Reggie tries to escape but out of fear and frustration, Reggie Hunt fires

Gangu resulting in the death of Gangu. The murder is followed by a trial which lasts

for three days. Mr.Justice Mowberley and a jury of seven European and two Indian

members find that Reggie Hunt was not guilty on the charge of murder. He is

acquitted of all charges.

The labourers are subjected to overwork, bondage, inclement weather and

gross violation of labour and human rights. They are deprived of their basic rights

as workers, they don’t have basic facilities. After Independence, seeing the pathetic
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condition of the plantation labour in the country, the Parliament of India passed the

Plantation Act, 1951 (PLA). Under this Act, the socio-economic development was

assigned to the tea management companies who employ the labour for their

production. It regulates the working and living conditions of these workers and

prescribes standards for housing, healthcare and education. The PLA lays down

rules regarding maximum working hours, overtime payments, child labour, paid

leave and sickness and maternity benefits. But in spite of Government rules and

regulations, still the majority of labourers are deprived of these basic rights. Anand

exposes the arrogant attitude of the capitalist society.

The Big Heart reveals the impact of industrialization, colonialism, caste,

creed and the problems of labourers. Anand fights for the betterment of labourers

through The Big Heart. Like other novels, this novel too exposes the burning social

problems of India to the world; so that the problems and sufferings of labourers

would force the authorities to uplift the society. Anand writes about the purpose of

this novel in Mulk Raj Anand: Author to Critic: Letters of Mulk Raj Anand to Saros

Cowasjee :

I wrote this novel at the end of World War II in London when the

machines of Western Civilization had nearly destroyed the world. I

was convinced that if India also went the same way, after freedom,

without controlling the machine, but allowed it to become instrument

of exploitation, when we would also produce the same horrors . . . . I

was thinking of Gandhi’s natural rejection of machine. I wanted to

show that though we can’t reject the machine altogether, we have to

control it, as a driver controls a railway engine. (121)

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The Big Heart brings about the disastrous socio-economic consequences of

the destruction of the traditional domestic industry by the local upcoming

industrialists. But they decisively wreck the Indian rural economic structure like the

British Manufacturers who invaded India. The British rule in India decimated

traditional unity of agriculture, spinning wheel and handloom with the introduction

of machines. Science and technology laid the foundation for India’s industrial

growth and development. Machine represents industrialization. Machines are

compared to monstrous animals and devils – ‘many headed, many armed chuckling

machine God’. It is ironical that in Untouchable Anand looks at machine as a

solution to the problem of caste conflict whereas in Two Leaves and a Bud and The

Big Heart he shows it as the cause of conflict. It becomes the tool of exploitation of

the working class. It eventually leads to sharpen the social stratification. Machines

are the ruthless means of exploitation of the poor by the rich. Anand wants to expose

all these social ills in The Big Heart as an appeal to the Indian society to have

universal brotherhood and respect the human values and rights.

The Big Heart presents the basic conflict between the traditional labourers

and the machines. It depicts a conflict between a class of artisans and a class of

capitalists. In this novel, Anand has attempted to give a whole social, economic and

political picture. It demonstrates both the positive and negative sides of modern

technology. The modern industrial mechanism brings a change in the quality of

social life. Like Untouchable, the novel narrates the events in the life of a

coppersmith in a single day. As Srinivasa Iyengar avers in his Indian Writing in

English , “A single day’s events are chronicled in the novel, but the tempo increases

steadily hour by hour and sparks in the air and there is rumbling thunder in the

confabulations and speeches” (233).

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Ananta, a coppersmith, returns to his hometown of Amritsar after having

worked in Bombay and Ahmedabad. Ananta is closely modelled after people Anand

had known in his childhood. He takes characters from contemporary life who have

been deprived of their rights by the oppressors. The novel begins:

Outwardly there is nothing to show that Kuchabillimaran in the

center of Amritsar has changed very much since the ‘age of truth’,

except that the shadow of the tall clock tower built by the British,

falls across it from two hundred yards away, and an electric bulb

glows flinty from a post fixed by the municipality in the middle of

the lane. But of course, a lot of water has trickled through its open

drains since the ‘age of truth’: the pure holy water (if it ever was

pure!) of the ceremonies of the ‘age of truth’ ; the dirty water of the

‘Middle Ages’; the slimy, asafoetida water of the ‘iron age’ and many

other waters besides. The fact about water, like time, is that it will

flow: it may get choked up with the rubbish and debris of broken

banks; it may be arrested in stagnant pools for long years; but it will

begin to flow again as soon as the sky pours down its blessing to

make up for what the other elements have sucked up; and it will keep

flowing, now slowly, now like a rushing stream. (BH 15)

The setting of the novel clearly exposes the conflict between the modern

world of industrialization and the conventional way of life. The industrialization

begins to change India dramatically. But this progressive era brought dramatic

changes to the nation’s economic, political and social sectors. As Anand describes it

realistically:
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It must be remembered; however that Billimaran is not a blind alley.

Apart from the usual mouth, which even a ‘cul-de-sac’ keeps open, it

has another which makes it really like a two-headed snake. With one

head, it looks towards the ancient market, where the beautiful copper,

brass, silver and bronze utensils made in the lane are sold by dealers

called Kaseras, hence called the Bazar Kaserian. With the other it

wriggles out towards the new Ironmongers’ Bazar, where screws and

bolts and nails and locks are sold and which merges into the Book-

seller’s mart, the cigarette shops and the Post Office replete with the

spirit of modern times. (BH 16-17)

The iron-mongers’ bazar represents the machine, while the bazaar Kaserian

typifies the conventional way of life. The items available in the bazaar Kaserian are

copper, brass, silver and bronze utensils. They are made by village artisans. They

are mainly used in kitchen. But the items sold in Iron-mongers’ Bazaar are full of

materials of sophistication. It evokes a frightening picture of handing down from

generation to generation, conventions, beliefs, habits and even superstition. It plays

a significant role in the advancement of humanity. Society is the base for tradition.

As society is dynamic, it undergoes change in course of time. As a result, tradition

is also modified. The spirit of reform and revolt gives way to modernity. So

acceptance of modernity is unavoidable.

In Amritsar, Anantha resumes his hereditary trade. He has difficulty in

making a living of his own. The introduction of the machine has thrown the artisans

out of work. Anatha is a man of tremendous physique endowed with endearing

qualities such as deep concern for human beings living in misery, starvation and

readiness to extend any help to them. He is convinced of the absolute need for unity
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and solidarity in order to combat suppression and exploitation of the poor

coppersmiths. He is ready to fight for the welfare of the labour. To fight against the

factory owners is not easy. The collective efforts and well organized trade unions

help to find the exploitation of labourers. As the protagonist of the novel, Anantha

tells his fellow labourers:

A living, heart-to-heart appropriation of “Vilayati fashions’ is what is

wanted. The coming of the machine in England, brothers, wrought as

much havoc there, a hundred years ago, as it is doing in Hindustan.

The bones of millions were ground to dust by machines. Women and

children were set to work for a few coppers, so Puran Singh Bhagat

tells me – Angrezi women and children, brothers. And there was such

hunger as we see in our Hindustan today. The men of property were

deaf to the cry of the victims of poverty. . . . But the working men of

Vilayar themselves took their destiny in their own hands and banded

themselves into the new brotherhood of unions. At first they were

persecuted and penalized by the employers. The men stuck together,

and struggled and struggled until today there are few working men

and women in factories who are not members of the union. They

bargain together for higher wages, shorter hours, against bad

conditions, for holidays with pay, and defend their rights by strike

action. . . (BH 200)

Anantha welcomes the machine. In 1928, Gandhi wrote in Young India:

“Mechanization is good when the hands are more hands than required for the work

as the case in India” (Sarasvathi 103). But Anand believes that mechanization and

industrialization may be used to enhance the standard of human life. He sings;

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This is the machine age, sons,

This is the machine age.

We are the men, who will master it,

We are the new men of the earth of

all the evil old ages! (BH 19)

Industrial development plays an important role in the economic growth of a

country. Technological changes and innovations are essential sources of structural

changes in the society. It is thus at the very centre of modern economic growth.

Economic growth is often essential for achieving a reduction in absolute poverty.

Ananta is compassionate towards the poor and the helpless. When he returns

from Bombay, he brings with him Janki a young widow. She is suffering from

tuberculosis at an advanced stage. He loves Janki breaking the conventional norms

of caste and religion. As Anand portrays him:

For the rogue and scoundrel that he was to the elders of the thathiar

community, he was the idol of the youth of the craft. Partly it was

the ‘contagious warmth exuded by his well-knit body, the rounded

proportions of a frame which seemed to combine a tiger’s fury with

the casual dignity of an animal who did not need to throw his weight

about. Also there was the air of the rebel about him, the man who

worshipped no god and feared no mortal and had travelled farther by

train than anyone else in the neighbourhood. And there was his large

expansive, generous manner the open; frank, hearty speech which

endeared him to those whose impulses were yet free from all

restraint. (BH 53)

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Therefore Ananta is a man with the big heart. He chooses to live with Janki who is

slowly dying of tuberculosis. Their relationship faces serious social disapproval.

But he tries to break down all the conventional norms of caste and religion.

Anand wants the Indian to learn lessons from England because

industrialization has brought a variety of manufactured goods and an improved

standard of living. It is better to accept the machines and enjoy its benefits. It may

give comfort and happiness. Ananta says;

When thathiars begin to handle the

machine, we shall soon show them!... we need

not to become slaves to the profiteers or the

machine. We are men. We will make a

Revolution. (BH 85)

He advises his fellow coppersmith. “I tell you the machine is in our midst

already, there! And we have got to decide to go and work it rather than sulk”

( BH 84).

Chaudhary Gokul Chand, the Chandri of utensil sellers’ community, sets up

a factory with the help of Lala Murli Dhar, the headman of the thathiar coppersmith

community. Thathiar and Kasera are the sub-castes in the community of

coppersmiths. This factory manufactures war tools. Many thathiars have been

rendered jobless because of the introduction of the machine. Ananta tries to gather

all the jobless coppersmiths into a union. So that they can demand their jobs. They

are thrown out of their hereditary profession. The machines deprive them of their

fundamental rights.

Ralia, a reactionary who opposes the advent of the machine age, mimics a

wild caricature of the movement of machines and raves, “Yes, may I rape the mother
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of the machines. . . . They roar and they spit” (BH 33). Ralia thinks that the

craftsmen will break under the heavy weight of these machines. He believes in his

dharma which says that ‘this Vilayati mixture of iron and leather is evil’ (BH 35).

He gives many reasons for rejecting the machine. Mahasha Hans Raj condemns the

‘machine – ridden India where they are threatened by those who want to reproduce

the conditions of the atheistic west.

Satyapal, a student leader, condemns the British government for flooding the

country with the instruments of destruction. He says “At first they brought railways,

telephones and telegrams. Now they are bringing that engine of death, the

aeroplane” (BH 37). He accuses the British government of doing all this for their

profits. He holds that Murli Dhar and Gokul Chand are the staunch supporters of

imperialism making parts of machines. He condemns Russia where the party in

power wants to mechanize the very soul of man to produce machine-men. Viroo

Mal too thinks that they will be strangled by these devil machines. The people are

afraid that the machines will spell doom. They say that the teaching of Mahatma

Gandhi is against the machines.

However, Ananta, ‘the machine man’, holds that it is no use blaming the

machines as the important question is who the master of those machines is. Janki,

Ananta’s beloved, is not sure whether those machines ‘The toys of Shaitan’ are not

to blame. Ananta refutes her statement saying:

You don’t understand that when one is married off to a girl and she

brings a bed in her dowry with her, one does not refuse the bedstead

because it is too high to get on to easily… Like the fashionable

Vilayati Bride, we have accepted, we ought to accept the dowry of

machines she has brought and make use of them, provided we keep
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our hearts and become the masters. Machines don’t think or feel, it is

Men who do. (BH 40)

Anand shows how the men in the town are torn between the uses of machine

– whether to hail its advent or to scrap it and go back to the age of the spinning

wheel. The bulk of men rooted in the womb of custom oppose it, while ‘big hearts’

like Ananta greets it with warm-heartedly. They wish to become masters of their

destiny. Ananta jocularly says that he wishes to persuade the Municipal Committee

to lay down gas pipes or electric power so that his beloved’s ‘green cat eyes could

be spared from the smoke in the oven’.

Ananta’s Marxist poet friend Sardar Puran Singh institutes a comparison

between Indian women, trapped in the airless kitchens of the old houses and the

women of Europe who have been released from the dark prisons. He says to Janki,

If you think of those things, you would prefer to use the gas or

electric cooker. . . . In fact if you know that there is an electric kettle

which boils water, I am sure you would have got our tea ready long

before the time it has taken you to light the fire. (BH 42)

Ananta knows that a revolution by a union will be the right option against the

capitalist. He pleads with the jobless coppersmiths for an organized action, so that

their rights will be recognized. The workers strike in front of the factory gate

demand work for them. Ananta is aware of the futility of violence. He alarms the

workers that revolution should not be a destructive force. The workers are frustrated

because their pleas do not reach the factory owners. They get lured by the words of

Sathyapal, a leader of student union and Prof. Mehjid. Ralia, a drunkard and friend

of Ananta. Relia starts to destroy everything. Ananta tries to stop him but in vain.

In the struggle. Ralia strikes Ananta’s head against a broken machine and kills him.
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The poet Puran Singh Bhagat says that the death of the old order and the birth of the

new for which Ananta has lived and died.

Industrialization is an effort to find solution to the problem of poverty.

Industrialization has given a modern society and factories to the working class.

Industrialization plays a vital role in the economic development of an under-

developed country. The historical facts reveal that all the developed countries of the

world broke the vicious circle of under-development by industrialization.

Industrialization makes possible the optimum utilization of the scarce resources of

the country. It helps in increasing the quantity and quality of various kinds of

manufactured goods. Industrialization helps in increasing the value of output per

worker. The income of the labour due to higher productivity increases. The rise in

income raises the living standard of the people. Industrialization is the best way of

providing economic stability to the country and it brings structural changes in the

pattern of foreign trade of the country. It helps in increasing the export of

manufactured goods and thus earns foreign exchange. It stimulates progress in other

sectors of the economy. A development of one industry leads to the development

and expansion of other industries. Industrialization provides increased employment

opportunities in small and large scale industries.

In an agrarian economy, industry absorbs underemployed and unemployed

workers of agricultural sector and thereby increases the income of the community.

Industrialization promotes specialization of labour. The division of work increases

the marginal value product of labour. Industrialization provides machinery like

tractors, thrashers, harvesters, bulldozers, aerial spray etc, to be used in the farm

sector. The increased use of modern inputs has increased the yield of crops per

hectare. The increase in the income of the farmers has given a boost to the economic
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development in the country. The industrial activity is easy to control compared with

agricultural. The industrial production can be expanded or cut down according to the

cost price and demand of the product. Industrialization provides larger scope for on

the job training and technological progress. The use of advanced technology

increases the scale of production, reduces cost of production, improves quality of the

product and helps in widening of the market. Industrialization increases the income

of the workers. It enhances their capacity to save. The voluntary savings stimulate

industrial growth and by cumulative effect lead to further expansion of industry. If a

country is industrialized, it can manufacture arms and ammunition necessary for the

defence of the country. A nation which depends on other countries for the supply of

ammunition will eventually suffer and may face defeat. With the development of

industries the market for raw materials and finished goods widens in the country. All

these abound in Mulk Raj Anand’s The Big Heart.

The Big Heart is a fictional articulation on labour rights. During the

Industrial Revolution, strikes became a common phenomenon. A strike usually takes

place in response to employees’ grievances. Many artisans are rendered jobless

because of the machine. Due to industrialism, the old order becomes obsolete in a

country like India. It may oppress the workers. It is necessity for the progress and

prosperity of the nation. To avoid exploitation of workers, it is better to have well-

organized trade unions. The unions should fight for the welfare of the labour force.

Labour’s right to strike is traditionally viewed as a right. The big-hearted Ananta’s

sacrifice enlightened the value of revolution to the fellow artisans. A sense of

solidarity and fraternity can come only through a knowledge of labour rights.

Two leaves and a Bud is also an articulation of the absence of labour rights

which destroys families of coolies. In this novel the protagonist is not rebellious but
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is given courage to lead the march of labourers. Labour and human rights violations

have been extensively documented through the novel Two Leaves and a Bud.

Exploitation and oppression are the ruling forces here. As Premila Paul observes in

The Novel of Mulk Raj Anand: A Thematic Study

When Munoo is abused by the shopkeeper his feeling is hurt, but yet

he is excited over ‘The wonder of city’. But Gangu is more mature:

he understands the insult involved in the beating of the coolies, how

it hurts their self-respect and sense of dignity besides lacerating their

backs. (35)

Though his instincts make him lead the march his experience makes him surrender

to the exploiters. Through the novels Anand shows that the capitalistic exploitation

of labourers has become more dominant than the caste system in the Indian society.

Though the capitalists profit by millions of rupees through the tea plantations they

do not provide even the basic amenities to the workers. Anand shows the cruelty of

the estate owners through the stories of the coolies in the tea plantation. They do not

hesitate to kill those who try to escape from their prison-like place. They do not

permit the coolies to form their trade unions. Neither do they allow the leaders of

the trade union outside to visit the tea estates. They do not allow reporters to enter

so that their partiality could not be revealed. When Anand was criticized for

exaggerating the colonial exploitation in the Assam tea estates, Saros Cowasjee

defended him by stating that most of the facts are based on the Report of Royal

Commission of Labour and of course, he has minimized the brutalities of the

English planters and the hardship of the labourers. Anand used the Report of Royal

Commission of Labour as a launching pad to register his strong protest against the

violation of labour rights and the result is the creation of these two novels.
 Chapter -IV

Women’s Rights in The Old Woman and the Cow and Seven Summers

A society that is unable to respect; protect and nurture its

women and children loses its moral moorings and runs

adrift. (The Hindu – Opinion Sept. 15, 2012)

Women are often the subject of literary works, seen as an object to behold or

an earthly link to God. However, early British literature, the image of women is

raised from political peace keeper to anti-beauty. The importance of female

characters extends past the physical beauty and sexuality of the sex, and literature

presents women as symbols of power, strength and godliness personified. However,

throughout the Middle Ages, their image is also associated with superficiality and

temptation; a majority of male writers portray women in the role of man’s downfall,

as seen in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Several of William Shakespeare’s sonnets and

plays redirect the focus of the female character as an anti-beauty, a parody of

societal norms and the cause of the downfall of man. In the old English Tradition,

women are seen as either dutiful woman or angelic creatures from heaven.

The female image is further marred in the works of William Shakespeare, as

he too portrays his women as temptations, week and powerless. Within his plays,

the female form is frail and weak, as in Hamlet; or manipulative and ambitious as in

Macbeth. Yet they are romantic and innocent, like Ophelia and Juliet, but easily led

astray by their emotional desires. In the framework of his sonnets, the female form

is parodied and masked. Shakespeare makes light of the perfection that is insisted

upon by his contemporaries and of the ideals that are held within the court of Queen

Elizabeth.
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Historically, women are categorized as servants of men, simply to be seen

and not heard, but in literature, the women excel their historical counterparts and

blaze trails for females to follow.

Since early times women have been uniquely viewed as a creative source of

human life. However, historically they have been considered not only intellectually

inferior to men but also a major source of temptation and evil. In Greek Mythology

Pandora was the first female person ever created by the Greek gods. Zeus, the King

of the gods, ordered Hephaestus, the blacksmith, to create a female human form out

of earth and water and to make her look as beautiful as the gods. All Olympian gods

contributed to the creation of her appearance and personality, both in positive and

negative ways. But it was this woman, Pandora, who opened the forbidden box and

brought plagues and unhappiness to mankind. Pandora was the source of all human

ills and misfortunes. The Greeks regarded woman as a sub-human creature whose

rank in society was in every way inferior to that of man.

Romans were the next to achieve glory and greatness after the Greeks. The

Romans’ social traditions recognized man as the chief of the family unit, possessing

full authority and power over the members of his family. So much so that he could

take the life of his wife. The Roman concept about the position of the woman

underwent a serious change. Rules and regulations, governing marriage and divorce

and the structure of the family system gradually changed. But the Roman women

became economically independent. Early Roman law described women as children,

forever inferior to men. Christian theology too perpetuated these views. Their basic

doctrine was that woman was the mother of sin and root cause of all evils. She was

the primary cause of stimulating man towards sin and corruption and thus led him to

hell and all human ills and troubles emanated from her.
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The colonial rule, patriarchal practices and traditions enhance the ideology of

female subordination which has resulted in the rise of ‘feminism’ in 1960s. The

central theme, therefore, is the emergence of ‘new woman’ in the fast changing

social milieu. As a result, the marginalization, insecurity, and segregation

experienced by women have been effectively depicted in fiction. Writers have

explored the emotional world of women, the problems of adjustment, depression,

hopelessness and anxieties in their novels. Their basic concern is with the issue of

women’s liberation. It seems that the Indian women novelists have taken up the

demand for the equality in the enjoyment of all fundamental human rights -- moral,

religious, political, educational, legal and economic. They generally centre in

family relationships, particularly the marital relationships. As the champions of

feminism, they all advocate feminism as is rightly said by Naresh K. Jain in his book

Women in Indo-Anglican Fiction: Tradition and Modernity: “The women characters

in Indo-Anglian novels coped with change in their lives and with the rival pull of

tradition and modernity in their search for identity, independence, fulfilment and

love whether within marriage or outside it” (9).

If a woman has to establish a true identity of her own, she must comply with

the economic, socio-political and cultural barriers imposed upon her by various

forces since time immemorial. They must attempt to redefine the dominant

patriarchal values in the Indian society. In this male-dominated society, women

from their child hood are made to learn how to compromise and adjust with

secondary role. Adolescent stage makes them think that their desires will be

fulfilled in their marriages for they look at marriage as a solution to their problems.

But in reality, marriage shatters all their dreams and they suffer miserably in their

marital life. Sometimes, they are in a dilemma, this confusing situation compels
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them sometimes, they take up a bold step of understanding the married home which

is a major deviation from the established traditional norms. The writers portray the

different aspects of women’s life: from their traditional, subjugated and

marginalized to the extremely modern and liberated. The variety of women depicted

in their writings brings out the different ways in which these women are subjugated

to male hegemony. The novelists also show the types of protests registered by these

women against male-domination. The traditional Indian women, in spite of feeling

hopeless and suffocated, try to adjust themselves to the social system prescribed by

the male-dominated society and its milieu.

In Indian society, woman occupies a vital position. Many historians claim

that women enjoyed an equal status with men in ancient India. It is said that women

were educated, had a say in family matters, took important decisions in family and

were free to choose their own husbands. The ancient system of “Swayamvara” is

mentioned in Holy Scriptures and also in many epics. A woman in ancient India was

respected and was given due importance in the society. The Vedas glorified woman

as the mother; the creator, one who gives life and worshipped her as Goddess. Much

of the ideal role of women can be ascertained from the images of a maiden and bride

in the Rig Veda. A daughter and maiden were praised for the characteristics of

beauty, radiance, appealing adornment, sweet odours, ample hips, and broad thighs.

This description suggests interest in feminine sensuality, child-bearing capacity of

the young girl. At festival gatherings, young virgins met eligible men, with

flirtatious coupling after initiating a relationship. They then turned to their parents

for approval and marriage arrangements were made. To be a virgin bride was of

paramount importance. Practical advice was given to the new bride such as not to be

angry or hostile to her husband, to be tender, amiable, glorious, and mother of sons.
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A woman’s role as outlined in Hinduism at this time was to be a good wife so that

the gods and goddesses would respond to the couple’s requests and needs. The

Laws of Manu, India’s most famous early legal code, was compiled over the years

between B.C.200 – B.C.400. While the position of women in early Vedic India had

been good, these laws illustrate the efforts of the Brahmin elite to restrict women’s

legal independence.

The patriarchal system prevailed in the religious rituals. The Indians

practised a form of ancestor worship, whereby the oldest male was responsible for

conducting the rites on a regular basis at home. It was the eldest son’s responsibility

to light his parents’ funeral pyre. Women could not serve as Brahmin priests or

study the sacred Vedas. Courtesans and prostitutes were part of ancient Indian

society. Later on prostitutes came from a certain caste. As Hinduism developed,

certain facets became dominant: the caste system, karma, dharma, and reincarnation.

India’s caste system has four main classes: Brahma, kshatriya, vaishya, and shudra

and women were represented in all of them. Caste determined whom people could

associate with, and who they could marry. It determined even their diet. In certain

cases a man was allowed to marry a woman of a lower caste, but a woman should

not do such a thing without disgracing her family and defiling herself. The early

Hindu society believed that a man or woman would be reborn as a woman if he or

she did not do enough good in their life time or if they did not do their duty or karma

in a proper manner. Such was the inferior status of woman in the early society.

The freedom given to woman was curtailed gradually and she was not

allowed to voice her opinions in all matters in society. Polygamy began to increase

and child marriage came into practice. Daughters were considered to be a burden

and they were reduced to doing the chores of household. Sati, an ancient practice in
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which a widow had to lie beside her husband’s pyre, and be burnt to death came into

vogue. Women were tortured and humiliated and their condition degraded. The

woman found herself totally suppressed and subjugated in a patriarchal society.

Wifehood and motherhood were regarded as women’s most significant professions.

Thus the status of women in India has seen many ups and downs. In the Vedic Age

B.C.1500- B.C. 1000, they were worshipped as goddesses. In the Muslim age 1026-

1756 AD, their status suffered a sharp decline and in the British regime they were

looked down upon as ‘slaves of slaves’. In the era of globalization and

modernization the present trends of crimes against women is on the increase.

Woman was always looked down upon morally as well as socially and she had no

legal rights. Throughout the history, women generally have had fewer legal rights

and opportunities than men.

The present chapter examines the treatment of women rights in Mulk Raj

Anand’s The Old Woman and the Cow and his other novels .The emphasis on the

image of woman portrayed in his novels.

Indian literature in English came to be written when India was engulfed by

innumerable social, political and religious evils. The nation was under the

suppressing yoke of foreign rule. The British rulers subjected the poor Indian to

slavish, subhuman existence. The rigid class and caste structure of India also caused

intolerable sufferings to people. The exigencies of the situation demanded an

exposure of these evils and agitation against them.

The novelists are primarily concerned with the predicament of the Indian

women who are subjected to physical and psychological torture in a male-dominated

society. The novelists have exploited their skills in projecting convincingly the

agonized mind of the woman. Their keen observation of the life of the Indian
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women and their interest in the study of their inner mind are evidenced by their

vivid portrayal of their plight. They focus on the existential predicament and the

journey of the subdued women in a male- dominated society governed by rigid

traditions and restrictions. Most of the Indian women living in an orthodox family

feel inhabited to raise their voice against the aggressive dominance of the male

persons owing to their inferior position made to feel by the rigid code of conduct

imposed upon them. Since India has been a tradition-bound nation, its women are

also shackled by numerous social and religious customs and conventions that bind

them incarcerated behind the curtain.

Common images of the woman appear in various literatures of the world.

Woman as mother-protector, woman as inspirer and cherisher, woman as the

motivating primal force – Shakti protecting good and destroying evil – woman as

the chaste, suffering wife, woman as charmer --are some of the facets frequently

depicted in literatures. The image of woman in Anglo Indian novel is complex and

multifaceted. The view about Indian women is biased by racial and imperialistic

prejudices. Indo-Anglian fiction was the inevitable outcome of the Indian exposure

to western culture and art forms like the novel. Indo-Anglian as well as Indian

novels reveal a struggle of the Indians to coordinate the divergent cultures of the

East and the West in the image of the woman. Sexually, she is shown as the

protagonist of the novel. Indo-Anglian fiction reflects how a girl is unwelcome in

the family and explores the reasons behind the traditional view. The same

movement towards realism shows up in Indo Anglian fiction with Mulk Raj Anand,

Raja Rao, R.K.Narayan, Kamala Markandaya, and others, who turned their

attention to the realistic problems of the poor people particularly, the treatment of

women.
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Mulk Raj Anand’s contribution to the Indian English fiction of social realism

is incontrovertibly great. His perspective of the Indian society is unparalleled by

any other Indian English novelist. His depiction of north Indian rural and feudal

society especially that of Punjab is authentic and historically true. He is appreciated

for the creation of a number of character types which are indigenous to Indian

society. The subtle transition of Indian society in all its dimensions from decade to

decade in the early part of the twentieth century has been captured by Mulk Raj

Anand microscopically and beautifully. As a champion of the down trodden, he has

always articulated his sympathy for the oppressed women. There is a reason to

depict the life of a rural Indian woman whose tragedy is multi-dimensional and

therefore, deserves artistic depiction by a masterly mind.

The woman in Mulk Raj Anand’s work is an important part at its core.

Anand shows how motherhood bestows a peculiar dignity on woman. Though

woman is suppressed in India, Mulk Raj Anand is aware of her dormant capacities

which are seen in some of his women characters. Woman, according to Anand’s

humanism, deserves to be treated on an equal footing with man. Woman can no

longer be considered a mere child- breeding machine, never to be allowed to stay

out of the four walls of home. In fact it needs to be recognized that woman is as

important as man in the social reconstruction.

Anand’s best novel Untouchable provides valuable insight into the life of

the girl Sohini. Though Bakha is at the core of the novel and Sohini is viewed from

the outside, she comes off very much alive. She appears meek, patient and

courageous even more than her brother, and she does not lose her composure in the

midst of squalor and her father’s carpings. She has to suffer insults from morning to

night. She listens silently to her father’s carping at home as she lights the fire,
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sweeps, makes tea and clears the hut. When Sohini goes to sweep the temple port

yard, a priest tries to molest her. But at her denial he starts shouting “polluted!

Polluted!”. Sohini is a lower class woman, that is why she always suffers insults and

taunts.

Anand’s next novel Coolie portrays Laxmi, the wife of Hari, a coolie who

lives in subhuman surroundings, but she stands by her husband in the face of

extreme poverty and hardship without questioning him. Anand says of Lakshmi:

And whether she was still too innocent of suffering or whether her

inherited springs of energy kindled her body, there was a gambling

light in theory, black eyes that matched the rich brown of her checks,

enhanced by the little gold point of the ring in her small nose, and

there was a naïve, fearless smile on her – parted lips. . . . (208)

Mrs.Mainwaring in Coolie an Anglo-India lady is abnormally conscious of her

‘dusky hue’ as is obsessed with the longing to become ‘pukka’ English and is torn

between the fear of sin and the fascination that sex held for her. She flirts with the

servant boy Munoo too. She wonders, “Why didn’t the world understand . . . how a

woman gives herself in love, in hate, in pity, in tenderness, in playfulness and in a

hundred different mode? What right had people to judge one?” (293).

Anand has stressed the pitiable condition of the woman Janki in The Big

Heart who is a widow, then Ananta’s mistress. After the death of her elderly

husband, the society expects her to be dead to all impulses and live only to worship

the memory of him. Fortunately she meets Ananta who cares her with great

devotion in spite of ‘the insidious tuberculosis’. Janki continues Ananta’s mission

after his death. Janki is impressed by the ‘spiritual guide and mentor’ Paran Singh’s

talk. She accepts the remaining part of her life as a challenge and sets out to sant
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Harnam to live with and for others and to organize women comrades for a

revolutionary life. The enormity of the wrongs she has suffered does not bow her

down.

In short Mulk Raj Anand combines the reality with the ideal in his

presentation of a downtrodden woman. In Anand’s novels, woman is shown as the

victim of the economic and social oppressive forces which relegate her to a

subordinate position in society. In order to comprehend the treatment of women

rights in his novels, it is important to discuss the women rights and women

emancipation.

The concept of women’s rights came into being when some individuals

began to experience a chronic imbalance in gender relations and to realize that the

unequal power – sharing between men and women is not actually an innate fact of

life or an in controvertible given but rather a viciously created situation, an evil

construct. At times – especially in the early stage – the resistance is spontaneous

and radical. But in course of time, the victim of discrimination is able to carefully

formulate a definite methodology for the restoration of equal rights.

When we talk of women’s rights or any other rights, we cannot exclude

certain terms and concepts that are specifically associated with them. In the field of

literature we cannot take into consideration the dichotomous archetypal stereotypes

that have worked against women – the anger or Madonna versus the virago or

monster – or the dichotomous stereotypes that have categorized men constituting the

centre and women merely forming the margin of an essentially patriarchal social

structure. We cannot ignore the clichéd binaries that have characterized the

depiction of the male and the female as the self and the other; as the active and the

passive entitles, as the reasonable and the passionate beings and so on.
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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) affirms that all human

beings are born with equal rights. The charter of the UN, which was adopted in 1945

by 51 states, provides the foundation of the international human rights system. Both

the charter and the UDHR that was subsequently drawn up recognize that all human

beings have human rights for the simple reason of being a human. The charter

forbids discrimination on the basis of race, sex, language or religion. The UDHR

lays down that everyone is entitled to enjoy all the rights and freedoms set forth in

this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, including sex. The Declaration

speaks purposefully to all human beings, when it holds in Article1 that all human

beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Men and women should be able

to enjoy their human rights on an equal basis. The Universal Declaration of Human

Rights, 1948 proclaims ‘it applies to all human beings unconditionally without

distinction or any kind such as race, colour, sex, language or other status’

(UDHR.1948, Article 2)

Articles 22 to 27 of the Declaration deal with the right to social security,

right to work, right to equal pay for equal work, right to just, and favourable

remuneration, right to form trade unions, right to rest and leisure, right to adequate

standards of living and well-being of the family, the right to education etc.

Women’s rights are the economic, social and cultural freedoms to which all

women are entitled. For women to realize their rights, they must have equal access

to resources and opportunities and equal treatment in economic and social life. In

many parts of the world, women are not treated on an equal basis with men and are

denied their basic freedoms because they are women. The worth of a civilization can

be judged only from the position that it gives to women. Women constitute half of

the global population, but they are placed at various disadvantageous positions due
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to gender difference and bias. They have been the victims of violence and

exploitation by the male-dominated society all over the world. There is a

uniqueness in exploring the women and their position in society. Therefore

women’s rights need to be spelled out as a separate category.

The women’s rights are natural and inherent. There is a struggle to protect

and promote women’s rights. This struggle is as old as human civilization. The

women’s rights emerged as a distinct aspect of human rights during the international

women’s movements of the 1918s. Two important international women’s rights

documents are now used as tools to protect women. One is the Convention for the

Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, came into force in 1981).

The second treaty is the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women

(UN Resolution 1993).

The recognition and protection of rights of women became an international

concern when the UN General Assembly adopted the convention on the Elimination

of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. This is a landmark international

agreement that affirms principles of fundamental human rights and equality for

women around the world. It defines discrimination against women on a universal

basis, forming an important bill of rights for women worldwide. It paves the way

for women’s participation in political economic and social life. It is also the only

human rights treaty which affirms the reproductive rights of women, and targets

culture and tradition as influential forces shaping gender roles and family relations.

It leads women to contribute fully towards the creation of a better world – to live a

life free from violence and discrimination to be educated, to work, to be healthy, and

to participate in public life. It is an important tool for countries to use in realizing

the potential of women.

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The convention was adopted by UN General Assembly and this charter of

the United Nations reaffirms faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and

worth of the human person and in the equal rights of women. All distinctions,

restrictions and exclusions impairing or nullifying the enjoyment and exercise by

women of human rights and fundamental freedoms are prohibited by the convention

on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, 1979. It also

requires the member states to abolish all customs, traditions and religious practices

that discriminate against women. Thus CEDAW seeks to uphold and strengthen a

range of women’s rights.

Violence against women has become a matter of concern for the

international community. Violence within the community includes rape, sexual

harassment, sexual abuse and intimidation at workplace offices, companies,

trafficking in women, forced prostitution etc. The main cause of violence against

women is women’s powerlessness and unawareness of their rights and the

traditional attitudes of the society that assigns a lower status to women. The

Convention on the Suppression of Traffic in Women 1949, Declaration of the

General Assembly on Violence Against Women, the Vienna Declaration 1993, the

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women

1979 etc., condemn violence against women. The 1994 International Conference on

Population and Development and the 1994 Programme of Action also recognise the

need to eliminate violence against women. “Women’s rights are human rights” is a

popular slogan used by the women’s rights movement at the 1993 world conference

on Human Rights in Vienna.

The United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against

Women recognizes violence against women as an obstacle to document adopted by

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the UN General Assembly which defines violence against women as “any act of

gender-based violence that results in or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or

psychological harm, or suffering to women including threats of such acts, coercion

or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public and private life”.

The United Nations Millennium Development (UNMD) goals commit to

promote gender equality and empower women by eliminating gender disparity in

education by 2015. The UNMD plans to achieve the eight anti-poverty goals and the

announcement of major new commitments for women’s and children’s health and

other initiatives against poverty, hunger and disease. The goals of Millennium

Development are:

i. to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

ii. Achieve universal primary education

iii. Promote gender equality and empower women

iv. Reduce child mortality

v. Improve maternal health

vi. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases

vii. Ensure environmental sustainability

viii. Develop a global partnership for development (Millennium

Development Goals)

It was initiated in 2005 by the then Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the MDGs form

a blueprint agreed to by most of the world’s countries.

Humanity crossed many milestones in the field of women’s empowerment

due to the efforts of many writers. Even before the UDHR, the early writers

attempted to assert women’s rights. Therefore women are often the subject of their

literary works. Women’s movements influence the literary arena too. Women’s
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rights movements are primarily concerned with making the political, social and

economic status of women equal on par with men and with establishing legislative

safeguards against discrimination on the basis of sex. Feminist ideas and social

movements emerged in Europe, Great Britain, and the United States in an

international context that promoted the migration of people and ideas across national

boundaries. Women’s movements have worked in support of these aims for at least

two centuries.

Mary Wollstonecraft of Britain published a treatise entitled A Vindication of

the Rights of Women. It is a treatise on overcoming the ways in which women in her

time were oppressed and denied to use their potential for the betterment of society.

This work has been written particularly for their improvement of female rights. The

dedication is to Charles M. Talleyrand - Perigord, the late Bishop of Autun whose

views on female education were distasteful to Wollstonecraft. The introduction sets

out her view that neglect of girls’ education is largely to blame for the condition of

adult women. They are treated as subordinate beings that care only about being

attractive, elegant, and meek; they buy into this oppression, and they do not have the

tools to vindicate their fundamental rights or the awareness that they are in such a

condition. It was followed by J. S. Mill’s On the Subjection of Women (1869), where

the author takes up the position that oppression of the opposite sex is fundamentally

wrong:

. . . the principle which regulates the existing social relations between

the two sexes, the legal subordination of one sex to the other is wrong

within itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human

improvement; and that ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect

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equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor

disability on the other. (340)

Mill’s belief in the equality of the sexes is consistent with his larger arguments on

individual liberty in his book.

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf is a mighty proposition for

women’s independence. Woolf is one of the most important women writers in

English. Her work provides an invaluable insight into both her own life experience

and those of women at the beginning of the twentieth century. She examines

women’s historical experience as well as the distinctive struggle of the woman artist.

Woolf challenges the patriarchal system that allows a man to choose any livelihood

he desires, but often requires a woman to live her life in full support of his enterprise

instead of allowing her to decide upon her own path.

Kate Millet is an American feminist and activist. Millet was the first to

define and bring focus to the term “Sexual Politics”. Her work is seen in three parts:

Sexual politics, its historical background, and the literary reflection of such politics.

Millett’s book paved the way for the 70’s feminism. She insisted that social and

cultural contexts must be studied if literature were to be properly understood.

In 1946, Simone de Beauvoir wrote her landmark study of women, The

Second Sex. It is one of the attempts to confront human history from a feminist

perspective. Beauvoir’s primary thesis is that men fundamentally oppress women

by characterizing them, on every level, as the other defined exclusively in opposition

to men. Man occupies the role of the self, or subject; woman is the object, the other.

He is essential, absolute, and transcendent. She is inessential, incomplete and

mutilated. He extends out into the world to impose his will on it, whereas woman is
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doomed to immanence or inwardness. He creates, acts, invents; she waits for him to

save her. The distinction is the basis of her work.

Elaine Showalter’s Towards Feminist Poetics is one of America’s foremost

academic literary articles. Showalter is renowned for her pioneering feminist studies

of nineteenth- and twentieth-century female authors and her provocative cultural

analysis of women’s oppression in the history of psychiatry. These publications

generated a powerful new concept and context for the advancement of women’s

rights.

In India, one of the major features of the late nineteenth and early twentieth

century has been the interest evinced in the under-privileged which was reflected in

the literature of the period. The nineteenth century is a very important period in the

history of India. It was a period during which English-educated Indians were

determined to reform Indian culture, society and religion. They sought inspiration

from Vedas and Upanishads. They were also influenced by western scientific

thoughts. The Hindu leaders kike Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Debendranath Tagore,

Keshav Chandra Sen, M.G Ranade, Atmaram Pandurangan, Swami Dayanand

Saraswathi, Swami Vivekananda and a host of others set out to reform Hindu

religion and society. They condemned the evils and abuses that had crept into

Hinduism: the reality of caste system, sati, child marriage, unsociability, idol

worship, polytheism, etc. They wanted to purge Hinduism of all these social evils

and thus restore its pristine purity and ancient glory. They tried to give a new life to

the decadent contemporary society. This ideology of social change was shared by

the litterateurs and fiction writers in almost all the Indian languages turned their

gaze to the farmers, the down-trodden and the outcasts.

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The advent of Marxism on the Indian literary scene in the thirties is a

phenomenon which India shared with many other countries. Both Gandhi and Marx

were driven by opposition to imperialism and concern for the dispossessed sections

of society. The Progressive Writers Association was originally established in 1936

by some expatriate writers in London, like Mulk Raj Anand. However, soon it

became a great pan-Indian movement that brought together Gandhian and Marxist

insights into society. The movement was conspicuously absent in Urdu, Punjabi,

Bengali, Telugu and Malayalam speaking regions but its impact was felt all over

India. It compelled every writer to reexamine his/her relationship with society and

its reality. In Hindi, Chhayavad was challenged by a progressive school that came to

be known as Pragativad (progressivism). Nagarjun is undisputedly the most

powerful and noted Hindi poet of the progressive group. The Bengali poets, Samar

Sen and Subhas Mukhopadhyay, added a new socio-political outlook to their poetry.

Fakir Mohan Senapati (Oriya, 1893-1918) was the first Indian novelist of social

realism. Rootedness to the soil, compassion for the wretched, and sincerity of

expression are the qualities of the novels of Senapati. Manik Bandyopadhyay is the

most well-known Marxist Bengali novelist. Malayalam fiction writers like Vaikkom

Muhammed Basheer, S.K. Pottekkat and Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, made history

by writing progressive fiction of high literary value. They explored the life of

ordinary men and the human relations that economic and social inequalities fostered.

Shivaram Karanath, the most versatile fiction writer in Kannada, never forgot his

early Gandhian teachings. Sri Sri (Telugu) was a Marxist, but showed interest in

modernism at a later stage in his life. Abdul Malik, in Assamese, wrote with an

ideological bias. The critical norms of progressive literature are established by the

pioneer of this phase in Punjabi by Sant Singh Sekhon. The progressive writers’
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movement attracted the attention of eminent poets of Urdu, like Josh Malihabadi and

Faiz Ahmad Faiz.

Being a social critic, Anand could not ignore women. Anand uses literature

as a means to modify society. His concepts of literature as closely related to life are

a by-product of human rights issues. He censures the primitive outlook of those who

treat women as slaves, mere child-bearing machines. He holds that the old notion

that woman is meant for the hearth has become outdated and irrelevant. Woman is

not a loathsome burden on man, as her “economic independence”, courage and

determination have set her free. Being a non-believer in the crotchet of the past,

Anand makes a strong plea for the recognition of women’s rights. Anand’s novels

are based on women’s issues. He explores the old Indian ‘womanhood’ concept and

condemns exploitations.

The fast changing new world demands the need for empowerment of women

and rights. As far as Indian English Literature is concerned, Anand has enjoyed

widespread popularity. His early works are dominated by men – he gives

prominence to the boys of Indian families. The girls are presented as subordinate

creatures evoking the pity of the readers. In the early works, Anand has given a clear

account of the position and status of women in India. Therefore his later works

chiefly deal with women who belong to the grassroots level and are without the

boon of education. When Anand started writing, women were actively fighting for

equal rights around the world and eventually won the voting rights in 1920 in

America and in 1928 in England and in 1935 in British India. His novels are the

showcases of a wide variety of female characters from all classes. Even before the

convention of women’s rights, Anand propagandized the need for women’s rights.
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The novel The Old Woman and The Cow is considered an example of asserting the

concept of women’s rights.

The Old Woman and the Cow, also known as Gauri (1960) is a unique novel

among Anand’s novels because the novel presents a woman as a central character

and projects a woman’s point of view. The first phase of the novel shows Gauri as a

gentle cow, suffering at the hands of her mother-in-law and her husband. The second

phase presents Gauri who is driven out of her house and exposed to the world of

Hoshiarpur. In the last phase of the novel, Gauri returns home only to leave her

husband and to begin an independent life.

The Old Women and the Cow deals with the life of Gauri. It is in the words

of Anand, “my affirming to the beauty, dignity and devotion of Indian Woman”

(Gauri).

It must be noticed by the Indian readers that Anand has paid his artistic

homage to the Indian woman in this novel long before the feminist or woman’s

emancipation movement became fashionable in India. His honest attempt to

understand and delineate woman’s mind helps him gain a comprehensive knowledge

of human life. Far from being partisan or prejudiced, he has exercised his

hermaphroditic power of art and has delineated his protagonists’ plight in the

patriarchal society of India. Woman in the Indian society has to play the traditional

roles like a submissive wife, procreative agent or an incarnation of sacrifice and so

on. Gauri as depicted by Mulk Raj Anand fits into the category of the submissive

wife.

When Panchi the bridegroom rides his pony to the wedding place to the

accompaniment of Angrezi music, he tries to imagine his would-be wife, “for there

was the prospect of the prize of a girl. Whom he could fold in his arms at night and
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kick during the day, who would adorn his house and help him with the work on the

land…” (OWC 11). He remembers how his parents-in-law kept up the constant

refrain during the negotiation that “Gauri is like a cow, very gentle” (OWC 11). The

metaphor of the cow easily brings to our mind the docility, sublimity, harmlessness,

virtue, holiness and such other properties attached to the animal in Hindu religion.

“Panchi felt like a holy bull going off to marry the cow Gauri” (OWC 13). The

metaphors of ‘holy bull’ and ‘cow’ easily bring out the contrast between the

dominating partner and the submissive partner respectively.

Eventually, the marriage between Panchi and Gauri takes place in a typically

Punjabi fashion in spite of the incidental problem of dowry hindering the

matrimonial procedure. Panchi is able to have the first look at his wife only after the

marriage when she is ceremonially received into his family. Gauri begins her

matrimonial life as a “do all” wife. She has obviously accepted all the norms of the

patriarchal society and therefore tries to conform to them as far as possible. She

nourishes all the rosy dreams.

But life is not as simple as she thinks. The familial as well as the societal

environment seem to be very antipathetic to her. For example, Kesaro complains

against Gauri to her husband and tries to intimidate him against her:

Control her, if you can . . . . This bride of yours! . . . . She has begun

to answer me now, when she was meek and obstinately silent before!

. . . . From the day that this witch from big Piplan set foot in our

house, we have had bad luck. You know the crops have withered and

burnt up. The bullocks have fever. And there is no sign of rain!

(OWC 37)

Thus bad luck begins to chase her at a very early stage of her married life.
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Sometimes her peccadillos done in ignorance or inadvertently are

misinterpreted by Kesaro: “I don’t like the visit to our home of Raj Guru and your

other friend, when you are not here . . . . And as usual her head was uncovered while

she was working!” (39). But Panchi is not ready to believe Kesaro’s interpretations

of her minor misdeeds and tries to clarify her doubt about Gauri’s behaviour by

telling her, “Chachi, Gauri had the reputation of being as gentle as cow in her

village” (38).

Gauri’s forlornness seems to have aggravated her helplessness and emotional

starvation. Having lost her mother and father early in life, she remembers them now

and then and weeps. A girl with such a background of emotional insecurity and

frustration is, obviously in need of a husband who can make her forget her past

worries by showering love and affection on her. But Panchi, although good by

nature, is influenced by Kasaro’s repeated accusations against Gauri and so Panchi

starts beating his wife now and then.

Panchi’s rebellion against Mola Ram Kesaro and his decision to set up a

separate home are quite admirable. However Panchi cannot lead a carefree life as he

is burdened with poverty. He is forced by the circumstances to borrow money from

many people.

Gauri does not want to behave like Sita by accepting the defeat. She asserts

her identity by defying the irrational husband and society. She has grown from the

stage of docility to that of defiance in spite of being uneducated. “Her face shone

from the pressure of her stridden heart, transfigured from the gentle cow’s

acquiescent visage of the time when she had arrived in Panchi’s house, to that of a

woman with a will of her own” (OWC 244). She knows that she is carrying the child

of Panchi in her womb, but she cannot accept his high-handedness and atrocities any
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longer. She wants to go to Dr.Mahindra’s hospital to deliver her child and lead an

independent life.

Anand reveals his concern for the woman in the society. G.S. Balrama Gupta

hints that “Anand’s principal objective in writing The Old Woman and the Cow is to

hint at the emergence of modern Indian Woman, and he achieves it admirably” (95).

The novel is replete with the essential concerns of women and the elements of

women’s rights.

The issue of woman’s place in a society is the central concern in the novel

The Old Woman and the Cow. In the Indian Society, a woman is looked upon either

as an object of sexual gratification or a child bearing machine. Anand’s fervent

appeal is to give women equal status with men. He censures the primitive outlook

of those who treat women as slaves, mere child-bearing machines. His early works

are dominated by men. Being the only woman protagonist in Anand’s fiction, Gauri

deserves special attention. He chooses his protagonists from the “dregs of humanity

and tries to identify them with the so-called high caste and high class people”.

(Arora viii)

Anand writes with the object of analyzing the status of women in the society.

The novel discusses the character’s feminine virtue of steadfastness in love and

loving concern for her husband. The Prologue speaks the purpose of the novel. It is

about the tradition of marriage. It begins with a marriage song about the bride,

Whom the husband brings Homeward at his side

How His parents both fling themselves on her

How his brothers soon Call her “Wasteful one”

How his sister next Call her “giddy one”.

How his father growls, “Greedy little bear!

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How his mother snarls Cannibal! at her. (8)

Through the prologue, Anand presents the crux of the problem of woman in

attaining freedom. The position reveals that the Indian woman is generally extolled

as a Goddess and is given an exalted position but mostly pampered as a doll. Anand

reveals the paradoxical situation in the treatment of women. Gauri is not least

approached as a woman but as a doll. Her right to choose a husband is denied. It is

pathetic to note that she cannot see her fiancé before her marriage. It is a

conventionally arranged marriage. She feels that a change in the traditional role of

women is needed to achieve full equality between men and women. Gauri’s

unfulfilled longing to select her husband echoes Article 16 of UDHR states:

. . . parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate

discrimination against women in all matters relating to marriage and

family relations and in particular shall ensure on a basis of equality of

men and women. The same right allows a woman freely to choose a

spouse and to enter into marriage only with their free and full

consent, and permits woman to avail of the same rights and

responsibilities during marriage and at its dissolution. (n.p.)

Like Gauri, women are often denied the right to choose the spouse. Consent

of the women to the marriage is often ignored in Indian society. The woman is

forced to marry according to the decisions of the parents or guardians. Gauri suffers

under several oppressive forces. Like Gauri, most of the women in villages of India

lead a tough, torturous and disconcerted life. They are the victims of a plethora of

violence committed against them such as domestic violence, rape, molestation,

forced marriage and dowry death. Victims of domestic violence are mainly women.
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A woman is considered to be the sole property, first, of her father and brother, and

then of her husband and then her son and she does not have any will of her own.

The novel begins with the description of the incongruity of the tradition of

Hindu marriage.

The pony under Panchi bucked suddenly and, lifting its hind legs, swayed

and shook and nearly threw the bridegroom and his little cousin, Nikka, the

best man, off its back. Arrayed with the ceremonial garland of flower which

covered his resplendent pink turban and rich brown face. Panchi could not

even see what had frightened the pony so. As his hold on the reins had been

leisurely, throughout the three-mile journey from the village of Chota Piplan

Kalan, because the servant of Lala Birbal, who had rented out the pony, was

holding the pony’s reins near the bit, Panchi’s heart drummed and sweat

covered his body. (OWC 6)

Marriage is one of the most holy ceremonies in Indian society. After

reaching Piplan Kalan, the groom’s party is given a formal welcome, but it is not

warm. They are belittled by Amru, the uncle of the bride for the small band they

have brought; “Look at the resplendent uniform of our own Akbar Shah’s

bandsman! Look! Oh, Look folks!” (OWC 11). Then comes an insinuation from

another more ‘cynical elder of Piplan Kalan, the shrewd, clean-shaven, sleek

goldsmith Kanshi Ram: “. . . they have brought a good dowry for our Gauri” (OWC

11). Finally when they reach the bride’s house, Panchi’s uncle, Mola Rama is

embarrassed when Amru embraces him as per the tradition, mentioning – the gold

plated jewellery with which people cheat each other at weddings “nowadays”. And

when Amru and Laxmi, the mother of the bride, come to know that they are cheated,

there is a big hue and cry. In a fit of fury Amru asks the pundit to stop gyrations
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around the fire, who however does not oblige him. “The Old woman had hoped to

wangle enough cash to buy a buffalo to increase her dairy business” (OWC 19). She

feels cheated, and there is a mist of tears in her ‘gay-green’. However, soon she

reconciles to her fate saying she had given them to Gauri, the bride “in charity”.

In a realistic Laxmi, Anand exposes the hypocrisy involved in the institution

of marriage. If Mola Ram is interested to save money by cheating the in-laws

through gold plated jewellery, the only concern that Laxmi and Amru have is for the

good dowry. Laxmi is more interested in purchasing a buffalo through the money

earned by the dowry than in the welfare of her daughter. She gives her daughter’s

hand to Panchi, in spite of the fact that he is “a God forsaken orphan”, “a goonda”,

and a show-off. In this way Anand looks at the issue differently, questioning the

institution of marriage. The beginning of the novel itself shows the pathetic plight of

the Indian woman.

Traditionally, the custom of dowry, long entrenched in the male-dominated

society has attained alarming proportions over the last few decades. The dowry

system effectively commodified women, so they came to be seen as expensive, as

well as less powerful in the economic exchange within the joint family system.

Thambiah defines dowry as,

Wealth given to a daughter at her marriage for the couple to use as the

nucleus of their conjugal estate, by and large we can say that dowry in India

and Ceylon(Srilanka), the notion of female property (Streedhanam) which

technically is her property and in her own control though the husband usually

has rights ofmanagement. (Qtd.in Brides are not for Burning: Dowry Victims

in India, Kumari 3)
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India, the land of Gods, is respected in the world for her culture. People’s beliefs in

religions have made the Indians well-cultured. There are a few ugly practices that

stain the image of India. Dowry system is one of these much discussed practices.

Although it is one of the most hated practices, surprisingly it is gradually growing

stronger day by day. The horror of the dowry system has made the marriage

ceremony one of the feared institutions.

In ancient India there was no question of dowry. It was considered a sin.

The bridegroom was voluntarily presented with some useful gifts. In some cases

bride’s father was offered money to allow her to marry a young man. Because the

bride was considered to be a virtuous and suitable one. The trend has now changed.

The parents of the girl desperately move in search of a suitable bridegroom for her

now. They persuade the groom’s parents and tempt them by offering money along

with dowry. Through these unfair means they get the consent of the groom’s parents

for the marriage. Thus begins the clandestine atmosphere of dowry.

Dowry system is an insult to Indian society. It is also an insult to education

and culture. Poor people cannot afford dowry. Many beautiful and brilliant girls

remain unmarried because they are poor. Even after marriage, some brides are

tortured and forced to bring more and more dowry from their parents’ house. If they

fail, they are tortured and sometimes killed. Strict laws have been enacted to check

the dowry system. But many people do not abide by the laws. Rich people give

heavy dowry to their daughters. They do not feel unhappy at such crimes. Dowry

system continues in spite of all steps to check it. However, it can be completely

checked if the awareness against this system is created among the girls. If they vow

not to marry greedy men, if they become economically self-dependent, this ugly

system will automatically disappear.

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Many social legislations are passed by the government of India. These laws

are designed to promote and protect the rights of women. The dowry system puts a

great financial burden on the bride’s family. It has been one of the reasons for

families and women in India resorting to sex selection in favour of sons. This has

distorted the sex ratio of India and has given rise to female foeticide. The payment

of dowry has been prohibited under the 1961 Dowry Prohibition Act in Indian Civil

Law and subsequently by section 304B and 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). In

spite of that, the practice of giving and taking dowry and dowry deaths are rampant

in the Indian society. It is because of the lack of proper and effective enforcement of

laws. Women are often subjected to exploitation because of dowry system.

Anand dramatically pictures the problem behind the dowry system through

Gauri: “Gauri is like a cow, very gentle” (OWC 11). This image of her continues to

inspire him throughout the novel. The tendency to dehumanize people by treating

them as objects or animals strongly correlates with the conventional attitude. The

traditional attitude of the society that assigns certain stereotyped roles to women,

such as domestic work, child bearing, taking care of husband etc., are factors

responsible for the inferior position of women. Therefore men expect the women to

be gentle. The society and family always fail to recognize the multiple roles played

by women in the family and outside the family. She is often denied the

opportunities for personal growth and development.

The primitive and cruel attitude cause untold sufferings to Gauri. She

becomes a slave to Panchi’s desires and obliges him by submitting to his impatience

and narrow – mindedness without protest. Her duties are to cook, to clean and to

satisfy her husband sexually, whenever it seems right to him. Panchi thinks of the

prospect of the marriage. He says “there was the prospect of the prize of a girl – a
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girl whom he could fold in his arms at night and kick during the day, who would

adorn his house and help him with the work on the land” (OWC 5). Women are not

treated nicely by men all through their life. They are denied their rights, their

opportunities and their dignity.

When Gauri leaves her house, her mother Laxmi advises her “to be like Sita”

(OWC 8). This is a common phrase that women use in order to advise. The story of

Sita is derived from Indian epic The Ramayana in which Sita is banished by her

husband Lord Rama, because the villagers had begun to doubt her chastity. Here

Gauri symbolizes Sita. Gauri is instructed at the time of her marriage to live like

Sita. Throughout the novel, Gauri tries to approximate her life to Sita’s, the ideal

Hindu wife totally devoted to her husband. Thus social conditioning is the barrier to

the women community. Patriarchal Hindu society does not allow women to be

independent and grow fully as individuals bestowed with confidence. It closes all

the avenues for the development of their personality, and provides them a false

consciousness, and works always in favour of men. The innocent girl suffers at the

lands of Panchi and Kesaro.

Panchi lives with his guardians uncle Mola Ram and aunt Kesaro. Gauri

steps into the realities of life where women are ill-treated by the family members.

Kesaro poisons Panchi’s mind against Gauri. Gauri tries to abide as ‘Sita’. Kesaro

and Panchi ill-treat her. They regard her as the incarnation of Kali. Panchi says: “my

aunt Kesari is right when she says this bride is the incarnation of Kali, the black

Goddess who destroys all before her, who brings famine in her beauty and lays bare

whole villages.” (OWC 33). The society violates the basic rights of women. The

atrocities against woman lead Gauri to rebel against society, Kesaro says: “Control
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her, if you can! This bride of yours! She has begun to answer me now . . . from the

day that this witch from Big Piplanet foot in our house, we have bad luck” (OWC 9).

Anand questions the role of the ‘elders” in the village. The concept of

tradition is a very important source of asserting hegemony over people. The “Heads”

of Chota Piplan Kalan exercise their dominance over the villagers in the name of

respect for “elders”. “Our religion enjoins respect for elders” (OWC 9) tells

Subedhar Chaudri Achru Ram to Panchi when the latter quarrels with his Uncle

Mola Ram over the issue of his beating the bullocks of his uncle while ploughing his

field. They settle the problem in the Kangaroo court.

Panchi and Gauri decide to live alone. Panchi tells his uncle that he would

take his things afterwards, but before that he wants to escape from his uncle’s vile

tongue. He signals to Gauri to get up and tells her his plans of shifting to Rajaguru’s

house. And at this proposal, Kesaro suddenly bursts out shouting “Hai, hai, son…

‘Do you want to lend your wife to the Subedhar’s son, blind one! Don’t you see that

already he has been coming and going here frequently and . . .” (OWC 42). Panchi

does not wait for any explanation from Gauri, but slaps her on head ‘once, twice,

thrice,’ until she falls on the bedstead again. Gauri becomes the victim of Panchi’s

thrashings for no fault of hers, but it serves as an outlet for all the pent up anger of

Panchi. He goes out in a huff for a walk, but when he returns he is remorseful of his

action.

It is important to note that most people in the village are “elders’ who snub

children and youth and women without any reason, and whatever that is convenient

to them is preached as a holy tradition. The defying of elders is the defying of

tradition and such a concept allows the heads and the powerful people in the village

to justify their unjust actions. Panchi’s break up with the joint family and the
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couple’s living in the Muslim house creates a big sensation in the village. Kesaro

further blames her going home without the dupptta on her forehead. Panchi slaps her

and she receives slapping without any protest. He justifies his beating thus: “. . . the

husband has to chastise his wife if she was wrong” (OWC 51). Violence is an

attitude that causes mental or physical injury and dehumanizes a person. It is true

that physical acts of violence can cause harm, but psychological and mental abuse

cause more harm to the mind of the woman. This type of treatment of woman

affects her right to live with human dignity. In 1983, domestic violence was

recognised as a specific criminal offence by the introduction of section 498-A into

the Indian Penal Code. This section deals with cruelty by a husband or his family

towards a married woman.

The Act ‘Protection of women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005’

protects women from any act / conduct / omission / commission that

harms, injuries or potential to harm is to be considered as domestic

violence. It protects women from physical, sexual, emotional, verbal,

psychological, economic abuse. (n.p.)

Panchi is easily influenced by his aunt Kesaro or by the gossip of others in

the village. Very often Gauri is subjected to physical assault by her husband.

Repeatedly she is sent out of house by Panchi. A daughter-in-law is supposed to be

treated as a member of the family with warmth and affection and not as a stranger

with disrespect and ignoring. She should not be treated as a housemaid. No

impression should be given that she can be thrown out of her matrimonial home at

any time.

In India the position of women is always perceived in relation to man. This

perception has given birth to various customs and practices. Violence against
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women both inside and outside of their house has been a crucial issue in the

contemporary Indian society. Anand shows this social ill in his novel and thus he

has laid the foundation for womens’ rights in an age when women were not aware of

their rights.

Kesaro abuses Gauri calling her a whore from Piplan, filthy woman, sweeper

woman, shameless and so on. In the absence of Panchi’s mother (he had lost his

parents when he was a child) she acts like a ‘real mother-in-law’. The joint family

system invests a lot of power in the mother-in-law, and Kesaro uses her power as an

elderly woman in the family to spoil the happiness of the newly married couple. She

tells lies, or rather exaggerates things for Panchi against his wife. Panchi could not

show his love for her, because of the “vigil eyes” of her mother-in-law Kesaro.

Gauri knows that Panchi loves her very much. They enjoy happy days very often.

But though they did not eat together as husband and wife, they slept together

on one bed throughout the whole night, for the first time since they were

married, burning the eyes of Kesaro and the gossip of the neighbours that

would surely follow. (OWC 45)

This shows that the “elders” are a hindrance to the happiness of the newly

married. They do not tolerate the youngsters’ enjoyment of life. The phrase ‘burning

the eyes of Kesaro’ clearly indicates the kind of hegemonistic attitude of the ‘elders’

towards the young. Kesaro further poisons Panchi that Gauri is an inauspicious girl

who is responsible for all the calamities that fall on the village.

In India woman is not only understood as a sex object, but also as impure

because of her menstrual cycle. The moment a woman accepts that she is impure,

she becomes vulnerable to dominance and thereby to oppression. However the

important question is that dominance on woman and their condemnation is exercised

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all in the name of tradition. Anand subtly brings in this question through the

portrayal of the dispute between Kesaro and Gauri. She victimizes Gauri for a

breach of the “stupid convention that forced women during their menstruation to the

corner as untouchables” (OWC 10). Though herself a woman, she does not look at

the problems of woman from the woman’s point of view. In India mothers-in-law,

often become agents of patriarchy in exercising power. They spoil the marital rights

of the young ones.

When the drought persists and the crops fail, Panchi is made to believe that

the disaster was caused by Gauri’s evil star and sends her back to her mother, who

sells her to Seth Jai Ram Das from who she eventually escapes to colonel

Mahindra’s hospital. Dr. Batra’s advances send her to the colonel himself and when

he asks her what she wants, she has only one answer: “I want my husband… I am

with child by my husband, and I want to go back to him” (OWC 191). Gauri knows

that she is safe only when she lives with her husband.

One morning, Gauri reveals to Panchi very shyly that she is with child.

Panchi was not happy because he fears of fatherhood. Panchi is not excited at the

news of his becoming father but rather is worried of the hard reality of feeding

another mouth. The seeds of suspicion sown by Kesaro grow and flower in the mind

of Panchi. He madly kicks her and orders her to leave the house. He is influenced by

suspicion, but it is also the drought condition in the village, and his inability to feed

his wife and the child to be born that force him to send her away. Panchi accepts this

without any pretensions. “Go, go, get out of my sight. Go to your mother the whore!

She can perhaps earn enough to feed you and your brat. Your uncle Amru has the

food” (OWC 88).

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Finally Kasaro instigates Panchi to drive her away. A woman has the right to

remain in the matrimonial home along with her husband as long as she is married. If

a woman is being pressured to leave the matrimonial home, she can move the Court

for an injunction or restraining order protecting her from being thrown out. This can

usually be obtained quite easily. It is generally advisable not to leave the

matrimonial home; it is easier to get a court order preventing a woman being thrown

out than to get an order enforcing her right to return to it once she has left or been

thrown out. There are many such “Gauris” even in the modern society who do not

know this right. They live in darkness. Anand’s earnest wish is that the “Gauris”

should come out of this darkness which enshrouds them. They should come to know

the women rights which entitle them a safe house.

Gauri who is turned out by Panchi is not welcomed by her mother at

PiplanKalan. Laxmi is shocked to see her daughter in her house, and when she

comes to know that Gauri is sent out by her husband, she gets immensely worried.

She feels proud at her becoming grandmother, but is too scared to feed another

mouth in such times of poverty. She is all of motherly affection towards her

daughter, but is too scared of the responsibility of feeding Gauri. The old woman

cannot afford to support her daughter, because Chanderi, the cow which is the only

means of her survival is giving “less and less” milk. And the fact that the cow is in

the mortgage of Seth Jwala Prasad forces her not to accept any more responsibilities.

In such a situation she decides to keep the cow, and sell away the cow- like Gauri to

Seth Jai RamDas, the elder brother of Seth Jwala Prasad. She succumbs to the lure

of Seth who promises “. . . cash and the wiping out of the mortgage on their two

houses as well as the cow Chanderi” (OWC 108) in lieu of Gauri. Many times she
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becomes remorseful, but the presence of Amru and the threat of Seth JwalaPradad to

take away the cow, compel her to agree to the sale.

Gauri hopes that she will be at peace in her mother’s house. But to her great

disappointment, the unlucky girl, is ill-treated there by her Step father Amru, who

thinks that girls are a curse. He arranges to sell Gauri to Seth Jai Ram Das, a lusty

aged banker of Hoshiarpur, in lieu of cash and other promises. Seth Jai Ram Das is

too glad to have Gauri in his house. To her dismay Gauri finds him “A man with full

white mustachio, pouches under the eyes, a caste mark on his forehead. . . . And a

heavy bare torso” (OWC 111). The first thing he does in their first encounter is to

irritate her with his pious speech. He is a widower and is too old to be married again.

As he cannot find a girl from his own caste, he buys this ‘hill girl’ to look after him.

As he tells Amru:

Since the death of the woman of my house, brother, I have not had a

moment’s peace. And my health is going down. I cannot sleep. And

thus the business is suffering! . . . Now, with this Bibi, by the grace

of God, I am blessed indeed. (OWC 114)

He calls her affectionally “Bibi”, but Gauri knows what he intends from her – “a

chaste domestic servant” (OWC 114).

Mahindra, a humanist doctor takes pity on her and takes Gauri to his nursing

home. There too miseries follow her. Another doctor tries to molest her. However

Dr.Mahindra protects her from the lecherous doctor. He sends her back to her

husband. Rakhi, the wizened old evil-tongued midwife of the village casts

aspersions on her chastity. Instigated by Kesaro, Panchi disowns her doubting her

chastity. The vicious gossip about the paternity of the child drives her out. Gauri
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exclaims; “. . . If I am a curse upon you, I will go away! . . . If you strike me again, I

will hit you . . .” (OWC 19).

Doubting her purity, Panchi disowns her, in the same way as Sita was

disowned by Sri Rama. Her stay in Colonel Mahindra’s hospital makes her

confident. The doctor trains her as a nurse. That confidence affirms the dignity of

her womanhood. As M.K. Naik points out,

The acid test of this transformation in her comes when Panchi

drives her out of the house once again, his mind poisoned by

malicious village gossip. She does not, as she did earlier go out as

a helpless, forsaken creature, but as a woman conscious of her

rights, and confident of fending for herself. Traditional experience

reminds her of her similarity to Sita abandoned by Rama on like

grounds. The similarity indeed goes deeper, for if Sita, as tradition

tells us, was found in the earth as a child, Gauri is truly the

daughter of the soil. But unlike her ancient counterpart, the modern

Sita does not need the earth to open up and swallow her; the

anonymous crowd of a big city can do the job equally well. The

modern Sita need not renounce life, but can be reborn into a life

richer and fuller. She need not vanish from the world; but can

actually rediscover the world. (94)

Gauri looks forward to new self-dependent life. When women earn a living,

they are mentally strong and is sure of a bright future. Gauri decides to go to the

town. She knows that Dr. Mahindra will be there, and this reassures her. She will

go to him and live under the shadow of his protection and work as a nurse until the

birth of her child and the child would not be a coward like Panchi or as weak as she
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has been. The novel clearly shows Anand’s plea for the upliftment of women

through asserting their rights. He is confident that a woman can enjoy her rights only

when she learns to earn her livelihood. Dependence on others makes an individual a

slave.

Anand is also worried about the pathetic condition of Muslim women.

Rafigue Chacha, a potter, expresses Anand’s concern for the welfare of Muslim

women in his conversation with Panchi:

There is a Purdah on the hearts of the men of our village. And we

impose it on the women! Our Mullahs and your Brahmins are the

hypocrites to lay down the laws, and the elders of the Panchayat of

every brotherhood support them. They are all fathers, squeezing out

the lives of the young ones with their dictates. However many

women they may take themselves, they want a woman to be reserved

for the use of one man. There is a need for political empowerment of

women through reservation in its decision making bodies like

parliament, and state legislature in the same line as at ‘Panchayat’

(village) level in India. The current economic and socio-political

maladies along with increasing violence against women and children

are attributed to the failure of male oriented polity. Representation of

women in higher bodies of political authority has been considered a

prerequisite for the success of democracy at the grass-root level.

However the need for accountability and sense of commitment on the

part of the elected women representatives is stressed. This requires a

higher degree of awareness among women regarding health, literacy,

gender and other relevant social, economic and political issues. (231)
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The concept of equality, equity and non-discrimination on the ground of sex finds its

place in all international instruments dealing with human rights. Women are often

subjected to exploitation and human rights violations.

Gauri is sold by her uncle Amru to Seth Jai Ram Das.Her Uncle Amru tells

about his lustful desire for her:

I must tell you that the bigger crime I have committed is not this; to

sell you to Seth Jai Ram Das, but to sacrifice you . . . . I have been

fond of you ever since you became a mature girl. I know that you will

be mauled by others when I wanted to hug you to myself . . . . I am

twice cursed, though my pride did not allow me to say so.

(OWC 136)

Pandit Bhola Nath tries to seduce her. Seth also intends for the same and sanctifies

rape with holy verses showing deep devotion in religion. Seth tries to coax her with

valuable presents such as Benaras saree, jewellery and also reminds her that she

should be grateful to him because he pays money to her mother. He restrains

himself but when he thinks that, “this girl was young and her breasts were bursting

out of her tunic” (OWC 152), his desire becomes uncontrollable and he thrusts his

body upon Gauri and gets kicked by her.

Then again she is saved by Dr.Mahindra. In his clinic, Dr.Batra is a young

doctor, who is a lustful character, and is quickly attracted to Gauri. He is so

fascinated by Gauri that he quarrels with his wife and drives her away. Gauri lies in

the hospital and mentally regards him:

Then, from somewhere below the torment in her belly there arose a

swirling wave, which made her eyes glisten in the dark. The young

doctor was not so undesirable. And he must want her badly to have
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quarrelled with his wife. The vanity warned her cheeks, and suffused

her innocent body with the glow of pride. ‘But what are you thinking

of mad woman?’ The sense of modesty spoke in wordless voice to

her. And she closed her eyes and drew a curtain on her thoughts,

shrinking into herself, with gritted teeth, rigidifying herself against

everything outside her, like a virgin rejecting all men. The shock of

the sudden passion did not die out so soon, however, and she turned

on her side and lay reclining on her breasts and belly, her will poised

against. The soft luxuriance of her body, until the inverted head

pressed down the waves of a white sleep on her eyelids. (OWC 162)

Thus Gauri does not want to fall into the web of an immoral world. She is frequently

assaulted by the merchant Seth Jai Ram Das and the young doctor Batra. She

undergoes every kind of harassment. But she has a strong moral sense, which

protects her virtue.

Harassment at the work place remains to be a hurdle experienced by many

women like Gauri. Women in the workforce are increasing every year. This is

because of increased awareness, education and changing mind-set amongst men and

women due to financial constraints. But women in the workforce have not made an

impact on workplace environment for setting a code of conduct. Women are the

target of some form of sexual harassment. Complaints of sexual harassment is

widely reported with many of the victims being working women belonging to nearly

all social sectors. Women in low-income groups, such as domestic workers are

particularly vulnerable. They are regular victims of physical and psychological

abuse and sexual harassment.

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Gauri rebels against the patriarchal set-up and chooses to live an independent

life. The story is set in an era immediately after independence. The character of

Gauri strongly projects the message that for women to gain self-respect, it is

necessary to protect them with legal rights. At the end of the story, Gauri makes her

own choice and leaves for Hoshiarpur, never to come back to Panchi again. Gauri

leads the Indian womanhood from tradition to modernity. The novel unfolds

Anand’s humanistic passion for the liberation of women from their bondage to

conventional society and dowry ridden family. Gauri emerges as a symbol of the

new womanhood who powerfully voices against the violation of women rights. She

consciously rebels against the Sita-image, tries to free herself and lives an

independent life. Gauri is “the story of a modern Sita who has at the end found a

new path for herself different from the one adopted by her mythic counterpart”

(Mathur 21). It is a powerful indictment of the brutal rigidity and authority of the

Hindu ethos. Anand has succeeded in the making of Gauri as Indian womanhood to

be a bridge that links tradition with modernity. Anand’s Gauri or The Old Woman

and the Cow “not only voices a strong protest against the ill- treatment of women

but also explores through the example of Gauri what woman in India should do for

her emancipation” (George 156).

The creation of a character like Gauri who achieves her true identity and

enumeration from the clutches of the suspicious husband is, indeed, a remarkable

literary achievement of Mulk Raj Anand in the Indian context. The concepts like

feminism and woman’s emancipation have become fashionable in India only in the

nineties. But Mulk Raj Anand presented a picture of such an emancipated woman

as early as in the sixties when the western ideas were not yet fashionable in India. It

testifies to his progressive as well as prophetic vision of life. The struggle of an

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educated and sick woman for emancipation is not equal to that of an uneducated,

poor woman. Gauri’s greatness lies in her struggle for emancipation in spite of

being poor and illiterate. She can be said to be an Indian version of Ibsen’s Nora.

None can fail to admire her gradual growth from docility through defiance to full

confidence. Although not formally educated in school or college, she is rigorously

trained in the University of Adversity. She discovers her true identity by rebelling

against the false charges of adultery by her husband and the patriarchal society

thereby accepting the challenge of leading an independent life guided by her own

strong will. Thus, she succeeds in her fight with the preconceived notions of gender

roles and develops the existential courage to be herself. The character of Gauri

created by Mulk Raj Anand anticipates the creation of similar characters by the

recent writers like Anita Desai and Shashi Deshpande and a host of other women

novelists of India today.

In Seven Summers also, Anand presents the picture of the low status of

women in traditional Hindu society. Krishan’s mother recalls how she had slaved

for her mother-in-law from dawn till past midnight. Obedient and uncomplaining,

she suffered the beatings by her husband at his mother’s instigation. But she effaced

herself completely and bore every suffering patiently. “Be like Savitri” (SS 10), “be

like the suttees of the gurus, loyal to your husband unto death” (SS 12), had been her

father’s blessings. She had no voice in the selection of her future partner in life.

Her marriage had been arranged by her parents, because the parents were supposed

to look after the interests of their children better. Her mother had advised her to

serve her lord and master without any expectation of reward and live for the

happiness of having children and bringing them up. Her story represents the story of

all women in tradition-bound Hindu society.

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Aqqi, Krishan’s aunt, has her own tale of sufferings to relate. Jai Singh, her

drunkard coppersmith husband, often beats her. When her husband turns her out,

she has to trudge all the way from the city to seek shelter with her sister. The

luckless lady begs for money from Krishan’s parents to enable her to set up an

independent house. Krishan’s another aunt, Kunti, is totally neglected by her

licentious husband and is subjected to suffering by her cruel mother-in-law and the

poor lady dies of Tuberculosis.

Harish’s wife, Draupadi also leads a miserable life. Her mother-in-law

(Krishan’s mother) expects her to live up to her dream of an obedient daughter-in-

law. Forgetting the ill-treatment she had herself received from her mother-in-law

and refusing to learn any lesson from her bitter past experiences, she advises

Draupadi to be meek and obedient. Draupadi says to her: “I want my husband, I

can’t wait while he finishes his college. Get him a job and give him to me” (SS 25).

She feels that Draupadi has outraged the limits of modesty by demanding openly.

Draupadi and Harish are the victims of an arranged marriage. The tradition –

bound society has pushed them together as life partners. Such ill-matched couples

can never hope to attain happiness. They are not allowed even to think of a divorce,

as there is no such provision in the laws of the Hindus. So the couple has to suffer

the inevitable consequences of mal-adjustment. Anand registers his dissent on such

arranged marriages which make ill-matched couples extremely unhappy.

The image of woman in Morning Face is not that of a modern educated

woman in search of a destiny that should transcend and not replace the domestic

round. His women are not satisfied with their society. None of the women in the

novel hankers after a position either in an office or in business.

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Anand has portrayed almost all the relations in a family: father, husband,

mother, wife, son , daughter , viz. He tries to break the image of mother as weak and

dependent. Her silent acceptance of her husband’s wish is considered an honour to

her “. . . we were to eat in uncle Pratap’s house; so father had said. Mother had

greeted this proposal in silence” (SS 34). She leads a dull and home bond life,

always immersed in domestic chores, unable to develop taste for a decent modern

way of living, which invites satirical remarks from her husband about the carpet

which Harish sent to them. Devaki has spread the carpet but the mother has kept it

“. . . in a bose so that the rats may eat it!” (MF 9) Father mocked. “You know that

your mother is not a pleasant woman for nothing. She likes to bundle up everything

and store it in the backroom!” (MF 11). Mother character is antithetical. While on

the one hand she silently acquiesces to the plans and mocking that her husband

makes and passes on her, on the other, she speaks up in satirizing the bad ways into

which Pratap has fallen: “To be some, Pratap must have pawned or sold all the old

family jewellery and spent the fortune already on the prostitutes!” (MF 11). She is a

judge of a character. Her explosive tongue ignites into smouldering remarks about

Devaki: “She drinks and plays cards and eats betel leaf” (MF 12). Another aspect of

her personality is that devotion to all types of God, saints and superstitions, it is to

meet either a woman with a picture or a sweeper with a broom while “he is on his

way to the examination” (MF 110).

Though Krishnan has seeds of faithlessness to the would-be marital bed, his

innocently bold determination to marry Mumtaz is a life-affirming gesture hardly

seen in the mature masculine figures in the novel. A parallel personality on par with

Mumtaz is Dr.Chuni Lal’s Shakuntala. Even when she knows that his head is full of
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boils, she kisses it and says “you will soon get will” (MF 415). Helen is another

woman who helps him attain artistic abilities.

Morning Face is a pendant to Seven Summers. Both the novels are intended

to evoke Mulk Raj Anand’s portrait of an artist. There is a complex dimension to

Mulk Raj Anand’s feminine perspective. Their love, not only brings salvation to

Krishnan, but leads him to real vocation. Through the women he attains a

heightened state of creative consciousness. Thus, Mulk Raj Anand identifies with

women the means to transcent the confusion, violence, and hypocrisy. His women

are with their talent of sympathetic intuition, their emphasis on value and

responsibility of human relationships, emotional warmth and responsiveness.

Morning Face throws light on the cruel treatment meted out to women.

DevDutt’s wife, Parvati, leads a very miserable life indeed. She is always kept busy

in doing kitchen work and drawing water from the first storey of her house. Utterly

secluded, she lives like a kitchen maid in the storeroom. Devki, the unfortunate

widow of Uncle Pratap, falls into the hands of all kinds of people who try to grab her

money, jewellery and house. She represents the unfortunate Indian widows who

suffer untold agonies and miseries inflicted on them by the greedy members of

male-dominated society. When Krishan’s father, Babu Ram Chand, takes him to

Dr.ChuniLal’s house for treatment of some sensitive boils on his head, the doctor

talks about his wife Shakuntala thus:

I have not succeeded in curing her entirely of her purdah mentality…

I really want her to discard all this formality and finish off her

medical course one day. She left it when she was in the second year,

because her father thought I wanted a kitchen maid. (416)

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He wishes to make Shakuntala into a model wife. He wants her to be like Gargi, in

the Upanishads, a sage who will serve people.

Anand’s view of women is expressed in his novel Two Leaves and a Bud.

Gangu, a character in the novel, says:

There is something of water about a woman. Flowing always

flowing, one way or the other and restless like the waves, sometimes

overwhelmingly moody, fickle capricious as a river in storm,

sometimes bright and smiling, sometimes soft and sad but always

tender and kid (TLB 145-146).

These lines highlight a very important aspect of woman’s nature---mobility.

Her whole life is marked by an eternal flow like restless motion of the waves that

wash away the sorrows and suffering. She always moves to an unknown destination

and refreshes herself with a fast vitality to give tenderness to others. In almost all the

novels of Anand, the life of a woman has been a long tale of sorrows and sufferings.

Most often she is doomed not by the wills of a man, chosen for her by others, but by

the deeds of her own sex. The Old Woman and the Cow presents the whole process

of the change of woman from a puppet in a man’s hand to that of an independent

woman who asserts her equal rights with man and demands recognition as such.

The novelist adroitly makes use of the old myth Ramayana and suggests how it is no

longer possible for man either to keep woman suppressed or neglect her lawful

liberty, equality, identity and individuality. The Old Woman and the Cow

eloquently exposes through the portrayal of Gauri what women in India should do

for further emancipation.

The empowerment of women is necessary for equitable development in our

modern world. Promoting women’s rights is not a way to diminish men but is the
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best warranty of balance and progress for our societies. The traditional attitude of

the society that assigns certain stereotyped roles to women, such as domestic work,

child rearing, taking care of aged parents etc., are factors responsible for the inferior

position of women. Women in India consistently lag behind the men in terms of

access to education, health, jobs, etc. Apart from the economic and social

inequality, women in India are victims of heinous crimes such as, dowry deaths,

rape, molestation and immoral trafficking. In Indian Society, women are placed in a

subordinate position though the preamble of the constitution, the fundamental rights

and directive principles guarantee equal rights for women.

Throughout the world, women have been deprived of their basic socio-legal

rights by a patriarchal order. In the domain of patriarchal culture, woman is a social

construct, a site on which masculine meanings get spoken and masculine desires

enacted. The factor which changes a girl into a woman with finality is not simply her

anatomy, but the process of social conditioning which influences and moulds her

psyche to desire and pursue traditionally accepted and encouraged feminine roles

only. To change the conventional image of women constructed by the orthodox

society it is necessary to discourage the habit of defining woman as an essence

whose nature is determined biologically and whose sole identity is to produce

human species.

Twentieth century has witnessed a growing awareness among women

regarding their desires, sexuality, self-definition, existence and destiny. Women’s

efforts to seek their independence and self-identity started a revolution all over the

world. Women in India have made some progress in the fields of education, health

or economics or as a result of technological developments, or because of a process

of evolution. Though in very small numbers today India has women in almost all
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spheres of life. Women of today are doctors, engineers, pilots, journalists, teachers,

administrators, judges including a woman Judge in the Supreme Court, state

governors, ambassadors, members of parliament and ministers. India has had a

woman Prime Minister and a President of the UN Assembly. In spite of these

achievements the fact remains that ordinary women’s condition is a grim reality.

The twentieth century generation of writers, more precisely the colonial era

has pictured British dominated society at large, catapulting social themes in Indian

society towards a new direction. Indeed, the very changing face of society in India

comes to the closest to perfect depiction during British India. The face of Indian

woman in all Indian literatures has impressed upon a pan-Indian psyche with

inevitable local touches and variations. Women have inspired literature and the

feminine theme has been a pivotal one. She herself is a creator of literature and is all

pervading. This is true of Indian English literature also. Indian literature spans a rich

variety of themes - from the theme of a conventional woman to that of the new

woman, reflecting in the process the changes that have been going on in the society.

Post-Independence literature portrays all these trends and voices the clamouring of

women for a new and just way of life. Over the years, the age-old image of the

woman seems to be slowly blurring and gradually shading off into oblivion. A new,

bright image is emerging. Anand offers a solution to the predicament of the Indian

woman: education and employment can give her economic independence and can

ensure for her a life of dignity and freedom. C.J. George observes in Mulk Raj

Anand: His Art and Concerns:

It is, as an artist, Anand’s greatest contribution towards the evils of

male chauvinism and the society’s ambivalent approach with regard

to woman and inspires the Indian woman to face the challenge by

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courageously working for her emancipation which alone can redeem

the society from the failure of communication between man and

woman. (162)
 Conclusion

Mulk Raj Anand by his prolific bold experimentation and aesthetic

sensibility has made immense contribution to Indian Writing in English Literature as

well as to world literature in English. His choice of unconventional subjects and

characters has been determined by his Dickensian Humanistic Philosophy. He has

set up new trends by introducing the antihero in his novels. His fictional world is

peopled by characters from various strata of society; from the lowest to the highest

rungs in the hierarchy. Anand has revealed exceptional psychological insight in the

portrayal of these characters who are real men and women and are not mere

phantoms of fantasy. He attacks social snobbery and social prejudice. For him the

novel is a weapon that should change the life of the masses. He feels that the true

creative ability featuring reality should transform society. People should strive for a

change to better their living conditions. His idea is that idle mind, subservient role

and decadence of the masses is responsible for their own degradation. Anand

displays a matured sense of uniting an objective with reality to bring in

transformation in the sleepy Indian society. He does not want the people to be

submissive to unwanted authoritarians. H.C.Harrex points out in The Fire and the

Offering: The English Novel of India 1935-70: “Anand’s characterization within the

proletarian campus is strong, varied and impassioned . . . his social criticism is

usually spirited and challenging” (144).

His humanitarian view and his desire to uplift the downtrodden from their

degradation, has been his mission in life. He has risen above sectarian or communal

outlook and has consistently written and spoken against capitalists and pleaded for

the causes of the downtrodden. Anand’s objective is humanistic but sometimes his

approach is vehement and passionate. His invective against the establishment is

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obvious in his writings. He does not approve of the harrowing conditions in which

the labourers live blaming their fate. He is rational in his approach. He believes that

one day the suffering would come to an end.

From the preceding chapters one of the conclusions that may be drawn is that

Anand’s works deserve a special study on human rights because he is the one who

voices out for the voiceless with regard to violation of human rights even before the

Declaration of Human Rights. His concern for the deprived community drives him

to write in order to give expression to the violation of human rights. The present

study is relevant in the context of the modern society.

Social injustice and the violation of human values motivate Anand to voice

out for human rights. He is primarily interested in human values. He uses his art as

a potent tool to bring about a just system for mankind. He always sides with the

underprivileged and depicts their miseries caused by human rights violations. So his

novels and short-stories become a vehicle of his philosophy of human rights. He has

written novels with a view to teaching the people to recognize the fundamental

principles of human values and rights. H.M. Williams in Indo-Anglican Literature

1800-1970: A Survey, aptly observes that Anand’s novels are “deliberate attempts to

expose the distress of the lower castes and classes of India, they are undisguised in

their plea for social change, and are motivated by intense anger and pity” (36).

The word ‘value’ means ‘worth’. Values are shaped by culture in which we

live. There are values that are held high in most cultures. These include fairness

and justice, compassion and charity, duties and rights. The Indian culture varies like

its vast geography. The people speak different languages, dress differently, follow

different religions, but in spite of all the diversity, India has always been a land of a

deep-rooted value system.

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Today, people are confused about their values and value system. They face

conflicts and dilemmas. They face dark realities such as corruption, oppression and

social injustice. There is a breakdown of values. Values form an integral part of a

particular culture. Therefore, there is a need to value people, ideas, activities and

objects according to their significance. Values allow members of society to interact

harmoniously; affect their formation and developments as individuals, and make it

easier to reach goals that would be impossible to achieve individually; values not

only need to be defined, they must also be maintained, promoted and disseminated.

Values shape people’s relationships, behaviours, choices and sense of who we are.

Human values form the basis of human life. They guide people’s behaviour

and lend meaning to their existence. The world is facing many challenges because

there is no awareness of human values or human rights. Mostly these two aspects are

absent in the lives of the people. Corruption, political and social oppression, unjust

systems, communal and caste conflicts, religious fundamentalism, gender

inequalities, oppression of women, sexual assault and violence against women,

bonded labour, child labour, trafficking, etc. are witnessed everywhere. Indian

society is full of bigotry, caste discrimination, untouchability, regional parochialism,

linguistic fanaticism and chauvinism. With the help of more and more awareness

programmes and studies of human rights, people will become aware of their

fundamental rights and duties.

The present study attempts to promote the understanding of the importance

of human rights through literature. Society experiences constant changes politically,

socially or morally. Literature is a tool to reflect the society. Not only does it guide

people but also it inspires them. The function of literature is not only to record

reality but also to illuminate and create new avenues for further social development.
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Mulk Raj Anand assumes the role of educator and through his fiction, he tries to

reform society by creating awareness among the people of human rights. The

oppressor begins to respect the human rights; the oppressed begin to learn their

rights. Thus, Anand’s novels prove to be an eye-opener for all.

When Anand entered the literary scenario the Indian society in the twentieth

century was caste-based. Society followed certain practices which were against the

principles of human rights and natural justice. When the British came to India, they

introduced certain modern ideas of liberty, equality and justice. At the same time,

the British wanted to pacify the orthodox upper section of society too. In the

twentieth century, and especially after 1919, the Indian national movement became

the main propagator of social reform. The novels, dramas, short stories, poetry and

newspaper became the mouthpiece of their views. Anand’s novels played a

significant role in the social reform of the twentieth century.

Anand is the spokesman of the masses. He writes for them. He is conscious

of the violation of human rights of the common people. His novels suggest that a

society committed to human values will not violate the human rights. His novels

highlight the violation of human rights by narrating events. His portrayal of real

characters drawn from across the nation strikes the right note in changing the Indian

society. Anand asserts that his portrayal of underprivileged society would bring

awareness of human rights. By way of comparison, contrast and conflicts between

the rich and the poor, the privileged and the underprivileged, and the oppressor and

the oppressed, Anand focuses on the need for implementation of the declaration of

human rights. His commitment to freedom is linked with his commitment to dignity

and equality. Anand’s major scope is to end or minimise the violation of human
 181

rights. He pictures the human miseries in order to present his vision of human

values.

India has one of the oldest legal systems in the world. The Indian legal

system of today is a combination of customary laws, Hindu law, Muslim law, British

law and modern jurisprudence. The constitution of India was adopted in 1949, two

years after independence. The preamble identifies democracy, secularism, liberty,

equality and dignity of the individual as values fundamental to the constitution that

cannot be removed, even by constitutional amendment. Part III on Fundamental

Rights and Part IV on Directive Principles of state policy contain objectives of the

governance of the nation and for the protection of human rights. The fundamental

rights, mainly civil and political rights are directly enforceable in Indian courts. The

Directive Principles of State policy mainly provide for the protection of economic

and social rights.

There are innumerable studies of Anand’s fictional works. The present

thesis is prompted mainly by the treatment of child rights, labour rights, and

women’s rights in his novels. The present research is an investigation of the

principles of human rights as presented in his works. In future research can be done

in his novels in the view of eco-criticism; living spaces of discriminated hierarchy of

caste, and comparative study of representation of the marginalized in the social

development. The Dalits in his novels as against the immediate post-colonial

representation of Dalits by the other novelists may be analysed.

The dissertation deals with a general view on human rights and how Anand

articulates them in his works. The main focus of the second chapter is examination

of violation of child rights in Untouchable and Coolie. A child’s need of special

care and assistance is recognized not as a favour but rather as a fundamental right of
 182

all children. A number of Acts related to human rights issues were passed by the

Indian legislative system because of the impact of literature too.

The Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles of Indian Constitution

contain particular references to children. The children Bakha and Munoo give a

warning signal to the society suggesting that the oppressed children should be raised

to the level of human dignity and self-respect. Munoo runs from place to place in

search of justice and dignity. The novel Coolie begins from a child’s innocent

journey as a child labourer and ends as a rickshaw puller. These two novels mirror

the Indian society and make people think about the values and rights of the children.

Coolie is a novel of deep social anger against the plight of the poor in India.

According to Saros Cowasjee, “freedom was an indication of Anand’s painful

assertion of the meaninglessness of political freedom without change of heart” (7).

After sixty-six years of independence, it must be admitted with shame that very little

has changed in the lives of the poor in India, and Coolie, written during the British

India, could well be a socio-literary representation of the struggle of millions of

people.

Coolie and Untouchable are the novels which aim at social reformation.

While the latter deals with the different forms of evils of caste discrimination in

society, the former details the ruthless child labour, exploitation, cruelty and abuse

of poor children that have taken stubborn root in the socio-economic soil of our

land. The novels highlight the loss of precious childhood, and the hardships

experienced at the hands of adults motivated by greed for gain, selfishness,

heartlessness, and callousness in destroying irrevocably that tender shoot of

humanity that ought to find protection from the adult world. While child labour

laws exist, and the Indian constitution bans the employment of children below the
 183

age of fourteen, it is well-known that the daily plight of millions of children is no

different today. Anand’s Munoo could be any one of millions of India’s children

trapped early in an unending vicious circle of bondage and debt, finding release only

in premature death.

The happy child, curious, wonderstruck, “tracing the colours, the shapes and

sizes of all things, enquiring into their meanings” (C 44) is stung by insults and

slowly settles into the routine of domestic slavery, though not easily: “the wild bird

of his heart fluttered every now and then with the desire for poor happiness” (C 44).

Munoo’s life turns into full circle when he leaves Bombay for Simla. Again, it is for

someone else’s convenience: Mrs.Mainwaring, like Prabha before him, sees in him a

potentially good servant. The description of his illness and death by tuberculosis is

heart-rending.

Untouchable is basically a tragic drama of the individual caught in the

cobweb of the age-old caste system. Through a gallery of characters Anand weaves

a deep and dense web of actualities and eventualities. His created cosmos in the

novel bears a direct resemblance to the actual one. Untouchable, a creative debut

blazed on the literary horizon in 1935 presents the not comprehensive and logistic

outlook on the problem of untouchability. Anand because of his definable passion

for Gandhi visited his Ashram at Sabarmati and himself cleaned latrines. This

proved to be instrumental in cultivating the idea of work as worship and imbibed an

integrated attitude for all labour as a tool of creativity. Anand truly shares the

feelings of the untouchables.

The study of child rights in these two novels highlights the social evils

attached with children such as child labour, child abuse, neglect, bonded labour,

child discrimination, slavery and so on. Children involved in child labour are
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usually deprived of access to child rights. Due to the poverty, the vulnerability of

children and their need for income to survive in a poverty- stricken environment,

these children are exploited. The income earned by children in its own way

contributes substantially to their own survival and that of their families. It is either

harmful to children’s physical, emotional, psychological and social development, or

interferes with the children’s schooling. The UN Convention of the Rights of the

Child (CRC 1989) views child labour as a human right violation. UNICEF declares

that everyone under the age of eighteen is entitled to the rights proclaimed in the UN

conventions on the rights of child including the right to be protected from economic

exploitation.

The UN CRC is a landmark development in international law. Child Rights

are the major UN Human Rights Treaties. The International Convention on

Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR 1996) obliges state parties to

criminalise employment of children under conditions deemed “harmful to their

morals or health” (Article 10). However, the CRC is framed specifically to address

children’s concerns. Together with ICESCR, it demands protection of the child

against economic and social exploitation (Art 32).

The importance of education for development of children cannot be

underestimated. Education significantly increases children’s quality of life.

Education has a special and unique role to play in all societies. The school has a

very strong influence in the formative years of a child’s life. Every child is eligible

to get uniform education. Poverty is considered to be the other root cause of

violation of child rights. A certain section of people are unable to fulfil their basic

needs due to poverty. Children are the creators and shapers of a tomorrow’s nation.

The children of today will be adults of tomorrow. India is standing at the threshold
 185

of a new era of progress. The children should get proper education and good values

should be imbibed in them.

The third chapter highlights the treatment of labour rights in Two Leaves and

a Bud and The Big Heart. The novel Two leaves and a Bud brings to light the

inhuman cruelty perpetrated by the whites. Anand was so outraged at this inhuman

treatment that he painted the exploiters in the darkest hue and in consequence, the

British Government banned this book. The novel documents the oppressed coolies

on the tea estates. A fierce denunciation of man’s cruelty to man, Two leaves and a

Bud projects Anand’s humanism, his rejection of theories of Karma and God, and

the destructive effects of poverty. The coolies are overworked and underpaid. Their

living condition is inhuman. The privileged classes violated the human rights of the

poor.

Anand inaugurates a new era in the Indo Anglian literature by choosing to

depict the pathetic plight of the poor and the underdogs. He rejects the fate and

points out that all these are manmade and the result of the weakness of the masses.

This novel is a more powerful diatribe against establishment than Untouchable and

Coolie. It exposes the ways by which the British exploited the ignorant labourers.

The train to Assam serves as trap to transport the innocent coolies. The poor though

virtuous are unable to outdo the social oppression and suppression. Their life is a

tale of continuous suffering and struggle with no end in sight. His uniqueness lies in

his full pledged concentration on the under privileged Anand is the counterpart of

Charles Dickens who is the first English writer to expose the exploitation of the poor

working class by capitalists.

The Big Heart (1945) has been acclaimed as a great novel by Margaret Beny,

K. N. Sinha and M. K. Naik in their book on Anand. It deals with a small

 186

community of coppersmiths of Amrittan, who suddenly lose their jobs because of

the introduction of machines. As factories begin to replace workers, thathiars fail to

get work. They are thrown out of their hereditary profession and are rendered

jobless. Starvation is in store for them. The machine deprives them of their daily

bread. Ananta, the coppersmith, the man with the big heart like Ratan in Coolie,

steps in. Though Ananta faces inhuman treatment due to the introduction of

machines, he does not become blind to facts. He recognizes the reined horse power

of the machine as a must for modernization and progress.

Anand, at this period, took the plunge to pick his heroes from the soil and

dirt from the lowest stratum of life. He decided to paint India in stark reality and not

as an abode of oriental philosophy, mysticism, and magic as many of his

predecessors had done. Real India, he felt, could be found amidst untouchables,

coolies, landless labourers, exploited women, and ousted princes. He discloses these

victims of society by portraying them as protagonists of his novels make them work

for a revolution against oppression, exploitation and injustice. Hence the

introduction of what Anand himself calls his principal characters ‘negative heroes’

in his novels.

Anand realises that the social context of the Indian novelists is different from

that of European writers. He warns that:

We have, however, in our newly emergent societies, to understand

that we are not the middle classes of Europe and America. We must

see ourselves as we are, we are struggling out of the days of contempt

of the caste orders, emancipating our minds from the submission to

one man rule, we are dimly becoming aware of the nature of our

hopeless resignation in the past to the unknown fate, the supreme

 187

God Vishnu, who will not wake up to help us, because the Kaliyug is

not yet over. (M. R. Anand, A Note on Henry James and the Art of

Fiction in India 6-7)

Anand felt that one could depend more on art and literature for solace than

on religion and philosophy. According to him, “Literature, music and art are better

worth worshipping than God or a Deity for whom the sanction lies in the intuitions

of a few mystics” (4-5). Anand tends to be sympathetic to the historic plight of

women and eager to see them emerge from the violation of their rights. Anand

treated women with respect in his own life. He strongly condemns the society

which sticks to myths and age-old customs. His women characters are traditional.

Gauri and Sohini are the voices of many Indian women who struggle against the

exploitation of women in many forms. Even a woman of a millionaire family suffers

just because she is a second sex.

Anand feels that woman whether she is rich or poor is marginalized. Women

in his novels are victims of male aggression, and they suffer passively. Her destiny

is determined by man. Women in his novels are subalterns who rarely speak or and

who are denied any chance to express their anguish.

In The Old Woman and the Cow, Gauri rejects the narrow world of

orthodoxy. Gauri is an epitome of a life of suffering for a long period. If she resists,

she is subjugated. The male society will accept her only in the form of a victim. She

is the true case of gendered subaltern. The novel brings forth different phases in the

development of her character in conflict with circumstances of her life. She is

depicted as submissive, meek and non-resistant. Panchi, her husband, a chauvinist

rules over her like a monster over a slave. If Gauri is helpless and silently

submissive at the beginning of the novel and like a subaltern who rarely speaks, in
 188

the end she emerges victorious. Indian society has defined a particular code of

conduct to persons belonging to every caste. Similarly, women in every caste are

lower than men in their community. The women belonging to the downtrodden are

in a deplorable state. The Manu dharma Shastra denies equal status for women

along with men. Girls are denied education. Women cannot utter the veda Mantras.

The upper caste men can sexually exploit any woman, even a woman of the low

caste. It was a period when nothing could be done independently by a woman.

Today is the era of modernization, development and change. Many changes

have taken place with respect to social life of the Indian women. The changes are

slow in pace in comparison with the developed countries. But the condition of

women in India is also improving. The reform movements in the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries galvanised the process of women awakening. Women receive

education and gradually became conscious of their rights, privileges and status. Now

in education, social reform, protecting their rights, participation in politics and

several other affairs, women have made mark on society. With various reform

movements and gradual change in the perception of women in society, there has

been a radical transformation in the position of women in modern India. The

recognition of individualism of women is another major achievement of the modern

age.

India has ratified various international conventions and human rights

instruments committing to secure equal rights of women. The National Policy for

the Empowerment of Women, 2001 was framed by the Government of India with

the goal of bringing about advancement, development and empowerment of women.

In January 1992, the National Commission for Women (NCW) was set up as a

statutory body under the National Commission for Women Act, 1990 to review
 189

constitutional and legal safeguards for women; recommend remedial legislative

measures, facilitate redress of grievances and advice the Government on all policy

matters affecting women.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Chief architect of the Indian constitution is a great

visionary. He provided constitutional guarantees and protections for a wide range of

civil liberties for individual citizens, including freedom of religion, the abolition of

untouchability and the outlawing of all forms of discrimination. He provided

various constitutional safeguards to ensure human rights. It would be right to state

that Anand’s literary campaign is a beginning of human rights awareness.

According to Anand, the novel can awaken the consciousness of the readers.

A novelist moves the readers through the novel’s cathartic effect. Anand’s concept

of literature as closely related to life is a by-product of his humanistic ideas. It is his

ardent love for human beings and his pity for the suffering, and the downtrodden

that leads him to believe that the function of literature is to enable man recognise his

dignity. Anand rises in value because of his love for the enslaved. As a fiction writer

Anand has been noticed for vitality and sense of actuality. Anand selects the lower

section of the society--those with purity and innocence and gives full life and blood

to them. Anand understood the degree of pain and suffering of his fellowmen. He is

the champion of the suppressed. He has always written to steer man’s worthiness for

respect and to generate pity and love for the underdogs and the down trodden. He

writes for the sake of man for cleaning and making him noble and for leading him

into action calculated to achieve the welfare for all. A plethora of literary activities

penned by him show that his main purpose is to divulge that fact; questionable

representation given to the subaltern and the different social problems of Indian

society. His provocative remarks call for a new India, free from any kind of
 190

discrimination and exploitation. Not interfering with the rights of the others is a

basic human right.

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