1

Voices of Oppression, Protest and Assertion: A Study of the

Selected Novels of Mulk Raj Anand and Ngugi wa Thiong’o

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the

award of the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in English

by

Mais Sbeih

Supervisor

Dr Annie Pothen

Department of English
Osmania University

August 2018

Voices of Oppression, Protest and Assertion: A Study of the

Selected Novels of Mulk Raj Anand and Ngugi wa Thiong’o
 2

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the

award of the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in English

by

Mais Sbeih

900110059029

Supervisor

Dr Annie Pothen

Professor of English

Department of English
Osmania University

August 2018
 3

CHAPTER І

INTRODUCTION
 4

Indians and Africans have written novel in English medium for social and
political purposes from earliest times with rare force, eloquence and efficacy.
The ideas of social realism are reflected in Anand’s novels Untouchable and
Coolie, while the ideas of socialist realism are revealed in Ngugi’s novels;
Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross. The main themes of such novels are
portrayal of wretchedness, poverty, exploitation, and many types of
oppression, corruption and hunger. The exposure of widespread social evils
and tensions, portrayal of the oppressive and repressive practices upon the
miserable outcastes and the poor, conflicts in tradition-ridden societies and
conflicts between tradition and modernity. There are depictions of the many
attempts of protest by the oppressed to gain their self-assertion. Finally, the
novelists hint to possible solutions to the existing problems and evils in their
societies.
The social realist political movement and creative assessments
flourished in the nineteen thirties in a time of universal economic depression,
intensified racial conflict, the rise of fascist regimes globally and profuse
optimism after the Russian and Mexican revolutions.(Wikipedia). Social
realists shaped metaphorical and accurate images of the “masses”, a term that
involved the proletariat, communists and the politically marginalized. The
realist artists are dissatisfied with all the evils that are prevailing in any
society; this leads them to search for solutions and they find their purpose in
the belief that art is a weapon that can combat the capitalist exploitation of
workers and cease the progress of international fascism. Social Realists
suggest themselves as workers and indentured laborers, as those who were
enslaved in the fields and factories.
Realism can be defined as a style of writing that gives the impression
of recording faithfully an authentic way of life. Realism refers sometimes both
to a literary method based on a truthful accuracy of description and to a more
common attitude that rejects idealism, escapism, and other extravagant
qualities of romance in favor of recognizing seriously the actual problems of
life. Contemporary criticism insists repeatedly that realism is not a direct or
simple reproduction of reality, but a method of conventions producing a
lifelike illusion of some ‘real’ world outside the text, by processes of
assortment, exclusion, description, and manners of addressing the reader. In its
 5

methodologies, realism can be found as component in many types of writing

earlier to a century ago. In literature, Realism is the practice of commitment to
natural surroundings or to actual life and to precise demonstration without
romanticizing of normal life. The earliest examples of realism in English
literature are among the 18th-century works of Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding,
and Tobias Smollett. It was deliberately adopted as an aesthetic program in
France in the mid19th century when interest arose in recording previously
ignored aspects of contemporary life and society. The realist stresses on
impartiality and objectivity, along with coherent but restrained social
criticism, was integral to the novel in the late 19th century. The term was also
used critically to signify extreme minuteness of detail or preoccupation with
unimportant, sordid issues.
“For some Marxists, realism is the best form of purposes because it
clearly and accurately represents the real world, with all its socioeconomic
inequities and ideological contradictions”. (Tyson 66)
A distinction between social realism and socialist realism should be
made. As according to Galsworthy, “the word ‘realist’ characterizes that artist
whose temperamental preoccupation is with a revelation of the actual spirit of
life, character and thought with a view to enlighten him and others”. The chief
difference between social realism and socialist realism is between ‘is’ and
‘should be’. Social realism is the description of social reality as it is; there
should be a point of communication between the society that is depicted in
literature and the real genuine society. Whereas Socialist realism means the
depiction of the social reality not as it is but as it should be idealized. The
second kind of approach is a representative Marxist approach to literature. The
Assembly of Soviet Writers in 1934 approved the Socialist Realism concept.
Joseph Stalin, Nickolai Bukharin, Maxim Gorky and Andrey Zhdanov
accepted this approach.
Socialist Realism stresses that art must portray at least one aspect of
man's struggle toward socialist growth for an enhanced being. It assures the
requirement for the inspired artist to assist the proletariat by being accurate,
positive and committed. The doctrine measured all formulas of
experimentalism as decadent and negative. Marxist criticism is an approach to
literature that focuses on the ideological content of a work, its explicit and
 6

implicit assumptions and values about matters such as culture, race, class, and
power. Marxist criticism, based largely on the writings of Karl Marx, typically
aims at not only revealing and clarifying ideological issues but also correcting
social injustices. Some Marxist critics use literature to describe the competing
socioeconomic interests that too often advance capitalist interests such as
money and power rather than socialist interests such as morality and justice.
They argue that literature and literary criticism are essentially political because
they either challenge or support economic oppression. Because of this strong
emphasis on the political aspects of texts, Marxist criticism focuses more on
the content and themes of literature than on its form. Being Marxists, Anand
and Ngugi stress the socioeconomic and political exploitation of the lower and
working classes in the four selected novels of this dissertation. Moreover, the
two novelists invite us to criticize and condemn the socioeconomic and the
repressive ideologies.
Realism in fine art and literary works is an attempt to describe life as it
is. It displays life in actuality, without neglecting anything unpleasant or
agonizing, and romanticizing nothing. According to the realists, the author’s
most significant role is to depict as honestly as possible what is observed
through the senses. Realism began as a recognizable movement in art in the
18th century. By the mid-19th century, it was a principal art form.
Despite the range of styles and subjects within Social Realism, the
artists unite themselves in the attack on the status quo and social evils. They
are realists who focus on the human figure and human condition. Most of the
social realists are committed to Marxism and Communism. True realism
portrays man and society as complete entities instead of showing merely one
or the other of their aspects. It is not just an echo but also the real sound of an
individual or society or a joint voice of their being. Thus, it is very much true
what Mulk Raj Anand accepts:
And I was confirmed in my hunch that, unlike Virginia Woolf,
the novelist must confront the total reality, including its
sordidness, if one was to survive in the world of tragic contrasts
between the ‘exalted and noble’ vision of the blind bard Milton
to encompass the eyes dimmed with tears of the many mute
Miltons. (Anand, Why I Write, Indian Writing in English 5).
 7

Moreover, Anand draws vast illustrations of such a commitment in his

own works, which will be explained clearly in chapters two and three.
Mulk Raj Anand is one of the greatest social realist novelists in India;
he is profoundly influenced by Gandhi, his ethics and his way of life. In his
writings, he endeavors to expose the age, the agony, the anguish of the
downtrodden, and the aggrieved sections in India. Untouchability and the caste
system are the major evils in Indian society as Mahatma Gandhi once said,
“untouchability and casteism are the indelible stigmas on Hinduism”. (M.
Gandhi). Anand appeared on the literary horizon in India in the nineteen
thirties. The 1930s in India were politically chaotic; the Mahatma launched the
Satyagraha Movement. Then there were the three Round Table Conferences.
The entire nation was stirred and moved by the conferences. Anand observed
the widespread discrimination against the most unlucky peoples of the Indian
society by the upper castes. The untouchables are prohibited from basic human
rights such as water, appropriate shelter, education and worshipping rights.
Anand had keenly observed and felt the violence and oppression of the
outcasts who had been subjugated for decades. He recognized that all the
heroes and heroines in his literary endeavors were dear to him because they
were reflections of real people that he had known in his childhood and youth;
he further went to say they were the flesh of his flesh and the blood of his
blood. It was his social realism and his sense of humanity that stirred Anand to
write about the plight of the unprivileged people. His fictional projection in
Untouchable is of the people whose lives are increasingly associated with
pain, oppression, humiliation, disrespect, deprivation and abuse from birth to
death. The outcasts who live in wretched conditions suffer pain and woe as
their fate. Anand observed the milieu, the plight and the predicament of the
untouchables. His novel continues in its popularity to this day. It is moved
away from a primarily realistic focus and has developed into the expansive
form that incorporates all other fictional modes.
Anand is one of the most highly regarded Indian novelists writing in
English. “He was born in Peshawar in 1905, from a coppersmith father and an
illiterate peasant mother, but though his low birth status he managed through
scholarships to manage some schooling and mix with the rich classes” (Ram
28). Shruti Nath described Anand thus:
 8

Novelist, short-story writer and art critic, Anand was amongst

the first writers to portray the disadvantaged sections of Indian
sub-continent realistically with a full humanistic zeal and
render Punjabi and Hindustani idioms into English In his work,
Anand has drawn a sympathetic portrait of the poor in India.
Anand is referred to as one of the “founding fathers” of the
Indian English novel... Anand is the champion, in writing for
the cause of the disadvantaged. (Nath).
From a Marxist perspective, Untouchable and Coolie are concerned
in revealing and condemning the worst social evils. i.e. untouchability and
poverty, which are practiced either in the name of religion and tradition or on
basis of class segregation. The above-mentioned novels concentrate in the
abusing contradictions within colonized Indian society. Anand reveals that in
addition to the British foreign colonization, there are existing layers of
colonialism within Indian society. These inner social evils stand in the way of
India’s conversion to a modern civil society. Anand exposes the most critical
social problems that are existed in the Indian society; these are the issues of
caste, discrimination, hatred, oppression, poverty, untouchability and
hypocrisy.
The steadfast of the proletariat renders an epical, but faithful account
of the agonies, hardships and sufferings of the Indian downtrodden in
Untouchable and Coolie.
Anand’s advance of years is accompanied by solidifying his
inclinations for the outcastes in defiance of the taboos of elders. So strong is
his affection to and identification with the outcaste friends that he would grow
desperate without their company. He felt impatient to seek their company after
a long bout of illness. “ I was desperately anxious to be able to walk out again,
and impetuously, I wanted to go and play with washer man’s and band man’s
sons, Bakha, Ram Charan, Ali who Shiva told me all wanted to see me”.
(Gautam.G.L 6-7).
Having lost faith in the dead conventions of society, Anand devotes
himself to the anti-imperial movement and philosophy. As a serious student of
philosophy in graduation in Khalsa college in Amritsar, Anand is often
 9

absorbed in “probing into the fundamental problems of reality, knowledge,

God, immorality, survival, evil and suffering” (Gautam.G.L).
Anand evolved a language flexible and varied enough to suit different
fictitious characters drawn from different varied professions and strata of
society as well as Indian enough to create the impression of verisimilitude and
authenticity (Ram). Anand tried to solve the problem of the medium by
Indianizing English words, through literal translation into English the Indian
expressions and proverbs. Anand also succeeded in creating an Indian
consciousness. This is another aspect that shows Anand as a social realist.
Anand’s literary career and life can be divided into three parts: “the
early years in India until his departure for England 1905-1925; the years
abroad 1925-1945 and the later years in India from 1946 to his death in 2004.
(Ram 12). This division is not merely based on his principal periods of
residence but corresponds with the different stages of his literary career. The
first period reveals the various components that contribute to the shaping of
his mind and the influences that later affect his writing. The second period is
the most important, which is related to Anand’s hard tussle to become a
novelist, and the eventual success that led him to be rated as “the foremost
Indian novelist”. (Punjabi). The third period is disappointing, but it is notable
for his concern for the social and cultural aspects of India, and especially for
his founding and editing of the Indian fine-art magazine, Marg. He attended
Khalsa College in Amritsar and entered the University of Punjab in 1921,
graduating with honor in 1924. Thereafter, Anand did his additional studies at
Cambridge and at London University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1929. (Ram 9).
He studied, and later lectured at League of Nations School of Intellectual
Cooperation in Geneva. In the 1930s and 1940s, Anand distributed his time
between London and India, joining the struggle for independence. He also
fought with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. During Second World
War, he worked as a broadcaster and scriptwriter in the film division of the
BBC in London. Later he returned to India permanently. He became the
director of Kutub Publishers. From 1948 to 1966 Anand taught at Indian
universities. (PUNJABI)
A tragic incident that occurred during his childhood completely
shattered his faith in God; this was when he suffered his first loss at the tender
 10

age of eleven in the death of his nine-year old cousin, Kaushalya who was his
close companion until “dreaded disease of lungs” stroke her down. Being
unable to reconcile to her death, he wrote a letter of protest to God asking why
He took Kaushalya away. The unacknowledged letter breaks the little
communion he had with Him. This incident shaped the artist’s defiant spirit,
together with the second major crisis in his life, which was the Jallianwalla
Bagh Massacre. In this occasion, Anand experienced the mercilessness of the
imperial servants for innocently breaking the curfew order. The seven stripes
of police cane, made him share with his compatriots the humiliation of being
disadvantaged in one’s own land. He was filled with bitterness at the way the
British were conducting themselves in India. He later on correlated their high-
handedness with that of the Indian feudal lords and denounced it in a number
of his short stories. The years, which Anand spent at college, were marked
with his introduction to nationalist activity, non-violent campaigning and brief
imprisonment. Besides, he tried to cleanse the culture and tradition, to
discover ways and means to alleviate the suffering of his countrymen,
especially of the disadvantaged people. All of these efforts which Anand did
are references to his Marxist vision in which he wanted a country that is free
of caste and class barriers.
Anand started writing at an early age. His first prose was written as a
reaction to the ordeal of the suicide of his aunt, who was excommunicated for
dining with a Muslim woman, besides an unsuccessful love affair with a
Muslim girl called Yasmin, who was forced to marry a man she had refused,
these incidents inspired him in writing poetry. After his graduation, Anand
went to London and pursued his doctoral studies under the supervision of
Professor G. Dawas Hicks. There the first seeds of Marxism started to bloom
and his experiences sharpened his political insight. He found the dignity of
labor in the individual. He discovered that the sweeper after having done the
sweeping of the road were to be dressed in a suit, nobody would ask him if he
is an untouchable or not. Anand realized that his fellow citizens with their
emphasis on designation, caste, and fate were not free. This solidified his faith
in the individual as well as in the democratic values. After studying Marx and
doing his best to educate himself politically, he starts condemning capitalism,
imperialism, castesim and classism in his writings. His stay in Europe was
 11

rewarding in yet another way. He made several memorable acquaintances with

the elite of the time like D.H Lawrence, E.M. Forster, F.R. Leavis, Middleton
Murray, Malraux and Pablo Neruda. His association with them resulted in the
flowering of his personality.
As observed by Shayam M. Asnani: “through his conversations with
them, Mulk wishes to explore his own personality forgotten in the smithy of
his soul the uncreated conscience of his race” (Asnani). It is during this period
Anand did some freelance writing and contributed in particular to Eliot’s
Criterion. This has coupled with his voracious reading and his admission to
Marxist study groups and his participation in British Trade Union Affairs
bring him in contact with whatever is the best or base in the foreign life and
culture. Mahatma Gandhi had maximum influence on Anand in shaping his
social conscience. Anand learnt simplicity and truthfulness from the Mahatma
who sent him to the people before he should take to full-time writing. Inspired
by him Anand discarded his Bloomsbury sophistication in order to make an
honest delineation of the people. Once the Mahatma had sent “the inner man
back to his roots and sources” (Gandhi.M.K). Anand has ever remained true to
himself and to the people around. A writer’s views and attitudes, which shape
up his work are the result of a number of influences that operate on him from
childhood onwards and Anand is no exception in this respect. His heredity, his
social milieu, his education, the book he reads, and the people he meets have
all conditioned his work, and have gone into the making of Anand the
novelist, a spokesperson of the disadvantaged.
In the early1930s Anand wrote books on art and history, but it is not
until the appearance of the novels Untouchable (1935) and Coolie (1936), that
Anand gained wide recognition. Anand set the scene of action of his novels
largely in the villages and cities of the Punjab with which he was well
familiar. (Ram 11). Falling under the category of social realism, his novels
express with realistic details the scenery, the style and the language of their
talk, the customs, superstitions, ritual practices, their social-disabilities,
financial and political crisis which the people of his novels suffer from, hence,
he confined himself largely to depict the life and circumstances of Punjab. His
themes and characters are universal, not local. His central characters belong
mainly to the disadvantaged lot and the theme always has some universal
 12

aspect related to them, this is evident in many of Anand’s novels. Through the
heart heartbreaking description of their wretched state, painted with the colors
of social realism Anand’s two novels Untouchable and Coolie reflect the hard
reality of the Indian society of the early decades of the twentieth century.
Written under a Marxist tone intentionally both these novels convict the
modern capitalistic Indian society and feudal system for the shameless and
tragic exploitation of the disadvantaged and the wretched miserable, as there is
nothing but a true, factual and harsh reflection of the society in both the novels
dealing with a similar central theme of social exploitation.
As a realist, Anand did not only carry his readers along, but he also
gained their confidence and built a close and sound relationship with them as
well as with his protagonists. Real life, which forms the theme of Anand’s
novels, is nothing but social realism. He has coated the elements of human
nature; the common sentiments of humans such as weeping, wrath, delight,
grief, pity, sympathy and empathy with great enchantment. Untouchable and
Coolie are the epics of the melancholies and sufferings of the underprivileged.
Both Bakha and Munoo share the same burden of personal suffering, which
they are not responsible for but their fellow human and the social strains.
Suppression takes many forms to invade the poor people's lives and
create problems for them. The main types of suppression are capitalistic,
colonial and sexual. Suppressing one person for another's survival is a curse
on humanity. Every society has this menace; Anand’s Coolie and Untouchable
present a dismaying state of victims who are suppressed till their death. The
novels display Anand as a unique representative of the weak. Their cry, pain
and suffering are portrayed with wholehearted sympathy. Anand embodies a
representation of Indians through the accurate portrayal of the burdened
people of India. In Coolie, Anand presents Munoo, an eleven-year-old boy
who is innocent and energetic. Through the saga of oppression, the author
displays the deterioration and rise in the life of the protagonist. Munoo's
caregivers consider him as a machine for obtaining money. They exploit him
to the extent they take all his wages for themselves. Munoo willingly receives
his role as a slave and goes to the town with his uncle in order to serve other
people.
 13

Untouchable is Anand’s first powerful novel, it highlights the situation

of the untouchables. The scene is laid in a remote village named Bulashah,
somewhere in the interior of the Punjab. In an outcastes’ colony lives Bakha,
the hero of this novel with his father, brother and sister, where he carries on
his duties of cleaning the public latrines. For Anand, filth and dirt are as much
part of life as beauty, purity and decency. It is not that he is fond of ugliness
but realism demands it. Anand, through his untouchable hero, attempts to
condemn the conventional hierarchical order and challenges the conservative
ideology since it has committed marginalization of the subaltern. He has given
Bakha an identity and a voice, which he is deprived of in the caste-ridden
society.
Untouchable is a sociological novel, that pursues to show the evils of
untouchability. Among the outcastes themselves, there is a hierarchy of higher
and lower. The sweeper is the lowest among the untouchables. Anand gives a
glimpse of the attitude of caste Hindus towards the sweeper boy Bakha. The
behavior of the priest towards his sister Sohini, the hypocrisy and the
corruption of this priest, the ill-treatment of the household woman towards
Bakha, the attitude of the injured boy’s mother, speak volumes of the
prejudices against the unfortunate category of people in the Indian society.
The intimacy of youngsters like Bakha and Ram Charan to the displeasure of
the latter’s parents, is quite revealed. The contrast of the behavior of the
outsiders and the caste Hindus towards Bakha is quite realistic. Untouchable,
is a novel that articulates the abuse of the oppressed and exploited class on
religious background, through absolute sympathy, in the traditional manner of
the realist novel. Anand is indeed the “fiery voice” (Paul.S.K) of those
miserable people. According to Anand, the goal of the writer is to transform
“words into prophecy” (Paul.S.K). Anand’s Marxist agenda is vividly clear in
his endeavors to address a precise question by writing Untouchable this is how
to assuage the mistreatment of the untouchables in India. He then continues to
address this question through the dramatization of Bakha. The possibility of a
humane solution becomes incoherent, yet the author offers three main
solutions for the annihilation of untouchability, the oratory of the Christian
Missionary, Mahatma Gandhi and the machine(the flush) which poet Iqbal
Nath Sharshar has suggested.
 14

Indian society is based on caste system that divides its people into
castes depending on their birth and profession while the Brahmins are
considered the upper caste; the Banghis are the lowest one, those are the
untouchables who do the work of sweepers, they are supposed to clean the dirt
of the other castes silently without any complaint. They are considered
untouchables because they violate the purity of the upper castes in the case of
touching them. These outcastes are not allowed to drink from the main well
unless one upper caste comes and fills their pitchers, “they are not allowed to
go to school because the parents of other children will not allow their sons to
be contaminated by the touch of the low-caste man’s son”. (Anand,
Untouchable). The Banghis are seen as impure. They live in miserable
conditions, surviving on the leftovers of the upper castes. They are deprived of
the simplest rights of humanity. Discrimination is practiced upon them by the
other castes, they are looked upon as even non-humans. No one is interested in
the necessary needs of the untouchables. No one will feel pity for them if they
starve to death or if they get sick.
Reading the text from the lens of Marxist theory will enable to
interpret Anand’s intention behind writing Untouchable and registering every
detail in his character’s life. It is Anand’s aim to let the reader condemn the
social, religious, political, classist and socioeconomic oppressive forces that
led to the existence of the untouchable layer in the Indian society.
The quest for identity is a major theme in Untouchable the reader
questions the viability of Bakha as the most appropriate figure to challenge the
abuses and the oppression of the upper castes. “It is clearly evident from
Anand’s novel that the untouchables are both an oppressed and exploited class
and so they are the most disadvantaged” (Paul.S.K). The scene is set in a
village of the Punjab, yet the happenings that take place in the novel are
universal and quite pan-Indian in character.
Untouchability in the Hindu society is a caste-based problem, the
Hindu Varna untouchables are at the lowest level. They are even not
considered as human beings. Their misery is this: “they were born in debt and
perished in debt; they were born untouchable, they lived as untouchables and
died as untouchables. (D. Keer 2). It is not only the oppression of the upper
castes towards the lower, but among the lower ones, there is untouchability.
 15

This is clearly revealed in the incident of Gulabo, the washerwoman who

claims higher status than Sohini’s. E.M Forster has aptly remarked on this
novel:
Untouchable, could only have been written by an Indian and by
an Indian who observed from the outside. No European,
whoever sympathetic could have created the character of
Bakha, because he would not have known enough about his
troubles. And no untouchable could have written the book
because he would have involved in the indignation of self-pity.
(Forster.E.M., Preface,"Untouchable" 67).
A new social vigor through work based on human collaboration is
what Anand has dreamed of. The depressed classes are caught in the milieu of
poverty and social squalor. Anand is interested in a cooperative social action
and he thinks that the salvation of humanity lies on work that secures the
dignity of the individual. It is in this respect the author is worried about the
future of the depressed classes. He senses that their social life must be actively
involved in a programmed work. The introduction of the technical mechanism
will replace the work that dehumanizes man, and it will ensure his/her dignity.
As a socialist, Anand offers in this novel three main solutions as a kind of
assertion for the untouchables. These solutions are clearly discussed in chapter
two.
Chapter three deals with Coolie, which is published in 1936. In this
novel, Anand takes for his central character Munoo, one of the childhood
playmates. Munoo the orphan boy “runs to avoid every place of cruelty in
search for happiness and self-identity” (Anand, Coolie). Munoo is deprived of
his childhood for the sake of money. Munoo symbolizes the suffering of the
oppressed and the disadvantaged. According to the Marxist novelist “there is a
need for a reestablishment of kindness in a world lost in capitalism and
colonialism, as they are found taking place in the existing society”. (Anand,
Coolie).
In Coolie, Anand’s Marxism is well evident in his attempts to project
the hardships of the low-class people caught as they are in the grinding
processes of social determinism. His tireless crusade is against all forms of
evils, poverty, cruelty, and of social exploitation of the ‘ less miserables’ as
 16

Saros Cowasjee points out: “it’s Anand’s most representative work and has
within it the germs of many of his strengths and weaknesses as a novelist”.
(Cowasjee, So Many Freedoms 63).
Coolie follows Untouchable in which Anand enlarges the scope of the
novel in order to make it an authentic macrocosm of Indian life. It also deals
with the life of a single boy struggles to regain self-esteem and search for his
self-identity in a world that has turned eternally cruel. While Untouchable
deals with the tyranny of the caste-system, Coolie is concerned with the larger
reality of class srtuggle.
Coolie is written in the vein of a realistic fiction. The illusion of reality
and the miserable life in Coolie is created by unambiguously realistic
narration. It is commonly known that an orphan is very often maltreated by his
uncle and is thrown into the busy stream of life even as a child. This
consciousness is the first proof of Anand’s realism that occurs at the beginning
of the novel. Anand is social activist and in his opinion works of fiction are a
stage for social improvement and alertness among the commonalities,
therefore his novels are influential tools to protest social reality. P. K. Singh
observes: “Anand is very much a man of the world, living and loving in
accordance to the rhythms of his own nature”
Anand chooses Munoo, the impressionable boy, as the pivotal
character of his novel who is a beast of burden. Munoo comes from the
tranquil background of a village as an orphan under the tutelage of his fussy
uncle and aunt. He is active and impish, nosy and honest. In the words of
C.D.Narisimhaiah:“the situations Anand creates are convincing on the whole
and reveal aspects of life hitherto generally kept out of fiction as though they
were tabooed from it”. It is almost a pitiless story narrated against the
backdrop of a menacing social reality that took all his energy and drives him
fast into his early death. As prof K.N.Sinha points out:
The Coolie touches the pathetic and the sublime areas of
human experience here, Anand explores the limits of pain
central to existence. He places Munoo in opposition to a
debasing and debased society….. On the contrary, he wishes to
arouse the conscience of humanity against the ruthless
exploitation of the weak. He handles in the prose epic the
 17

realities of the human situation as he sees and understands

them. (K.N.Sinha 33).
Munoo’s story is essentially the story of an exploited Indian. His life
embodies the pitiless lives of millions who are desperately suffering and
deprived. The plight of the coolies is presented by the novelist in a Marxist
tone that it provokes an appropriate revolt against the society, which refuses to
grant indentured laborers as human beings. Anand draws Munoo’s life,
starting from the pastoral background to the megalopolis Mumbai and then on
to the fascinating spot of Shimla, where he dies of tuberculosis. Experimental
consciousness as in graphing out the processes of his continual exploitaion.
Munoo’s search for a foothold in a society that has illtreated him and his
failure to come out of the sophisticated circle constitute another aspect of the
novel. His otherwise eventful life is eroded by the contingency of social
custom, and he becomes exploited all through his life. Thus Anand’s
protagonist becomes a victim of other’s greed, arrogance, cruelty, a victim as
it were of ‘civilization’. In the words of Premila Paul:
Coolie, is a veritable saga of unending pain, suffering and
prolonged struggle punctuated only occasionally by breif
moments of releif and hope. It presents the various experiences
of Munoo at the hands of different exploiters in four different
places. Thus it is only the exploiters that change : the exploited
remains the same. (Paul, The Novels of Mulk Raj Anand 43).
Pride, hypocrisy, class distinction, cruelty, poverty, supprsssion,
exploitaion, and search for identity are recurring features in this novel. The
novelist tries to offer solutoins for all these evils, the best solution is revealed
during Munoo’s work in the factory when the strike has taken place, he
directly mentions communism to be the best solution for the proletariat.
Together with the need for education. Munoo is convinced that the root cause
of all of his suffering is the class segregation and not the abstract entity called
‘fate’, he is the symbol of a million of unfortunate poor Indians who are
condemned to lead the life of unending traumas.
Coolie displays Anand as a unique spokesman of the weak. Their cry,
pain, and suffering are portrayed with heartfelt sympathy. In his realistic
depiction of the oppressed, he represents a realistic picture of the worldwide
 18

underprivileged. Several people across the globe are exploited for the pleasure
and well-being of others. Hargunjot Kapur comments on Coolie as:
In spite of the largeness of its canvas, the multiplicity of its
characters, and the variety of its episodes, the focal point in
Coolie, is always Munoo, and the pathos is sustained. He is
subjected to more rigidity and deprivation... The coolie,
ruthlessly exploited and eternally indebted, has no such
assurance or certitude and lives under the perpetual threat of
losing his job. (H. K. Kapur 154).
In Coolie, Anand’s industrial Marxist ideology is exposed in the
Bombay Chapter as this quotation from the Communist Manifesto shows:
Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the
patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial
capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are
organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army, they
are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers
and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class,
and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved
by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the
individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly
this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more
petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is. (Marx,
The Communist Manifesto).
Chapters four and five deal with two works of the African writer Ngugi
wa Thiong’o, who is a Kenyan; born on 5th of January 1938. His novels Petals
of Blood and Devil on the Cross will be discussed according to their relevance
to the title and theoretically from the Marxist and socialist realism point of
view. As Ngugi is influenced by these two movements. Socialist realism is an
artistic movement that portrays societal and ethnic prejudices, economic
adversities and daily life melee through unembellished pictures of
underprivileged labors often representing their actions as heroic. This is,
therefore, a social and political protest edged with satire. The socialist realism
called for equality among all the layers of the society, thus the rich who
enjoyed exploiting the poor would give away their property to those who were
 19

enslaving all day for their survival. Therefore, this movement would be the
best solution for the proletariat if its principles were put into action correctly.
The socialist artists claimed that all forms of art must depict aspects of man’s
struggle with the collective progress for a better life. It assured the need for an
devoted artist to assist the proletariat by being accurate, positive and
courageous.
Socialist Realism is the basic method of the Soviet literature and
literary criticism and hence it was a potent tool of information during Stalin’s
reign. The main event in this movement was the Russian Revolution of 1917,
It demands of the artist the truthful, historically concrete representation of
reality in its revolutionary development. (Realism).There was a necessity to
use propaganda in literature to preserve the spirit of socialism alive. Its
purpose was to uplift the common proletariat, by presenting his life, work, and
recreation as marvelous. In other words, its aim was to educate the people
meaning of communism. The ultimate aim was to create what Lenin called:
“an entirely new type of human being”. (Lukacs 82).
The movement mirrors the course of American and western art, where
the proletariat became at the center of communist ideals, novelists had to
produce elevating stories in a manner reliable with the Marxist doctrine of
dialectical materialism. Socialist realism thus required close observance of
party doctrine. In applying Socialist Realism on works of art within African
perspective, it would be relevant to look at common workers that involved in
heroic activities, which participated in stirring the social harmony and the
assertion of the power of unity among the proletariat in trying to live their
lives and fight against common enemies in particular circumstances.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o dramatizes this in his novels: Petals of Blood and
Devil on the Cross. The communal life in the first novel is threatened by
betrayal and collaboration between the native Africans and the British
colonialists in post-independent Africa. During the colonial era, the situation
of Africa was miserable and this extended even after independence due to the
post-colonial government which continued robbing the African resources for
the interest of the colonialist. Uwasomba Chijoke rightly described the
situation in Africa as thus: “Africa remains comparatively the least developed
of all continents in terms of the production and sustenance of critically
 20

significant social goods such as physical infrastructure, food supply,

electricity, medical and health services, education, shelter, employment and
other vital materials for human personal and social being”. (Chijioke 94) This
situation illustrates clearly the pitiable condition of Africa. It has been exposed
to various forms of slavery, exploitation, colonization, and neo-colonization in
the last four hundred years. The fusion of the economies of Africa into the
international capitalist orbit which began between1450-1500 with its
consequences has created problems of development and survival for the
people of Africa. “To sustain and promote their interests to the disadvantage
of Africa, the international hegemonic have ensured that their agents remain in
power to do their biddings. These agents pursue policies that satisfy their
interests and those of their imperialist masters even at the brink of economic
collapse” (Uwasomba, The Politics of Resistance and Liberation in Ngugi wa
Thiongo’s Studies), occasioned by “fictitious debts” allegedly owed to the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and other Western
banks and financial institutions. In a glimpse, the African continent is plagued
by afflictions, disasters, macroeconomic crisis and dysfunctions, debt over-
hang, corruption, high-level illiteracy, squalor, disease, hunger and other
negative and threatening conditions resulted by imperialism in cahoots with a
gluttonous and advantageous ruling class. Moreover, the continent is left in
limbo and suspended simulation as the received development pattern from the
West has abysmally failed in solving the devastating socio-political and
economic problems that have engulfed it. As uttered by Kofi Anyidoho in the
following excerpt from an article:
Africa is a homeland that history has often denied and
contemporary reality is constantly transforming into a
quicksand; a land reputed to be among the best endowed in
both human and material resources…..Africa the birth place of
humanity and of human civilization now strangely transformed
into expanding graveyards and battlefields for the enactment of
some of the contemporary world’s worst human tragedies.
(Anyidoho, African Creative Fiction and A Poetic of Social
Change 3).
 21

The colonial practices of most African countries have refused to go

after many decades since the colonial rulers left. This is a result of the
countless social, political and economic problems that are still ravaging the
continent. Many factors have been obstacles on the way of African
development, with the major factor of bad governance which Ngugi wa
Thiong'o has rightly termed the “blacknisation of colonialism”. “It has more or
less become a form of relay race, which Chinua Achebe aptly refers to as "eat-
and-let-eat" regimes. What has been responsible for this situation in most
African countries that have been ravaged by abject poverty, corruption, war,
political and economic instability, serious underdevelopment” (Maxwell 218).
It is a fact that Ngugi wa Thiongo’s two novels, Petals of Blood and Devil on
the Cross, become very important in understanding the miserable pass to
which Africa has come and the need to summon patriotic and concerned
people for a communal battle against the forces that seized Africa’s progress.
Chapters four and five attempt to investigate Ngugi’s concern about and
perceptions of Africa’s march towards selfhood and independence. The many
forms of oppression, that the African people went through and the many
attempts of protest by the Africans in order to gain their self-assertion. The
emphasis on Ngugi and mainly the two novels becomes very important given
the revolting influence of imperialism on African land, and the need for
political struggle and subsequent liberation of the people.
Three broad concepts are significant to this study: namely politics and
the oppression resulting from it, resistance and protest, and liberation and self-
assertion. In life, everybody desires to think and act as s/he likes; and at the
same time, everyone cannot have his/her way, because s/he lives in a society.
There are always conflicts between one’s ego and those of the superego.
Therefore, the relations of individual members of society need to be regulated
by an organized body called government. It is in this context that A.
Appadorai defines politics as “the science concerned with the state and of the
conditions essential to its existence and development.” (Appadorai.A 1).
Hans J. Morgenthau, on the second hand, describes politics as “the
authoritative allocation of resources.” (Hans.J.Morgenthau 25). Here, politics
is seen in terms of supremacy, which is also a means to an end and an end in
itself. Power is, also the capability to influence those who could govern
 22

outcomes, and the ability to influence others in one’s interest. Power is

therefore, a component of politics the ruling class uses effectively to maintain
and sustain its hegemony. From the abovementioned, one can obviously
perceive that the way a society is systematized; the process of its equipment of
power; how and by whom that power has been attained, the class formation
and the sustenance of power; and the ends to which the power is put, are all
issues in the domain of politics. In other words, this means that there could be
two forms of politics: a politics that holds back the advance of humanity and
the one that enhances it for the benefit and improvement of humanity.
Liberation is a product of resistance, and according to Gustavo
Gutierrez, “it expresses the aspirations of the oppressed peoples and social
classes emphasizing the conflict aspects of the economic, social, and political
process which puts them at difficulties with prosperous nations and oppressive
classes”. Liberation is achieved when the people are said to be truly free; when
they control all the tools, instruments, the means of their physical, economic,
political, cultural and psychological being. Nevertheless, in Africa of the
twenty-first century, that free incorporated self-development has not been
permitted to materialize. Ngugi has provided a clarification for the existence
of this condition.
First of all, it is the external influence of foreign assault, occupation,
and control, secondly, is the interior factor of association with the external
threat, whether, under the foreign slavery and the slave trade, under
colonization and recently under neo-colonialism, the two features have
interacted to the disadvantage of the African being. The materialistic chief and
other elements reared by the new colonial masters cooperated with the main
external imperialist aspect. The tempest echoes itself, in a more agonizing way
under neo-colonialism. The interaction between the external menace and the
internal agents is the greatest problem in Africa today, and the effort towards
the liberation of Africa from the shackles of imperialism and capitalism that
inflame the revolutionary undertone in Ngugi’s works as the only a
fundamental breakdown from the status quo claiming an unselfish
transformation of the private property system, access to power of the
oppressed class, and a communal revolution that would break dependence and
thus allow for social change.
 23

This question may be raised: what has literature got to do with the
whole range of issues that have been raised so far. This question is important
if we take into consideration the views of some writers and critics who insist
that literature does not have any utilitarian value. The poet-soldier,
Christopher Okigbo had the opinion that “the writer in Africa does not have
any function. That is, personally I have no function as a writer, I think I
merely express myself, and the public use these things for anything they like”.
(Okigbo 103). Conveying his view on this in an essay, The Modern Writer and
Commitment by way of berating Chinua Achebe for his literary attitude in a
lecture in 1965, Kolawole Ogungbesan states: “it is a betrayal of art for the
writer to put his writing at the service of a cause, even if it is such a laudable
and uncontroversial cause as the education of the people (Okigbo 7). These
situations differ from our conception of literature. Literature is concerned with
humankind. This includes everything that imposes on human life; it covers
every aspect of knowledge and ambitions, politics inclusive. Moreover, it does
not deal with a closed scope of human experience as mentioned by Amuzu “it
admits of all human activities and experiences dealing with the whole life”
(Amuzu 30). Ngugi’s selected works have proven his imaginative and dire
commitment and that the author is a product of society and has responsibility
towards it, wherein he indisputably says in his prison memoir, Detained, “that
literature is not something belonging to a surreal world, or a metaphysical
ethereal plane, something that has nothing to do with man’s more mundane,
prosaic realm of attempting to clothe, shelter and feed himself” (N. w.
Thiong'o, Detained 6).
Ngugi’s fourth novel, Petals of Blood, is viewed by many critics as the
most ambitious and important of his works. According to Palmer “of all
African novels, Petals of Blood probably presents the most comprehensive
analysis to date of the evils perpetrated in independent African society by
Black imperialists and capitalists.” (Palmer, The Growth of African Novel
228). In addition, Ngara (Ngara 67) and Anyidoho (Anyidoho, African
Creative Fiction and A Poetic of Social Change), among others see Petals of
Blood as not only breaking new grounds for the African novel in literary
creation, but also as representing the height of Ngugi’s achievement. This is
because Petals of Blood is viewed as having subsumed the themes and
 24

concerns of all of Ngugi’s other works, including those written after it, into
one volume.
During the publishing of the book in 1977, Ngugi hints: “imperialism
can never develop a country or a people” (Thiong’o 145). “This was what I
was trying to show in Petals of Blood: that imperialism can never develop us,
Kenyans. In doing so, I was only trying to be faithful to what Kenyan workers
and peasants have always realized as shown by their historical struggles since
1895 (Thiong'o, Writers In Politics 95). In both theme and ideological
perspective, Petals begins where A Grain of Wheat stops. It deals mainly with
neo-colonialism in all its facets: oppression, exploitation, social manipulation
and injustice, and thus “it probes the history of the heroic struggles of the
people of Kenya, from pre-colonial times to the present day, within a
comprehensive cultural perspective which embraces the political, religious,
economic and social life of Kenya”. (Palmer, The Growth of African Novel
34). Petals of Blood emphasizes on a period in the history of Kenya and the
development of Ngugi’s socialist vision.
The novel’s setting starts in prison while the four central characters,
Abdulla, Munira, Wanja and Karega are suspected of murdering of the three
African directors of the Theng’eta Brewery. This revelation is exposed
through Munira in the jail. Thus, from the present, the story goes twelve years
back to when Munira first came to Ilmorog as a teacher in the village. As
Ngugi employs the technique of the flashback. The scene of most of the events
of the novel is the community of Ilmorog, which transfers from a traditional
African village into a modern industrial complex. Here is a direct implication
by Ngugi that the traditional values of Ilmorog have been destroyed by
modernism, this is, of course, something very annoying to the novelist that it
obliged him to invite his people to go back to their roots and abandon the
newly bred habits. As Palmer describes “Through the historical demo given by
Ngugi, one is able to have glimpses on the glory of Ilmorog’s past as a truly
rustic community untouched by Western values that move gradually from a
nomadic one to an agrarian civilization” (Palmer, Petals of Blood: African
Literature Today 154).
Before the coming of the “civilization” there have been prosperity and
satisfaction. There was also a sense of belonging even before the penetration
 25

of imperialism with its distorting influence and the invasion of imperialist

values which have brought Ilmorog into its decline, hence the writer informs
the reader that
Ilmorog had not always been a small cluster of mud huts lived
in only by old men and women and children with occasional
visits from wandering herds men. It had its days of glory;
thriving villages with a huge population of sturdy peasants who
had tamed nature’s forests and breaking the soil between their
fingers had brought forth every type of crop to nourish the sons
and daughters of men. In those days there were no vultures in
the sky waiting for the carcasses of dead workers and no insect-
flies feeding on the fat and blood of un-suspecting toilers.
(Petals of Blood 120).
The drought starts extinguishing Ilmorog with significant damage to
the otherwise flourishing community. The immoral neglect by the political
authorities, in particular, Nderi the MP, representing Ilmorog in the
Parliament, worsens matters. Nderi is corrupt and he is only interested in
acquiring wealth at the expense of his electorates. Ultimately, Karega the
smart committed young teacher in the community proposes that the people
should march to the capital where their MP stays to confront him with their
problems. They go to the city in search of their MP. This march and its
associated accomplishment mark a milestone in the lives of the oppressed
section of Kenyan community in general. The entrepreneurs and their agents
Chui, Mzigo and Nderi, start investing projects such as banks, factories, roads,
distilleries and housing estates. These investments have destroyed the texture
of traditional Ilmorog. The destruction of the mysterious spirit Mwathi
symbolizes the eradication of a once traditional society by the devastating
forces of rejuvenation and modernity. Nonetheless, the betrayed peasants have
lost their plots and all their properties to the local profiteers(neo-colonial
tools) and their international leaders.(the imperialists).
Ilmorog is transformed into a capitalist society with all the connected
problems of social inequalities, prostitution, misery, idleness, and inadequate
housing. The new Ilmorog is now divided along class lines. There is the
residential area “of the farm managers, country council officials, the managers
 26

of Barclays, and African Economic Banks, and other servants of state and
money power” (p.280). This area is called Cape Town, while New Jerusalem
is reserved for the downtrodden in society. At this stage in the development of
Ilmorog, Karega leaves Ilmorog following his discharge from the teaching
service five-years before he reappears again. To his disappointment, Wanja
whom he is in love with turns from a prostitute into powerful woman in the
society. He tells the other characters about his previous activities during the
last five years, doing one menial job or the other. As a Marxist figure Karega’s
return to Ilmorog helps in arousing the consciousness of the people. The novel
ends with a sturdy hope of a proletarian revolution, as there is the realization
on the part of the Kenyan proletariat of the potentials of conquering
international capitalism and its neo-colonial representatives.
The spokespersons for Ngugi’s communist solution are Karega, the
lawyer, Abdulla, and Munira. Ngugi through Karega shows that socialism is a
natural way of life in traditional African society and calls on the African
society to go back to its traditional customs. Ngugi is extremely aware that
imperialist capital is the worst enemy in Africa today. To change the status
quo, Karega becomes a trade union activist who instructs the proletariat to rid
the society of exploitation. Karega’s union activities have raised awareness of
the workers and they are ready to haul defiance at their greedy employers as
can be seen in the last chapter of the novel, “the last duty” indicating that the
struggle continues. Ngugi hopes that out of Petals of Blood, Kenyans
(Africans) might gather “petals of revolutionary love.” (N. w. Thiong'o,
Writers in Politics 94).
In Petals of Blood, Ngugi employs his art to encounter the status quo.
The agents of imperialism, the wealthy representatives of Ilmorog control the
important domains of life in it. This is evident in their directorship of
Theng’eta Breweries and Enterprises Ltd. It is important to remember that this
brewery once belonged to Wanja and Abdulla, but the government hands it
over to a multinational corporation. The economic deficiency and callous
deprivation of the peasants are well symbolized in the degradation of Wanja,
the barmaid, who shifts from prostitution to economic independence and
womanhood, but is obliged to be a shameful prostitute selling her body
 27

because “nothing is obtained free”, and the slogan becomes “eat or be eaten”.
(N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood).
Ngugi’s confrontational spirit against neo-colonial agents and their
leaders is there in Devil on the Cross, a novel he wrote in 1982 while he was
detained in Kimathi Maximum Security prison in Kenya. Similarly to Petals of
Blood, the story’s setting is mainly in Ilmorog and partly in Nairobi. The
major target in Devil on the Cross is neo-colonial dependence, with the Devil
and the Cross as the configuring symbols. This is best demonstrated in
Wariinga’s nightmare wherein the white colonialist ‘Devil’ is crucified by the
masses (Seemingly, a reference to political independence) and to be saved by
the native acolytes. (Namely, a reference to neo-colonialism).
Devil on the Cross reflects the clash of opposites namely the class
struggle between the poor and the rich, the exploited and the exploiters. The
novel begins with the story of Wariinga, who suffers a series of mishaps,
maltreatment, and deprivation at the hands of few powerful men in the society.
She is exploited, abused and abandoned by the rich old man of Ngorika,
whose child she was carrying during her adolescence. She attempted suicide
on the railway track but rescued by the timely intervention of Mutiri. After
giving birth to her daughter, she was able to complete her secretarial studies
and finds herself a job in Champion Construction Company. She, later on,
loses this job because she refuses boss Kihara’s sexual allusions. Her
boyfriend John Kimwana has abandoned her after accusing her of being
Kihara’s mistress and she is thrown out of her rented room for her inability to
pay the increased rent. Moreover, the landlord secures the services of three
thugs who throw her things out. Through Wariinga, the novelist socialist view
is pretty clear where he is capable to celebrate the exploited workers who are
fighting for their rights. Wariinga is the protagonist whose actions are intended
to uplift the workers progress. The kind deeds of other characters also
highlight the unity and compassion of the proletariat in reaching out each other
and thus promoting comradeship. This novel in a way is an invitation for
unity, communism and socialism.
The resistance put up by the people, their massive struggle against the
forces of law shows that the masses can determine their fate. The awareness of
Wariinga’s ambition to be an automobile engineer illustrates how the
 28

disadvantaged in the society have worked hard to improve their situation, in

spite of the ruthless attempts by the powerful people to shrink them to
nothingness. After Wariinga has worked persistently to become an engineer,
the forces of “economic strangulation” strike her and the other workers. Boss
Kihara; in partnership with a group of foreigners from the USA, Germany, and
Japan, buys the garage and the surrounding piece of land for the building of a
hotel. The gunfire and killing of the Devil’s accomplices, including the rich
old man of Ngorika demonstrate the determination of the masses to liberate
themselves, to take the initiative to start over.
Ngugi reveals through this novel that the urbane structures that
appeared in the cities of Kenya, Ilmorog, Mombasa, Nairobi, Nakuru, and
Kisumu, did not have their equivalent enhancement in the average of living of
the overall population. Rather, what is observed, is the emergence of a new
class structure the “nouveau riche”, an infinite corrupt minority having allied
itself with the imperialists in order to form a barrier to the people’s share of
the national resources. The struggle is between the robbers who strive to
confirm their hold and the disadvantaged who also strives to frustrate them.
The novel illustrates the class of each character; Muturi, Wariinga, Wangari,
and Gaturiria represent the proletariat, while Gitutu, Kihaahu and Muireri
represent the bourgeoisie. Henceforth, there is a strong struggle between the
victims of exploitation and the exploiters.
Ngugi’s usage of symbols in this novel, such as that of the matatu and
the cave is to represent two things. The matatu denotes the world of the
deprived where freedom of speech is not secured. Thus, the matatu is
associated with the lower class endeavoring after freedom as seen in the
characters of Wangari, Maturi, Gatuiria, and Wariinga. The cave, on the other
hand, signifies the devil’s den dominated exclusively by men of profit and
women of leisure. Ngugi’s socialist vision in this novel as in all his critical
works rests on a “completely socialized economy collectively owned and
controlled by the people.” (Thiong'o, Homecoming 13). Nevertheless, the
achievement of this dream is dependent on unity, an aspect Ngugi explains as
“until democratic-minded Kenyans, workers, peasants, students, progressive
intellectuals and others unite things will get worse, no matter who sits on the
throne of power. (Thiong'o, Homecoming 28).
 29

Finally, Ngugi justifies Wariinga’s shooting Gitahi and his guests as a

means to securing self-determination. Violence is accepted only if it is used in
fighting oppression and exploitation. As he puts: “Violence, in order to change
an intolerable, unjust social order, is not savagery. It purifies man. Violence to
protect and present an unjust, oppressive social order is criminal and
diminishes man.” (Brown, Mau Mau and Violence in Ngugi's Novels).The
action, therefore, must be seen in its conceptual significance as a means of
conquering an unfair social order. Although Wangari’s act in telling the police
to arrest the rich robbers fails, it nonetheless, helps the people in the course of
their struggle for liberty and a corruption-free government. It also teaches the
proletariat that the law is not the basis of their salvation from capitalist
exploitation, and as a result, it exists to put up with the status.
In these two novels, there is a probability of protest and liberation in
the cultural and economic spheres as articulated by Masllela Ntongela,
Chesaina (Chesaina) and Jeyifo. “Ngugi comes down heavily on the African
ruling elite in Petals of Blood, and celebrates the renewed struggles of the
people against oppression and repression implemented by local colonialists”.
(Chesaina). This theme is carried further in Devil on the Cross as Petals of
Blood and the former reveals the ills of the society, hence Ngugi’s ideological
works that highlight the communal survival of the exploited in Africa, he
attacks the neo-colonial class structure which has thrown up poverty,
deprivation, need and the lack of security that often are associated with present
life in many neo-colonial modern cities in Africa. As political novels, they are
loyal to the visions of the proletariat and they condemn the bourgeoisie way of
life and practice, as demonstrated in international capitalism and they reject
neo-colonialism as a concrete way of life for Africans. The novels assert that
the protest and the unity of the peasants and the workers under socialism will
liberate them from the present state of suppression and life of misery and
poverty.
 30

CHAPTER Џ

Evils of Untouchability and Caste in Untouchable

 31

According to the1981 census, the untouchables are those who cannot touch,
represent 105 million inhabitants of India, roughly about one-seventh of the
Indian population. (Perez 9). Permanent contamination is ascribed to the
untouchables due to their job’s nature which involves direct contact with dirty
objects such as cleaning lavatories, taking the responsibility of cleaning public
infrastructure and others’ dirt even the carcasses of animals and the
decomposition of vegetables. “The caste system is usually characterized as a
hierarchy whose members have heredity professions and are separated by rules
restricting sexual and dietary interchange to persons of the same caste.” (Perez
10) Social rank is based on the ritual compound of purity and impurity. The
Brahmans idyllically the owners of the maximum purity are at the top of the
system and the untouchables; the owners of the maximum contamination are
at the bottom.
From ancient times, the untouchables have been prohibited from
sharing the other castes the social and ritual practices. They are even banned
from using the public water supply such as wells, so they should wait
sometimes for long time and in queues begging the mercy of an upper caste
passerby to fill their pitchers. Moreover, they are not allowed to go to school
and practice their human right in getting the suitable education. They are also
prohibited from using public transportation or even living in towns or mixing
with the other castes. The outcastes are also prohibited from wearing jewelry
for such a luxury is connected to the upper castes together with other types and
materials of dress. “It is mandatory for the untouchable to use a recognizing
sign such as branches on his/her back to sweep away one’s footprints or
containers hung around the untouchables’ necks to collect their saliva”. (Perez
12).
The caste system has assimilated the difference between the guardians
of Hindu values by hereditary right and the outcastes who are expelled from it.
The effort to justify the nature of untouchability has attracted writers from
different bases. The criteria chosen, however, create different hitches.
Professional criteria: this suggests that the stigma of untouchability is
derived from jobs that are obviously attributed to the untouchables, indicating
consistent contact with unhygienic subject matters. This proclamation is
strengthened by the central idea of Hinduism, the relation between karma and
 32

the phase of rebirths, according to which the untouchables would be

condemned to compensate severe lapses which they have committed in their
previous lives. To consider the professional standard as crucial creates certain
variances.
As regarding to Srinivas (1955) and also Bailey(1957) some castes, by
dropping their dirty jobs and converting to the farming work, may after few
decades their generations might get rid of their earlier disgrace. However,
according to available statistics, “in contemporary India the majority of
agricultural labors are untouchables and the stigma of untouchability remains
indelible. In other words, when one observes these groups from the
occupational standpoint, one is forced to conclude that untouchability exceeds
the scope of professional activity”. (Perez 12).
Economic criteria: as according to Klass “the caste system is the
outcome of the development of clan structure. The beginning of sedentary
agriculture in the subcontinent, with the introduction of new technology later
might have led to the supremacy of certain clans and to the progressive
discrimination against the exclusion of those dominated religiously and
politically by the former”. The author assumes that “caste in South Asia is a
socioeconomic system” (Klass 87).
Directly after India’s political scheme as a casteless society,
legislators and social scientists assign more significance to economic doctrines
be it for understanding of or for a political solution to the problem of
untouchability. However, its legal abolition and subsequent policy of
“compensatory discrimination” based on economic and political data did not
eliminate the social practices of the Hindus but led to a contradiction between
the legal status and the social status of an untouchable.
Racial criteria: scholars such as Risley date untouchability to the Aryan
invasion of India around 1500B.C and to the succeeding discrimination
executed by invaders of Indo-European origin on the native Dravidian people.
To sustain the idea of racial origin for untouchability does not however resist
the confrontation with reality. (How is it possible to distinguish an
untouchable from Delhi from a Rajput of the north of India on the basis of
skin color and other physical characteristics?). (Perez 13).
 33

The beginning of the century marks the commencement of systematic

political concerns in relation to untouchables, foreseen in some legislative
procedures of British organization in the mid-nineteenth century, the more
prominent being the Caste Disabilities Removal Act 1850s. In 1932, after
successive discriminations against the untouchables, the government decided
to stop all financial assistance to educational institutions that refuse admission
to students belonging to the “oppressed” classes. (Perez 14). The constitution
of India later created a category known as “backward classes” which include
scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward groups.
The influence of thinkers like Gandhi, Ambedkar, and Nehru
participate in the abolition of untouchability. The political strategy for the
eradication of untouchability is built up because of their efforts. Somehow,
these individuals have modernized revolutionary ideas, which have been
stirring in the country, around the revolting nature of untouchability. In their
opinion, this phenomenon is a sociological irrationality, and they have called
for equal access to the Hindu cult in spite of strong opposition from the upper
castes. To evaluate the accurate effect of the strategy evolved around the
untouchables in India today, a concentration is needed on the persons whose
thinking resulted in important aspects of the nature of untouchability.
To start with Gandhi who is undoubtedly connected with the moral
awakening of Indian society to the problem of untouchability. In India, his
progressive connection with untouchables would have suggested to him the
relativity of the criteria of discrimination. His return from South Africa marks
the beginning of his political activity. Gandhi is attached to the national
subject of self-rule for India (swaraj) based upon the strategy of the movement
of civilian disobedience. He plays a decisive role in the implementation of
swadeshi, formulated in 1905 by the National Congress fighting for the
exclusive use of goods produced in the country, especially hand-spun and
woven cloth, and subsequently boycotting all foreign products.
Gandhi’s political intervention articulates deep spirituality achieved a
long path built upon Satyagarha; (the search for truth). He says “my devotion
to truth has drawn me into the field of politics and I can say without the
slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has
 34

nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means” (M. Gandhi
420).
Gandhi believes that untouchability is not a part of Hinduism as a
religion itself, he defends his religion: “a religion that establishes the worship
of the cow cannot possibly countenance or warrant a cruel and unhuman
boycott to human beings…Hinduism will certainly never deserve freedom, nor
get it if they allow their noble religion to be disgraced by the retention of the
taint of untouchability. (Gandhi.M.K 6).
Gandhi’s purpose is social reform, converting the untouchables into a
Varna and eliminating its previous stigma, rectifying in this way the original
spiritual corruption of Hinduism. “The eradication of untouchability would
result in a change in the attitude of the other castes by accepting that, like
them, the untouchables are children of god, harijan.” (M. Gandhi).
Gandhi compels the actual inclusion of the subject of untouchability in
the Congress Party Program, making it as important as the project of
independence, but his ideal of eradicating untouchability by humanistic
change in the other castes put at risk his political intentions irreparably.
Ambedkar has adopted a social and political perspective contrary to
Gandhi’s. The problem of untouchability for Ambedkar started imperiously in
the following excerpt: “there would be outcastes as long as there are castes”.
Moreover, “nothing can emancipate the outcastes except the destruction of the
caste system”. (Keer 37).
As he was born an untouchable in Maharashtra in the Mahar caste,
Ambedkar’s attitude is the outcome of an undesirable situation in the Indian
political scene: the inherent practice of untouchability. Due to his family’s
financial means together with the help of the Maharaja of Baroda, who is
impressed by his intellectual capacities, Ambedkar got access to an education
conventionally unapproachable to someone of his social rank. On his return
from England, he has found his country under the course of independence. He
becomes one of the most radical opponents of the Hindu social structure,
provoked by a insightful faith in the socialist state. Throughout his vigorous
intervention in drafting the Constitution, he assesses the evil of untouchability
as a national political cause. He works and pledges to guarantee an electorate
separate from the Hindus for the untouchables, similar to what has been done
 35

to Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. “This in Gandhi’s opinion, has

compromised the process in operation, and has led to his historic hunger
strike, suspended by the Poona Pact 1935, according to which the
untouchables would benefit from an increase in the number of reserved seats
in legislative assemblies and a special quota for government jobs”. (Perez 18).
It is notable to recognize two major aspects of Ambedkar’s political
behavior. Ambedkar’s speeches at that time revealed his concern with the
education of the untouchables. He encourages and incites them to change their
socially unacceptable behaviors such as the consumption of alcohol and eating
meat but at the same time, he urges them to adopt habits of hygiene and
personal care.
The question for Gandhi is to change the attitude of other castes by
socially accepting the untouchables as Hindus, while for Ambedkar, in this
first phase, the question is to enhance certain attitudes of the untouchables,
keeping in mind their social acceptance by the upper castes, but preserving
their own personality. It is commendable here to draw a distinction between
the two thinkers in their approaching to the evil of untouchability, where
Gandhi’s attitude is primarily humanistic, demanding the opening of places of
worship to the untouchables and the advanced breaking down of the barriers of
pollution. Wherever Gandhi demonstrates a sentimental approach to political
matters, there was disagreement from the side of Ambedkar. Ambedkar’s
activities are politico-economic demanding reforms, which will improve the
capabilities of the untouchables to fight in an undeniably competitive world.
This highlights a pivotal standoff: “if untouchability were so weakened that
political protection was unnecessary, then Mr. Gandhi needed no
untouchability laws; if untouchability was still so serious that Mr. Gandhi
needed anti-untouchable laws, then the untouchables needed political
protection” (Keer 54).
Ambedkar’s disagreement with the caste system is well exposed when
he openly burns a copy of the Code of Manu and launches an attack on the
most important points of the system. In 1925, he organized a march to the
Chowdar water tank in Bombay, from where the untouchables drew water for
the first time. In 1930 he held a mass entry into a temple in Bombay. It was at
 36

this time that he has become the greatest critic of the Congress Party. (Perez
19).
By converting to Buddhism Ambedkar’s main conflict with a society
that sanctions the existence of untouchability is culminated. This conversion is
a protest against Hinduism as well as against his own caste and social status.
He asserts himself by finding another religion that is free from caste system.
Anand in his turn to eradicate untouchability tries in his writings to
expose the age, the agony and anguish of the downtrodden and the aggrieved
section in the Indian society. Hargunjot Kaur Kapur rightly comments on the
humanistic concerns of Anand:
As an explorer of a lower depth, Anand has an exceptional
revulsion against the footed odors of the social abyss. His vivid
description gives ample evidence of his sensitivity to the
squalid scenes he observes and shocks his audience into sense
of obscurity of poverty and oppression. (Kapur).
On his return to India in the early thirties, Anand stays in Gandhi’s
Ashram to work against the evils of untouchability declassing himself and
working for some time as a sweeper. He has got to know the ways of
hopelessness and degradation at first hand and on that experience writes
Graham Perry “gave power to his scathing first novel, Untouchable in 1935”
(Perry, Anand, Orwell and The War). Mahatma Gandhi once said that
“untouchability and caste are the indelible stigmas on Hinduism”. Anand has
arrived in the literary horizon in India in the nineteen thirties (1930s). The
1930s in India were politically hectic; Mahatma Gandhi has launched the
Satyagraha Movement. Then there were the three Round Table Conferences.
The entire nation was stirred and moved by the Conferences.
Concisely, India in the 1930s was in a frenzied situation. Anand has
witnessed the rambling discrimination against the most ill-fated sections of the
Indian society by the caste Hindus. The untouchables are not even entitled the
minimum human requirements. Anand intensely witnesses and touches the
horrors and suppression of these sub-humans to which they are subjected for
ages. He recognizes once that all the heroes and heroines in his literary
ventures are dear to him because they are reflections of real people that he has
known in his childhood and youth, he further goes to say they are the flesh of
 37

his flesh and the blood of his blood. He is thoroughly obsessed with these
people in the society. His literary projection is of the people whose life is
attendant with pain, social injustice, humiliation, disrespect, and insult from
womb to tomb. Anand perceives the milieu, the plight and the predicament of
the untouchables. In the words of O.N.V. Kurup, a Malayalam poet, Anand
has a purpose of “preparing to strike and to present the case of the Indian
proletariat in front of the world”. (Thomas 34).
Untouchable in reconsideration is regarded as typical Anand, as it
projects most of the themes of oppression (caste, sub-caste oppression, sexual
harassment, exploitation and verbal and physical abuses). This novel also
exposes Anand’s attack on the above mentioned practices and the solutions he
tries to offer to the most unfortunate oppressed people. Anand’s social realism
is clearly illustrated in his documentation of every detail of his protagonist’s
life, even the most unpleasant details which are described in the setting of the
novel, such as the place where the untouchables live, the muddy walled colony
which is allocated on a river of dung, even the oozing smell can be imagined.
The accurate description of the miserable conditions that the untouchables
suffer from is nothing but a proof of Anand’s social realism.
This slim but powerful novel records a day’s events in the life of a
sprightly sweeper boy named Bakha, a member of India's lowest caste people
(the bhangi). Anand intends to touch the reader with Bakha's untouchability.
As he struggles to internalize his place in one of the toughest societies which
is the Hindu caste-based society. In the words of D.S. Kaintura:
Mulk Raj Anand focuses on the oppressed downtrodden, and
thus brings their problems to the surface so that an average
reader might be able to understand the plight of the innocent
creatures who suffer for no fault of their own but simply
because they are the outcastes as they are born in that particular
class of untouchables. (Kaintura.D.S. 159).
Untouchable is more than a simple novel, there is a glimpse into the
real oppression which is practiced upon the outcaste people. This oppression is
clearly noticed in the way the outcastes live in an unhygienic place where the
drainage system runs through their mud-walled houses. Filth and dirt surround
them, no pure water to drink. This real description of the outcaste colony is
 38

nothing but a proof of Anand’s social realism. These outcastes are deprived of
the simplest way of living as human beings. As Ram Jha has observed on the
novel:
Untouchable is Anand’s first novel in which he is concerned
with the evil of untouchability in Hindu society. Anand is the
first Indian novelist to have depicted in the novel form, the
stigma of this evil, which isolates man from his own society
creating an archetypal image of the untouchable. This novel
portrays an individual’s struggle However, the individual here,
a victim of his traditional Hindu culture fails to do so the
novel’s emphasis on an individual’s attempt to emancipate
himself from the age old evil of untouchability.(Jha 59).
The hero of the Untouchable is Bakha, a young man of eighteen,
strong and able bodied. Bakha is a sweeper boy, who is responsible for
cleaning the three rows of latrines in the cantonment. This novel tells the story
of one day in Bakha's life who wakes up by his father's abuses ''Get up. Ohe
you Bakhya, you son of a pig", ''He always keeps abusing me, I do all his
work for him "(p.5). Bakha has to attend to his daily toil at the rude command
of his father. Premila Paul observes: “Bakha never shirks work which is a
source of pleasure some intoxication for him”. She also quotes from
K.S.Venkataramani’s My Little Arunachalam about Bakha “as stalwart in
stature, in bearing dignified, all brawn and muscle, the gift of daily toil, he is
easily nature’s well-built child”. (Paul, The Rigidity of Caste System: The
Novels of Mulk Raj Anand: A Thematic Study 14).
In this novel, Anand questions other religions like Islam and
Christianity. This is clear in Bakha's inner thoughts when he watches a
Muslim purifying himself in a ritual manner, before going to the mosque "I
wonder what they say in their prayers?'' (11). “Why do they sit, stand, bend
and kneel as if they were doing exercises?'' Anand is trying to give solution for
untouchability by referring to other religions. When Bakha becomes familiar
with religion, he may convert to it and in this way, he will protest against the
harsh treatment of Hinduism. The other religion is exposed through the
character of Colonel Hutchinson who is Christian and is interested in the
converting the outcastes into Christianity. The essence of Christianity is
 39

equality, where there is no difference between the rich and the poor, the
Brahmins and the Bhangis. Christianity reflects mercy and salvation for
Bakha. The discrimination practiced by people in Hinduism is not there in
Islam or in Christianity. Anand brings up this comparison in order to mock the
discrimination that is practiced by upper caste Hindus upon the lower one on
basis of religion, where Islam and Christianity have noble principles of
meekness, equality and peace upon all human beings.
Oppression is practiced upon the outcastes in many ways; the most
important and critical one is that they do not have a well for their use,
whenever they want water they should go to the caste-well in order to wait for
an upper caste passer-by and beg him to give them some water from the well,
lest that the outcaste will pollute the water. The outcastes crowd round the
well, begging every passer-by with servile humility, cursing their fate for
being outcastes. This is one example of their humble day. In a caste-ridden
society, there is not only the oppression imposed by upper castes, but there is
the one practiced by those people within the outcastes who think themselves
superior to others. A good example of those is Gulabo the washerwoman, who
claims this superiority for two main reasons, the first one is that she has a fair
complexion, the second one is that she claims a high place in the hierarchy of
the outcastes because a well-known Hindu gentleman in the town was her
lover in her youth and is still kind to her in her middle age. Now, Sohini, being
of the lowest caste among the outcaste crowd, would naturally be looked down
upon by Gulabo. She feels jealous of Sohini who becomes a potential rival to
Gulabo and this justifies the latter abusive and mocking manner of speech.
''Go back home, there is no one to give you water here! And, at any rate, there
are so many of us ahead of you!" p.16. This last sentence carries two
meanings; the first one is that she implies that so many people among the
outcastes are above Sohini's rank in the caste system. The other meaning
might be that she is speaking of the queue of people who are waiting to
receive water before Sohini's arrival. Gulabo is about to explode out of anger
because of Sohini's coldness and abruptness. This is an obvious example of the
oppression that the outcastes are exposed to and suffer from.
Sohini's response to the abuse was very cool and polite. She should be
angry and respond in a different manner. What she has done is that she
 40

humbly surrenders to the oppression she has received from the washerwoman.
“Please do not abuse me, the girl says 'I haven't said anything to you.''17.
Sohini does not protest against her suppressor, on the contrary, she treats her
in a very polite and good manner. In spite of that, she is hurt, sad and wistful.
Sohini heaves a soft sign and feels something in her heart asking for mercy.
What the novelist intends from this incident is to tell that social harmony
could be possible if there were no caste system or cruel people who claim a
higher position in the society to justify their cruelty and discrimination.
The hypocrisy of Hindu religion is revealed in the character of Pundit
Kali Nath, as a priest, he should reveal the message of God on earth by
spreading equality, mercy and ethics. On the contrary, he is hypocrite and evil
by nature. Instead of helping the outcastes drawing water from the well, he
thinks that it will be a good exercise for his chronic constipation so, he does
not do that for the sake of those poor thirsty people, but for his own sake.
What makes things worse is that this priest, who is supposed to be holy and
purified starts molesting Sohini and when she refuses his sexual advances; he
starts his presumptions to be polluted by her touch “polluted, polluted” He is a
big hypocrite. The moment he approaches her touching her breasts and body,
she is not an untouchable for him, but when she rejects him, he becomes
polluted. He wants to avenge himself on her, by shouting and accusing her of
defiling him, in this way, the people surely would believe him because he is
the symbol of honesty for them. This incident shows Anand’s attack on the
clergymen of Hinduism who are corrupt and hypocritical. Hargunjot describes
the character of Pandit Kali and his hypocrisy as follows:
In Untouchable, Mulk Raj Anand focuses his lenses on the
hypocrisy, the dual standards and the perfidy underlying the
façade of purity and spirituality. Pandit Kali Nath is associated
with gluttony and congenital moral weakness. His life is one of
the endless recitations of sacred verses punctuated by the
occasional writing of a horoscope with a red pen. However, he
lacks the spiritual strength to ward off waves of amorousness.
His cowardly attempt to molest the untouchable, appears all the
more offensive because of the Pandit’s accusation against her
and her brother for defiling him at the temple, when his attempt
 41

is foiled. The innocent Bakha and Sohini become victims of the

conventional moral code. (Kapur 152).
According to the Hindu holy books, a temple can be polluted by a low-
caste man coming within sixty-nine yards of it. Bakha is on the steps of the
temple at the door. This makes the crowd of worshippers run out of fear and
anger. When they hear the priest shouting ''polluted, polluted'', they notice
Bakha running, they sympathize with the priest without knowing the truth,
they even believe that he has suffered more terribly, ignorant of the real story
which Sohini has told her brother at the door. ''That man! That man! Made
suggestions to me, when I was cleaning the lavatory of his house there. And
when I screamed, he came out shouting that he had been defiled”. Bakha is
deeply insulted and humiliated because he could not avenge himself upon the
priest. “His eyes flared wild and red and his teeth ground between them the
challenge’’ ‘I could show what the Brahmin dog has done!’ (Anand,
Untouchable 54).
Bakha exposes an ardent desire to learn, he knows that learning is the
first step for assertion. If he is literate, he can understand the language of the
British ''The fish-mish'' as he calls it, and he will look like the sahibs.
Therefore, learning for him and for all the outcastes is one way of attaining
their assertion. The outcastes are not allowed to go to school for many reasons,
the first one is that they are not allowed to mix with the upper castes’ children,
simply because the parents of the latter will not allow their children to be
contaminated by an outcaste touch, and the second reason is that there is no
teacher who will teach them lest he would be polluted by their presence. The
third one is that outcastes are deprived of the right of learning, in order to
remain ignorant and powerless, in this way they will be unable to protest
against their oppressors. When Bakha first expresses his wish to be a sahib, his
uncle at the British barracks has told him that he ought to go to school, Bakha
weeps out of joy, but suddenly his father shatters his happiness by telling him
that schools are not meant for the sweepers, but for the Babus. By the time,
Bakha starts realizing why he and the other outcastes are not allowed to
schools. ''He was a sweeper son and could never be a Babu. Later still he
realized that there was no school which would admit him because the parents
of the other children wouldn't allow their son's to be contaminated by the
 42

touch of the low-caste man's sons'' p. 30. Bakha’s interest in learning is clearly
revealed in this extract: “The anxiety of reading the papers after going to
school! How beautiful it felt! How nice it must be to be able to read and write.
One could have been to school. One could talk to the sahibs. One wouldn't
have to pay him to have one's letters written”. (Anand, Untouchable 30).
There are many types of oppression practiced upon the outcastes as
mentioned by D.S Kaintura in the following extract:
The denial of water at the well, the denial of education and the
pollution through touching of the upper caste people, were the
rude impressions buried in the tender mind of Bakha who
performed the work of cleaning the dung and human soil.
Perhaps, he is born to clean it. This is not enough, but the
abuses they get in exchange for their hard work and inhuman
conditions have been presented graphically in the novel. The
abusive addresses of the higher caste people towards the
untouchable is a commonly accepted way of
conversation(162).
However, there is little difference between the old and the new
generations of Hindu society, while the older generation is very strict in
interacting with the outcastes. The new one, willingly deals with them and
touches them while playing hockey so, here we have two different positions;
the old which resembles the restricted attitude towards the untouchable who
are not ready to change, and the young one resembled by the sons of the Babu
who do not possess the aggressive attitudes towards the outcastes. Bakha
clearly exposes this view by calling the old Hindus as ''cruel''. Thus in a way,
the new generation is protesting the old strict habits in dealing with the
untouchables, this protest can bring a real transformation in the status of the
outcastes in Hindu society if it is practiced in public without any fear of those
who believe in the caste system.
The 'red lamp' cigarettes symbolize Bakha's aspiration for a higher
class, which is also another kind of protest because the sweepers are not
allowed to enjoy the luxuries of life such as cigarettes and sweets.
Furthermore, this incident clearly reveals the harshness of the caste-ridden
 43

Hindu society. The way Bakha pays for the cigarette is a good example of
untouchability and dehumanization of the outcastes.
The way the shopkeeper throws the packet to Bakha is similar to a
butcher throwing a bone to a dog. Therefore, the human being Bakha is treated
like a dog. He is stripped out of his humanity by such maltreatment. Bakha
means no offense against the Lord by smoking. However, the only thing he
wants is to be like the rich, to be equal to them. This is a kind of protest
against his poverty, his caste and his status not against God. ''For a sweeper, a
menial, to be seen smoking constituted an offence against the lord. Bakha
knew it was considered a presumption on the part of the poor to smoke like the
rich people but he wanted to smoke all the same.'' (34).
Deep in his heart, Bakha realizes that he is a sweeper, and that he
should act upon this state of being, but sometimes he tries to revolt against the
social strains and tries to break the barriers which the upper caste Hindus put
to seize their grip on the oppressed outcastes. He searches for his identity as a
human being in a very harsh society. The novelist’s social realism is again
revealed in the incident of the sweets which, reveals how Bakha protests
against his social position as a sweeper and how he is treated by the
shopkeeper on the first hand, and on the second one, the ill-treatment he
endures because he is an outcaste “Dare I buy some sweets? He thought…, it
is a protest against the social barriers but “Come, I have only one life to live,
let me taste of the sweets, who knows, tomorrow I may be no more” (36).
Bakha wants to enjoy the delicacies of life before his death, he reasonably
thinks of the concepts of life and death. Bakha’s appetite for sweets is very
strong that he cannot resist the lushly, expensively smothered in syrup sweets.
He knows that they are not cheap, certainly not for him. Bakha knows that the
shopkeeper has charged him more for his sweets, and that he has cheated him
in the weight, but Bakha dare not complain, moreover, the shopkeeper
humiliates Bakha by throwing him the sweet lest he would be polluted by the
touch of Bakha. The taste of the sweets is something very delightful and
satisfying, it is as a dream in which he escapes the harsh reality of life, though
it was real that he bought sweets and tasted them, but through such a taste, he
escapes his misery. This made him forget to announce his approach from
people in the market; unfortunately, he touches an upper caste Hindu and a
 44

hail of insults pour into him: “Keep to the side of the road, you, low-caste
vermin! Why do not you call, you swine and announce your approach! Do you
know that you have touched me and defiled me, you cockeyed son of a bow-
legged scorpion! Now I have to go and take a bath to purify myself”. ( 38).
Consequently, Bakha stands deaf and dumb; his senses are paralyzed
out of fear, humility and servility. Actually, he is used to such harshness, but
he has seldom been taken so unaware, as the high-caste man starts his abusive
words, blaming Bakha for not shouting and warning of his approach, his eyes
are flaming out of rage and fury. Bakha’s responds to this abuse in a very
humble manner, he wants to apologize, but his mouth remains shut. He beats
his head and mumbles few words, which are incoherent and feeble, but this
action pours more fuel to the flame of the angry man: “Dirty dog! Son of a
bitch !the offspring of a pig !...I’ll have to go o-o… and get washed, I was
going to business and now, on account of you, I’ll be late” ( 39).
The man uses more abusive words to express his fury, the most
abusive and nasty words, which a man can tolerate, but Bakha does not avenge
himself upon him and stands sound silent he hears each word without daring
to lift his forehead. A crowd gathers round Bakha as if to judge him for what
he has committed, and this adds more confusion to the poor sweeper who
occupies the middle place of the crowd, he is about to collapse, confused
thoughts come to his mind telling him to run away from his tormentors, but he
realizes that he is surrounded by a barrier of men and if he escapes from them,
he will touch one or more of them and such a contact will make his situation
worse. He is not ready to listen to more abuses, and finally, he yields to this
public court. The inhumanity of the crowd is an apparent testimony to the
hostile society around the sweeper boy. The abuses of the crowd continue
while Bakha is still listening and cannot defend himself against his abusers.
The crowd displays very sadistic delight to Bakha’s pleading and begging for
forgiveness, and expresses its lust for power. This scene expresses clearly the
sadism of the upper caste Hindus who enjoy torturing the poor outcastes and
exercise their superiority.
While this crowd takes delight in the suffering of poor Bakha, the latter
experiences every second as an endless trauma of woe and suffering. He is
humiliated and his heart is a queer stirring. His legs tremble and shake under
 45

him; he feels they will fail him. He is really sorry and tries hard to convey his
repentance to his tormentors. The crowd continues its abuses in rage and fury:
“Careless, irresponsible swine! They do not want to work they laze about!
They ought to be wiped off the surface of the earth” (41). For the upper castes,
the untouchables do not deserve to live. This also intensifies the cruelty of this
society.
Bheemaiah rightly comments on this incident: “The inhumanity of the
crowd is an apparent testimony to the hostile society around the sweeper boy.
The timely arrival of a Muslim, the Tonga Walla( cart driver) prevents the
incident from turning into a turbulent scene.” (Bheemaiah.J 98). While Bakha
himself stands with joined hands in the center and asks him: “Why was all
this? Why was all this fuss? Why was I so humble? These questions reveal the
inner compulsion of anger and the realization of the oppression he is exposed
to. Bakha’s protest is only within himself. He does not put all his anger into an
action. On the contrary, he keeps it within himself and in spite of the hail of
humiliations he has received; he blames himself for not announcing his
approach:
Why did not I shout to warn the people of my approach? That
comes of not looking after one’s work I should have seen the
high caste people in the street. That man… the slap on my face,
the coward… Not one of them spoke for me. The cruel crowd!
All of them abused, abused, abused. Because we are
sweepers…. Untouchable ! Untouchable! Untouchable! That is
the word! Untouchable! I am an untouchable! (Anand,
Untouchable 43).
Farhana Khan; a critic comments on this incident as: “the action of the
“touched man”, polluted by the untouchable Bakha, is a deliberate one, which
only reveals the pathetic predicament of the untouchables. As Bakha says: “all
of them abused, abused, abused, why are we always abused? (Khan 66). This
extract explains how Hindu society treats the sweepers and how these
sweepers are considered as untouchables within their own society. Bakha now
realizes that he is an untouchable, now he realizes why Hindus treat him as an
untouchable. It is because of his profession. He is a sweeper who sweeps the
upper castes’ dirtiness, who cleans their toilets and washes their clothes. This
 46

recognition of his state of being illuminates the inner chambers of his mind.
He gets answers to every inquiry, and finds explanation to everything that he
experiences during his day. He repeats the word ‘untouchable’ so many times
in his mind. Yes, he is an “untouchable” but what is the meaning of this word?
Who creates it? Who is dealing with it? And who is the untouchable? Ms.
Farhana states:
Anand had read about the humiliations of untouchables and
also carried with him umpteen memories of his childhood. He
desired to put everything into the novel, thus encapsulating his
felt experiences and the various forms of social determinisms
in order to dramatize the whole saga of suffering, and the
pathetic outcome of the irrational social order. The whole
drama of human depravity, compressed into a few pages of the
novel, makes it more or less exciting sociological document.
Anand’s anger is directed not so much against the individual as
against “man’s inhumanity to man”, and a plethora of social
evils collectively symbolized by the Indian society. (Khan 62).
At the market place, a busy scene attracts Bakha, that is of a Brahmin’s
bull. The scene expresses how the Hindus treat animals with respect and
tenderness in spite of the fact that the animal destroys their shops and eats
their vegetables, whereas, they will not allow an outcaste to touch them or
even enter their shops. This is very ironical, how an animal is treated better
than a human being. Anand questions in this novel the identity dilemma of the
outcastes and their need for assertion in a harsh society that denies their
humanity.
At the bazaar, there is another incident, which indicates that Bakha is
not familiar with his religion, what seduces him there is the picture of an
English woman rather than the Hindu deities. “The picture of an English
woman very scantily dressed and reclining with a flower in her hand, seduced
Bakha’s eyes away from the Hindu deities”. (47). When Bakha is walking, he
passes by a temple and he has the desire to go into the temple and see what is
going on inside, but he remembers that he is an untouchable and that he will
cause pollution. Bakha enters the temple and is astonished at the pollution
which will contaminate the devotees. While he is near the temple he hears the
 47

devotees uttering many names and invocations which are mysterious and
ambiguous to him, this indicates his lack of knowledge about his own religion,
he is ignorant of the gods he worships and this is because he is born as an
untouchable and the untouchable is not allowed to go to temple and practice
the worshiping act he believes in. This is one of the shortcomings of
Hinduism, which Anand is targeting in this novel.
The hypocrisy of the upper class Hindus and mostly the priests, who
are the symbol of holiness and who are responsible to convey religious deeds
and carry out religious principles, is clearly portrayed in the temple scene,
where Bakha enters the temple and is astonished at the presence of his own
sister in the courtyard of the temple. In this scene, the worshipers recognize
the presence of Bakha at the temple, where the latter is not supposed to be.
These people start shouting ‘polluted, polluted’ but what is worse, is that a
priest shouted polluted and a figure of a woman is behind him, the crowd of
worshipers starts shouting after him nearly ignorant of the reason for his cries.
“You people have only been polluted from a distance l have been defiled by
contact”(53).
Bakha is tormented with the anxiety to know what has really happened,
and yet he is hesitated to question his sister again lest she should begin to cry:
“Tell me Sohini how far did he go”? (54). In this scene, Anand satirizes the
hypocrisy of the priest and the crowd as P.K. Rajan points out:
The aggressiveness of Bakha does not find utterance in
physical action, because when the conscious part of his mind
smolders with an aggressive spirit, the unconscious part with
all its legacy for the past, compels him to withdraw. Anand’s
attempt here is to portray the gradual making of an aggressive
mind. The magnitude of the change Bakha undergoes can be
understood if we compare his father Lakha’s total acceptance
of his fate with Bakha’s growing propensity to revolt. (Rajan
108).
Bakha is full of remorse and regret because he could not kill that priest
“why did not I go and kill that hypocrite! “I could have sacrificed myself for
Sohini” The idea of sacrifice is remnant in his mind out of his love for his
sister and out of jealousy too. However, Bakha asks a very crucial question in
 48

spite of his conflicted mind. This question indicates the position of women in
Hindu society, that how the girl is considered a source of disgrace on her
family, also the beauty of the girl is considered a disgrace, not a blessing
because it will bring troubles to her. “Why was she born a girl in our house to
bring disgrace upon us, so beautiful, and so accursed! I wish she had been the
ugliest woman in the world! Then no one would have teased her”! (57).
Wishing her to be ugly and his pride in her beauty is juxtaposed, he
cannot bear the idea of her being ugly, he is proud of her beauty. He felt hurt.
Sohini is ashamed and crestfallen, she thought that she has been the object of
the scene and the stain upon her honor she feels guilty for something she does
not commit, and this is because of the oppression practiced upon the low caste
women. Although she commits no wrong, yet she has the sense of guilt and
shame. Anand intends in the temple scene to spotlight on two major themes;
the first one is to criticize the hypocrisy of the Hindu religious people. The
second one is to tell us that in Hindu caste-ridden society, the outcaste women
are being molested and harassed all the time, they dare not speak or defend
themselves due to the oppression they undergo, this made Anand upset, and he
wants them to rebel and find solutions to their dilemma.
The novel is full of instances of the oppression that Bakha goes
through on his single day, it is not only Bakha’s burden, but it is that of every
untouchable Indian. In the silversmiths’ lane, Bakha asks for food from the
household women. On his way to the alley, where he has to call for food, he
has met a devout Hindu sprinkling water on his well-oiled naked body, lest he
will be accused of violating the sanctity of religion, he waits till this Hindu
finishes a can of water on his body then after that, Bakha resumes his walk
into the dark and damp lane, he reaches the houses, but the kitchens are on the
top floors and he being an outcaste is not allowed to climb the stairs to ask the
house wives for his food, but he has to shout and announce his arrival from
below: “Bread for the sweeper mother, bread for the sweeper. “The sweeper
has come for bread, mother he shouted”. (59).
The housewives do not respond to Bakha’s calls for bread, then he
feels drowsy and numb. He yields to his lethargy and sits down on the wooden
platform mat of a house and surrenders to sleep, knowing that his place is not
on the doorstep of the house, but on the damp brick pavement on the side of
 49

the drain which carries water from the filth pipes of all the houses, but for a
while he does not care, and he succumbs to sleep. After a while he wakes up at
noon, at the time when the sadhus will come and ask for food, also Bakha
knows that the house wives are waiting for the ascetics and will not eat their
meals before dispensing hospitality to the holy men, but what about the poor
Bakha, who is waiting for his bread since a while, why none of these women
gives him his bread and lets him go, here the caste-ridden culture is well alive,
the sadhus who are also beggars for food but under the cloak of religion are
respected and well-treated by the women but Bakha is a sweeper, no one will
look after him; he shall be humiliated and abused before giving him what he
asks for. This is what happened, the housewife recognizes that a sweeper is
sleeping on her doorstep. She immediately punishes the poor Bakha with a
hail of abuses “You eater of your masters, “may the vessel of your life never
float in the sea of existence! May you perish and die”. “You have defiled my
house! Get up! You eater of your masters! why did not you shout if you
wanted food? Is this your father house that you come and rest here”? (63).
How terrible you sweepers have lifted your heads to the sky, nowadays”! (63).
All these words are directed to Bakha while, when she sees the sadhu she
switches on a calm, polite woman and she speaks to the sadhu very politely
and patiently. “Be patient, Sadhuji, I shall just go and bring you your food.
Here the change of tone is very clear in her words, she treats the sadhu in a
very polite manner and welcomes his request for lentils very calmly, while
Bakha who was shouting for his bread, was treated very harshly and
humiliated also. The owner of the defiled doorstep stared eagle-eyed at Bakha
and remonstrated: “Wah! you have wrought strange work this morning,
defiling my home”! ‘May you die’, thinking she has acquired much merit by
being good to the holy man and would not lose much of it by being unkind to
the sweeper. The woman was not satisfied yet after abusing and rebuking
Bakha, she puts a condition that he will not have his bread until he cleans the
drain as a punishment for defiling her doorstep. Bakha cows down by the
woman’s abuse and sets to sweep the gutter, but what makes things worse is
that the boy of the woman wants to relieve himself, and he is not allowed to
use the lavatory of the house. This is downdraught humiliation for Bakha, she
wants to insult him again and avenge herself upon him by making him sweep
 50

her son’s dung. Moreover, she forces her son to do it on public, although he is
shy to sit in a public place.
She could have sent the bread with her son or given it to Bakha by
hand, but to assert her superiority she throws it from the window. Bakha fails
to catch it, and it lands on the dirty pavement of the lane. Bakha foolishly
picks it up quickly and wraps it, he is supposed to leave it in order to preserve
his dignity, but he chooses to accept this humiliation, he has been rush and
spontaneous at that moment, he has felt ashamed at this insult and blamed
himself for taking it. “Vay Bakhya, take this here is your bread coming down”
(65).
The woman is disappointed at not receiving a courtesy from Bakha as
if she has treated him kindly to receive appreciation from him; moreover, she
ironically speaks about the out castes: “Aren’t they a superior lot these days!
They are getting more and more uppish! (65). Bakha is afraid of his father’s
abuses if he goes home with only the two chapatis he has got, he is afraid that
his father might know about the delicacies he has bought. This is another form
of oppression that restricts the individual’s own freedom to enjoy one’s life.
D.S. Kaintura comments on this incident as:
The outcastes were leading a life of deprivation as the food
they used to get was the waste thrown by the upper caste
people. The insults Bakha faces when he goes for the food in
the barracks and the throwing of bread to him shows that he
who cleans the litter of the people is deprived of all the rights.
(Kaintura.D.S. 162-163).
Bakha feels isolated from society. He makes an anxious attempt to
imitate the European way of life, particularly its outer gloss. Alastair Niven
comments on Anand’s heroes especially with reference to Bakha in
Untouchable :
Anand is writing with conscious irony. His heroes are isolated,
and Bakha’s attempt to reach out far away of life that is
fundamentally alien to him serves to emphasize this isolation.
Untouchable, at its core, shows the attempt by a young outcaste
to attain several forms of community identity and the desire to
ape white values is the first of those attempts (Niven).
 51

Bakha knows that if he tells his father the whole story, he will get
angry and abuse him, so his thoughts are conflicted whether to tell or not. He
recalls all the incidents that have happened to him during his day, the most
annoying one is the one of the street, when the touched man slaps Bakha, this
incident is mostly Bakha afraid to tell his father about because the latter will
surely blame him and will tell him that he deserves this humiliation and it is
his fault moreover, he will remind him that he is an outcaste and he should
respect the upper castes and subdue to their oppression, his father also will
take side with others, rather than his family, “father always takes sides with
others. Never with his own family” “How can I tell him about the priest, he
won’t believe it” (66). This is what Lakha will say to Bakha if he reveals the
truth to him. He expects a dialogue between him and his father. The stream of
consciousness technique that Anand has adopted is very clear here. This
speech also reveals the oppression inflicted upon the outcastes by their own
fathers.
In this novel Anand indirectly portrays one of the most important
issues in Hindu society, no less a vice than caste, which is child marriage, that
is elaborated in the wedding scene of Ram Charan’s sister who is only fifteen
years old.“Lakha is to be blamed for most of the child marriages in Bulashah.
The parents of the potential brides always remembered Lakha, giving him a
suit of clothes and generous portions of food” (68).
Bakha’s father advises him that he should know all the upper caste
Hindus in the neighborhood, because he serves them all and he will be
servicing them the rest of his life, but Bakha does not enjoy the idea of being a
servant all his life, this is a kind of protest against his recent status. He
expresses his protest by the word “never” and he reaches his self-assertion by
dreaming to wear his superior military uniform and cleaning the commodes of
the sahibs in the British barracks. As the following quotation elaborates:
Bakha felt the keen edge of his sense of anticipation draw
before his eyes the horrible prospect of all the future days of
service in the town and the insults …. No, No, his mind
seemed to say ‘ never’ and there appeared before him the
vague form of a Bakha clad in a superior military uniform
 52

cleaning the commodes of a Sahib in the British barracks ‘ Yes,

much rather’ he said to himself to confirm the picture. (69).
After all the insults, that Bakha has received during his day, his mind
starts thinking about his position in such a caste-ridden society. He realizes
that he is a sweeper and an untouchable, but he intends not to be a sweeper the
rest of his life, he is ambitious, he wants to rebel against his current situation,
he has dreams and visions to be accomplished. He does not want to continue
his life serving the upper castes. He hates his situation, he dreams of living a
different life, in a world that is different from the harsh one he lives in. That is
accomplished in the irony of fate when he dies and moves to another world
where he serves no one and is abused by none. It is a strange mixture of
suffering and romance, the alternation of his disgust for his own town and the
love for the world to which he looks out. It is the desire that tries to create a
new harmony, glaring upon the familiar which has grown stale and dreamy
with too much use. The mind has once peeped into the wonder land of the
new, contemplated various aspects of it with longing and desire is shocked and
disappointed when living reality pills in the reins of the wild horse of fancy,
but how pleasant men find it to look at the world with the open, hopeful,
astonished eyes of the child ! The vagaries of Bakha’s naïve tests can be both
explained and excused. He detests his profession because he has worked at the
English barracks and has got glimpses of another world, strange and beautiful.
He has grown out of his native shoes into the ammunition boots that he has
secured as a gift. Moreover, with this and other strange and exotic items of
dress, he has built up a new world, which represents a change from the old
paralyzed order and the rotting conventions of the life to which he is born.
This paragraph “They insulted me this morning, they abused me
because I was walking along, a man happened to touch me. He gave me a
blow and a crowd gathered round me, abusing…. (70); clarifies how Bakha
feels humiliated, hurt and touched by the ill-treatment of the upper caste
Hindus. He is sick of his work. For the first time he declares his disgust for his
work. He also declares his self- realization of his position among the caste
Hindus. This is stressed by the sentence “I have done with this job”. The
conversation between Bakha and his father is intended by the novelist to draw
a distinction between the old humble personality of the father and the
 53

rebellious and ready to change the character of the son, while Bakha’s father is
worried about the consequence of a crime Bakha may have committed. For in
a caste-ridden society, an untouchable should listen to the abuses and should
hear the humiliation without retaliation from his abuser, if s/he receives a
blow. “You did not abuse or hit back did you?” ‘No, “I could have given them
a bit of my mind” (70). This sentence clarifies the challenging spirit of Bakha,
his protest, his desire to change the rules, of his need to be a victimizer not a
victimized. The following extract shows the humility of Lakha and his total
submission to the superiors, in response to Bakha’s challenging and
revolutionary words: “No, no, my son, we can’t do that. They are our
superiors one word of theirs is sufficient to overbalance all that we might say
before the police. They are our masters. We must respect them and do as they
tell us. Some of them are kind”. (71). Lakha, here, in a way justifies his
submission to the upper caste Hindus, when he utters the word ‘ masters’ and
that he advices his son to obey them, justifying his total submission by stating
that some of them are kind.
The humility of the father and the harshness of the high caste people
are elaborated in Lakha’s story about the Hakim. He admits that he is a
sweeper, and that no one will listen to his cries even if he loses his son. The
Hakim’s manner of speech shows that he is an orthodox like any other upper
caste Hindu, but being a doctor should prevent him from dealing with people
like that, he should have mercy and act according to the ethics of his
profession. Lakha humiliatingly begs the Hakim in order to gain his mercy
upon him and give the medicine to his child. He also sheds tears out of sorrow.
He said to the Hakim: “Your shoe on my head”. “I can only serve you. Will
you come and give some medicine to my child? He is on his death bed” (73).
The previous episode is intended by the novelist to tell that there are
still exceptional high-caste Hindus who are good and the problem lies in
religion not in the individuals: “they are really kind. We must realize that it is
religion which prevents them from touching us”. (70). Throughout Lakha’s
narrative, his deep-rooted sense of inferiority is clearly revealed and the docile
acceptance of the laws of fate. Bakha’s feeling of disgust and nausea is evident
in the sense of the family having food, Bakha’s yearning for cleanliness is
clear when he scolds Rakha for not washing his hands before having food, he
 54

feels even more disgusted when he touches a piece of wet bread. Bakha also
indirectly expresses his interest to eat in a separate dish not the same bowl
from which the whole family eats. This is another evidence of Bakha’s
aspiration for superiority and better rank in society; he protests against his
status que, he is looking for asserting his own identity as a human being.
While going to Ram Charan sister’s marriage, Bakha has an erotic
vision about the girl, he visions her naked and he senses a sexual feeling
towards her but immediately he curses himself for daring to think such unholy
thoughts. He whispers to himself “how could I, who is known to every one as
Bakha, the good, have such an unholy design?” (76). Anand intends this
incident in order to draw a comparison between the good, the moral and the
holy Bakha and the selfish, dishonest and the hypocrite priest. While Bakha
does not know much about religion and the fact that he is raised up in the
street without any moral instructions from his parents or community, he still
has morals and ethics more than the priest who is supposed to be a leader and
a preacher of morals and honesty. Anand’s heroes are always decent and
honest, in spite of the fact that they are poor or untouchables.
Before going to the marriage ceremony, Bakha recalls his past with
Ram Charan, how the latter once has told him that he is a Hindu and Bakha is
a sweeper. At that time, Bakha was too young to understand the distinction
implied in Ram’s arrogant claim. But now he realizes that there are degrees of
castes among the lower castes also, and that he is of the lowest.
Bakha suffers a feeling of inferiority among his friends; he realizes his
identity as a sweeper boy, though his friends do not mind mixing with him.
They are unmindful of their social superiority, they do not seem to believe in
the rigid caste system and they treat Bakha as their equal, they are interested in
Bakha being sad and lonely and finally after some hesitation, Bakha
remembers how the priest has tried to molest Sohini and how he himself
suffers from various humiliations. By hearing what has happened to him, his
two friends try to console him. The friendship of all the three lads proves to be
a protest against the caste system, in spite of all the oppression that is
practiced upon them first from their own parents before the other community,
they are still bound together by the string of friendship. J.Bheemaiah says:
 55

His friends are sympathetic but they are also helpless in the
upper caste dominated society. They try to console Bakha. They
express their helplessness “comrade, we’re sorry, come be
brave, forget all this. What can we do? We are outcastes”. Even
the outcast youth cannot help him in any way. They extend
more moral support to Bakha. They do not get involved in
physical action because the society they live in is such. Though
Bakha grows aggressive, he does not indulge in any act of
aggression. (Bheemaiah.J 103).
Within the Hindu caste system, also another sub-caste system is found
among the untouchables themselves. This caste system is one of the major
problems in Indian society that practices oppression on those from the low
castes. As in most of the societies in the world, the son inherits his father’s
profession, also in India; there are families who professed the same family job
for generations. Later on as these families grow larger, they are seen as
communities or as they are called in Indian language Jat (as according to the
Hindu caste system). Later on, the Aryans who created the caste system added
to their system non-Aryans. The different Jats were integrated in different
Varnas according to their profession, other foreign invaders of ancient India
conquered parts of India and created kingdoms, were integrated in Kshatria
varna “warrior caste” (System). This is how the caste system is supposed to be
in its religious form. Nevertheless, in reality it is much more complicated and
different from its religious form. Undeniably, the Aryan policy was not to
integrate original Indian individuals within them and consequently several
noble and warrior groups that were in India before the arrival of the Aryans
did not get the Kshatria status. Most of the communities that were integrated
in the Sudra Varna or were made outcastes depending on the professions of
these communities.
The Brahmans have a deep concern about cleanliness. In the past,
people believed that infections might spread through the air and not only by
direct touch and this may be one of the reasons behind the prohibition of the
untouchables from touching the high castes or even stand by them. That is
why the outcastes had to stand at a certain distance from the higher ones.
Therefore, what had happened to Bakha during his day is because of the caste
 56

system and untouchability. He recalls what has happened to him since he starts
his day with his father’s abuses ending with the insult of the woman who
tossed the bread from the window. All the insults he has received have
touched his soul. The sympathy that the repetition of his narrative evoked
from his friends accentuated Bakha’s self-pity. He began, as he walked along,
to feel the heart-burnings of the morning. He felt furious, his fury heightening
with an invisible strength that the presence of his two friends gave him. As a
proof of the deep bound friendship, the friends have sometimes the same
recurring thoughts at the same time.
The legendary stories about the hat clearly reveal the discrimination
that lies there in Indian society, as the hat, first, of all belongs to a rich man
and this the reason behind keeping it up for a long time in the office, if it were
for an ordinary man, no one would care about it. The second thing is that the
man who shot the soldier escaped from judgment only because he is a white
man, if he were a black one; surely, he would have been sentenced to death, so
here are two kinds of discrimination. The first one is between the rich and the
poor which denotes class distinction, the second one is between black and
white, which denotes race distinction. This is another kind of oppression. A
question may be raised here: Why Bakha is yearning to own the hat? The
answer is because of his inferiority complex. His desire is to some extent a
kind of protest against his situation as a sweeper. “For years he had pined for
it”. (93). Ever since he was a child, he had contemplated it with the wonder-
struck gaze of the lover and the devotee. (93).
Moreover, the hat resembles modernity versus tradition. Since Bakha
is seeking to look-like sahibs from his childhood, he has that desire to possess
that hat to fulfill his ambition to be a sahib, which is a kind of protest against
his own tradition and culture, because the hat is used by foreigners, not by
locals. It is not from traditional clothes, but it has been introduced by the new
invaders of India, Bakha wants to resemble the symbols of modernity, by
imitating their way of living.
Bakha cannot find an answer for his cowardice. He does not know that
with the progress of years he has lost freedom, the wild, careless, dauntless
freedom of the child, that he has lost his courage, that he is afraid. It is due to
oppression. Bakha deceives himself by believing that he does not really want
 57

the hat, because he can get any number of hats from the rag shop or from any
Tommy in the barracks, but he still longs for the hat and now he is standing
contemplating it with the same interest, the same curiosity, and the same
desire to possess it. He cannot go and ask the sentry about it because of his
self-assertion, his realization that he is a sweeper which prevents him from
approaching the sentry. He has abandoned the irresistible desire to steal the hat
and then, at last he realizes that there is no way to get it so, he gives up.
While going to Havildar Charat Singh’s place, Bakha passes through it.
He is embarrassed, he is afraid to be seen, he feels as if he were a thief. He
cannot shout for the Havildar because he should keep non-defiling distance,
this stresses the deep-rooted feeling of inferiority, which he has acquired from
his society. The author has intended to add the character of Havildar Charat
Singh as a symbol of strength, determination and persistence. The Havildar is
fond of hockey, he is a goalkeeper. He has faced many wounds and bruises
during his matches against the British regiment: “the number of his scars he
had on his body equaled in number the marks of sword and lance on the body
of the Rajput warrior Rama Sanga, the conqueror of Akbar”. (96).
The author intends indirectly to teach Bakha a lesson in determination
and endurance, by being somehow close to Havildar, Bakha shall think about
his current situation and focus on one goal, a major one that is to get rid of the
oppression practiced upon him and have the full determination to achieve his
goal, no matter the obstacles he comes across and the insults he receives. The
bruises on the Havildar body are symbolic of Bakha’s inner wounds and
bruises, which he has got from the hails of insults and humiliations. While the
Havildar’s are physical Bakha’s are psychological, so Bakha has to face his
destiny and conquer it as the Havildar has done. Farhana Khan rightly
comments on Anand’s use of the Havildar character:
But there are few moments of happiness in the life of Bakha….
he is more happy with Tommies because they consider him as
a human being…. since he finds temporary escape from the
routine drudgery of life in imitating them. And shows a
remarkable empathy for his hero who symbolizes the
predicament of a hapless conservatism. Even for his gesture of
kindness, Bakha is abused and threatened, when he carries an
 58

injured caste Hindu boy to his home. The boy’s mother abuses
him for defiling her house instead of reciprocating this gesture
with generous praise: “they ought to be wiped off the surface
of the earth” (Khan).
The Havildar is a representation of the good and moderate Hindu, who
does not believe in discrimination. Bakha feels happy in his presence and he
says in praise of this man: “for this man, I wouldn’t mind being a sweeper all
my life, I would do anything for him:”(96). This proves the novelist’s socialist
vision that goodness inside any one’s heart will bring the change in any
society, what he seeks; is only the humanitarian side within any individual,
then there will be no cruelty, no untouchability, no caste and no hatred. This is
what really Bakha suffers from, he is not happy with his profession, but he
would be a sweeper only for the sake of the good Havildar.
Bakha has a revolutionary mind to change his current life. He is
shocked when the Hindu hockey player asks him to fetch him two pieces of
charcoal from the kitchen, this request is a protest in itself, for the Havildar is
a Hindu who believes in caste and defilement, which would occur by the touch
of an untouchable, but in spite of all this he asks Bakha to enter his kitchen
and bring him coal. Bakha regards this order as an honor to him that the Hindu
player trusts him with so an intimate job as fetching coal. For a moment Bakha
doubts whether Charat Singh is conscious and in his senses when he has
entrusted him with such a job. However, Bakha switches to suspicions and
anxiety then starts assuming that the Havildar might not be in his senses, or he
might forget that Bakha is a sweeper. All of these doubts are due to the
oppression which makes Bakha even think of every detail and suspects
everything.
Finally, after all of this stream of consciousness, Bakha reassures that
he is grateful to God because he has got to know such a wonderful man like
Charat Singh. This is a hint that goodness is still there in the hearts of the good
and that the evils of the society cannot survive wherever good people exist,
and whenever there is determination to destroy all barriers that deconstruct the
unity of the society. Anand intended to use the character of the Havildar to tell
that not all the upper caste Hindus are caste-ridden. There are good and noble
 59

Hindus who do not believe in the caste system and they show their nobility
and humanity towards the downtrodden.
The hockey match reveals the truth about how the children of the upper
castes are raised. They have inherited the same cruelty of their fathers, so they
would not let Bakha play with them if they got to know his real profession.
That is why Chota ran up to Bakha and whispered into his ears: “I have told
them that you are the Sahib’s bearer, they do not know that you are a sweeper”
(103).
Neglecting all the caste barriers, Bakha’s sense of humanity does not
prevent him from touching or even picking up the Babu’s son in his arms to
save him. Bakha crosses all the limits in order to pay the call of human duty
unintentionally. This is a good example which illustrates his good nature, kind
heart, and nobility, he could have left the boy bleeding and he could have
avoided the insults that he had received from the boy’s mother, but he is ready
to get any abusive word for the sake of the little boy whom he loved. As a
reward for his good deed, Bakha receives a hail of abuses from the boy’s
mother, instead of thanking him and or even welcoming his nobility with a
smile. The woman rebuked and insulted Bakha harshly: “you eater of your
masters you dirty sweeper, what have you done to my son? You have killed
my son! You have defiled my house, besides wounding my son!”(106).
Shaileshwar Sati Prasad comments on the incident of the injured child as
follows:
Significantly Bakha shares the hero’s quality of sympathy,
when the match with the 31st Punjabis ends in a free for all and
the injury of the child, the Babu’s son, is caught in the melee
and hit on the head by a stone, Bakha’s sympathy flows to him,
he carries the child home and when scolded by the Babu’s wife
for polluting the house, his reactions show his basic qualities:
“Of course, I polluted the child. I couldn’t help doing so. I
knew my touch would pollute. But it was impossible not to
pick him up. He was dazed the poor little thing. (Prasad 42-43).
The anger of the mother reinforces the Hindus’allegations that he does
nothing else but pollute people. His sensitive and inquisitive situation makes
him suffer. Bakha says:
 60

I only get abuse and derision wherever I go pollution,

pollution, I do nothing else but pollute people, they all say that
‘polluted, polluted’ she was perhaps justified though. Her son
was injured. She could have said anything It was my fault and
the other boys too. Why did we start that quarrel? It started on
account of a goal I scored. Cursed me! The poor child! I hope
he is not badly hurt. (Anand, Untouchable 107).
It is clear from the previous extract that Anand has employed the
technique of stream of consciousness; he has placed it within the mind of the
sensitive untouchable lad in order to give the reader a peep into Bakha’s
suffering soul. Rendering the rise and fall of Bakha’s emotional graph, as he
passed through one traumatic experience into another. Bakha’s interior
monologue served the technique of stream of consciousness a lot in the novel.
The match scene provides the novelist with another occasion to depict
the inhumanity of the caste Hindus and the degrading and demoralizing effect
of untouchability. The serial of oppression goes on with Bakha, even at his
own home; he could not find some rest and peace. He returns home only to
receive hysterical abuses from his peevish father: “you son of a pig! You son
of a dog! You ran away! You illegally begotten!”(108). Bakha was cool in the
face of this warm reception. He was too worried by the succession of revived
memories to cope with anything now. Lakha mocks Bakha for imitating the
sahibs and he reminds him of his social status as a sweeper. “There you go
trying to be a sahib when you are a sweeper’s boy. You illegally begotten!
Dog! Pig!”(108).
Bakha receives all these abuses with patience and in a way that he pays
his father his right to him. In spite of all the callousness of Hindus he has met
during his bad day, he goes home only to receive more insults and malice, as if
he is doomed to live in suffering all his lifetime. His father concludes Bakha’s
day by firing him out of home: “get away, you swine, run away from my
presence go away out of my house and do not come back! Do not let us see
your face again! (109). Here is a quotation of the author’s own words in which
he describes Bakha’s state after all of this oppression:
Before now Bakha had often borne the brunt of his misery with
a resigned air of fatalism. He had quietly suffered his father’s
 61

abuse and satire, and even occasioned beatings with a calm that
betokened his intense docility and gentleness. He would never
lift his head, or his hand to defend himself against anyone. To-
day, however, he had more than enough. The spirit of fire
which lay buried in the mass of his flesh and ignited this
morning and lay smoldering a little more fuel and it flared up
like a wild flame. (Anand, Untouchable 109).
After an exhausting day, Bakha has the chance to amuse himself with
nature. He goes up to Bulashah hills but he cannot employ his senses to enjoy
the pleasures of nature, his profession; the work of scavenging has destroyed
his finer senses. He finds pleasure in nature, which influences him but he feels
the influence only in a limited superficial way. It is the monotonous routine
and the filthy work of cleaning latrines that have made Bakha incapable of
appreciating natural beauty. After going out of his house, Bakha feels desolate
and lonely. The fact that he is homeless now dawns on him. He is tired from
the day’s long work and from the callousness he has received from others, he
is aware that he does not deserve the job of a scavenger, he is ambitious, his
place is not among filth and latrines. His strength, broad shoulders, and
muscular body are not for a sweeper but for a wrestler he wished to be. As if
he is protesting against his own destiny, he wants a change in his life. While
he is walking, he wonders why his father is so angry with him, what is wrong
if he plays hockey, he is a human being, not a machine, he has the right to take
a half- holiday once in his life especially after his long busy day. His father
should stand by him, support and console him, not to be against him like the
others.
The character of the Colonel is intended by the author to serve as the
first solution to Bakha’s problems. The Colonel is the Christian missionary
chief; his role is to convert the outcastes into Christianity and save their souls
from fire, so this is one good opportunity to Bakha in order to get rid of his
religion, which is to be blamed for all this caste divisions. By converting to
Christianity Bakha can assert himself and start over as a respected human
being.
There are many similarities between Bakha and the Colonel, which
bring them together, while Bakha is alienated by his own community as an
 62

outcaste and moreover by his own father, the Colonel is also alienated by the
British residents(namely his own circle) of the city and driven from home by
“this irreligious, card-playing and hard-drinking wife”.(112). He is often seen
hiding behind rubbish heaps awaiting some troubled outcaste who would listen
in his despair to the Gospel of Christ. From this similarity, the author
implicitly wants to say that all of us, human beings are the same, we are equal
in the sight of God, we are created from the same clay. God does not ask
people to put boundaries among them, so why do we create such boundaries
and create differences among us? The Colonel is a lovable and pathetic figure
who in spite of his fervor has had little success with conversion because of his
broken Hindustani his contemplative nature and his total inability to offer in
concrete terms the solace of Christianity: “the number of conversions to his
credit for the last twenty years being not more than five, and those five mainly
from among the dirty, black untouchables”. (112).
In spite of this small number of converts, Colonel Hutchinson remains
loyal and devotee to the cause he has taken up and this is confirmed by his
wife’s words. This is just the same case with Bakha, who in spite of his dirty
profession remains honest and devoted to accomplishing the job in his hands.
The dialogue between the clergy man and Bakha is very interesting; it
reveals the clash of boundaries of caste and class. There is something
wonderful in the brave effort the Colonel seemed to be natural in this
unnatural atmosphere, but he was not self-conscious. He had thrown aside
every weight pride of birth, race and color in adopting the customs of the
natives and in garbing himself in their manner to build up the Salvation Army
in India. “He had swamped the overbeating strain of the upper middle-class
English man by his hackneyed effusions of Christian sentiment” ( 114). Bakha
feels confused and embarrassed by the kindness and generosity of both Charat
Singh and the Colonel. No one ever from his community has ever treated him
with such benevolence. He feels as if he were dreaming. Those people are the
remedies for his conflicted and injured soul. In spite of that, these men are
strangers, yet they are very humane and they show mercy upon him, while his
Hindu folks are very harsh and oppress him all the time. Anand, through the
character of the colonel once again shows that the British are more
compassionate to the natives than the people who share the same flesh and
 63

blood. It is worthy here to note that Anand is not suggestion the idea of
accepting the British as colonizers and invaders of India’s natural and human
resources. He is just drawing a comparison between the good and the bad
people. He is only blaming his Indian folk for being harsh and merciless
towards the untouchables.
Bakha’s understanding of the word “sahib” is connected by physical
appearance which he tries to copy. He thinks that all sahibs wear trousers and
hats. The encounter between Bakha and the missionary is amusing, one is
drowned in his ecstatic hymn- singing, the other is quite oblivious to the
message but happy to be in contact with a ‘sahib’ from whom he may extract a
pair of caste off trousers. Bakha is eager to know who is Yessuh Messiah from
the Sahib only to fulfil his curiosity not because he is interested in the
Christian religion or about what really the missionary is talking about, his
major interest is in the Sahib’s appearance.
The Colonel’s character is employed by the novelist to give Bakha a
solution. Through converting to Christianity, he could get rid of the callous
life he lives. He might find peace and rest in his life, because the followers of
this religion are equal in the sight of God. There is no class or caste
differentiations. Saros Cowasjee comments on the solution offered by the
missionary as follows:
But to look on the whole piece as a satire on missionary
activity in India is to miss the point. The missionaries did
succeed in converting thousands of people to their faith,
especially from among the untouchables. If heaven remained
an elusive proposition to many converts, they still accepted
Christianity to ameliorate their life on this earth and to escape
from the abominations of their own religion. Of the alternatives
offered to Bakha during the course of the evening, this
certainly is the one to produce the quickest remedy. His
resistance to accept it was not, as has often been claimed,
owing to his conviction ‘that the religion which was good
enough for his fathers, was good enough for him’ but because
the missionary in his contact with God had lost touch with the
people (Cowasjee 58).
 64

The first solution that is offered to Bakha by the Colonel does not
succeed because Bakha is not really interested in the essence of the Colonel’s
faith. He is interested only in the apparel of the sahib. In addition to that, the
Colonel does not give Bakha convincing explanation and clarification about
his religion, while he has been busy singing the hymns which are ambiguous
to Bakha, this justifies the boy’s inability to take this solution and assert
himself as a Christian believer. Hagunjot comments on the character of the
Colonel as follows:
Through the character of Colonel Hutchinson, Anand directs
his attack against the missionaries engaged in proselytization.
Hutchinson talks to some untouchables or the other about
divinity and attempts at conversion through ecstatic hymn-
singing and long spiritual discourses, which make no
impression on the ignorant untouchables. As he does not offer
the solace of Christianity in simple and concrete terms, even
Bakha slips out of his hands. In presenting a caricature like
Colonel Hutchinson, the novelist suggests that such
unimaginative and ill-equipped individuals are likely to inspire
unbelief rather than belief in whatever they preach (Kapur
152).
There is another factor which contributes to the failure of this solution,
that is the Colonel’s wife, the irreligious woman, the cruel and racist woman,
who is like the upper caste Hindus, she gives Bakha the impression that in
Christianity there are also cruel people, so no way to escape them if they are in
other religions. This is another shortcoming of the Colonel’s attempt and the
failure of his solution. Bakha is terrified by the Colonel’s wife, even the
Colonel himself is afraid of her. She is an atheist; the Colonel fails in making
her believe in God or follow the Christian doctrine. Therefore, how is he
preaching people to convert to his faith while his wife is irreligious? This is
paradoxical and ironic. These reasons have prevented Bakha from not taking
up the chance of converting to Christianity. She said to her husband: “I can’t
keep waiting for you all day while you go messing about all those dirty
Bhangis and Chamars”. (122). Bakha got to know the reason behind her anger
 65

when he hears the words Bhangis and Chamars, he associates her anger with
his sight.
The Colonel’s wife has frightened Bakha more than the thrust of the
touched man eye-balls, for she is a woman and the frown of her has a strange
quality of the unknown, uncharted seas of anger behind it. To Bakha the few
words she has uttered carry a dread a hundred times more terrible than the fear
inspired by the whole tirade of abuse by the others.
The Mahatma Gandhi offers the second solution, as while Bakha is
scared away by the missionary’s shrewish wife, he goes to Gadbagh, where
Gandhi is scheduled to make a speech, Saros Cowasjee writes in the
description of this scene:
Perched on a tree, not quite unlike an ape, Bakha gets his first
view of Gandhi with superb skill Anand fashions the image of
Gandhi as all knew him…In a single sentence Anand sums up
the unique mass appeal of Gandhi ‘this strange man seemed to
have the genius that could by single dramatic act ….. The stage
is set for Gandhi to speak but his power lies not so much in his
message as what he has come to signify to the common mind.
It is for the reason that Anand devotes twice as many pages to
the Gandhi legend “no sword could cut his body, no bullet
could pierce his skin, no fire could scorch him. (Cowasjee).
Gandhi’s speech is carefully drawn from his autobiography, Young
India, and other writings. The opening words are unintelligible to Bakha but
when the Mahatma says that he regards untouchability as the “ greatest blot on
Hinduism”, and elaborates on it in personal terms as to how he reacted to it in
childhood. Bakha is thrilled when the Mahatma asks the untouchables to
improve their own lot by giving up such evil habits as drinking and eating
leftovers. Bakha is confused and afraid that Mahatma’s conducting words
“two of the strongest desires that keep me in the flesh are the emancipation of
the untouchables and the protection of the cow” (Gandhi.M.K) comes as
somewhat of a shock to a reader, for a very serious social evil is being equated
with something of far less consequence. This is certainly the case, but Gandhi
is not appealing to the purely rational in man but to his emotional self as well
where religious taboos play an important part. To bracket a social evil like
 66

untouchability with an accepted religious practice like the protection of the

cow is to make untouchability a very serious issue. Gandhi’s genius lies not
only in his doctrines, which are often inconsistent but in the mysterious way in
which he could feel the pulse of the people and win them over.
Gandhi and what he stands for is the second remedy offered to Bakha,
but in terms of effectiveness, and despite Bakha’s enthusiasm for the pious
sentiments of the Mahatma, it is less satisfying than the muddled offerings of
the missionary. Bakha and his kind are to play only a nominal part in their
own release, they must passively wait for a change of heart in the capricious
crowd. What Ghandi is asking the untouchables to do is far attainable due to
the wretched situation of the untouchables who cannot afford buying their own
grains or food. Their poverty compels them to beg the upper castes for their
bread. The cause of untouchables, one may infer died for the present with the
last reverberation of “Harijan ki jai” shouted aloud as the Mahatma departed.
The Mahatma said addressing the audience:
If there are any untouchable here, they should realize that they
are cleaning Hindu society, they have therefore, to purify their
lives. They should cultivate the habits of cleanliness, so that no
one shall point his fingers at them. Some of them are addicted
to habits of drinking and gambling of which they must get rid.
They claim to be Hindus, they read the scriptures, if therefore,
the Hindus oppress them; they should understand the fault does
not lie in the Hindu religion but in those who profess it. In
order to emancipate themselves, they have to purify
themselves, they have to rid themselves from the evil habits
like drinking liquor and eating carrion. (138).
The Mahatma’s solution is clearly illustrated in the following extract:
They should now cease to accept leavings from the plates of
high-caste Hindus, however clean they may be represented to
be. They should receive grain only, good sound grain, not
rotten grain, and that too, only if it is courteously offered. If
they are able to do all that I have asked them to do they will
secure their emancipation. I am an orthodox Hindu and I know
that the Hindus are not sinful by nature, they are sunk in
 67

ignorance. All public wells, temples, roads, schools,

sanatoriums, must be declared open to the untouchables, and if
you are all profess to love me give me a direct proof of your
love by carrying on propaganda against the observance of
untouchability. Do this but let there be no compulsion or brute
force in securing this end. Peaceful persuasion is the only
means. (139-140).
After the Mahatma’s speech, the audience shouted in one united voice
impressed by the words of the Mahatma: “let’s discard foreign cloth, let’s burn
it!” (140). This is only a protest cry against the foreign colonial rule and also
against the exploitation of the natives.
To conclude what the Mahatma has offered to emancipate the
problems of the underdogs is that he asked the untouchables to assert
themselves and never beg for their bread, never take the leftovers of the upper
castes unless they offer them grain courteously. He called also for peaceful
disobedience. The last thing he did is that he stressed on the issue of the
brotherhood between Muslims and Hindus. This is remarked by a citizen from
the crowd, surcharged by the glow of the brotherliness and humanitarianism
that the Mahatma had left in his trail: “He has made Hindu and Muslim one”
This solution might have worked if it were combined with other
practical solution like the use of machine that would replace the human hand
and rid the untouchables from doing the filthy jobs of cleaning latrines. The
Mahatma’s appeal of changing the habits or even stop taking the leftovers
might be little complicated or difficult to come true, due to the current
situation of the untouchables who are extremely poor and lack the simplest
means of life such as water, suitable housing conditions and financial support
which would prevent them from begging the rich upper castes.
Finally, the author presents the third and last solution for the
untouchables, presented by the poet’s suggestion of the machine that shall
replace the dirty labor of the sweeper, the flush system. He said:
India is behind the other countries of the world. In fact, it is
one of the richest countries; it has abundant natural resources,
only it has chosen to remain agricultural and has suffered for
not accepting the machine, we must of course remedy that. I
 68

hate the machine. I loathe it. But, I shall go against Gandhi

there and accept it, and I am sure in time all we will learn to
love it. And we shall beat our enslaves at their own game.
(Anand, Untouchable 142).
Iqbal Nath Sarshar, the young poet together with his friend Mr. R.N.
Bashir have offered a clear suggestion for the problems of untouchability,
caste and inequality, which is the machine system. The machine which is
invented by the colonizer would be the tool of protest against the colonizer
himself and the evil of untouchability, it is a double edged weapon. It can be a
remedy for the emancipation of untouchability because it will help the
sweepers get rid of their filthy work in cleaning lavatories and give them a
chance in finding other suitable jobs for their human beings. On the other
hand, it might be considered as a kind of accepting the colonizer and
encouraging its rule over India even after independence through the tools of
neo-colonialism. Commenting on the congressman, who ironically criticizes
Mr. Bashir for wearing a silk-tie and a suit of foreign cloth (imitating the
British) the poet said:
Some of us are born with big heads, some with small. Some
with more potential physical strength, some with less. There is
one saint to a hundred million people perhaps …. But
essentially, that is to say humanly, all men are equal “Take a
ploughman from the plough, wash off his dirt, and he is fit to
rule a kingdom”. The civility, the understanding and the
gravity of the poorest of our peasants is a proof of that as it is
caste is an intellectual aristocracy based on the conceit of the
pundits, being otherwise wholly democratic The High- Caste
high Court Judge eats freely with the coolie of his caste. So we
can destroy our inequalities easily. The old mechanical
formulas of our lives must go, the old stereotyped forms must
give place to a new dynamism. We Indians live so deeply in
our contacts, we are so acutely aware of our blood-steam.(145).
The assertion according to the poet is attained thus:
We must destroy caste, we must destroy the inequalities of
birth and unalterable vocations. We must recognize an
 69

inequality of rights, privileges and opportunities for

everyone… caste is now mainly governed by profession when
the sweepers change their profession, they will no longer
remain untouchables … for the first thing we will do when we
accept the machine, the flush system, then the sweepers will be
free from the stigma of untouchability and assume the dignity
of status that is their right as useful members of a casteless and
classless society. (145-146).
The change must be organic not mechanical. After all this outburst,
Bakha stands aside beyond polluting distance thinking of the words he has
understood from the poet. He felt that the poet would have answered all the
intimate questions of his soul without using such big words “that machine,
which can remove dung without anyone having to handle it”(144). He
wonders what it is like. Bakha still cannot understand these words; he wants
an explanation from the poet before his leave. Commenting on the poet’s
suggestion E.M Forster writes in the preface to Untouchable:
It is prosaic, straightforward, and considered in the light of
what has gone before in the book, It is very convincing. No god
is needed to rescue the untouchables, no vows of self-sacrifice
and obligation on the part of more fortunate Indians, but simply
and solely -the flush system. Introduce water closets and
machine drainage throughout India and all this wicked rubbish
system cannot do much, and it has not done much, since the
time Untouchable was written. What is needed is a change of
mind and hearts and this can be brought about only by
following the teachings of Gandhi, hence both Gandhi and the
flush system together can go a long way towards the
eradication of Untouchability. (Forster.E.M.).
Anand’s novel retains the classical purity of form and conforms strictly
to “twenty-four-hour duration” with the climactic scene involving Bakha’s
humiliations. He uses the Joycean technique of well-informed narration and
examines almost with an insinuative temper and inwardness, the plight of
untouchables in India and of their continual processes of degradation and
 70

social alienation. Summing up his assessment of the novel, K. R. S. Iyengar

observes:
Untouchable strikes us as the picture of a place, of a society
and of certain persons not easily to be forgotten; a picture that
is also an indictment of the evils of a decadent and perverted
orthodoxy. As a novelist addressing himself to the task of
exposing certain evils, Anand (it must be conceded) has been as
effective as Dickens himself. (K. Iyengar 339).
If untouchables can develop a consciousness of self-respect and India
adopts the flush system, then untouchability may be eradicated. Throughout
the experience Bakha has undergone, the oppression that is practiced upon him
and his family, the kind of protest he tried by several ways, finally the stage of
assertion is clear to him throughout three solutions that are Gandhi’s, the
poet’s and the humanitarian attitude towards the untouchables. He decides to
go on his life influenced by what these two men have said, he will change his
profession as what Gandhi has suggested, and he will leave the latrines
because the machine will replace his hand. The word ‘yes’ which he utters in
the last paragraph of the novel stresses his intention to change himself. “Yes, I
shall go on doing what Gandhi says”. He then was afraid of the idea that he
might never leave the latrines, then the poet’s words come to his mind and
discard his fears away and he assures that he has the ability to change; he has
the resolution, and determination. “But shall I never be able to leave the
latrines? Came the disturbing thought. “But I can”. This stresses Bakha’s
resolution to change his situation. In the words of E.M. Forster commenting
on the novel:
Untouchable could only have been written by an Indian and by
an Indian who observed from the outside. No European
however, sympathetic, could have created the character of
Bakha because he would not have known enough about his
troubles. And no untouchable could have written the book,
because he would have been involved in indignation and self-
pity. Mr. Anand stands in the ideal position….he has just the
right mixture of insight and detachment and the fact that he has
come to fiction through philosophy has given him depth.
 71

CHAPTER Ш

Class Conflict in Coolie

The attentiveness of the anguish of his childhood playmate Munoo urged

Anand to write Coolie. It is social realism that is the prop of this novel. The
 72

novel begins with the Punjabi pastoral words and explores the social evils of
child labor. Published in 1936, Coolie is the story of a child laborer Munoo,
the orphan boy who runs away to avoid social malice and search for
happiness. Munoo is badly oppressed by quite a few ways and by several
people. He universally symbolizes the suffering of the oppressed and the
disadvantaged. Munoo’s story is fundamentally the story of an oppressed boy.
His life exposes the harsh lives of millions who lead a perpetual saga of
suffering and deprivation. The dilemma of the coolies or the indentured
workers is presented by the novelist with such a “firey pointedness” that it
provokes a well-timed repulsion against the society which refuses to
acknowledge the underprivileged laborers as human beings. Anand charts out
Munoo’s life from the rustic background to the megalopolis Bombay and then
on to the fascinating locale of Simla, where he dies of tuberculosis. With its
scene shifting. The novel covers all the classes of society from the
dispossessed peasant to the aristocratic Anglo-Indian and finally to the
capitailst British.
Munoo’s wretchedness starts when he is taken by his uncle to Babu
Nathu Ram at Sham Nagar. He feels that he will be free from the clutches of
his nagging aunt but he has to confront a far more terrible woman who abuses
him at any time. He finds the Babu’s house a real hell, then he escapes from
this house to find himself in the company of Prabha, who takes him to
Daulatpur, where his life takes yet another unexpected turn. With the first
optimism and bliss, he starts working in the pickle factory and finds solace in
the company of his co-workers and shares affection with Parbati; the owner’s
wife. The Cat Killer’s lane is a true den of mix-up and chaos with unending
drudgery. Unfortunately for Munoo, the owner of the factory becomes
bankrupt that results in the closure of the pickle factory.
Unlike Bakha, Munoo realizes that it is his poverty not caste; that is the
cause of his indescribable agonies and has this assumption that the worst thing
in one’s life is to be poor. Munoo generalizes this concluding from his own
experiences ‘money is everything’. “There must only be two kinds of people
in the world: the rich and the poor”. (Anand, Coolie 69). The underprivileged
poor section is the target of social, foreign, capitalistic, and collective
exploitation. Anand represents the poor in a pathetic and realistic way.
 73

Anand’s social realism is presented in real life characters such as

Lakshmi; Hari’s wife who is a typical Hindu wife devoted to her husband and
children. Parbati; Prabha’s wife who has that “wisdom of the heart” which
Anand appreciates more than any amount of intelligence. Social set up
presented by the characters in Coolie serves to fill up the canvas and complete
Anand’s panorama of Indian coolies’ social life in the grain market of
Daulatpur, the sick and pitiable pavement dwellers of Bombay, the workers in
the cotton mill factory. He focuses only on the ordinary affairs of his realistic
men and women. As an evidence of his social realism, he does not dwell on
the extraordinary in sentiment or intellect and thoroughly adhere to the
common social activities of his characters. As a writer of fiction, Anand’s
distinguishing marks are vitality and a sense of reality.
Anand is interested in graphing out the processes of Munoo’s continual
exploitation. His search for a foothold in a society that ill-treated him and his
failure to come out of the circle yet, constitute another aspect of the novel. His
otherwise eventful life is eroded by the contingency of social custom and he
becomes exploited all through his life. Thus Anand’s protagonist becomes a
victim of other’s greed, arrogance, cruelty i.e. a victim of ‘civilization’. As
Anand describes them in this extract“They are the robbers, the thieves, the
brigands, who live in luxurious bungalows on the Malabar Hills on the money
you earn for them with your work they eat five meals a day and issue forth to
take in the large Rolls-Royces”. (Anand, Coolie 256). Anand wants to expose
all the social evils that are found in Indian society through the tragedy of
Munoo and he appeals to the Indian society for the equitability of the
oppressed poor class in society. The accurate depiction of poverty can be seen
in Anand’s representation of the wretched life of the labourers living in the
slums of Bombay.
Munoo questions the nature of people, why some are good while others
are bad and cruel. He is unable to comprehend the existence of evil, like
Bakha, he also does not “build” his life but it is built for him. The perennial
theme of Anand’s novel is the loss of ‘innocence’ as it is related to the
personal life of the protagonist who finds no single-line in the dark horizon of
life. Anand believes that it is because of the discerning attitudes of the
exploiters both Indian and British, who believe in subjugation rather than in
 74

the affirmation of social egalitarianism. Munoo becomes the victim of

exploitation of the rich Indians and the superiors, like his aunt and uncle Daya
Ram, Natho Ram, the bank clerk, Ganpat the businessman and the Todar
Mals, and the English men like Sir Reginald, Jemmie Thomas and Mrs.
Mainwaring who continually exploit him and sap out his potential for growth.
The novel is replete with instances, thus depicting the passive submission of
the poor and their compounded suffering and indignities. In one of the finest
passages. Anand outlines Munoo’s life in the dusky rooms of the pickle
factory at Daulatpur thus: “It was a dark and evil life. He rose early at dawn
before he had his full sleep out, having gone to bed long after midnight. 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”. (Anand, Coolie 107).
Anand sheds light on the themes of superiority, inferiority and
hypocrisy in Coolie as for instance, the speech of the Babu's wife, who
pretends to be high class because of her husband's job and overlooks her being
a villager before marriage and this fact is stressed by her brother-in-law’s
mocked command: "Don’t say anything about village folk, you yourself come
from a village" (19). The hypocrisy of the woman is clearly revealed in her
own words. "Ah, do you think I should let him use our lavatory! Let this rustic
brute to use our lavatory" "We must keep our prestige; we must keep up
appearances at least before a stranger in the house". (19). Another thing she
boasts in is the China tea set and when this set is broken by Munoo, the
mistress rains him with a hail of abuses, for not only breaking her China teapot
that costs five rupees but for breaking the inner prestige that she used to boast
and look like the high-class people.
On the other side, the superiority of the British man versus the
inferiority of the native is clearly revealed by the novelist when he introduces
the character of the English man Mr. England, whose name symbolizes
England as a country which invaded and colonized India, this country is the
symbol of the Bourgeoisie authority over the feudal system that dominated
Indian villages before the coming of the British. Therefore, as it is clear from
the text that Babu Natho Ram is an official in the Imperial Bank and for his
own convenience, he invites Mr. England to his house after insisting many
 75

times, Mr. England pays the visit. He carries the presumed superior ideas
about white and black, rich and poor, civilized and uncivilized, clean and dirty
and he could hardly tolerate being at the house of the Babu. He has imagined
before visiting the Babu's how their house would be, whether it might be like
Mr. England father's house in Briton, but it went beyond Mr. England's
expectations. When he noticed an elephant god, Ganesha, garlanded with a
chain of faded flowers, he thought it a sinister image, something horrible, one
of the heathen idols which he had been taught to hate in the Weslyan Chapel.
Therefore, in a way, he detests the Indian holy gods altogether with their
beliefs. Mr. England refuses to eat the sweets offered to him by the household
of the Natho Ram assuming that it is due to the hot weather, but in fact,
because they offer him the sweets without a fork and that it is strictly
distasteful for an English man to pick up anything in his fingers. The English
care a lot about hygiene and healthy habits. The household wife who used to
scold Munoo every day for not doing his work as well seems to be a hypocrite
because she always pretends to be clean, but when Mr. England comes to her
house, her pretense is revealed. This has happened when Natho Ram hands
him the marriage photo and puts it on his lap, Mr. England notices the frame
which is thickly covered with dust and ruins his trousers. Mr. England also is
confused by the classical Indian music, which Natho Ram is very proud of and
he wishes that this music and the situation he has put himself in will end soon.
He regrets that he has let himself in for it at all. This scene clarifies the
humility of the Babu towards the English man together with his total
submission to the white man. This episode is significant according to Saros
Cowasajee as he notes:
The episode is significant for two reasons. Firstly, it is perhaps
the best refutation of a criticism leveled against the author that
he does not fully understand his English characters and is,
therefore, unable to portray them faithfully. But where in
Indian fiction is there a more authentic picture of a colonial
Englishman…..True some of Anand’s English characters suffer
in comparison to his Indians... His personal prejudices, the
habit of exaggerating, and at times the propagandist intention
overrides his critical faculties and his writing suffers in
 76

consequence. Secondly, the episode illustrates Anands’s

conviction that the British government not only exploited the
country’s natural resources but debased the character of those
Indians who were in its service. It created a body of sycophants
looking up to the English, fawning. And they lost their sense of
humanity and human decency. Natho Ram and Daya Ram have
been dehumanized in the service of the English and have lost
all fellow-feeling. (Cowasjee 68).
Coolie deals with the exploitation of children, hillmen, peasants and
other underprivileged bottom people. Anand's sympathy for this exploited
section is mirrored transparently in the following extract from Morning Face:
Suddenly it was revealed to me that I had in me treasures of
sympathies and understanding which I did not know I had
possessed. I felt that I loved the simple and smeared people of
my mother's village, with dignified turbans on their heads. And
I was lost in a reverie about the millions of emaciated skeletons
of these slow-moving hill men, their face like parchments,
seemingly only kept alive by the tender care of their women
who fetched pitchers of water from the river Beas, a mile and a
half down the hillside. (Anand, Morning Face 118).
As a realistic novel, Anand opens it with a description of the hut of
Munoo's aunt and uncle, a sequestered little mud hut, thatched with straw,
which stood upon the edge of a hill about a hundred yards away from the
village in the valley. This shows clearly how the Hindu society deals with
untouchability for that Munoo and his family are coolies and they should not
live together with their superiors according to the Hindu religion, as V. Singh
notes down:
Ancient Hindu religion has the concept of untouchability deep-
rooted in its caste system. The system of caste, based on the
division of labor in its early days. Many, a codifier of the laws
of organized Hindu religion said Chandals and sweepers should
live outside the village. One should not talk to them during
religious rites. Their lending and borrowing should be confined
to their own community. One should offer them food through
 77

another person in broken pots. They should not move in the

villages and towns during the night. (Singh 126) .
In Munoo’s village, there are two classes of people, the peasants and
the proprietors who represent Feudalism. While Munoo and his family
represent the low class, Jay Singh and his family represent the Feudal class,
which suppresses and exploits the peasants’ class on basis of money power.
All Munoo’s misfortune is because of the feudal system and its representatives
as Jay Singh’s father who has seized Munoo's father's five acres of land due to
the interest on the mortgage covering the unpaid rent. Because of this Munoo's
father died and left his family penniless and heavily indebted.
Munoo's entire misery is the result of the cruelty and harshness of the
lusty bloodsucker property owners. Deep within, Munoo is very sad to leave
the village. In spite of the bad treatment he receives from his guardians, he
wants to continue his school but he is forced to leave for the town. He has that
inner curiosity to look at the Sahibs, the Babus and their silk clothes and most
importantly, to see the machines which he heard about. Now, comes the time
for Munoo to leave his beloved village and go to the town. Munoo's uncle is a
blind follower of the Babu Nathoo Ram, he expresses his loyalty to the Babu,
while he feels superior to Munoo and he frequently abuses him. Daya Ram
forces Munoo to walk barefoot for about forty miles while he is enjoying
sitting in a cart. The car driver feels pity for Munoo who is bitterly suffering
the sores of his feet, while his uncle is merciless and keeps oppressing and
abusing the boy all the way to town.
In the city, Munoo expresses his wonder about everything that he has
ever seen in his village. He recognizes the differences between village and
town. In the village, people graze cattle and plow lands whereas, in the town
people work in banks and factories. They live luxurious lives because they
have money. This is a reference to capitalism which Marx stated in his
Communist Manifesto and which Anand adopts in his novel. The following
extract portrays how the industrial class exploits the working one.
They have money. They have crores of rupees in my bank.
They earn money by buying wheat which the peasants grow
and by selling it as flour to the English, or by buying cotton
and making cloth and selling it at a profit. Some of them are
 78

Babus who work in offices, like the Babu whose house you are
going to be a servant. (Anand, Coolie).
This excerpt clearly reveals the real misuse of peasants by the
industrial Bourgeoisie, who grow richer by employing the machines and
purchasing the raw materials from the poor peasants at low-cost prices. Munoo
is aware that ‘money is everything’ then he thinks of the gap between him,
‘the poor boy’ and his superiors, ‘the rich people’, between all the poor people
in his village and Jay Singh’s father, the landlord. This is a direct reference to
feudalism to the exploited peasants in villages and to industrialism and
capitalism to the exploited people in towns. Munoo’s stream of consciousness
leads him to find out these critical differences between people and finally
makes him aware that people are of two kinds only regardless the caste. They
are either rich or poor.
Munoo expresses his astonishment at the sight of the music machine
for the first time. Here, in Coolie is the first occurrence of the machine, which
was introduced in Untouchable as one of the solutions to the outcastes’
problem. In Coolie Anand cleverly introduces the machine that almost entered
every field; he wants to tell that machine is intended for the service of human
beings, though it was brought by the British colonizer. Here, Anand is not
condemning the British, nor praising them. The first machine is the
phonogram, which Munoo has mistaken it to be a man inside the box who
speaks and sings. The boy's reaction is very strange; of course because he has
never come across such a thing, Munoo is a hill boy and there are no machines
in the village modernity is still beyond their reach. This is one of the
differences between village and town. The second machine is the bicycle,
which was almost to hit Munoo and caused him waves of abuse and a slap on
the face from his uncle. The third machine is the caller machine which Munoo
sees in the Babu's office and admired it.
The novel also deals with oppression that is practiced upon the low
classes and castes and even among the sub-castes. It is like a game of power,
the strongest controls the weak, there is no place for the weak in this world.
Daya Ram is oppressing Munoo on basis of his position as he is the guardian
of the Imperial Bank of India, while Daya himself is oppressed by Babu
Nathoo Ram who is higher in position. :"I bow my forehead to you Babuji".
 79

On seeing the manager of the bank, Daya Ram stands erect with a mingled
gesture of fear, humility and reverence. Daya Ram asks Munoo to offer his
humiliations to his mistress in an oppressive manner. "Join your hands, you
pig, and say I fall at your feet" (12). Nevertheless, Munoo hardly utters these
words, he yields to his suppressor in a sad manner. This indicates that he has a
defiant nature and does not want to be easily oppressed but because he is an
orphan and just a kid his uncle and others suppress him. If he were bigger, he
would protest and never allow himself to be humiliated. Munoo is treated as
an inferior on basis of his social rank. He is an orphan who shall be looked
after. Even his own uncle treats him in a superior way, at the Babu’s house,
Munoo experiences the differences between classes. It is like a series of
submission to the one who has the highest profession. As for example, Daya
Ram who is the chaprasi of the bank offers loyalty and total submission to the
Babu and other employees in the bank. While the Babu himself who feels
superior to the Muslim neighbors and Daya Ram, Munoo and other low-class
people offers his loyalty and degrades himself in front of the English man,
who finds himself superior to the Indian people and calls them "natives".
Therefore, this is like a pyramid in which the higher in the class ladder is the
most powerful and suppresses the weaker. Munoo is the one who is ultimately
suppressed. Everyone oppresses and abuses him. Babu Nathoo Ram's wife, for
example, does not allow her children to play with Munoo in spite of the fact
that they enjoy his monkey dance and want to play with him but her so-called
"superiority" prevents her from allowing the daughters to play with Munoo.
She even does not show him their lavatory in order not to let him use it. “Ah
do you think I should let him use our lavatory! “let this rustic use our lavatory!
(18). The woman has to keep up her false prestige in order to fulfill her
pretend superiority, though she is a hill woman, she mocks the village folk as
being stupid and dirty. “Ah! These village folk”, (19). She herself commits
one of the most unhygienic things by making tea from the same water she has
boiled in eggs. “Even in the hills that was considered unhygienic”. (20).
Munoo’s mistress tries hard to look like the rich and pretends to be like
them. For this reason, she asks for a servant because only high-class people
keep servants, which is one of the major things to fulfill one’s inferiority
complex. Unfortunately, for her, Munoo ruins all her “superior ideas” by his
 80

mischiefs. She comments on Prem’s deal with Munoo saying: “Our house
used to be like the houses of the Sahib-logs until this brute has come from the
hills and has spoilt it all, the uncivilized brute”(45). The woman bursts into
fury and slaps Munoo on the face and abuses him for breaking the China tea
set which symbolizes her assumed ‘superiority’: “You spoiler of our salt! You
have bought bad luck to our house! You beast! And I have tried hard to correct
you! (46). This is ironic. How anyone who is incorrect would correct others?
How insults would correct people? How maltreatment and bad words would
give any positive result? How anyone who suffers from inferiority complex
could be superior!
The episode in which Munoo’s uncle beats him savagely depicts the
climax of Munoo’s suffering. When Munoo asks Daya Ram for money, the
latter grows ruthless, his love for money and his fear from poverty hardened
his heart and made him cruel. Moreover, it is the sense of inferiority that his
job as a peon in the bank gives him. Munoo is left alone with no one to shield
him from cruel people, so he calls out his dead mother; to the dead people to
be merciful to him. Here is Anand’s genius evident in this pathetic excerpt
where Munoo finds no living human to pity him he calls the dead to have
mercy on him. Anand’s disgust with the exploitative manner the people deal
with the orphan boy reached the top as he seeks mercy upon the poor lad from
his deceased mother.
Although poor, Munoo does not stop himself from enjoying his life.
Inside him, there is a free aspiring soul searching for protest against his status
of being a slave. Munoo’s escape from the Babu’s house is his first step into
breaking the shackles of slavery and protesting against his oppressors. Munoo
even let loose his thoughts, which is another kind of protest “I will tear him to
bits while he is asleep, I will murder him” (49). He decides to murder his
uncle in order to avenge himself upon him. He will not actually kill him, but in
his subconscious mind, there are conflicting thoughts of protest.
The encounter between Munoo’s mistress and the judge’s wife reveals
the reality and the hypocrisy of the people who keep up prestige and assume
high-class status, in fact, they are very low morally and ethically when they
become angry with each other. They use the most common abusive words and
insults. The judge’s wife abuses Bibiji: “These low Babus are getting so
 81

uppish, let my husband come and we will show you what is to insult your
superiors! They are getting so proud just because they have an uncouth boy
from the hills come to be their servant”. (53). This passage shows the class
clash in Hindu society, which is Anand’s target who clearly attempts to unveil
their superior pretense and show their flaws as the ordinary human beings.
Munoo has recurring thoughts of attraction to Sheila but when he
recognizes this, he feels ashamed of himself. He is a boy with high standards
and morals, though he is poor and wretched, yet he is clean from within. Like
Bakha, Munoo felt ashamed of himself. Here Anand intends to show that his
protagonists are clean from within in spite of their dirty professions. “Has not
the wicked age come! This boy! He is hardly yet born! And he attacks the
honor of his master’s child! Heavens!” (58). This extract sheds light on two
important issues in the novel. First, the oppression Munoo suffers in the house
of the Babu, the ill-treatment he receives and the abuses he hardly tolerates.
The second one is the class dilemma, in spite of being a Kshatriya, yet he is
poor and he is regarded as a coolie who is down-trodden by the superior class
of the Babus and Sahibs. This issue is clearly stressed by Munoo’s mistress
own words “What is your status that you should mix with the children of your
superiors”. “Did not I tell you that my children are not your class! “They are
the children of a big Babu!(57). One more point, adds Saros Cowasjee that
Anand often writes about young people and children in the manner of
Dickens’s:
He does not idealize them. He is quick to show that children, in
spite of their innocence accept without questioning the
prejudices of their elders. And in their state of thoughtlessness,
they can be terribly cruel.…. She tells him ‘you are a servant;
you must not play with us’. But the uninhibited Munoo who
knows no barriers between the high and the low, is not so
easily discouraged…. It is done in all innocence, but Nathoo
Ram and his wife judge that act in the light of their own
deprived experiences. Munoo is kicked and beaten savagely
and unable to bear life any longer in the Babu’s household, he
escapes that night. (Cowasjee 68-69).
 82

Ganpat’s character serves as the bad side of human being, where there
is good, there is evil on the opposite. Therefore, Prabha is the good one who
will be Munoo’s salvation, while Ganpat will stand as an obstacle in his way
to get rid of misery. Moreover, Ganpat increases Munoo’s oppression and
suppresses him a lot. The reason which stands behind Ganpat’s cruelty is that
he was born rich and was bred in the lap of luxury, while his father gambled
away his fortune in the stock exchange and left him penniless to work for his
own living. Ganpat views himself a mere parasite. He develops in himself
personal hatred and a perverse selfishness. He exploits all the means to serve
his own ends. The light that gleams from his bloodshot eyes makes him
abhorrent to look at, demonic and malevolent like a potential murderer. Philip
Henderson rightly observes: “Coolie takes us into a world in which the
comradeship of man to man exists only among the very poorest people. With
nothing to hope for. Their common humanity is all they possess”. (Henderson
256).
The relationship between Hari and Munoo, Ratan and Munoo, Munoo
and other coolies proves their common humanity. While, the relationship
between masters cannot be favorably for instance, the relationship of Ganpat
and Todar Mal and that of Babu Nathoo Ram and W. P. England. At the pickle
factory, most of the workers are from the hills, even Prabha himself is a hill
man, Munoo felt the tenderness and kindness directed to him by those people,
whereas in contrast to them, Ganpat is a city man, cruel and oppressive. This
is a clear distinction that can be made between the simplicity, kindness and
goodness of the hill folk, and the cruelty, aggressiveness and exploitation the
city dwellers.
This is a part of the economic exploitation of coolies. The industrial
capitalism, which exploits the poor in India appears clearly in the pickle
factory represented by Ganpat the cruel and broken down rich man who treats
the laborers in a very hostile manner. The quarrel which he makes with lady
Todar Mal reveals Ganpat’s own truth about his life and his parents. Through
a discussion with his partner, Ganpat touches the very core of his hatred and
fraudulence to Prabha. That is simply because of the class differences between
them. Prabha was once a coolie and will work as a coolie again after his
bankruptcy. Ganpat, who was once rich will run his own business after
 83

stealing his partner’s money and will go on his life without punishment.
Ganpat’s values are revealed by his own words to his partner: “Your father
was a coolie and you are a coolie, you dirty swine! I won’t disgrace my
prestige and go down! Get away, you low hill dog…..you are not my class.
You are coolies and belong to the street I spit on you”. (105-106).
Anand intends to show that due to the class boundaries and the
harshness of the rich, the coolies who got the chance to rid themselves from
the stigma of poverty will again go back to drudgery as long as there are
corrupt and cruel people. He is indirectly suggesting a humanitarian solution
for the coolies which it seems impossible to be attained in the true cruel world.
Class distinction and discrimination towards coolies are evidently
highlighted by Ganpat’s own words. A coolie should not aspire for a higher
status according to a class or caste ridden society. This is exactly what
happened to Prabha in the novel, who is finally bankrupt and the creditors
come to claim their debts. Prabha begged them for one more chance but in
vain.
After the closure of the pickle factory, Munoo is in the streets once
again, he swifts from one mean job into another. In the circus, Munoo
becomes more aware of the fact that he is a coolie and he starts worrying
about his ambition. ‘Everyone can see that I am a coolie’ He was slightly over
fallen at the prospect of never being able to go beyond the seas at the horse
rider world’. (144). This proves the quantity of oppression he was exposed to
and the harshness and ruthlessness of the city dwellers. He has to face alone
the difficulties in the big city of Mumbai, later on he found a job at “Sir
George White Cotton Mills” where he worked together with Hari, his wife and
children. At the cotton mill, Munoo experienced the oppression and
exploitation practiced by the British owner, the Foreman, and moneylenders.
This exploitation falls under the category of Industrial Capitalism; the layers
of such a system in their ascending order include Sir Reginald white, President
of Sir George Cotton Mills, Mr. Little, the Manager, and Jimmy Thomas, the
Foreman. The higher the layer in this system, the more subtle and politely
masked is the exploitation. In a moment of crisis brought about by depression.
Sir Reginald White guard against any loss of the shareholders’. Nevertheless,
he instructs the mills to go on short time order “no work for the fourth week in
 84

every month” and cutting short the laborers already meager wages to what is
less than even ‘starvation allowance’. He however masks the exploitation in a
subtle manner by calling it ‘substantial allowance’ in his letter.
However pleasant-looking the mask of courtesy in Sir Reginald’s letter
and the reality of exploitation implied in it, is pinching enough to impel the
laborers to rise in confrontation with Mill owners. “Communalism too lends
them a hand”(66). The Mill owners avoid the confrontation by diverting the
laborers’ attention in a subtle way. They disperse the communal riots by
getting a Hindu laborer’s son kidnapped and spreading through their agents
the rumors, that he has been kidnapped by a Muslim. The British government
connives at the communal riots and exploits its own Indian citizens to
strengthen its hold on them.
The fires of communal hatred are further fanned by politicians,
who have their own axe to grind. In the whole process, the
exploited losses his job, his livelihood and sometimes even his
life . The economic and political exploitation thus coalesce
into one. The capitalists. Particularly Englishmen, consider the
laborers and coolies as sub-humans with no rights. For them the
Indian laborer is just a piece of property, a sub-human being
with no rights and all duty whose only utility is to be a
serviceable toot. (Anand, Coolie 67).
The coolies working at “Sir George Mill” are extremely exploited, first
of all, they work from six to six in miserable conditions and with very low
wages, the second thing is that they live in huts let by the foreman who
deducts money from their wages in case of any injury caused by rains or
floods. The third thing is that they are exploited by money lenders who take
heavy interests on the borrowed money. They cannot buy their rice and dal by
cash, they need to lend from the shopkeepers who charge high interests. As the
workers work in a very damp and dark place, their children are not safe from
the machines; there is no place for them to wash when they want to have their
meals, except a pump in the grounds at the back, among huge drums of oil and
bales of cotton. Where a hundred men are crowded to get a drink. There is
nowhere to get for a meal, not a canteen, nor a cookshop. The machines are
very dangerous for the little children, even for big laborers. Hari’s little boy
 85

has grazed his right arm by ignorantly touching the belt of a machine in the
spinning shed. Hari due to this accident has a fearful threat to lose his job if he
takes his son outside the mill without permission from the supervisor. The
cruelty of the superiors towards the inferiors is clearly implied in this incident.
Saros Cowsajee writes:
Anand writes from a first-hand knowledge of his subject. In
Coolie he recalls the Pickle Factory and the Cotton Mill, he
brings alive a picture alien to many of the readers requires
more than fruitful reportage. Anand achieves it by mingling
arid details with human situations we have experienced… we
do know what it feels like to have clay plastering bare feet or
sweat running down bodies. By striking faithfully on familiar
chords. To drive home his point. Anand huddles man and beast
together. (Cowasjee).
When Munoo has set foot in Bombay, the elephant driver warns him
‘The bigger the city is, the crueler it is to the sons of Adam’. Munoo should
have known this, but his mind was too full of what a coolie has said of
Bombay. It is truly a wonderful city one should visit before one dies. A caustic
fulfillment of the coolie’s words seems to be the substance of such a chapter.
Munoo approaches each new place with hope and a blissful lack of self-
realization. The question ‘who I am’ Never seriously bothered him. For such a
question might be the beginning of Munoo and the end of the novel. As Anand
has conceived it. In spite of unforgettable moments in the Bombay chapter,
much is tedious. The life and hardships of the poor remain the same, the
change is one in scale mostly the larger the city, the more ruthless the
exploitation and the greater is the human misery. The indigenous pickle
factory has now its counterpart in the Sir George White Cotton Mills, where
the working conditions are even more grueling, Ganpat has been replaced by
the foreman Jimmie Thomas who is even more tyrannical, the working hours
are so long and unbearable. The creditors are more numerous and more
wicked. The world of the poor remains one of comradeship, while that of the
rich is one of hysteria and nightmare. There is the same foul smell and stink,
damp and sticky sweat, dust and heat incense and compost. The occasional
destitute to be seen on the streets of Daulatpur have now been replaced by a
 86

vast concourse of pavement dwellers, and Anand’s description of them makes

some of the most poignant reading in the book. “In a corner a coolie by
huddled, pillowing his head on his arm, shrinking into himself as if he were
afraid to occupy too much space”(189). However, perhaps the most agonizing
picture of all is offered when Hari, along with his family and Munoo, at last
reach a clearing that surprisingly has not been occupied. As they stand
wondering, a half-naked woman speaks to them between smothered sobs: “My
husband died there last night!”, “He has attained the release said Hari we will
rest in his place”. (Anand, Coolie 190).
The Englishman is again employed by Anand in the Bombay Chapter.
This time the English man is a symbol of exploitation. Here, Anand attacks in
this novel the British as being the exploiters of India’s natural and human
resources. Although the characters are minor ones, yet they anticipate in the
oppression of the workers. Those are Sir Reginald White, Mr. Little and
Jimmie Thomas and his wife. Jimmie Thomas mockingly abuses Hari in
reference that the latter has brought his family to Bombay. “Why did not you
bring the whole of your village, you son of a dog! Hari spontaneously replies
to the English man’s mockery that he will write a letter to some more people if
they need more workers. Again the English man insults Hari “You stupid
Bullock”, “there are no jobs here”. Hari begs the Sahib in severe humility to
give him a room and a good salary for him and his family, but the money the
Sahib offers is very few, thirty rupees only, anyway, the coolies have to accept
it due to their urging need, the English man clearly exploits the coolies. “Hari:
“But Huzoor! Touching the foreman’s black boots with his hand and taking
the touch of the beef hide to his forehead (172).
It is not only humiliation and oppression of the coolies but it is more in
the matter of exploitation both physically and financially. The British (the
factory owners and those who are in charge of business) are to some extent,
bloodsuckers, they make the coolies work for almost twelve hours a day in
very miserable conditions and they above all pay them salary hardly enough
for ten days of a month and to increase their grip over the coolies’ necks, the
money lenders take their part more cruelly. This shows the mentality of these
people, their greed and merciless acts towards the poor coolies, they are even
ready to fight each other to win many coolies to exploit. As if they were in a
 87

jungle and the most powerful is the one who dominates. To quote Ambuji
Kumar Sharma who wrote about the theme of exploitation and the exploitative
industrial capitalism:
Industrial capitalism exploiting the poor in India appears in
Coolie, the layers of this system in their descending order
include Sir Reginald White, President of Sir George Cotton
Mills, Mr. Little, the Manager, and Jimmy Thomas, the
Foreman. The higher the layer in this system, the more subtle
and politely masked is the exploitation. (Ambuji 65-66).
The exploitation flows from the lower layer of the Industrial system. It
alternates between the crude and the subtle, the scene where Munoo and Hari
approach Chimta Sahib in search of employment illustrates the crudeness and
rudeness of exploitation. In addition to usury and brokerage charging the
exploitation at the lower level assumes the form of landowning also.
At Bombay Munoo admires everything. He thought of his pay, this
money he had ever earned or expected. Like Bakha, Munoo admires all the
paraphernalia of Sahib-hood, he thought that he would buy black boots, a
watch and chain, a polo top, shorts and a tunic. All of Munoo’s ideas are
unfulfilled dreams of changing his social position as a coolie and by imitating
the Sahibs; he is protesting against his position. Like Bakha, Munoo aspires
for a change in his social status, but the cruelty of life shatters his dream.
Being paid off fifteen rupees a month does not mean that he will become a
Sahib or even authorize him to enter the world of Sahibhood. The social high
standards will not allow him to cross his limits and will always remind him of
his own status as a coolie. This is exactly what happened to Prabha, the coolie
who by his own hard work has become a factory owner but soon after, he is
broken down by the upper-class society. In such a harsh society, no coolie is
able to cross the red lines and free himself from the clutches of the social
strains that are set by those who have money. Munoo utters his self-assertion
words in Bombay’s Mill when he said: “Yes, yes I want to live, I want to
know, I want to work, to work this machine. I shall grow up and be a man, a
strong man like the wrestler”. (Anand, Coolie).
Again in the novel Anand’s realism is revealed in the Bombay chapter
during the monsoon season. Anand’s description is meant to show the real
 88

meaning of suffering which the coolies endure. As the heavy rains have
washed out the coolies’straw huts and this compelled them to vacate to
another tenement but the new place is not better than the previous one, where
it is located on a ‘river of dung’ The scene shows the miserable and
unhygienic place the coolies live in. This illustrates the reality of their
miserable life. Anand intended clearly to clarify the oppression they endure
because of the rich and the British together, who are directly responsible for
their anguish. When the supervisor Jimmie Thomas asked for full rent as a
compensation of the damaged tents, Ratan’s soul boiled in fury and this led
him to quarrel with the foreman, this quarrel leads to the main sparkle of
protest that is of the strike.
Ratan’s character serves to denote the high-spirited protest; he does not
care about pretentions or appearance “That you will get anyhow but just you
touch any of them and I will show you a bit of my mind”. (201). The story
which he narrates had an important topic to be underlined that is the strike;
which is a kind of protest against unfair treatment. The strike Ratan and his
co-workers do at Jamshedpur is against long hours, general bad treatment and
bad housing conditions. Nevertheless, this protest is destined to failure
because of the betrayals of some leaders. In a way, Ratan meant to tell that the
best solution for every oppression practiced upon the coolies lies in unity,
commitment and loyalty to the cause which attests all the oppressed. In unity
lies potential power that cannot be defeated. This unity is simplified in the Red
Flag Union in this novel.
In contrast to Ratan the defiant, self-dignified and persistent wrestler is
Hari the humble, poor, easy going and old coolie who accepts exploitation and
humiliation coldly because he ‘believed’ he has to be under the norms of
‘superiority and inferiority’. A very good example of the exploitation of the
coolies is Hari who accepts meekly the cut of ten rupees from his pay; salutes
the foreman and withdraws. While on the contrary, Ratan does not allow the
foreman to deduct his pay, he stays defiant and asserted: ‘No damaged cloth,
Sahib, and no interest because I did not borrow money on compound interest’.
Nineteen rupees! Said the foreman ‘one rupee cut for being late at the factory:
‘Twenty rupees! Shouts the wrestler summoning all the power of his colossal
frame into a deliberately restrained manner. Not a pica less (204).
 89

It is clearly intended by the author that oppression should be fought by

protest in order to gain self-assertion. That is clearly what Ratan achieves and
what the other coolies have to. Ratan says courageously enough to Shibu:
“You ought to be manly enough to standup for yourself or you should come
with me and join the Union. You are so lethargic”. (207). Now, Ratan offers
the second solution for oppression that is the ‘Union’, which is the ‘Red Flag
Union’ by name and it is made up on communist rules for the sake of the
oppressed.
Ratan is a rebellious character, he has confidence in his own strength
and in the strength of the Union too. He has never bowed to a Sahib, unlike the
other coolies who are cringed with humility. Because of his pride and defiant
character; Ratan is discharged but he accepts this with pride and self- control,
it is like a shock of electricity through him and has illuminated his frame with
the most intense sense of his own status. He raises his hand to strike the
Chimta Sahib, but the latter moves away and Ratan cannot violate the
chivalrous law of the wrestler by hitting his adversary on the back. He thought
about another solution that is to rush to the office of the All India Trade Union
Federation to put his cause before the President. The reaction of the other
coolies to Ratan’s discharge is not assuaging; they are broken, dispirited,
docile and reticent. The misery of their life had sapped their energy until their
souls seem to have disappeared and only a bare suggestion of the memory of
pain hung around their faces. Things got more complicated in Ratan’s
situation; the President Onkar Nath refused to see him and may be the reason
behind his discharge is his association with Muslims, according to Muzzaffar
Sauda; one of the officials of the Red Flag Union, commenting on Ratan’s
discharge and using a defiant and demonstrative language:
Do not all the insults you people suffer rouse you from the
apathy to which you have succumbed? Does not all the misery,
all the degradation you suffer rouse you to indignation? I tell
you that they have ground you down, they have fleeced and
sweated you they have tortured your life enough! (219).
The official’s speech is intended to encourage the coolies to protest
and stand up for their social rights. His words reveal the real situation which
the coolies undergo: “Look at the room you lie in, is it big enough to house
 90

you all? And thousands of you are content to live in the tenements and straw
huts which have not paved roads, no playground, or a garden”. “How long can
you live? When will you wake up? When will you come to your senses”?
(219). The coolies have to rebel and appeal for their own justice and assertion.
The union offers solutions for coolies in which they can abolish poverty.
Those solutions are as the following:
First, establishments of schools for the children. This is a very crucial
solution because by teaching the new generation, the coolies will gradually get
rid of illiteracy and they will be more cautious of their rights and no one will
be able to exploit them. Ignorance itself is a disaster; knowledge is an
important instrument to gain self-assertion. The second solution is to supply
the coolies with food, especially that they produce this food in their fields.
They need not buy their food from the traders at high rates.
The third solution offered by Sauda is the strike, “You must walk out
of the mill, all of you and refuse to work till your hours are shortened, your
pay increased, your children given schools and till you are given new houses.
You go on strike”. (220). The language of protest is very clear in Sauda’s
speech which aimed to stir the coolies’ consciousness to revolt against the
oppression practiced upon them. “You, you are human beings”. “Have you
forgotten your notion of izzat”? “Would you let anyone throw away the
turbans off your heads”? “Where is your sense of dignity”? Where is your
manhood”? (220).
Sauda tries to awaken India’s dispossessed from drudgery and apathy
into active participation so that they can liberate themselves from the stigmas
of poverty and social evils. He calls upon the workers into an organized
gathering which is communism as a sure step towards achieving social
equality:
Stand up for your rights, you roofless wretches, stand up for
justice! Stand up, you frightened fools… Stand up and be the
men that you were meant to be and do not crawl back to the
factories like the worms that you are! Stand up for life, or they
will crush you and destroy you altogether ! From tomorrow,
you go on strike and we will pay you to fight your battle with
the employers. (Anand, Coolie 276).
 91

This is a kind of protest in which Sauda encourages the workers in the

factories to carry out. Though a victim of social malaise and indignity; Munoo
still retains his integrity that makes him the ‘paragon of animals’. Having been
put into a series of ritual sufferings, he emerges as a victor rather than a victim
only to be convinced that the root cause of all of his suffering is the class
segregation and not the abstract entity called ‘fate’. He is the symbol of a
million of the unfortunate of India’s lost generation who is condemned to lead
the life of unending traumas.
Anand clearly hints to Marxian approach to life in the cotton mill
scene. What Chamber’s encyclopedia says about this approach is referred in
Ambuj Kumar Sharma’s book. The Theme of Exploitation in the Novels of
Mulk Raj Anand, to quote Chamber’s:
Marx’s purpose was to reveal the economic laws that govern
modern society. Social development of modern times depends
on capital. The core of modern history is rise, culmination and
final breakdown of capitalism. But the full development of
capitalism, and the power of the class which owns the means of
production, also involve the rise of socialism and the class of
the proletariat who have only their labor to sell. Capitalism
grows by appropriation and accumulation of surplus value and
with the analysis of value, Marx begins his economic theory.
The wealth of modern society, what so ever its form, is the
product of human labor. The value of all commodities is
constituted by human labor and can be measured in human
labor-time. But the means of labor are land and capital and
these essential means are the property of a special class, the
bourgeois. To this class, the Proletariat is compelled to sell its
labor. Power for a wage which represents the average
subsistence necessary for the workers and for the children
required to keep up the supply of labor. The labor of the
proletariat, when utilized and organized by the capitalist,
produces a value greater than the wages paid for it. (Ambuji
119-120-121).
 92

This is the surplus value of labor and the growth of this surplus value
in the hands of owners of capital alone. Thus, the history of modern society is
the story of the struggle between these two classes, the capitalist who absorbs
surplus value and the proletariat which produces it. The consequences of this
class struggle are far reaching. The big capitalist goes on destroying the
smaller until big monopolies tend to control vast accumulations of the capital.
By producing extremes of poverty and wealth, degradation and pauperism on
the one hand and luxury and extravagance on the other. This process sharpens
the class struggle until it breaks into open revolution. Marx believed that
because the poorest classes must go on getting even poorer and the rich even
richer, the final revolution is inevitable. At that stage, if the proletariat were
sufficiently aware of what is happening, the exploited would take the
initiative, expropriate the expropriators and seize the means of production into
their own hands. This great revolution will inaugurate the new era of socialism
wherein production will be carried on for the good of all and will bring with it
the classless society.
At this point, the theory of Marxism moves from economics to politics.
The state as it exists in a capitalist society is the instrument of exploitation. It
is the means by which the owners of capital oppress and exploit the proletariat,
and is devoid of justice. When the proletarian revolution establishes a classless
society, there will be no need for the state in the old sense. It will not be out of
place now to apply the above-mentioned elements of the Marxian approach to
the treatment of exploitation in the novels of Anand. Of the landowners and
the laborers today, the former were agitating against the ruling British and
feudal class and the latter against the capitalist mill owners. In the Marxist
terminology, these struggling classes were the emergent or would be ruling
classes whose ideology in keeping with the observation of Marx prevailed in
those times.
Anand has his own ideology in his treatment of exploitation, which is
conditioned by his growth in the exploited class of coppersmith and later on
military soldiers, continued to be pro-proletariat partly because of his reading
of Marx and partly because of his struggle to support himself financially
during his studies for Ph.D. He could not rise much higher in the class
hierarchy even during the major part of his career as a writer from twenties’
 93

onwards as writing in Indian does not yield so much as in England; his

ideology, therefore, remained proletariat-oriented. Hence, there is no
contradiction between the ideology he adopts in his novels and the exploited
people’s point of view, which he represents. Ambuji Kumar rightly points out:
It may also be pointed out that the form of the novel with prose
as the medium of expression and with for less constraints than
the constraints upon several other forms such as drama and
poetry is typically suitable for the expression of the theme of
multi-faceted exploitation in the life of the exploited masses. It
is so because their daily language is prose itself and tends to
approximate to the prose in Anand’s dialogues in which the
vocabulary of the simple exploited and the cruel exploiters is
used not unoften. (Ambuji 125, 129) .
Anand introduces Lalkaka, the clerk in the All Indian Union Council,
to spotlight the kind of oppression that is practiced by the British upon the
locals. The clerk is horribly terrified by Mr. Little (The English) who
resembles ‘white men’. He has never felt quite at ease with the whites ever
since once a man kicked him at the corner of Hornby Road for his childish
curiosity which has made him stare with wonder and admiration at the Sahib.
Lalkaka received a storm of abuses when he stroke the Sahib’s forehead “You
damn fool! You bloody little foul”, (223). He would have kicked the boy out
of the room if the telephone had not rung. “Go and call the foreman Sahib, you
swine” (223). This announcement of work shortage in the mill is a disaster for
the coolies because they will starve if they do not work and have been paid
off. No one will take mercy upon them, the English are exploiting them and
moreover, looking upon them as inferiors and call them ‘niggers’,“Goddam all
niggers!” (233).
The British oppress the locals in India to the extent that they are ready
to kill or demolish anyone or any union that stands in the face of their own
advantages and interests. They want to enslave the coolies and to suck India’s
natural resources, in order to satisfy their gluttonous desires. Sir Reginald
comments on the situation at the Mills like that: “But the trouble is that these
Indians are getting more and more restive, and the socialists at home. It is very
difficult what with the Quakers and Gandhists” (225). This explains that any
 94

act of protest will make the British worried and restless moreover, the
awareness of people about Marx’s theory and the influence of Gandhi’s
Movement will be a nightmare for the British. This is exactly what Anand
wants as a reformer, he indirectly tells that the strikes and the adoption of
Marxist and Gandhi’s theories would be the best solutions for asserting the
exploited class identity.
The coolies are stunned by the sudden shock of the announcement that
deprive them of the only privilege left for them, the privilege of work, a
privilege indeed because it means wages, whereas its withdrawal means
starvation. They are willing to work. They are willing to do anything. So long
as they can have their regular pay, even with a little cut for damaged cloth and
for the foreman’s commission and the interests on debts, so long as they can
have enough money to pay the landlord and to buy rice and lentils for the
month. But, to be told to go on short work! They seem to have died all of a
sudden, that little spark of life which makes them move about willingly, died,
and left them a queer race of men, dried up, shriveled, flat-footed, hollow-
chested hollow-cheeked, hollow-eyed. Their wretchedness passed beyond the
confines of suffering and left them careless and resigned.
The Trade Union declares a strike, as a kind of protest against the
announcement of work shortage. Coolies gather from all factories; they decide
to avenge themselves upon their oppressors. A middle-aged man among the
mob of coolies asks a very crucial question which expresses the current status
of coolies: “How can we live in such times”? A young man answers, “By
protesting against the wage cuts”. This expresses the zeal of the young
generation who are not ready to accept or tolerate any more oppression. They
are different from their elders. The author has intended to show by bringing
two generations into his novel that the awareness and tolerance change and
develop from one generation to another. Ignorance shall not be inherited; it is
high time to wake up. The old man’s reply was very ignorant and humble
“Aye, the youths of today have no respect for anybody”. However, the wise
and defiant reply comes from the young man as: “Grandfather’ I join my
hands to you every morning, do I not? But I will not prostrate myself before
the Burra Sahib in the motor car he rides in comfort and I have to walk on the
dusty road under the sun. And then he declares the factory on short work”,
 95

(229). The President of the Union is not completely welcomed by the coolies,
he has failed to bring about a good solution for the coolies, it might be because
he has studied in England and mixed with the English and has sympathy with
them, his speech is somehow rhetoric, philosophic but it is insulting:
I have known the methods of the labor people in Vilayat. What
has made the English working class strong and solid but
organization? There was not a trade Union in India till I
arrived….. They are not your enemies. If they have declared
you on short work, you must act in a sensible, organized way.
The Union works in your interests. It also works for the
common interests of the employer and laborer. You must have
faith in the Union and the methods by which it brings about
cooperation in industry between labour and capital. You must
trust me and the executive committee. (233).
Sauda, a member of the Trade Union Executive Committee and a true
advocate of the coolies is not very satisfied with the President’s speech. He
addresses the crowd totally in opposition to the president’s speech as: “You
know that the mill owners are not your best friends, in fact, there’s a world of
differences between the mill owners or the exploiters and you the exploited”
(232). The protesting voices come after this speech:
You are the roofless, you are the rice less, spinners of cotton,
weavers of thread, sweepers of dust and dirt, you are the
workers, the laborers, the millions of unknown who crawl in
and out of factories every day. You are the coolies black men
who relieve yourselves on the ground, you are the miserable
devils who live twenty a room in broken straw huts and
striking tenements. Your bones have no flesh, your souls have
no life, you are clothed in tattered rags. (232).
This is the exact situation of the coolies, which is totally uncovered by
Sauda’s speech; he reveals the truth of the mills’ owners and those who are
privileged by them; the infidels of the masses who participate in the
exploitation of the coolies such as Onkar Nath and other natives. Sauda
continues:
 96

There are only two kinds of people in the world, the rich and
the poor, and between the two, there is no connection. The rich
and the powerful, whose ambulance is built on robbery and
theft, …..you are respected by no one and you don’t respect
yourselves. (233).
Sauda goes on his zealous language in order to awake the sleeping
consciousness of the coolies who are suffering due to oppression and it is high
time to wake up and ask for their rights. Anand employs Sauda’s character just
to light the fire of protest; Sauda’s speech indirectly is Anand’s. He wants to
say it is time for coolies to face their oppressors and regain their identity, their
right to live as human beings. This speech stirs the blood of every coolie:
Stand up, then, stand up for your rights, you roofless, wretches,
stand up for your justice! Standup you freighted fools! Stand
up and be the men that you meant to be and do not crawl back
to the factories like the warms that you are! Stand up for life,
or they will crush you and destroy you altogether! Stand up and
follow me! from tomorrow you go on strike and we will pay
you to fight the battle with the employers. We are human
beings and not soulless machines (232-3).
At this stage, it is relevant to refer to Ambuj Kumar Sharma
commenting on Coolie, “The exploited class of coolies and laborers comes
into conflict with the mill owners in Coolie. They form a union and raise their
voice against exploitation Sauda, who is the true representative of the
coolies… raises his voice against their exploiters. (Ambuji 130). The Mill
owners, the moneylenders and the employers who benefited from exploiting
the coolies are not ready to accept any protest against their interest, so they
acted fast before the strike took place. They have instigated the Hindu-Muslim
conflict to divert the coolies’ attention from the strike. Saros Cowasjee
comments on this conflict:
In Coolie the preparation for the strike by the workers and its
bloody aftermath The Hindu-Muslim fight instigated by the
employers to divert attention, are a logical outcome of the
events that have preceded it, no doubt the author’s sympathies
are with the Red Flag Union officials, but he has not aligned
 97

himself with them openly, the reader, along with a few of the
workers, is swayed by the eloquence of the Communist leader
Sauda, but his solution that all workers should go on strike is
riddled with irony, for the workers are all in debt, they are
protesting against the partial shutdown of the mills which
means additional debts, and they are in bad condition to go on
strike. …. Good words are cheap. Anand has no easy solution
to offer. And it is primarily because the author does not
explicitly offer a solution that the novel can’t be called
Propagandist in intent. (Cowasjee).
One of the highlights of this chapter is the Hindu-Muslim feud in Indo-
Anglian fiction Coolie is perhaps the first novel to touch on this subject and it
foreshadows the murderous riots that followed the partitioning of India in
1947, the broken accent of a lone cry ‘Kidnapped, Kidnapped. Oh! my son has
been kidnapped is taken up by the crowd and elaborated upon till nothing but
an insane hatred rages between Hindus and Muslims is quite brilliantly done
(Cowasjee 79-80). The scene continues its bloody consequence and Munoo
has saved his life several times from assured death, through his cleverness and
his encouraging self-assertion. “I am a brave hill boy who has walked alone
hundreds of times even past graves and cremation grounds”( 238). But the
riots are very aggressive and they approach him, at this time Munoo is sure
that death is certain; he is knocked down by a blow on his spine.
Walking back to the mills the following morning, Munoo reflects on
the happenings of the previous evening. He, who has been so far immune to
the true nature of suffering owing to his enormous zest for life awakens to the
reality of pain and death, for the first time in his life. Just then, he is knocked
down by a car belonging to an Anglo-Indian lady Mrs. Mainwaring. When he
regains consciousness he discovers that he is on the way to Shimla. Munoo is
mentally and physically broken. He thinks of the conditions under which he
has lived, the intensity of the struggle and the futility of the waves of revolt as
if falling upon the hard rock of privilege and possession, as well as he thinks
of Ratan, Hari and Lakshmi and the riots, he feels sad and bitter and defeated
like an old man.
 98

The last chapter of the novel portrays Munoo’s life in Shimla. In the
beginning, Munoo is treated kindly then he serves his mistress as an auto
carrier, together with other coolies who used to carry his mistress and push her
carriage up to the hills in Shimla. Coolies in Shimla are treated as salves and
made to carry the rich people on their shoulders, which cause them severe
pain. This is the worst form of oppression. As a solution to such physical
oppression, the Reverend J. Fordyce, a chaplain of St. Marks’s Church, who
was much troubled by the uncomfortable thoughts of death and dignity and
being very concerned about his flock he concentrates all his efforts to secure a
vehicle for the transportation of the rich from their bungalows to the church
and back to. Therefore he invents the Rickshaw. Gandhi had refused to ride in
a rickshaw, as he said, “it hurts his soul to have to be borne in a carriage
driven by human beings” (M. Gandhi).
The Shimla scene also carries evidence that the residents of Shimla are
treating coolies as their own property. They deprive them of their own
identity, they enslave them all day and night. A good example for this is when
Mainwaring is having tea at the Davico’s, the coolies who are waiting for her
are curious to see what is it there inside the restaurant, then they are noticed by
May’s daughter Circe “Oh! Look, mummy! Our coolies are there!” (264).
In this chapter, two characters who are originally Indians are
introduced those are Mrs. May Waring and Major Marchant. Mrs. May’s
Mainwaring is descendant of an Anglo-Indian family. She was grown up in
the hill station among the children of English officials who were continually
talking of ‘home’. May develops a tremendous inferiority complex about her
origin. She vaguely knows that she is an English only at Fourth remove and
that there is Indian blood in her from her grandmother’s side but she has to
pretend to be ‘Pukha’ in order to cope with the snoopery of the other children.
She builds up a fairy tale picture of her family’s estate in Western Ireland and
seeks to disguise her dusky skin under thick coats of powder and the
camouflage of a Celtic origin. She was miserable at school and ultimately ran
away from it to Zalimpur obsessed with the ambition of going to England to
whitewash her color if possible. She had a desire to become ‘Pukha white’ and
the ambition to go to Europe which is satisfied easily through her marriage to
a German photographer Heinrich Ulmer. Being brought up under the care of
 99

the stepmom and her schooling in the convent of the Sacred Heart, May has
terrible thoughts about sex and this leads her to live a promiscuous life later.
She exercises her female charms on men whom she seeks advantages from, as
the Education Minister of the Zalimpur state and she gets a job teaching in a
children’s school. In order to keep her job, she has to please other men. She
uses her good looks for her advantage. She is one of the few emancipated
women in a world where the female sex is veiled of the sight of the male. She
is the object of admiration of rich courtiers, high officials; eminent judges both
English and Indian. ‘She became a bitch to all the dogs that prowled round her
bungalow’ (252). After marrying Aga Raza Ali Shah, she got divorced and
entrapped Guy Main Warming; an Englishman much younger than her, he was
easily deceived by May who told him that she was expecting a child which she
believed to be his. However, this trick does not survive long later; she has
revealed the truth about the child. May goes with Guy to England and she
insist on living at ‘home’ the heaven she has gained after all these years of
waiting, she makes excuses in order to stay. Guy becomes a slave to May, he
is totally haunted by her. He voluntarily makes an allowance of half of his pay
to her and bequeathed to her half the fortune he has inherited from his mother,
who died out of disappointment.
Major Marchant on the other hand, is a young Christian Indian and like
most the converters to Christianity in India, he was originally a cobbler’s son,
whom on English mission has brought up an education. During the course of
his adventurous career in the hands of the Padres, he has secretly enjoyed the
thrill of rubbing shoulders with Englishmen, he has gone to England and
became addicted to meeting the English people on a basis of equality, he
begins to regard himself as an Englishman, a belief that is encouraged by the
faultless accent he had acquired, the young chorus girl he married and the
complete adaptability to European conditions that he has easily cultivated. He
has changed his name from Mochi [Cobbler] to Marchant. He has forgetten
the low-class boy he has been when he has first fell into the hands of the
Mission and only recognized the successful young IMS officer he has become.
The only price he has to pay for this rise from nothingness to the position of a
dignified member of one of the imperial services in India is the regular
allowance of half of his pay which he has to send his wife in England. As
 100

Marchant formerly was very poor, so the loss of seven hundred rupees a
month troubles him. He is stingy and spends little on himself, using the
position as the Medical Officer of Shimla to get hospitality freely.
Nevertheless, apart from this burden about money which grows in his soul and
inclines him sometimes to seek divorce from his wife and drives him
sometimes to the arms of married women. He is very satisfied with himself, he
sees that Mrs. Mainwaring is almost the same color as him, or rather the color,
he would like to be a dusky such as could be brightened into a pink by
constantly rubbing a towel on the cheeks. He thinks her to be a Eurasian and
knows that it is so easy for an Indian Christian to find an affinity with a
Eurasian than either with the ‘natives’ or with the thoroughbred English.
The conversation between Major Marchant and Mrs. Mainwaring
reveals the inferiority complexes they share, the falsehood they live in is
meant for appearances. They take deep care about appearances, social
prestige, and imitating the English. Mrs. Mainwaring does not want to criticize
the community of which she aspired to be a member” (266). Mrs. Mainwaring
‘Oh, I only came from ‘home’ a few days ago. She mentioned the word
‘home’ as if England were her own homeland. Marchant, also carries the same
lies and he asks her about ‘home’. Both of them lead a life full of lies, they are
like parasites. They are oppressed within themselves by their own inferiority
complexes. Through their pretense, disguise and lies they protest against their
own nationality, identity, color, language, and culture and seek to assimilate
themselves with the British. Both of them, during their conversation talk about
the assumed ‘home’ which is highlighted by the author in order to reveal their
made-up world.
The feeling of inferiority is bound in a cycle starting from the low-
class people to the higher one. As in the case with Munoo who has always
admired the superior people who wear English clothes and live in bungalows.
The same inferiority complex lies there deeply in Mrs. Mainwaring and Major
Marchant who live all their lives trying to escape from their own complexion
and origin. Mrs. Mainwaring finds that India is a veritable paradise for a white
woman. She has not spent her time trying to bleach her color in England in
vain. She finds that she has plenty of time to waste. For India is the one place
in the world where servants still are servants and one could laze through the
 101

morning and sleep through the afternoon happy in the assurance that the cook
and the ‘boy’ will look after breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner. India is the one
place in the world where one could come in to dress and leave the discarded
garments in a heap on the floor to be collected and folded away by the
servants. In India, there are all the luxuries and amenities of the west at the
knockdown prices of the East.
Munoo feels superior to the other coolies especially when he is treated
kindly by Mrs. Mainwaring, he has met Mr. Mainwaring whom he liked, the
master is very kind to him. Munoo wishes that all the masters were like Mr.
Mainwaring who is kind and always smiley. He wonders why most of the rich
are not kind like him or even smile! What they will lose if they draw a smile
on their lips when they receive something from the coolies. Here is the
humanitarian side of Anand; he is indirectly telling that the rich should adopt
the sense of humanity towards the poor. Unlike Mr. Mainwaring, Major
Marchant is cruel and treats the coolies badly. He even encourages the
mistress to make the servants do difficult things like asking Munoo to come
running behind the ponies on the Jakhu round. This treatment of the coolies is
another kind of oppression. Being a servant boy who shall attend to the
Memsahib at every moment she needs, an auto rickshaw puller and an
executor of any odd order, all lead to Munoo’s deadly sickness. The truth that
is revealed by Mohan, “he is dying of consumption”.“Look at his pale cheeks
and sunken eyes!” (272). Munoo considers this truth at first as a joke, the
lively boy who is always enjoying his life in spite of all his miseries, refuses to
accept that his life is going to end very soon. He wants to live, to enjoy life, to
fulfill his dreams to be like a Sahib, to put on English clothes and wear foreign
boots. “The next day, however, while he was cleaning his teeth and gargling to
clear his throat, he saw himself spitting out streaks of blood. He horridly threw
a handful of ashes on the puddle to conceal it, both from Ala Dad and
himself”.( 272).
Munoo tries to forget himself in his work, he feels rather frightened
and depressed by the cloud the shade of this first hemorrhage has raised in his
imagination ‘Am I really dying’, he asked himself. He tries to ignore his
sickness although he feels the congestion of his chest and the blood that has
oozed from his throat. However, he said to himself, “It is not, it is merely my
 102

throat which is sore with tonsils” (272). He simply does not want to die, in
spite of that before three years back he wished he were dead, but now the
question mark of death arises in his mind, which he is not ready to accept the
idea of death. Munoo seeks for a relief that is to write for his friend Ratan to
ask him for a piece of advice. He feels lonely and he wants to do something.
Later on, Munoo sought Mohan’s advice; he went down to the coolies’ huts
below the lower bazaar, which is a very filthy and unhygienic place to live in.
The coolies start ridiculing Munoo, the moment he start coughing for being
very ‘green’. Mohan defines them as fools, they rush up the hills long before
the season starts just, because they want to be in time to get the Rickshaw’s
which are good to look at. They are illiterate and uncouth, and they have
become sterile, driving rickshaws up hill and down dale until there is nothing
left for them but to mock others. Mohan’s advice is: ‘Go back to your land.
That is my advice to you. Go and work on your land’.(273).
Anand intention behind creating Mohan’s character is to stand for the
voices of wisdom, awareness and protest: ‘Yes, you fool, you will let them kill
you, you are all ignorant slaves. How can I drill any sense into your hands?
The role of Mohan in this novel is very important. Mohan reflects both the
protest and assertion voices. Through his defiant language and his direct
discussions with the coolies, he tries to stimulate them to revolt against their
current situation and oppression. Knowing that Mohan is not from the coolie’s
class but he is an educated man who has been in England and now he is living
with coolies in their huts and driving rickshaws. He has given up his class and
social standards and indulged himself inside the coolie’s circle just to
accomplish his role in educating the coolies about their rights and to make
them aware of their crucial status, to awaken them from their lethargy, to let
them regain their identity as human beings, to assert themselves. Mohan, to
some extent, is Anand himself portraying his own experience in the Ashram,
and Karl Marx whom the author is influenced by. Anand creates the character
of Mohan just to make the coolies aware of the Marxist’s Movement. One
coolie describes Mohan as:
He is a very strange fellow. If he has been to Vilayat and is
such a learned man, why does he drive rickshaws and live
among us? He comes from a high-class family. He had an easy
 103

life in his childhood and youth. And now he is doing a sort of

Penance for his sins. He felt very alone, he told me isolated and
could not mix with people. (276).
To quote Saros Cowasjee commenting on the last chapter of Coolie:
It is not an organizing part of the total pattern and could be
dispensed with. I do not agree with this view, and think it was
right of Anand to retrieve his hero from the horrors of Bombay
and to help him to regain his identity before he coughs his
lungs and pulling rickshaws for his mistress. It is the correct
finale to the concerto, the boy who had come from the hills to
work and see the world goes back to the hills. What is wrong
with this chapter is that Anand gets so involved pillorying the
Anglo-Indian woman that he loses sight of his hero. He gives
some five pages to sketching her shady past and her somewhat
more shady present… (Cowasjee 81-82)

CHAPTER ІѴ
 104

Change and Transformation in Petals of Blood

Ngugi wa Thiong’o was born in 1938 in Kamirithu village near Limuru in

Kiambu District of Kenya. His father Thiong’o wa Nducu was a dispossessed
peasant who was forced to become a squatter on the estate of a land owner.
Ngugi’s mother Wanjiku was one of his four wives and Ngugi was one of the
twenty-eight children in the family. He entered the primary school at Limuru
 105

and the secondary school at the Alliance High school from 1954 to 1958. After
school education in Kenya, he went to the Makerere University (Uganda)
where he studied English in 1959 and graduated in 1962. Ngugi’s talent as a
writer appeared at Makerere. He then edited Pen Point at the English
Department Magazine where several of his short stories were published. It is
there that he wrote his first two novels; The River between and Weep not Child
respectively published in 1964 and 1965. His first play The Black Hermit was
written while he was at Makerere and it was performed in 1962. Ngugi worked
for short time as a reporter with the Daily Nation in Nairobi before he went to
Britain where he did his postgraduate studies in English at Leeds University in
October 1964. He worked as a University Lecturer in English from 1967 to
1969 and worked for one year as an Associate Professor at North Western
University (U.S.A) in 1971. Ngugi one time edited Zuka, a literary journal
published by Oxford University Press. Ngugi wa Thiong’o was the author of a
collection of three plays published by the East African Literature Bureau in
1971 under the title This Time Tomorrow. Furthermore, he wrote a book of
essays and criticism entitled Home Coming published in 1972. In addition to
another collection of short stories entitled Secret Lives published in 1975.
Ngugi devoted most of his efforts for the study of Literature mainly the
African one. He made it a study for his daily life. Ngugi was also influenced
by the socialist realism movement and most of his works deliberately illustrate
his views and commitment to his own community.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o is identified as East Africa's remarkable novelist.
His condemnation of colonial rule, Christianity and post-colonial exploitations
expanded his appreciation from the public as well as trouble from the Kenyan
authorities. Ngugi's literary objectives included governmental corruption,
socioeconomic exploitation, and religious hypocrisy. As a rebellious socialist
writer, Ngugi always advocates the view that it is the duty of an artist to
provide moral direction and vision to the struggles of the exploited. Through
his various essays, novels, and plays Ngugi often concentrates on
contemporary Kenyan politics, the exploitation of the people by the colonizer
and their fight for freedom. Ngugi in an interview with Michael Pozo says:
Like all artists, I am interested in human relationships and their
quality. This is what I explore in my work. Human
 106

relationships do not occur in a vacuum. They develop in the

context of ecology, economics, politics, culture, and psyche.
All these aspects of our society affect those relationships
profoundly. These aspects are inseparable. They are connected.
The most intimate is connected with the most earthly. As an
artist, you examine the particulars to explore the
interconnection of phenomena to open a window into the
human soul. The material of life opens out into the spirituality
of human life. (N. w. Thiong'o).
In Kenya, Ngugi is one of the most creative artists who has never
hesitated inviting others to listen to him and subjected his works to the
inspection of his people. His art is committed to his people, to revolution and
transformation. It contributes to revolutionary change and it preserves
everything that is good for humanity. Of course, this illustrates his socialist
ideas. As an ingenious artist, Ngugi is dedicated to the advocacy of certain
beliefs and programs especially linking to his own African community. His
beliefs originate from his sense of moral fervor, conviction, and righteousness.
In his fictional works, Ngugi registers the exploitation of the Africans at the
hands of the Europeans during colonization and after independence. His
interest in shaping and molding his community is reflected in the following
words: “I believe that African intellectuals alien themselves with the struggle
of the African message for a meaningful national ideal. The African writer can
help in articulating the feelings behind the struggle”(N. W. Thiong'o,
Homecoming 50). In his fictional works, Ngugi delineates the exploitation of
the Africans by the Whites and the consequences of such exploitation on the
lives of the Africans. He intensely classifies three faces of encounter between
the Africans and the imperialists: slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism.
His first three novels Weep Not Child, The River Between and A Grain of
Wheat deal with the period of slavery and colonization. They explore the
detrimental effects of colonialism and imperialism. On the other hand, Petals
of Blood, Devil on the Cross and Matigari are about Ngugi’s bitter criticism of
neo-colonialism.
Published in 1977, Petals of Blood tells the story of the transformation
of a rural community named Ilmorog and of the four major characters coming
 107

from outside the village yet, playing vital roles in changing it. Munira; the
school headmaster, Abdulla; the ex-Mau Mau fighter, then a barkeeper and
later a seller of oranges and sheepskins on the street, Karega, a former teacher
and later a trade-unionist and Wanja, a prostitute and a barmaid at Abdulla's
old bar. All of them have unresolved pasts with which they have to come
terms in the new era. Aligning with the genre of the detective novel, Petals of
Blood revolves around the mysterious murder of Mzigo, Chui and Kimeria,
the most well-known rich in Ilmorog. There are different points of view by the
four main characters and the employment of flashback as one of its main
techniques to give an overview of Kenyan histories from the pre-colonial to
colonial and to post-colonial eras. The temporal focus of the novel is post-
independence Kenya in the 1970s and through his characters; Ngugi explores
how the fruits of freedom have been unfairly eaten, how the ideals of the
national liberation are betrayed by the new ruling elites who align themselves
with the exploitative ideologies of a transnational neo-colonial bourgeoisie
and how those who actually fight for freedom are unrecognized in Kenyan
history.
Petals of Blood can be said to be Ngugi's attempt to expose the exploitative
features of neo-colonial capitalism and to speak as a representative voice of
the marginal.
One of the recurring themes that Ngugi introduces in A Grain of Wheat
and expansively elaborates upon in Petals of Blood is the emergence of the
local elite and the bourgeoisie as the new ruling classes in the post-
independence Kenya, who ally themselves with the exploitative ideology of
neo-colonialism and betray the masses on whose behalf they have attained
their power. In the novel, the villagers of Ilmorog form a delegation and set
out on a journey to see Kimeria; their MP in the capital Nairobi to ask for a
solution for their drought-stricken community. The drought has a significant
meaning in that while it suggests the geographical fragility of the area, it also
evidently symbolizes the hardships of the peasants in neo-colonial Kenya who
suffer from the lack of practical connection between the politicians and the
people. The departure of the British colonizers does not mean the end of
colonial power. On the contrary, the educated elites and middle-class people
who take over the political and economic controls from the colonizers
 108

reconstitute the colonial regime and exercise power over their own people.
Merely seeking to create connections with multinational businesses for their
own benefits, they in fact, practically do not establish economic and political
plans that would transform the country after independence. As Fanon puts in:
The national bourgeoisie of underdeveloped countries is not
engaged in production, nor in invention, nor building, nor
labor; it is completely canalized into activities of the
intermediary type. Its innermost vocation seems to be to keep
in the running and to be part of the racket. The psychology of
the national bourgeoisie is that of the businessman, not that of a
captain of industry imitating the role of the Western
bourgeoisie, the national bourgeoisie in the Postcolonial
countries functions as "the transmission line between the nation
and a Capitalism, rampant though camouflaged, which today
puts on the mask of Neocolonialism. (F. Fanon 120).
Instead of being the voice of the nation as they once were during the
colonial period, the elite betrays the ideals of the nationalist liberation struggle
and the hope of the people by fully embracing imperialist capitalism. The M.P.
in the novel, for example, aligns himself with transnational companies in the
tourism business. From the capital of the foreign investors he buys the land
from the peasants, transforming Ilmorog into a tourist center, where tourists
from outside come for young prostitutes. He has no interest in modernizing
agriculture but his concern lies only in the development of his business. As
Fanon says, “The landed bourgeoisie refuses to take the slightest risk and
remains opposed to any venture and to any hazard. It has no intention of
building upon sand; it demands solid investments and quick returns” (Fanon
p.155). Another instance from the novel is mentioned right here to denote how
Nderi wa Reira is using his position as an MP for his own benefits. On page
209, Ngugi writes:
Reira had gone to Mombasa for a business inspection and on
the spot investigation of two tourist resorts which had been
mentioned in a foreign newspaper as ‘special places’ where
even an aging European could buy authentic African virgin girl
 109

of fourteen to fifteen for the price of a ticket to cheap cinema

show. (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 209).
This extract also shows how the neo-colonialists exploit their own
women by turning them into mere prostitutes for the Europeans. Petals of
Blood is a demonstration and at the same time a critique of the processes and
impacts of neocolonialism on the marginalized peasants and the workers who,
for Ngugi are the principal actors in the anti-colonial struggle. These two
lower classes are on the verge of vanishing in contemporary Kenyan history.
The interventions of imperialist powers manifest themselves in the
forms of transnational corporations and international development
organizations, which are of course sanctioned by the national elite and the
bourgeoisie. These organizations give loans to the peasants and encourage
them to do various kinds of big-scale farming with machines, imported
fertilizers, and paid labor as well as persuading the workers to sell their plots
and invest in commercial businesses instead. Unable to produce agricultural
products at the level expected, however, the peasants accumulate debt, and
their lands are thus confiscated by the bank. This is the second robbery of land
after it was once stolen by the colonialists during the colonial era. The
peasants are disillusioned with independence which does not secure their land
against foreign intruders. The advent of imperialist economic planning
inevitably leads to restructuring the mode of production and transforms human
and social relations in post-colonial societies. The epitome of a new Kenya
affected by capitalism, Ilmorog has gone through such a transformation. This
is perhaps best captured in the consumption of Theng'eta in different historical
periods. Theng'eta is a kind of traditional drink made from a medicinal plant
and served during the ceremonies of circumcision, marriage, and harvest. It is
a drink shared by all the members of the community. As the novelist
illustrates:
The plant was very small with a pattern of four tiny red petals
it had no scent. This can only poison your heads and intestine.
It is a dream. It is a wish. It gives you sight and for those
favored by God it can make them cross the river of time and
talk with their ancestors. It has made barren women mothers of
 110

many children only you must take it with faith and purity in
your hearts. (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 251).
During the colonial period, Theng'eta was outlawed by the colonialists
who believed that it made the natives so lazy that they did not go to work. The
traditional drink, however, was changed in the capitalist Kenya. It became a
commodity produced in a brewery owned by local businessmen and foreign
investors and employing six hundred workers. This change in terms of mode
of production is a testimony of how Ilmorog has been changed from a pre-
capitalist society into a capitalist one, where the mode of production has been
changed from subsistence agriculture to industrial mass production. Actually,
the Theng'eta business was originally owned by Abdulla on a local small
scale, but it was bought out by Mzigo because he needed money to help Wanja
to buy back her grandmother's land, which was being confiscated by the bank.
This incident is a good illustration of the vicious circle of the exploitative
capitalist system in which money goes round but at the end, it eventually lands
in the hands of businessmen. The change symbolized by Theng’eta
production, shows that Ilmorog once a drought-stricken community now fully
embraces the ideology of entrepreneurship and alters itself into a state
economy controlled by international owners. The once-communal drink made
for ritualistic purposes is turned into a commodity produced to make profits in
an international market. Mysticism becomes mass marketing. This is a good
illustration of Marx’s criticism of exploitative capitalism that “turns use value
(Theng'eta made with care by people for their own use in important
community ceremonies) into exchange value (Theng'eta commercially
produced simply as a commodity to be sold for the greatest possible profit)”
(P. Williams 83).
The profits from the drink never return to local people like Abdulla,
but go to black shareholders with foreign investors. Looking at it from a
Fanonist perspective, Mzigo, Chui, and Kemeria, the representatives of
businessmen, do not produce anything but borrow capital from foreigners and
buy the Theng'eta business which is initiated by Abdulla. In this sense, they
act merely as the intermediaries who seek to construct Ilmorog in the image of
the metropolitan mother country. Postcolonial modernity materialized in the
construction of the Theng'eta factory, the New Ilmorog shopping center and
 111

the New Ilmorog tourist town, at the expense of the land of poor peasants and
the working-class people, engenders a new social organization, altering human
relations and consciousness. As the narrator testifies:
Within only ten years Ilmorog peasants had been displaced
from the land: some had joined the army of workers, others
were semi-workers with one foot in a plot of land and one foot
in a factory, while other became petty traders in hovels and
shanties they did not even own, along the Trans-Africa Road,
or criminals and prostitutes who with their stolen guns and
over-used cunts eked a precarious living each and everybody
workers, peasants, factory owners, blacks, whites
indiscriminately. (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 302).
The invasion of capitalism into Ilmorog also affects the main
characters. After his shop is bought off by Mzigo, Abdulla finds himself
selling sheepskin and oranges on the street for tourists, whereas Wanja now
runs a brothel targeting high-class businessmen. Neo-colonialism not only
manifests itself in terms of economic oppression but it also has psychological
effects on the colonized subjects. The competitive and exploitative nature of
capitalism invites them to think like businessmen who are only concerned
about themselves. If they have an opportunity to take advantage of other
people, they would not hesitate to do so. As Wanja explains her reason for
building a brothel to Karega: “This world this Kenya this Africa knows only
one law. You eat somebody or you are eaten. You sit on somebody or
somebody sits on you” (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 291). Wanja grows an
exploiter herself. In this sense, she is the same time a capitalist victim and a
predator who eats somebody and is eaten by somebody. (N. w. Thiong'o,
Petals of Blood 293).
In Petals of Blood Ngugi shows that far from being the hope of the
people with a mission to reconstruct the nation. The educational and political
institutions in the novel illustrate how dominant practices and values of
capitalism are reproduced. Karega is the character who has doubts about
formal education as a tool to bring about a people's liberation. Formal
education does nothing more than, in the words of the human rights lawyer in
the novel “obscure racism and other forms of oppression”. Under the rule of
 112

Headmaster Cambridge Fraudsham, the colonial discourse of progress and

order is reinforced in the classroom where the students do not study their own
history but rather the history of the Celts. His teaching is colonialist in
perspective in that it reconnects the colonial rhetoric of the master-and-slave
relationship: In any civilized community speaking the language of Matthew
Arnold, Chui is imposing the cultural values of the colonizers on his students
and privileging them over the African values.
In Petals of Blood Ngugi not only focuses on Ideological State
Apparatuses as seen in the educational institutions but also on Repressive
State Apparatuses in form of the police. Suspected of being involved in the
murder of the three businessmen, Munira, Abdulla, Wanja, and Karega are
detained. In this environment, Inspector Godfrey, who helps maintain social
stability and order to protect all kinds of industries and foreign investment,
reveals the perpetuation of the capitalist ideology. As a product of his time,
Godfrey narrates he has been brought up to believe in the sanctity of private
property. The system of private ownership, of means of production, exchange,
and distribution was for him identical with the normal order of things like the
sun, the moon, and the stars, which seemed fixed and permanent in the
firmament. Anybody who interfered with that ordained fixity and permanence
of things was himself unnatural and deserved no mercy. “People like Karega
with their radical trade unionism and communism threatened the very structure
of capitalism; as such, they were worse than murderers were” (N. w. Thiong'o,
Petals of Blood 333).
It is remarkable to note that for Inspector Godfrey, capitalism is
identical with nature, a necessary phase of human development. As a protector
of Nature he wants to pluck the harmful weeds from the surface of the earth by
the use of force: “The police force was truly the maker of modern Kenya, he
had always felt. “The Karegas and their likes should really be deported to
Tanzania and China!” (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 334). If Africa is to
develop itself, it will need financial support and investment from outside.
Nderi wa Riera; the MP of the Ilmorog area who represents another
Ideological State Device of the government, also shares this worldview. Once
a man of the masses who has opposed illiteracy and unemployment and
advocated the nationalization of industries and Pan-African Unity, he now
 113

allies himself with foreign-owned companies, which give him shares and land
for the tourist industry. Like Godfrey, he advocates "the need for people to
grow up and face reality. Africa needs capital and investment for real growth
not socialist slogans" (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 174). The cases of
Chui, Godfrey, and Nderi wa Riera testify to the maintenance of capitalist
ideology by the neo-colonial state which uses its power to create docile
citizens through sociopolitical organizations.
In Petals of Blood, Ngugi not only illustrates the plight of the peasants
and working-class people in its material aspects but he also demonstrates how
these people are marginalized in Kenyan historiography. Since history is a
converse where language can be a device of dominance and a means of
constructing identity, the question of who writes it, who is the subject of
history and how it is written becomes an important issue. Ngugi's concern is
that the sacrifices made by the masses in the war of liberation have been
erased from national memory. The groups of people who are given special
attention in the novel are the peasants and working-class people who, for
Ngugi, are national heroes of Kenya. Despite being agents of historical
change, they are not given a place in national history, which, like the national
economy is controlled by neo-colonial state. A sense of isolation and
alienation is caused by national development. Their lives have been neglected
by the government since they have no control or power. A cry for historical
existence is uttered, for example, by Munira, who came to Ilmorog because he
is dissatisfied with his personal life. His father is a priest who preaches against
the Mau Mau and his sister committed suicide due to her fruitless love affair
with Karega. Feeling that life is absurd, he is driven to do something to give
him a sense of belonging. As the narrator points out: “He was an outsider, he
had always been an outsider, a spectator of life, history”. (N. w. Thiong'o,
Petals of Blood 212).
The betrayal of the hope of the masses, what Ngugi calls one of "the
ironies of history" (127) is also portrayed in the character Abdulla whose leg
has been amputated. Ironically, even though he was one of those freedom
fighters who made a change in Kenyan history from colonial to postcolonial.
He was not recognized by the state but rather marginalized from history:
“Abdulla had fought for independence he is now selling oranges and
 114

sheepskins to tourists and drinking Theng'eta to forget the forced demolition

of his shop. “Yes. Nothing made sense. Education, work, my life, accidents. I
was an accident. I was a mistake, doomed to a spectator's role outside a
window from a high building. (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 297).
Since history plays a very important role in constructing identity those
who are not mentioned in national memory cannot help but feel betrayed,
inferior, and incapable of doing anything meaningful. As Abdulla bursts out:
“I too was foolish enough to lose a leg for a national cause. What right had
mothers to send their children to the battlefield when it would have been wiser
to make them run putrid errands for the European butchers? Fools all (N. w.
Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 313).
The narrative of betrayal and the unfulfilled promise is recurring in
Petals of Blood. It blends in the story of Dedan Kimathi, who is the leader of
the Mau Mau guerillas. He is betrayed by his own people. As Abdulla
tells:"Dedan had been caught, delivered to our enemies by our own brothers,
lovers of their own stomachs, Wakamatimo" (Petals of Blood: 142). The
betrayal of Dedan is put in a stark contrast with the increasing wealth of the
MP Kimeria. During the Emergency, Kimeria makes his fortune by being
homeguard transporting bodies of the Mau Mau killed by the British. After
being elected as an MP, he benefits from the new economic development
project of Ilmorog along with his friends Chui and Mzigo. The sharp contrast
between the Mau Mau and the political elite echoes once again the gap
between "the ironies of history, appearance and reality, expectation and actual
achievement" (Petals of Blood: 127).
Ngugi makes his people aware that Kimeria, once a traitor is not the
only type of person who can exploit the people. Those who fight in the Mau
Mau war can also be a threat to the New Kenya, if they have lost the ideals of
nationalist liberation. When Kimeria talks about his business partner Nderi wa
Riera to Karega he says:
We used to have our little differences. He (Nderi wa Riera) was
what you might call a, eh, a freedom fighter, that is, he was
member of the party and was taken to detention….? Now, we
are friends. Why? Because we all realize that whether we were
on that side of the fence or this side of the fence or merely
 115

sitting astride the fence, we were all fighting for the same end.
Not so? We were all freedom fighters. Anyway, Mr. Nderi and
I, we are quite good friends. We have one or two businesses
together. (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 153).
Kimeria's statement: "We were all freedom fighters" echoes Kenyatta's
claim that all the Kenyans fought for Uhuru. Even though Kenyatta's speech
carries some truth that the Mau Mau fighters are not the only group who
fought against the British because Kenya's independence was also achieved by
those who worked in a constitutional way, it cannot be denied that in the post-
independence period the fruits of freedom have not been equally shared. The
"we" is not a homogenous entity but is divided into two sides by "the fence"
built by capitalism. Ngugi makes clear that even though Nderi wa Riera is an
ex-Mau Mau, he is not regarded as one of those who stands on the same side
of the fence with Karega and Abdulla because he has become an exploiter like
those he once fought against. The previous "little difference" between him and
Kimeria is rubbed out by their embrace of capitalist ideology.
Moral in tone, Petals of Blood is unambiguous about its stance toward
"postcolonial" conditions in Kenya. It touches on two important issues in
postcolonial criticism, which do not reach reconciliation. Postcolonial
intellectuals and theorists pay critical attention to two different areas of
inquiry: colonial/post-colonial discourse analysis and the material aspects of
colonialism. While the first group focuses on how the West legitimates its
imperial power on the colonized deploying a variety of representations in such
discursive fields as literature, history and anthropology, the latter directs its
attention to the economic and cultural changes engendered by colonialism in
the pos-tcolonial period (Loomba 55-57). As a record of the transformation of
Kenya between the pre-colonial to post-colonial periods, Petals of Blood
addresses both the issue of the discursive representations of Kenya in history
and the material changes in the neo-colonial Kenya.
The reconciliation between the discursive and the material is best
captured when the school teacher Karega teaches history in Ilmorog. Trying to
enlarge the historical imagination of his students, he encourages them to think
of themselves, Ilmorog, Kenya, Africa as part of “a larger whole, a larger
territory containing the history of African people and their struggles” (109).
 116

Karega, however, realizes that the "imagined communities" that he is drawing

are too abstract. Teaching history in this way is useless since the students too
cannot draw a material/practical connection between the world outside and the
Ilmorog they live in. Karega, therefore, thinks of approaching history from the
local point of view, which needs to take into account the material conditions of
the community: He and Munira are ignoring the howling changes outside. The
irony lies in that they committed the same crime they had accused Chui in
Siriana. How could as teachers, even though in a primary school to close their
eyes to the reality of the drought? The listless faces before them? What had
education, history, geography and mathematics got to say to this drought?
Ngugi hints that even though history plays a crucial role in
constructing identity, human beings as subjects are not only formed by
language and discourse but also are conditioned by their immediate material
reality. The struggle for a civil society thus requires changes both in the realms
of the discursive and the material. The "listless faces" Karega sees in the
classroom can become agents of social change only if they can both escape the
capitalist economic exploitation and represent themselves as the speaking
subjects of history. Here Ngugi is suggesting that unity among all the
exploited layers of the society will bring the change and the assertion.
Petals of Blood is a rich, multifaceted narrative that expresses what is
in the hearts and minds of Kenyans, also it is a tale that delivers the appeal to
non-Kenyan audiences. It is on the top facet a murder mystery when the tale
develops; the author explores so many allotting points (ethnic, religious,
social) in Kenyan society in such all-pervading form that the main metaphor of
the novel becomes the “petals of blood” that carry various meanings
throughout the novel. The title of the novel is symbolic that the ‘petals of
blood’ is a kind of flower grows widely and has red petals. The redness of this
flower is like that of blood, this flower might have derived its color from the
blood that watered the arenas of Kenya during the struggle for freedom, this
flower is symbolic for the sacrifices that the Kenyan freedom fighters have
offered for Kenya’s sake. While the worm-eaten flowers are symbolic of the
advantageous neo-colonial black elite who prospers and eats the fruits of
freedom without any effort. This advantageous layer maintains capitalism in a
different shape. This novel deeply reveals the dark reality of the post-colonial
 117

organizations and how ailing the divided and tangled Kenyans have suffered
due to the exploitation and greed of the elite. At times, these “petals of blood”
appear to represent the suffering that villagers had to endure and suffer at the
hands of the government, a suffering that continues to some extent up to now.
Emmanuel Ngara (Ngara, Stylistic Criticism and the African
Novel)and Kofi Anyidoho (Anyidoho, African Creative Fiction and A Poetic
of Social Change) commented that Petals of Blood “is not only breaking new
grounds for the African novel in literary creation but also as representing the
height of Ngugi’s achievement. Thus, Petals of Blood is seen as containing the
themes and concerns of all of Ngugi’s other works including those written
after it into one volume.
The novel is a satire on colonialism. It is the first novel that has a full-
length story about colonial events in Kenya. McLaren wrote:“ Petals of Blood
is widely regarded as an important transitional work in Ngugi’s career, in
which he moves from the anti-colonialist critique in his early works to a
condemnation of the neo-colonialist regimes of the African comprador
bourgeoisie” (McLaren 73). Petals of Blood deals with neo-colonialism in all
its manifestations: oppression, exploitation, social abuse and injustice, and
thus “it probes the history of the heroic struggles of the people of Kenya, from
pre-colonial times to the present day within a comprehensive cultural
perspective which embraces the political, religious, economic and social life of
Kenya” (Eustace 34). Ngugi wishes to mention about the Kenyan’s problems
under colonialism. MSC Okolo said: “Petals of Blood demonstrates the
problem of spiritual and mental degradation which is an important aspect of
the reality of the masses’ condition under capitalism” (Okolo 108). It also
describes that the Kenyan people need their country back without colonialism.
According to Ngugi “ Petals of Blood is about the peasants and workers who
have built Kenya, and who through their blood and sweat have written a
history of grandeur and dignity and fearless resistance to foreign economic,
political and cultural domination” (N. w. Thiong'o, Detained: A writer's Prison
Diary 98). Cook and Okenimkpe wrote: “Petals of Blood is the first of
Ngugi’s novels which is fairly and squarely about independent Africa”
( Cook David and Michael Okenimkpe 90).
 118

The novel begins with four main characters, Munira, Abdulla, Karega,
and Wanja in jail on suspicion of being involved in the murder of three
important men in Ilmorog, Mzigo, Chui and Kemeria. The Chief Inspector
Godfrey who is a Kenyan Police Force conducts an investigation into the
murder of the three men. While the inquiry goes on, the lives of the principal
participants are revealed and the strange pattern of the interrelationship
between the characters emerges through flashbacks thematically tied to the
investigation. The flashbacks also embrace several different timeframes. The
present action takes place over the course of ten days and the past events take
place over twelve years. The reminiscences start with Munira. Finally,
Inspector Godfrey leaves New Ilmorog as the murder case is closed.
Munira the first suspect came to Ilmorog as a teacher in the village.
There, when he met the other characters, he said that he came from a Christian
family, his father Ezekiel was a preacher and a rich man, he was attacked by
the Mau Mau rebels as a collaborator with the British colonizers. Munira was
expelled from Siriana because he participated in a strike. He experienced
many failures and escaped from his father. Finally, he found refuge as the
headmaster of Ilmorog elementary school. Munira chooses to deal with the
difficulties and calamities of life by being a simple person. He surrenders
himself to a narrowly religious ideology one that, in few ways, parallels
Karega's generally dogmatic Marxism and thus argues against seeing the
whole novel as a Marxist tract. So many critics are willing to see Karega as a
mouthpiece for Ngugi. Undoubtedly, plenty of Karega's statements are of
Ngugi’s. Whether Ngugi intends him to be so or not, Karega comes off as
often too idealistic for the circumstances and his faith in communal revolution
seems only slightly more justified by the text than Munira's faith in anti-
political religiosity. Many of the events are seen through Munira's insight,
especially from the beginning of the book. His position is one that would be
sensitive for many readers, a man who believes in a current ideology of
progress and education, who is first frustrated by trying to establish a school in
what he considers the remote and reluctant village of Ilmorog but then he
decides that Ilmorog is a more honest place than the milieu of bureaucracy
occupied by his bosses. He is a friend and companion to the other three main
 119

characters and so serves as a bridge into their stories. Munira is the character,
who by the end became the least sympathetic, the most pathetic.
Munira’s father is the first symbol of exploitation in the novel, he is
rich and opportunist. He exploits his farmers and workers in the name of God.
This is one of the reasons for Munira’s escape from his father’s land. He feels
shy asking questions relating to society and life. Sometimes he feels uneasy
when his students ask him different questions like “why did things eat each
other? Why cannot the eaten eat back? Why did God allow this and that to
happen? (22). He always answers that it is simply the law of nature. Munira’s
life is simply characterized as a failure as Palmer notes: “Munira is anti-hero,
an ultra-sensitive young man whose life is a failure”. (Eustace 295). Munira
finds difficulty in getting a teacher in order to keep the school open. Here,
Ngugi brings up the problems in the education system, which fails to teach
African students their own history and remains deaf to student pleas for a
more Afro-centric curriculum.
Education is often depicted skeptically in Petals of Blood. The fact that
Munira is a teacher, yet he lacks strong abilities to guide his pupils. He prefers
to stand back and not to assert any of his own beliefs. He refuses the claims of
others that the children ought to be taught more about being African, instead
favoring that they are taught politics and things, which are "fact". Two of the
three "betrayers of the people" those who are ultimately murdered are also
educators; they are untrustworthy and depict the education system as a
"problematic institution" in independent Kenya. Although there is a brief
suggestion, that education does provide hope as Joseph succeeds academically
at Siriana. It is the education system as a whole which is criticized. The notion
of education as self-liberating is criticized as Joseph's success is still within
the Siriana School, previously a bastion of "European" education.
Karega's education lets him suspect his original belief that, education is
a tool to gain liberation; originally taken in by the lawyer's socialist rhetoric,
Karega's dealings with education ultimately leave him disillusioned. Education
is meant to do much help to the African people, to strip them out of the days of
ignorance and mythical life but Ngugi satirizes the establishments of
education, which lack the simplest means of tutoring such as teachers, good
 120

curriculum, history books and many other things. In this novel education fails
to offer any good solution for the Africans.
Ngugi clearly draws attention to the exploitation of the Africans in the
field of education instructed by the colonizers. In fact, the education imparted
to the students in the Siriana missionary school is directed mainly to advance
interests of the British Empire. They have the desire to convert the Africans to
believe in their faith and help them spread Christianity. They also want the
students to help them in the administration of the natives. Livingstone
recognized Waiyaki to be ‘a possible Christian leader of the Church.’ Such
education began to condemn the native rituals, customs, and traditions. Ngugi
responds: “A is sitting on B. In other words, education what kind of culture
and consciousness. B has no culture or his culture is inferior. ‘A’ will want ‘B’
to imbibe a culture inculcates in his values of self-doubt and self-denigration,
in a word a slave consciousness”. (N. w. Thiong'o, UFAHAMU 24).
The illumined students such as Karega go on strike as a kind of protest
when they got to know the reality of such an educational system. In the first
strike, Munira, Chui and others are expelled from the high school as a kind of
punishment from the management of the school to those students who are
opposed to the rules. Ngugi’s use of legends, proverbs, songs and other
aspects of oral tradition is just to make a comparison between the pre-colonial
and the post-colonial education, where the latter lays many forms of
oppression on the learners, as ignoring the history of the natives. Munira
explained to Karega the situation of the educational system after independence
as:
But after internal self-government…. The result was that while
the former African schools remained equally poorly equipped,
they now lost the best of African teachers… some schools in
remote places like Ilmorog were almost completely abandoned
to their own rural fate. (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 128-
129).
Education is meant for giving hope and satisfactory solution for the
Africans after independence but with the lack of teachers and the modern
curriculum that teaches politics and “facts”, the hope for better future
diminishes and decreases even Karega now has doubt about his initial belief
 121

that “ education was a tool to gain liberation”. Karega is the one who has
doubts about formal education as a tool to bring about people’s liberation.
Formal education does nothing more than, in the words of human rights
lawyer in the novel “obscure racism and other forms of oppression The arrival
of Chui, who once led his black fellow students to strike against this
Eurocentric education, to replace Fraudsham as a new headmaster, however,
does not bring about any change for he became merely “a black replica of
Fraudsham”(171). Disapproving of the idea of Africanization in school, he
teaches canonical English literature such as Shakespeare: “history was history:
literature was literature and had nothing to do with the color of the one’s skin.
The school had to strive for what a famous educator had described as the best
that had been thought and written in the world”(172). By speaking the
language of Mathew Arnold, Chui is imposing the cultural values of the
colonizers on his students and privileging them over the African values.
Ngugi exposes his real-life experience in the western education
through the characters of Karega and Hawkins. “The education we got had not
prepared me to understand those things: It was meant to make us accept our
inferiority, so as to accept their superiority and their rule over us” (165).
Ngugi faced this obstacle once in his life when he worked in Nairobi. He was
expelled from Nairobi University. The colonial education made the colonized
students intelligent and also revolutionary towards colonialism. However, as
educators, Karega and Munira do not utilize their knowledge according to the
situations. Their roles are limited to teach in the school only. On commenting
on Munira:
He was once again stabbed by a different kind of guilt he had
himself actively participated in an oath of national betrayal. He
had not shown the courage shown by Ilmorog women or by the
worker who protested, or by all men and women in the country
who were openly criticizing the whole thing at the risk of their
lives (128).
The educational system does not help in the development of Ilmorog or
offer a solution to the famine problem. In brief, it fails as a solution.
Livingstone and his missionary people considered the traditional customs as
Satanic works. They called the Gikuyu god, ‘the prince of darkness’. At
 122

Siriana it was taught thus: “Those who refuse him are the children of darkness;
These, sons and daughters of evil one will go to Hell. They will burn and burn
forevermore, world unending”. (N. w. Thiong'o, The River Between 29).
Joshua as a converted Christian begins to hate his African culture. He
has repented all his life for having married circumcised Miriamu. He also does
not want his children to have any inclination for their African culture. Joshua
begins preaching to the people to believe in the Bible and gives up the
traditions. Thus, by condemning the native tradition in favor of the new faith
and by becoming a preacher himself he is at once the exploited as well as the
exploiter. Chege is hurt to see many Africans converted. He also is
disappointed as he is unable to do anything to save his culture. He fears that
even his son Waiyaki might begin to dislike the ways of the village and its
rituals. The impact of the missionary education is clearly found on him. The
day before circumcision Waiyaki felt hesitated to join with other boys. At first,
he stood as an outsider. He grew uneasy to listen to the songs of circumcision
sung by the young Kenyan boys and girls of his age. When he was pushed into
the circle dancing around fire, his body moved mechanically. The voice of
Whiteman’s education made him guilty so he could not put his heart in it.
Ngugi comments on the disruptive influence of Christianity on the African life
in this manner: “Christianity as an organized religion is corrupt and
hypocritical: besides acting as an agent of imperialism. It exercised a highly
disruptive influence on African life and was the chief villain in alienating the
African from his own culture” (N. w. Thiong'o, Homecoming 31).
Ngugi employs economically the rich Christian characters like Mr.
Howland and Joshua. Ezekiel; Munira’s father, who is a rich landlord and
priest. He forced his son to convert to Christianity and then Munira committed
many sins like drinking alcohol and committing adultery with Wanja. Then he
turned out to become a fanatic who was ready to kill under the name of God.
He said “I truly beheld a new earth, now that Christ was my personal savior. I
would level mountains and valleys and would wrestle Satan to the ground and
conquer the evil that is this world”. (289).
Ngugi makes circumcision the central point around which he rotates
his novel and describes in telling manner the cultural exploitation of the
Africans by Whites. Robson comments: “In his narration of the ceremony of
 123

circumcision, he draws a number of elements closely together”.(Robson,

Ngugi wa Thiong’o: 8). In chapters III and IV of The River Between Ngugi
describes at length the importance of the circumcision to the people who lived
there. He makes it explicitly clear that the act of circumcision is the most
central in the Gikuyu way of life.
Circumcision was an important ritual to the tribe. It kept the
people together, bound the tribe. It was the core of the social
structure and something that gave meaning to man’s life, end
the custom and spiritual bias of the tribe’s cohesion and
integration would be no more (N. w. Thiong'o, The River
Between 79).
Indeed, Ngugi as a devoted Kenyan wants to emphasize that the
colonial rule in Kenya has destroyed the entire fabric of culture and social
peace. It does not only divide the society but also the inner beings of the
Africans. As a sensitive artist, The River Between illustrates Ngugi’s cries for
the loss of African culture and glory of the rich heritage. Here is a
reminiscence of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart which describes the
situation in Africa during colonialism and how the African religion is infected
thus:
How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? but he
says that our customs are bad; and our own brothers. He came
quietly and peacefully with his religion. We were amused at his
foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our
brothers and our clan can no longer be like one. He has put a
knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen
apart. (Achebe 158).
For the first time in the novel, it is clear that the drought starts
overwhelming Ilmorog with major destruction to the drought-stricken
community. The wicked neglect by the political authorities, namely, Nderi the
member representing Ilmorog in the Parliament makes things worse. Nderi,
like other political bureaucrats is interested only in obtaining wealth at the
expense of his community. Finally, Karega, the active, committed young
teacher in the community, proposes that the people should go to the capital
Nairobi, where their MP stays to share him with their problems. They march
 124

to the city in search of their representative. This march and its associated
achievement mark a turning point in the lives of the exploited section of
Kenyan society in general. Beginning from the visit to the town and the plane
crack in Ilmorog, the attention of the government is attracted to Ilmorog, as
the people’s doubts are fully justified. The capitalists and their agents Chui,
Mzigo and Nderi move in their progressive projects: roads, banks, factories,
distilleries and housing estates. These establishments quickly destroy the
fabric of the traditional Ilmorog. The demolition of the mysterious spirit
Mwathi by an enormous bulldozer is the solid symbol of the annihilation of a
once proud traditional society by the overwhelming forces of rejuvenation and
nevertheless, the betrayed peasants lost their lands and all their properties to
the local profiteers and their international principals. Ilmorog is transformed
into a proto-capitalist society with all the consequent problems of prostitution,
social inequalities, wretchedness, insecurity, and inadequate housing. The new
Ilmorog is now divided along class lines. There is the residential area “of the
farm managers, country council officials, the managers of Barclays, and
African Economic Banks, and other servants of state and money power”
(p.280). This area is called Cape Town , while New Jerusalem is reserved for
the downtrodden in the society. At this stage in the development of Ilmorog,
Karega who has left Ilmorog following his dismissal from the teaching service
five-years before reappears. Karega’s return to Ilmorog helps in arousing the
consciousness of the people.
As a socialist novel, it ends with a strong hope of a proletarian
revolution, as there is the realization on the part of the Kenyan workers and
peasants of the possibilities of overthrowing international capitalism and its
neo-colonial agents. In this novel, there is a clear demonstration that
imperialism can never develop Kenya in particular and Africa in general.
According to Ngugi: “In writing this book I was only trying to be faithful to
what Kenyan workers and peasants have always realized as shown by their
historical struggles since 1895.”(24).
The spokespersons for Ngugi’s socialist exposition are Karega, the
lawyer, Abdulla and Munira. Through Karega, Ngugi shows concretely that
communalism is a natural way of life in traditional African society and calls
on the African society to go back to its traditional way of life. Ngugi is aware
 125

that imperialist investment is the real enemy in Africa today. To change the
status quo, Karega becomes a trade union protestor who organizes the workers
and the peasants to rid the society of exploitation. Karega’s union activities
have educated the workers and they are ready to haul defiance at their greedy
employers as can be seen in the last part of the novel, “the last duty” indicating
that the struggle continues, La Luta Continua. Ngugi hopes that out of Petals
of Blood, Kenyans (Africans) might gather and unite “petals of revolutionary
love.”(25). This hope exemplifies Ngugi’s socialist views and in Karega’s
union Ngugi celebrates the communal life
In Petals of Blood, Ngugi uses his art to challenge the status quo. The
Chuis, the Kimerias and the Mzigos who are agents of imperialism control the
important spheres of life in Ilmorog. This can be seen in their directorship of
Theng’eta Breweries and Enterprises Ltd. It is important to remember that this
enterprise once belonged to Wanja and Abdulla, but the government through
its agents handed it over to a multinational corporation. The economic
deprivation and ruthless dispossession of the peasants find their most effective
symbol in the degradation of Wanja, the barmaid, who rises from prostitution
to economic independence and womanhood but is forced back to the
humiliating status of a prostitute who sells her body because nothing is
obtained free, and the slogan becomes “eat or be eaten”. Being a socialist;
Ngugi hints that unity is the best solution to any problem faces the community,
“the voice of the community is the voice of God” (152).
During the journey to the city Wanja told her companions a strange
story which happened to her when she heard of an aged white man who was
searching an African lady called Malindi in order to take her to Germany, this
lady was treated badly by the aged man and this led her to escape from him.
This is an example of the oppression that is practiced upon African women by
the Europeans, Wanja tells that the Europeans are trading with the women in
Europe like any other commodities, then it is the turn of Abdullah to tell the
story of Ole Masai, the tall half-Indian who led a strike after strike in a shoe-
factory, these strikes happened by the workers to claim higher wages and
better housing, but were broken by helmeted policemen. Ole Masai had
wondered several times how was it a boss who never once lifted a load, who
never once dirtied his hands in the smelly water and air in the tannery or any
 126

other part of the complex, could still live in a big house and own a car and
employ a driver and more than four people only to cut grass in the compound?
(p.136). Behind all these inquiries, there is a hidden hint to exploitation, to the
workers, the natives who are being exploited by the rich white colonialist.
Abdulla suggests directly from this story that the strikes are the best solution
for the proletariat to redeem their land, to redeem the industries for
themselves, so that their sweat could belong to their own people, so that their
children one day could have enough food to eat and enough clothes to wear
under adequate shelter from rain, so that, they could redeem their pride and
self-assertion. This is the Marxian approach, which Ngugi employs in this
novel to give a solution for the exploited layer of the African community.
The search for identity, the sense of belonging are occurring features in
this novel. Ole Masai who is a half-Indian is a good example for this theme
Ole Masai asserted himself as a complete man when he shot two European
policemen in the forest since then he is reborn as a fighter, he humiliates his
oppressors, he rejects his father’s promises of wealth. He asserts himself as a
fighter in the forest, a real Kenyan. Dedan is another example of protest, he is
a fighter who has organized a group of military fighters opposed to the British
occupation in areas over Kenya, he wants his group to spread their cause to the
Court of Haile Selassie and to Cairo, where Gamal Abdel Nasser took the Sues
Canal and later fought the British and the French. The group fighters of Dedan
have suffered lack of food through their long journey, yet this does not prevent
them from maintaining their cause. They are determined to take up their long
journey to Mount Kenya. Their cause is the reason behind their determination
and unity. The group sings this song repeatedly to assure their belonging to
their motherland Kenya:
And you, traitors to your people,
Where will you run to?
When the brave of the lands gather?
For Kenya is black people’s country. (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of
Blood 171).
This song is another example of Ngugi’s socialist realism through
which he celebrates the communal life of his motherland. The journey of
Dedan is ended by treachery, the traitors of their own land, the lovers of
 127

money, the slaves of the Europeans have caught him and delivered him to his
enemies. This is a temporary victory of colonialism over liberation struggle;
the death of Dedan is symbolic for the death of the spirit of protest, the spirit
that is full of defiance, high spirits, liberty, and patriotism.
During the journey, Joseph gets sick and he needs immediate care, the
procession decides that they have to take him to the nearest farmhouse to seek
help. So, Karega and Munira knock the first house and a white European
woman opens the gate and tells them that there are no vacancies and orders
them off the premises, she is an example of cruelty and hatred towards the
natives, she does not even give herself a chance to hear from them what the
reason behind their coming to her house. She is not ready to offer any help,
she is cruel and bad. The next door they have reached is for An African priest
named Jerrod Brown, they have mistaken him to be a man of God, under
whatever skin is a soul of goodness, mercy and kindness. They ask him for
food, water, and medicine for the sick child but astonishingly, he offers them
prayers followed by reading from the Bible then a sermon. He asks them not
to beg and he refuses to help them. Ironically, this Christian minister is an
African like them and his duty is to give his hand to the needy but he is like
his masters; the Europeans. He answers Abdulla as “that is my son the bread
and fish of Jesus”.(179).
The rebellious three bitter and empty-handed, go back to the group
waiting at the gate. They do not know how to break the news, but their very
faces and silence reveal everything Abdullah says: “let’s try another house.
This time we must avoid Europeans and clergymen. This clergyman is a good
example of the hypocrisy of the Christian people whom Ngugi criticizes in this
novel. In one of his speeches, Ngugi wa Thiong’o opened his speech to a fifth
general assembly of a Presbyterian church of East African in Nairobi in 1970
with these striking words: “I am not a man of the church. I am not even a
Christian” (Malembanie). It is on this incident that Ngugi has discarded his
Christian name “James”. The next house they enter belongs to Kimeria, the
man who made Wanja pregnant long time ago. Kemiria’s guards catch the
group in the forest as if they were thieves and capture them, but soon Kemeira
recognizes Wanja and orders his guards to set them free. It is Wanja who
saves her friends this time but at the expense of her own self. This man asks
 128

her again to sleep with him in order to help them. He wants to exploit her
sexually by offering her a little flat in the city center and he will pay its rent.
The exploitation of Wanja is similar to that of Waringa’s in Devil on the
Cross. The same theme occurs in both novels, women’s exploitation for sexual
ends.
When Wanja refuses Kemiria’s sexual offer, he threatens to put her
altogether with the rest of the group in prison charging them with the offense
of trespassing in Blue Hills. The following lines show clearly his sexual
harassment: “Now that fate has brought you to my house, I shall not let you go
until you have lain, legs spread, on that bed. Remember you are no longer a
virgin. Think about it. The choice is yours to make, and freedom is mine to
withhold or to give. Go.” (186).
In order to save Joseph from death, in order to save her friends, Wanja
yields to the man’s proposal to share him her bed, she sacrifices herself once
again to a man she detests, she accepts another humiliation after her vows six
months before, not to sleep with any man, but she surrenders and breaks her
promise just for the sake of others. The delegation finally reaches the city,
fascinated by the high, colorful building, the tarred streets, the heavy traffic
and even the various dresses worn by men and women. They discover the
great difference between the city and the village. Soon, they get in troubles
again, for Abdulla’s donkey is detained, the MP is not in Nairobi, so they have
no place to sleep in. Once more Wanja saves them when she mentions the
lawyer whom she knows and asks him for help. The lawyer is a good man who
is one of those few who still have ethics and fight against colonialism. He asks
the delegation to stay at his house. When he is at home, he starts telling his
guests about the real situation in Kenya. Munira notices the lawyer’s library
and he feels ashamed of himself, for he is not reading at all. The lawyer starts
talking as if he were holding a dialogue with an inner self and the rest were
only spectators at this naked wrestling with his own doubts and fears:
It is sad, it hurts at times I am angry, looking at the black
zombies, black animated cartoons dancing the master’s dance
to the master’s voice.. But when we are tired of that we turn to
our people’s culture and abuse it just for fun. But I ask myself:
what other fruit do I expect that what we sowed would
 129

produce… on the missed opportunities…at the crossroads we

took the wrong turning….when the whole world, motivated by
different reasons and expectations waited saying: they who
showed Africa and the world the path of manliness and of
black redemption, what are they going to do with the … the
priesthood of the ministry to the blind god…(195).
The previous speech of the lawyer is figurative of the neo-colonial rule
in Africa. He is directly criticizing the opportunists of such a system who grow
wealthy and prosperous. He continues: “let’s not be slaves to the monster….
We want to control all this land, all these industries, to serve the one god
within us”… (196). The lawyer’s speech echoes the revolutionary slogans of
Vladimir Lenin on 25th of October 1917 in the Soviet Union. The lawyer in
this novel is to some extent Lenin himself, he adopts the same socialist views
and the revolutionary attitude.
The lawyer continues narrating another story of a white man who has
killed an African just because he has thrown stones at his dogs in Siriana only,
he is condemned to death, but Fraudsham calls for a school assembly, he
argues about the need to be sensitive to animals, for him the measure of a
civilization is how far a people has learnt to care for animals. He defends the
Whiteman Pooles that he has been a little excessive, but he has been prompted
by the highest and most noble impulse to care for and defend the defenseless.
Therefore, he sends a letter to the governor appealing for clemency including a
very heartbreaking quotation from Shakespeare. The Whiteman is set free and
escapes his punishment. This story clarifies the racism and the oppression the
Africans have gone through during the colonial and even post-colonial rule.
The lawyer comments on this incident as “the education we got had not
prepared me to understand those things. It was meant to obscure racism and
other forms of oppression. It was meant to make us accept our inferiority so as
to accept their superiority and their rule over us.” (197).
The lawyer also tells another story that has taken place in America
when he was at college, a real story of a black man who is hanged from a tree
outside a church for a crime that he earlier fought with a white man who had
manhandled his sister. The lawyer intends in this story to mock the hypocrisy
 130

of the Americans and their racism towards the blacks. “Ah! America, land of
the Free and the Brave!”(198).
The lawyer’s experience in America makes him sensitive to the black
people cause. He decides to go back to his country thinking that after
independence, the black man has restored power, but he is mistaken he says:
“And suddenly as in a flash of lightning I saw that we were serving the same
monster-god as they were in America…. I saw the same signs, the same
symptoms, and even the sickness… and I was so frightened”. (198).
The lawyer intended in telling all these stories to awake the colonized
people of Africa by protesting against their current situation. It is high time for
the oppressed to wake up from their deep sleep and ask for their rights. The
voice of the lawyer is that of Ngugi himself, now Ngugi’s own socialist words
come in the following extract: “Is it right that which had been bought by the
collective blood of a people should go to a few hands just because they had
money and bank loans? Was it banks and money that had fought for it?” (200).
In Siriana high school two strikes have taken place, the first one occurs
the time Munira is expelled from the school, the second one is during the
lawyer’s study there and it takes place for the reason that Fraudsham has
expelled the students who have refused to dig a grave for his dog Lizzy. This
incident has its influence in making the students more alert and aware of their
rights, so they go through the second strike by refusing to attend the classes
and declaring their new demands. As the lawyer says: “We wanted to be
taught African literature, African history, for we wanted to know ourselves
better. We wanted African headmaster and African teachers. We denounced
the perfect system, the knightly order of masters and menials”. (204). This
extract illustrates Ngugi’s socialist beliefs by showing that only collective
action and unity will make the change and guarantee the rights of the
oppressed.
The strike is employed in this novel as a protest and assertion at the
same time. The call for protest is simplified in these phrases: ‘Down with
Fraudsham: down with the perfect system: down with whites: Up with Chui,
shake them…. Black power’!(205). After this strike, the people in the ministry
come. They appeal the students to resume their classes. Soon after, the rules of
the game have been questioned and everything has been alerted. Almost a
 131

month later Fraudsham has resigned. The students are proud and thrilled, they
feel themselves anew. They vow if they get an African headmaster that they
shall give him utmost obedience, they will work even harder, so as not to
shame him and themselves. No more prefects, they will elect their own
leaders. The group of the students call themselves African populists and they
want a populist headmaster. In a way at the end they asserted themselves.
Finally, the delegation meets their MP and discuss with him almost
everything in Ilmorog. He promises to do something for his village but an
outbreak occurs and he is hit with stones so he runs away. The suspects are
Munira, Karega and Abdullah. The policemen take them to detention, they are
rescued by the lawyer once again and during his defense in the court, he
mentions the miserable situation of Ilmorog describing it as: “a deserted
homestead”, a‘ forgotten village’, “ an island of underdevelopment’ which
after being sucked thin and dry was left standing static and grotesque distorted
image of what peasant life was and could be”(208). He castigates the
negligence of those entrusted with the task of representing the people. The
lawyer successfully applies not for the case to be heard the next day but also
for the three men released on bond. The story of the Ilmorog delegation is
splashed across the central pages. Donations have poured in from every
quarter, the lawyer’s office is flooded with donations of food and soon the
donkey cart is filled to the top. One company has offered to provide free
transport to the group. Rev. Jerrod calls on an alliance of churches to send a
team to the area to see how a church can help. A government representative
promises to dispatch experts to see how Ilmorog is fitted to the government’s
long term rural development schemes to see if plans can be speeded up so that
in future Ilmorog and other areas can be self-sufficient to meet threatening
droughts.
For a whole month after the group’s triumphant return church leaders
keep coming to conduct prayers for rain and promise a church for the area.
Government officials have said that the area needs a District Officer in its
town, charity organizations which promise to sell more raffle tickets in the
area and a group of university students who later on write a paper relating
droughts and uneven development to neo-colonialism, calling for the
immediate abolition of capitalism and sign themselves as the committee of
 132

students against neo-colonialism. All of these plans are to some extent a kind
of assertion and fulfillment of the mission which was full of disappointments
in the beginning. The group has proved that communal unity can make
miracles real and that nothing can stand in front of the solidity of the united
people.
Everything in Ilmorog now has changed, it is no more the remote
abandoned village, it is now full of shops, breweries, clubs, brothels and all
forms of capitalist town. It is now full of evils, murders, thefts, prostitution,
drinking, and other evils. This transformation is an evidence of the evils of
post-colonialism and capitalism. A murder of three famous businessmen has
happened and Munira, Abdulla, and Karega are held for investigation, the
murdered men are the owners of the Theng’eta factories and have been
mistaken to be leaders of nationalist struggle for total African ownership by
buying out the remaining shares held by foreigners but they are murdered
before completing this and such they are turned heroes in newspapers and
popular talk. After the journey, Ilmorog turns to a place where imperialists and
neo-colonialist enjoy benefitting this change. They are great robbers of the
land and the sweat of the proletariat. What makes things sarcastic is that the
MP. Nderi wa Reira, once in a press conference has told that he would be
leading a strong delegation to all cabinet ministers and even to higher
authorities if necessary to demand a mandatory death sentence for all cases of
theft, with or without violence. In addition, he will seek the same mandatory
death sentence for all crimes that are politically and economically motivated.
If the MP were to punish thieves, he should start from himself, he is the
biggest thief of public lands and money and for sure, he will stand in front of
any protest that will threaten his own interests and advantages.
Speaking on a wide range of subjects, the MP calls for a total and
permanent ban on strikes. For him as an anti-socialist, strikes generate an
atmosphere of tension, which can only lead to instability and periodic
violence. For him, strikes shall be regarded as deliberate anti-national acts of
economic sabotage. Calling on Trade Union leaders to be unselfish, he asks
them to refrain from demanding higher and higher wages without proper
regard for the lower income groups or the idle, who will be the sole
beneficiaries of a more equitable reallocation of would have gone into
 133

unregulated wage increase. “It was time that Trade Unions were told in no
uncertain terms that they could no longer hold the country to ransom”.(232).
Referring to the proposed delegation, the MP calls upon teachers, employers,
churchmen and all men of goodwill to join it to demonstrate their unity of
purpose in abhorring recent dastardly acts, that will only scare away tourists
and potential investors. Even local investors he warns, might find it necessary
to invest their capital abroad if the situation were left to deteriorate. The
character of the MP is intended by the author to serve the anti-socialist man in
power whose presence in authority serves as an obstacle in creating a socialist
society where equality prevails and everyone takes his rights and knows his
dues towards his/her community and most importantly, the abolition of
oppression and exploitation of the proletariat.
Karega has a momentous role in the novel and in the village of
Ilmorog. He is the socialist who suggests the idea of forming a delegation to
go to the city to find out a solution for the drought. Believing in the power of a
community, in spite of the fact that he is a stranger from that village; an
outsider but yet he believes in the oneness of Kenya and the sense of
belonging to Africa. He is a communist in his both beliefs and acts upon his
ethics. As a teacher, he rejects the European curriculum and wants to teach
history and African literature. He reads history books in order to find the key
to the present, to find answers to questions as how does it come about that
75% of those who produce food and wealth are poor and that a small group-
part of the non-producing part of the population are wealthy.
History revolves around those whose actions and labor have changed
nature over the years but how do those parasites come? Who do no useful
work live in comfort and those who enslave for twenty-four hours go hungry
and without clothes! How can there be unemployment in a country that needs
every ounce of labor? So how did people produce and organize their wealth
before colonialism? What lessons could be learned from them? All these
questions make Karega’s mind busy and he tries to find solutions for all the
evils of his society. He has read from historians that the history of Kenya
before colonialism was one of the wanderlust and pointless warfare between
peoples. The learned ones have never tried to confront the meaning of
colonialism and of imperialism, when they touched on it, it was only to
 134

describe acts of violent resistance as Grisly murders; some even have

demanded the rehabilitation of those who have sold out to the enemy during
the years of struggle. Karega concludes that Nature has been too kind to the
African, so he deserves the brutality of the colonizer to boot him into African
civilization, there is no pride in this history. Karega reads also books of
political science and literature, but all of these books have never fulfilled his
desire to know about colonialism and imperialism.
Karega writes a note to the lawyer asking him for books telling the
history of the political struggles of peoples of Kenya. And the reply comes
from the lawyer in a long letter telling that educators, men of letters,
intellectuals are only voices, not neutral, disembodied voices but belonging to
bodies of persons, or groups of interests you who will seek the truth about
words emitted by a voice, look first for the body behind the voice. The voice
merely rationalizes the needs, whims, caprices of its owner, the master.
“Better, therefore to know the master in whose service the intellect is and you
will be able to properly evaluate the import and imagery of his utterances, you
serve the people who struggle or you serve those who rob the people. In a
situation of a robber and a robbed”. The lawyer’s eloquent words echo the
Marxist materialistic theory which looks at the way social ways crop up in the
material world.
Everything after the journey has changed, the people of Ilmorog are
now aware of the changes and they have their fears of that change. “They
know now that forces other than droughts posed new types of threats but
nobody wants to quite voice their new fears”. In contemporary Kenya, the
interventions of imperialist powers manifest themselves in the forms of
transitional corporations and international development organizations, which
are sanctioned by the national elite and the bourgeoisie. These organizations
give loans to the peasants and encourage them to do various kinds of big-scale
farming with machines, imported fertilizers, and paid labor as well as
persuading the workers to sell their plots and invest in commercial business
instead. Unable to produce agricultural products at the level expected
however, the peasants accumulate debts and their lands are thus confiscated by
the bank. This is the second robbery of the land after it was once stolen from
them by the colonialists during the colonial time. The peasants are
 135

disillusioned with independence which does not secure their lands against
foreign intruders. The advent of imperialist economic planning inevitably
leads to reconstructing the mode of production and transforms human and
social relations in post-colonial societies. The epitome of a new Kenya
affected by capitalism, Ilmorog has gone through such a transformation. This
is perhaps best captured in the consumption of Theng’eta in different historical
periods. Theng’eta is a kind of traditional drink made from a medicinal plant
and served in ceremonies of circumcision, marriage, and harvest. It is a drink
shared by all members of the community. During the colonial period, it is
outlawed by the colonialists who think that it makes the natives so lazy that it
prevents them to go to work. The traditional drink, however, has changed in
the capitalist Kenya. It becomes a commodity produced in a brewery owned
by local businessmen and foreign investors end employing six hundred
workers. Actually the Theng’eta business was originally owned by Abdullah
on a local and small scale but it was bought out by Mzigo. Abdullah needed to
sell it because he wanted to help Wanja to buy back her grandmother’s land
which was confiscated by the bank. This incident is a good illustration of the
vicious circle of the exploitative capitalist system in which money goes round,
but at the end, it eventually lands in the hands of the capitalist businessmen.
The changes, symbolized by Theng’eta’s production, show that Ilmorog, once
a drought-stricken community now fully embraces the ideology of capitalism
and becomes a national economy organized by international owners. This
illustrates clearly the abolition of traditional values and the adoption of the
new trends of modernity. Post-colonial modernity, materialized in the
construction of the Theng’eta factory, the new Ilmorog shopping center and
the new Ilmorog tourist village at the expense of the land of poor peasants and
the working-class people engenders a new social organization altering human
relations and consciousness. As the narrator testifies:
within only ten years Ilmorog peasants together had been
displaced from the land some had joined the army of workers,
others were semi workers ... They did not even own, along the
trans-Africa road, or criminals and prostitutes who with their
stolen guns and overused cunts eked precarious living from
 136

each and every one workers, peasants, factory owners, blacks,

whites, indiscriminately (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 302).
The invasion of capitalism into Ilmorog has also affected the main
characters. After his shop is bought off by Mzigo, Abdulla finds himself
selling sheepskin and oranges on the street for tourists whereas, Wanja now
runs a brothel targeting high-class businessmen. Neo-colonialism not only
manifests itself in terms of economic oppression, but it also has psychological
effects on the colonized subject, the competitive and exploitative nature of
capitalism invades them to think like businessmen who are only concerned
about themselves. If they have an opportunity to take advantage of other
people, they do not hesitate to do so. As Wanja explains her reason for
building a brothel to Karega:“ this world this Kenya this Africa knows only
one law. You eat somebody or you are eaten. You sit on somebody or
somebody sits on you.” (291). she expands upon the theme to him:“ you eater
or you are eaten”. Wanja's worldview that "you either preyed or you remained
a victim" (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 294) is a manifestation of how the
subjectivity of the colonized is deformed by the exploitative ideology of
capitalism. As a product/subject of the capitalist epoch, Wanja defines things
along the axis of exchange value where human beings are commoditized and
deprived of their essence and so she turns women into sex objects for profits.
As for neo-colonialism by creating a brothel, Wanja falls into the trap of the
vicious circle of capitalism which turns her into an exploiter herself. In this
sense, she is the same time a capitalist victim and a predator who eats
somebody and is eaten by somebody. Ngugi refers that the capitalist ideology
is maintained and perpetuated by a variety of social organizations. What
national development has caused for the masses is a sense of isolation and
alienation. Their lives have been neglected by the government since they have
no control or power. A cry for historical existence is uttered, for example, by
Munira. The betrayal of the hope of the masses, what Ngugi calls one of "the
ironies of history" is also portrayed in the character Abdulla whose leg has
been amputated. Ironically, even though he is one of those freedom fighters
who made a change in Kenyan history from colonial to post-colonial, he is not
recognized by the state but rather marginalized from history “I was an
 137

accident. I was a mistake, doomed to a spectator’s role outside a window from

a high building”( 297).
Petals of Blood reflects the exploitation of Africans by the fellow
Blacks. When Kenyans were fighting for independence, they all had
attainment of independence. In his independence speech, Jomo Kenyatta, the
first Prime Minister of Kenya, remarked that:
Our march to freedom has been long and difficult. There have
been times of despair when only the burning conviction of the
rightness of our cause has sustained us. Today, the tragedies
and one voice and one common enemy. But with the
misunderstandings of the past are behind us. Today, we start on
the great adventure of building the Kenya nation (Brown,
Land, Freedom and Fiction 184).
The Kenyan nation today is built on the capitalist-imperialist
foundation, rather than on its original communalism. The majority of Kenyan
peasants live in a state of poverty. The life of the urban poor is made worse by
appalling housing conditions and poor urban services, the socio-economic
position of the Kenyan masses is desperate J.M. Kariuki describes this
situation as thus “A small but powerful group, greedy self-seeking elite in
form of politicians, civil servants and businessmen, which has steadily but
very surely monopolized the fruits of independence to the exclusion of the
majority of the people”. (Kariuki 160).
Kenya, since independence has exhibited ever more starkly the
classical faces of underdevelopment, the humiliating poverty and conspicuous
consumption by a privileged minority (Nwankwo 48-49), which as Ngugi puts
it: “Surrounds itself with country houses, cars, washing machines, television
sets and all the consumer durables that are associated with an acquisitive
middle class” (280). The re-birth of Ilmorog is a transformation of its
landscape into a new Ilmorog devoid of all sanity. Munira remarks that:
“Ilmorog was never quite the same after the journey” (280).
Petals of Blood draws a distinction between patriots and traitors. While
the true heroes and patriots like Abdulla are cast aside in the neo-colonial
period, those who have collaborated with the imperialists emerge as
government officials and major business barons. The march to the city marks
 138

the beginning of the people’s exposure to the inefficiency of government and

their representatives. Government attention is however drawn to the plight of
the people and so they return to Ilmorog awaiting government aid or charity.
These are all to be illusions because the land and its people are to pass through
a new revolution. First, it was Ilmorog’s capitalism that fully entrenches itself
in Ilmorog. Businessmen move into Ilmorog with roads, banks, factories and
estate agencies. This is a process of cultural diffusion and consequently, the
old Ilmorog which has traditional value as its framework goes way. A giant
bulldozer destroys the hut of Mwathi; the people’s oracle. This is symbolic of
the complete destruction of a community that once used to boast of its values
and traditions.
Characters also undergo the process of rebirth. There is Wanja whom
the system forces to play the tough city game. The resort of prostitution in the
new Ilmorog and her building a whorehouse are all protests against the neo-
colonial system. Wanja represents Kenya’s deprived young women who can
only earn a living through odd jobs under conditions that force them into
prostitution. She arrives at Ilmorog in her quest for another kind of life in
which she can earn a more decent living and at the same time be useful to
others. This “quest spirit” dictates her total involvement in the life of the
village. However, the combined blow of her grandmother’s death and advent
of the new economic and social order at Ilmorog sends Wanja back to
whoredom. She demonstrates her newly acquired values to Munira whilst
retaining a special place in her heart for Karega who has touched off the best
she could offer in love. Nevertheless, she has to break with Karega in favor of
Abdulla in response to her changed circumstances. The secret of Wanja’s
continuing success as Karega rationalizes lies in the fact “that she could appeal
to so many different people at different times as if each could find reflected in
her the condition of his being (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 322-23).
It is immensely symbolic that Wanja’s whorehouse is burnt down, that
the three capitalists’ lords are killed in the fire. Moreover, Wanja is expecting
a child for Abdulla. This last fire is the third in Wanja’s experience and each
one takes place at a crucial stage where her life has to be purified and re-
dedicated. She briefly narrates the story of the fires in her life to the police
officer who is questioning her on the latest incident ending significantly in the
 139

words: ‘so you see I have been running away from one fire into greater
flames’ (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 321).
Although Ngugi’s scornful attack on capitalism and his call for its
abolition is unconcealed in the novel, Petals of Blood rises above a bare
manifesto in its content and organization. In it, the novelist’s well known
narrative skill and his imaginative powers and sense of order are everywhere
apparent. According to Ime Ikiddeh:
The central characters attain a complex fullness of life both as
individual adventures; each seeking for harmony with self, and
as a community whose fate hangs together in their struggle
against external forces. The novel carefully traces the various
stages in the development of the society, which becomes the
scene of the characters’ interaction and joint struggle (Ikiddeh
288).
In all Ngugi’s novels, there are characters that tell stories, which reflect
the intentions of their creator. Ngugi is no doubt primarily concerned with
“restoring the African character to his history,” to enable him to find an
“identity in an essentially colonial situation” and discover a source of pride in
his people’s past accomplishments. They are stories of a past when “Africa
controlled its own destiny” of “heroic resistance” which Karega’s Petals of
Blood goes to such trouble to impart to his students: they are found only in
legends passed from generation to generation. The difference between
authentic and literary myth is made plain by Ngugi as the mythic figures,
legendary and heroic from the past have the stories told alongside
contemporary heroes whose songs are composed, telling of the resistance
efforts of actual historical figures in the immediate colonial past. The efforts
of these individuals are made to exemplify however much of the motives may
be misunderstood, the courage and determination of Kenyan nationalists. G.
D. Killam says: “to understand the present, you must understand the past. To
know who you are, you must know where you come from”. (Killam.G.D.
288).
Petals of Blood has the characteristic of the epic. The action stretches
over an adequate duration of years, evoking Kenya of the 1940s, the liberation
struggle of the 1950s. Indeed, we are taken further back to where Ngugi in his
 140

use of myth and legend, conveys impressions of precolonial Ilmorog where

exchange was in terms of equivalent exchange of the wealth of the land and
where the folk heroes through their courage might justly be described as epic
heroes. Nevertheless, the peasantry was at one with its hero-leaders in the
original Ilmorog, the modern peasantry has no heroes. Their leaders are their
exploiters; the collaborators are sometimes the fools of the capitalist
exploiters. The peasants are unconscious or unaware of alternatives to their
own way of life, but they recognize the need to change their present
circumstances. The peasantry possessing idealism and capable of courageous
action symbolized by the drought-ridden march to Nairobi are brought to
disillusion and despair through betrayal.
According to Karega, the past is not to be kept in a gallery, i.e. we can
draw from it in today’s battlefield the future and the present. But not to
worship it. “May be I used to do it: but I don’t want to continue worshipping
in the temple of a past”. Karega; the revolutionist in the novel is detained for a
murder he did not commit but there is no holding back the revolutionary spirit
he has let loose. Behind his cause already are sympathies from unexpected
quarters, like the case of the liberal-minded who is later murdered for his
political views. The actual vanguard pools together all sections of workers and
the youth.
Abdulla’s adopted son Joseph still a pupil assures his father, he wants
to contribute to the liberation of Kenya. The young girl Akinyi who visits
Karega in prison brings news of the new mass movement of workers at
Ilmorog and voices of hope in her simple words, “You’ll come back”. The
novel ends at the point where revolutionary action has taken over. It is
appropriate to end on the note of Karega’s last assurance to Wanja poured out
in breathless fury, of the inevitable failure of the exploiter and the ultimate
victory of the workers, which actually clinches the revolutionary message of
the novel: They are bound to fail.
Can’t you see we, the workers, the poor peasants, ordinary
people, the masses are now too awake to be deceived by tribal
loyalties, regional assemblies, glorious pasts, all that when we
are starving and we are jobless, or else living on miserable
pay… Tell them this: there are a million Karegas for every ten
 141

Kimerias. They can kill the lawyer or ten such lawyers. But the
poor, the dispossessed, the working millions and the poor
peasants are their own lawyers. With guns and swords and
organization, they can and will change the conditions of their
oppression. (N. w. Thiong'o, Petals of Blood 326-27).
Because Ngugi belongs to the Socialist Realism school, it is clear that
he concentrates on the communal life of the peasants of Ilmorog and their
difficulties in the capitalist Kenya where only few corrupt representatives with
their attachment with the foreign capitalists continue exploiting their own
people and the natural resources of their country. Ngugi is engaged in
portraying the heroic activities of the exploited class that aims at uplifting the
communal harmony and the assertion of the power of unity among the
proletariat in trying to live a respected life after fighting their common enemy.
It is clear that Ngugi did not offer any clear solutions in this novel for the
abolition of capitalism and imperialism but he hinted on the necessity of unity
which would be the best solution for obtaining the rights of the
underprivileged. Unity generates strength, the undefeated strength that will
bring about the promised change.
Chimalum Nwankwo says in the context of Petals of Blood which is
Ngugi’s endorsement of violence as the only productive way of inducing
changes that, “the conflict in the society between the rich and the poor can
only end in this way” (C. Nwankwo 321). As in most of his works, he also
reminds us that this has happened once in the Emergency and is bound to
happen again unless there is change.
In attempting to settle this conflict, a difference must be established
between the basic ideology, which a writer holds and the writer’s presentation
of that ideology in artistic form. On this, Marx and Engel’s propounded
“objective partisanship theory” (Spector 299) which in practice works out as a
compromise between political commitment which should be embraced, and its
open expression in fiction, which is to be avoided. Summarizing these views
of the founding fathers, Terry Eagleton, a leading Marxist critic writes:
The political tendency must emerge unobtrusively from the
dramatized situations; only in this indirect way could
revolutionary fiction work effectively on the bourgeois
 142

consciousness of readers…Taken together, Engels’ two letter

(1885, 1888) suggest that overt political commitment in fiction
is unnecessary (not of course unacceptable) because truly
realist writing itself dramatizes the significant forces of social
life, breaking beyond both the photographically observable and
the imposed rhetoric of a “political solution (Eagleton,
Ideological Scholarship. Historical Studies and Literary
Criticism 47).
Ngugi, therefore, identifies himself with the masses with the peasant
class. Some commentators claim that this imposes a severe limitation upon his
achievement in the novels because he is forced to present characters that are
too simple and inarticulate to provide an appreciation of the complexities of
understanding implicit in the national political scene. The people in the novel
talk less about politics than Ngugi does in his non-fictional writing.
Nevertheless, they are his primary concern and the alleviation of their plight is
his primary quest. In this respect, he differs from a writer like Soyinka of
whose characters Ngugi made the following observation:
Soyinka’s good man is the uncorrupted individual: his liberal
humanism leads him to admire an individual’s lone act of
courage, and thus often he ignores the creative struggle of the
masses. The ordinary people, the workers and peasants, in his
plays, remain passive watchers on the shore or pitiful
comedians on the road. (N. W. Thiong'o, Homecoming 65).
In judging Ngugi on the question of commitment to an ideology and
scoring him on the overall success of Petals of Blood, it is appropriate to note
and end with another revealing statement from Terry Eagleton. It is on that
basis also that other contemporary African writers stand cleared or
condemned:
There are periods and societies where conscious, “progressive”
political commitment need not to be a necessary condition for
producing major art, there are other periods, fascism for
example when to survive and produce as an artist at all
involves the kind of questioning which is likely to result in
explicit commitment. In such societies, conscious
 143

“progressive” political commitment need not to be a necessary

condition for producing major art, there are other periods-
fascism for example, when to survive and produce as an artist
at all involves the kind of questioning which is likely to result
in explicit commitment. In such societies, conscious political
partisanship and the capacity to produce significant art at all,
goes spontaneously together. Such periods, however, are not
limited to fascism (Eagleton, Ideological Scholarship.
Historical Studies and Literary Criticism 57-8).
In this chapter, Petals of Blood actually reveals Marxist vision, which
states that the proletariat “the comradeship of the down-trodden” will achieve
revolutionary change in the society especially as a mirror of the African
revolutionary actions in the wake of mass political awareness in the novel.
This means that the novel is being portrayed as a mirror of the African
revolution that is the demonstration of truth and reflection of African
revolution in the society as a whole.
In conclusion, African writers in common and Ngugi, in particular,
have played an important role in the long struggle for political independence.
They have successfully depicted the way the colonizers exploited the African
masses and natural resources at the same time, they urged Africans to be
aware of the real intention of the white colonizers that is the exploitation of
African resources to enrich the Western capitalist countries. African writers
through their works have tried to conscientize African the issues of white
exploitation. At different levels, they have urged Africans to be aware of
dangers of the presence of colonialists on the African continent.
 144

CHAPTER Ѵ
The Callousness of Neo-colonialism in Devil on the Cross
 145

In his fight to change his society, Ngugi is involved to denounce the major
barriers that stand in the way of the development of the African society. In
fact, the Africans were disillusioned by independence as they thought that by
prohibiting the white colonizer from leading their country, they would be
liberated from colonialism and its evil impact. Moreover, they believed that by
self-African rule, they could regain their country and get rid of the social evils.
However, the Africans recognized that the situation got even worse in post-
colonial era since the new ruling elite got involved in the evil practices of
corruption, oppression, exploitation, snobbery, and prostitution.
All of these evils have lead Ngugi as a socialist writers to employ his
art in depicting the social and racial injustices, economic hardships and
everyday life struggle through portraying the horrifying pictures of the
working poor people often as heroic. Therefore, this is a political social protest
that is hinted with satire.
Devil on the Cross is published in 1980. This novel is captivating as it
dramatizes the whole story of Africa and markedly the evils of the new
African elite in Kenya. Boss Kihara resembles the white man follower who
continues the circle of exploitation after independence. This novel reveals
Ngugi’s commitment to the struggle against neo-colonialism and imperialism.
It is an invitation for the oppressed and the working classes to unite in order to
change their status quo. Devil on the Cross tells the tragic story of Wariinga, a
young woman whose parents were detained while she was still two. Then, she
was taken by her aunt as a caregiver but the latter’s husband becomes
Wariinga’s exploiter and defiler together with the Old Rich Man from
Ngorika. This old man defiles her and she consequently drops out school and
is deprived of the chance of learning, her only key to face the corrupt society.
Wariinga becomes preoccupied with her misfortune at an early stage of
her life and the dreadful possibility of the end of her studies emerges largely in
her mind to the extent she becomes traumatized. This leads her to think that
suicide might be a solution for her dilemma when she is aware that her dream
is shattered. However, in order to earn her living, she maintains to pursue her
studies and learn typewriting and shorthand. Then she leaves her rural town
and sets to the capital Nairobi, where her boss assaults her. As she rejects him,
she is fired and her lover John Kimwana abandons her the same day then she
 146

turns a jobless young woman. To add more misery to her situation, her
property owner evacuates her out of his premises after having increased the
rent. The protagonist is therefore overwhelmed by series of ordeals and
attempts to commit suicide for the second time.
Wariinga’s story is intended by the novelist to show how the African
women are exploited and assaulted by their bosses and their need to recognize
how to lead a certain revolt. That is the reason behind Ngugi’s usage of
Wariinga’s character though, at the beginning of the novel she is somehow
inactive and does not take part in the struggle. Nevertheless, later one she has
mastered all the lessons of life and become aware of the need to unite with the
other exploited people to dismantle the oppressors.
On her way home, Wariinga meets Wangarii who has once fought in
the battle for independence but now she also suffers due to neo-colonialism
and becomes isolated inside her own land. As Abdullah in Petals of Blood
who was also a freedom fighter and after independence, she was forgotten.
She becomes a vagrant searching for any job in order to survive. On her
journey in Nairobi, Wangarii confronts with the white man’s followers. She is
aware of the evils of neo-colonial practices. Ngugi has intended to let his
female characters be aware of what is going on, for this awareness rising will
let the people understand the cause to fight for is common, noble and
worthwhile to engage in. They, therefore, gather masses composing of
peasants, workers and students. But Wariinga passively watches their process
towards the cave to fight against the devil and his followers for she does not
find it worth to take an active part in the struggle while she has not mastered
all the lessons on self-reliance, constancy to purpose, sacrifice, courage and
endurance. As the masses’ struggle only thrived in scattering the private
executives and has ended in killings of the marching people and arresting of
Wangarii and Muturi, the victory is seen as partial, yet it highlights on
Wariinga’s way to the total victory of the devil, this partial failure lets her to
think more about how to dismantle the devil.
Ngugi’s socialist realism is well illustrated in this chapter where
Wariinga takes the responsibility as a community spokeswoman and therefore,
sharpens her forces against forces of evil, gathers means and skills, shows her
concern for masses of workers, peasants, and students’ welfare above her
 147

personal happiness and contentment. She bravely decides to put an end to her
engagement with Gatuira and chooses a place among the proletarian masses
and all those who serve the kind of the Old Rich man from Ngorika. She
selects her target and decides the time to shoot at her abuser. This kind of
heroism that serves the community is what Ngugi intends to celebrate together
with the exploited and oppressed poor working class.
The problem this chapter tries to solve rises from the title of the novel
throughout its whole text. In his dissertation The Metaphor of Devil and Cross
in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross, (N. w. Thiong'o, The Metaphor of
Devil and the Cross) tries to display that ‘Devil’ and ‘Cross’ are mere symbols
and they can be constructed into metaphors after a deep reading of the novel.
The results show that the resulting metaphors would be correct if based on the
novel’s analysis:
Colonialism was a devil.
Capitalism is a devil.
Imperialism is a devil.
Neo-colonialism is a devil.
Independence was a cross.
Communism is a cross.
Unity is a cross.
Nonetheless, the title of Devil on the Cross draws attention to itself and
raises some inquiries whether the devil Ngugi is talking about:
is on the cross;
was on the cross;
has been put on the cross; or
should be put on the cross.
However, the opening of the book unfolds this initial ambiguity by
specifying that the devil should be put on the Cross by the oppressed, thus, the
title is an invitation to crucify the Devil. Still, there is need to know who and
how the devil should be crucified. The analysis in the whole chapter seeks to
give satisfactory answers to all of these questions.
This chapter uses the Marxist approach owed to the class conflict and
the reinforcement of class division represented in the novel. The Marxist
theory uses traditional techniques of literary analysis but then, assists aesthetic
 148

concerns to the final social and political meanings of literature. It endorses

writers compassionate to the working classes and depicts economic
inequalities found in industrial societies. The Marxist view of literary texts
focuses on their social significance. At this point Devil on the Cross is an
abundant novel of social relevance. It is envelopment in the social change and
the enhancement of the working class existing conditions. In fact, a writer is a
product of society towards which he has responsibility. His responsibility is to
use his art to condemn the evils prevailing in his society or in the view of
Terry Eagleton “to commit his art to the cause of the proletariat” (Eagleton,
Marxism and Literary Criticism). Ngugi stresses the same point as in the
following:
Literature results from conscious acts of men in society. At the
level of the individual artist, the very act of writing implies a
social relationship: one is writing about somebody for
somebody. At the collective level, literature, as a product of
men’s intellectual and imaginative activity embodies, in words
and image, tensions, conflicts, contradictions at the heart of a
community’s being and process of becoming (N. w. Thiong'o,
Writers in Politics 5).
Devil on the Cross reveals the predicament of the oppressed masses in
the contemporary political system in Africa. Ngugi believes that writers
should address themselves to the conflict between the developing African
bourgeoisie and the African masses. Ngugi is aware of the need to invite the
proletariat to unite in order to face all the social and political evils. The author
begins the novel with: “The Devil who would lead us into the blindness of the
heart and into the deafness of the mind should be crucified, and deep care
should be taken that his acolytes will not lift him down from the cross to
pursue the task of building Hell of the people on Earth”. (N. w. Thiong'o,
Devil on the Cross 1). Ngugi recognizes that it is his burden to expose the
social evils existing in his society. He clearly appears as a Marxist Socialist
and a committed novelist. Marxist Criticism calls on the writer to commit his
art to the cause of the proletariat.
As a communist, Ngugi believes in an economic system in which the
state controls the means of production to create a society where everyone is
 149

treated equally. Once these privileges do not meet, there is need to raise the
proletariat’s awareness for claiming a better situation. This is according to the
Marxist theory, one of the writer’s duties. Similarly, Ngugi writes in Writers
in Politics:
What the African writer is called upon to do is not easy: it
demands him that he recognizes the global character of
imperialism and the global character or dimension of the forces
struggling against it to build a new world. He must reject,
repudiate, and negate his roots in the native bourgeoisie, and its
spokesmen, and find his creative links with the pan-African
masses in alliance with all the socialistic forces of the world.
He must write with the vibrations and tremors of the struggles
of all the working people in Africa, America, Asia, and Europe
behind him. Yes must actively support, and in his writing
reflects the struggle of the African working must show
commitment, not to abstract notions of justice and peace, but
the class and its peasant class allies for the total liberation of
labour power. Yes, his work actual struggles of the African
peoples to seize power and hence to be in a position to control
all the forces of production and hence lay the only correct basis
for peace and justice (N. w. Thiong'o, Writers in Politics 79-
80).
This is Ngugi’s vision and he finds that it is his duty to condemn the
prevailing evils that ruin Africa. He says that the “Devil has not been crucified
yet by independence as people might think, for his acolytes represented by the
businessmen and the African elites”; those continue robbing the African
resources and benefiting the colonial master; have lifted him down.
Ngugi shows that the independence for which Africans have struggled
and accomplished and which aim is removing colonialism, imperialism, and
capitalism from the African society is not proficient so far as the Devil is
revived after three days through neo-colonialism which the new African
political leaders have adopted. Ngugi decides ‘not to hide’ as he says ‘not to
cover up pits in the courtyard with leaves or grass’ saying that because the
eyes ‘cannot see the holes, ‘the children can prance about the yard as they
 150

like’. Ngugi justifies this position on page (15) of this novel by mentioning
“that a man who is able to discern the pitfalls in his path is happy for he can
avoid them and so is a traveler; who is able to see the stumps in his way for he
can pull them up or walk around them so that they do not make him stumble”.
Terry Eagleton has the view “This is the determination that Ngugi decidedly
takes in his writing” (Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism). In Writers in
Politics, Ngugi illustrates the danger of avoiding the vision he takes as in the
following:
Unless we as African writers embrace such a vision anchored
in the struggles of the people-we shall succumb to self-despair,
cynicism and individualism, or else we become mesmerized
superficial bourgeoisie which in words of Karl Marx has never
been possible without individuals and peoples through blood
and dirt, through misery and degradation” (N. w. Thiong'o,
Writers in Politics 81).
Ngugi’s commitment as a ‘prophet of justice’ is well illustrated in the
first short and pivotal chapters of Devil on the Cross and in Writers in Politics,
as he explains his will to write for his society and invite all Africans through
Kenyans to free themselves from the predators who are multiplying in post-
independent Africa. The Africans should get a real independence for their
benefit. This gives the importance of the novel the way Chijoke comments:
In understanding the sorry pass to which Africa has come and
the need to mobilize patriotic and concerned people for a
collective battle against the forces that have hijacked Africa’s
development. This mobilization is sought since free integrate
self-development has never been reached and is still far from to
materialize. (Uwasomba, The Politics of resistence and
Liberation in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood 12).
On explaining the condition in Africa after independence, Chijoke
quotes Ngugi as follows:
First it has been the external factor of foreign invasion,
occupation, and cultural control, and second, the internal factor
of collaboration with the external threat…. under colonialism
and today under neo-colonialism….The greedy chief and other
 151

elements bred by the new colonial overlords, collaborated with

the main eternal imperialist factor. The storm repeats itself in a
more painful way under neo-colonialism. (Uwasomba, The
Politics of resistence and Liberation in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's
Petals of Blood 2).
Ngugi occupies socialist realism theory to portray the evils of the Devil
and to urge the proletariat to gather for executing him and making sure his
devotees will not lift him down. Socialist realism, as according to Eagleton
(1971: 47) “implies besides truth details the truthful reproduction of typical
characters under typical circumstances”. As for the opening, Ngugi’s
characters are created according to different classes they belong to; while
Muturi, Wariinga, Wangari and Gatuira represent the proletariat; Gitutu wa
Gataaguru, Kihaahu and Mwireri represent the bourgeoisie and they are
demonstrative to conditions they act in. The context like the one in which the
talk among Wangari, Muturi, Gatuira, and Wariinga is distinguishable to
people of the underprivileged class, as they have not freedom of speech. By
doing so, Ngugi interprets the language of literature into that of sociology and
finds the social correspondent of literary facts. He translates social facts into
literary ones. Besides, he presents a socially insightful text, which is but a
component of socialist realism. All over the narrative, Ngugi describes
capitalism as a negative acquirement. In addition, which is worse of it is that
the situation is widely spread in all Africa not only Kenya, as the following
passage reads:
But it is not Nairobi alone that is afflicted in this way. The
same is true of all other cities in every country that has recently
slipped the nose of colonialism. These countries are finding it
difficult to stave off poverty for the simple reason that they
have taken it upon themselves to run their own economies from
American experts. So they have been taught the principle and
system of self-interest and have been told to forget the ancient
songs that glorify the notion of collective good (N. w.
Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 56).
By depicting such a reality about Kenyans, the writer makes it
comprehensible why capitalism has distressed Kenya and the whole African
 152

continent to the extent that citizens addict worshiping money, like Mwaura
who says“Business is my temple and money is my God…Show me where
money is and I’ll take you there.” (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 19). It is
also for money and capitalism’s sake that the Devil Feast is planned, wherein
thieves have to demonstrate their proficiency in robbery under the sponsorship
of Satan King of Hell. In addition to capitalism, corruption also aggravates
Africa; the worst type of it is the immoral corruption. As Ngugi depicts people
are not employed in regards to their qualification or merits but rather to what
they offer. The situation becomes worse when it comes to women’s search for
jobs. The latter have to sacrifice their bodies, either for getting the job they are
seeking or for preserving the one they have. This is the situation the character
Kareendi experiences after she has completed her studies, in spite of the ill-
fated birth she has given to an illegal child. The narrative stresses that ‘the
Modern Bar and Lodging has become the main employment bureau for girls
and women’s thighs are the tables on which contracts are signed. On page 52
of the novel, the writer regrets that instead of forbidding and condemning such
a behavior, Kenyans sing this song: “Sister Kareendi, the case of a fool takes a
long time to settle. Sister Kareendi every court session opens with feasting.
Sister Karendi, no man licks an empty hand. Take care of me and I will take
care of you. Modern problems are solved with the aid of thigh”. (N. w.
Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 52).
This excerpt shows how African sentiments are becoming awful
because of the continuous search for welfares; dishonest and immoral ones. It
also illustrates how people are adopted to sell everything including their
bodies in search for money. After picturing all these evils and others, Ngugi
calls the oppressed to fight against neo-colonialism preached by the heirs of
colonialists. He invites the exploited to unite for efficient productiveness in
order to modify nature and make things meet their needs, like their shelter to
keep out rain, clothes to keep out of cold and sun, food to make the body
grow, and many other needs. It is from unity, the writer thinks that humanity is
born as this passage reads:
That humanity is in turn born from of many hands working
together, for as Gikuyu once said, a single finger cannot kill a
louse; a single log cannot make a fire last through the night; a
 153

single man, however strong can’t build a bridge across a river;

and many hands can lift a weight, however heavy (N. w.
Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 56).
The strength of unity the passage preaches is also stressed when the
writer speaks about the miserable outcome of bourgeoisie and peasant life.
Famine has increased in African land but it has been given other names, so
that the people should not discover where all the food has been hidden, as the
following passage reads:
Two bourgeoisie women ate the flesh of the children of the
poor. They could not see the humanity of the children because
their hearts were empty. Many houses and acres of land, and
wounds of stolen money. These cannot bring peace to a person,
because they have been taken from the poor. Now look away
from the rich, at the poor, and at the children. They are all
stagger-a-staggering on the highway because their hearts are
empty. (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 57).
Ngugi finds a justification for inviting the proletariat to crucify the
‘Devil’ as expressed by Wangarii’s song on pages 74, 75 and 93.
Come one and all,
And behold the wonderful sight
Of us chasing away the Devil
And his disciples!
Come one and all!
Ngugi moreover invites the proletariat to be careful after they crucify
the Devil, lest that his disciples can lift him down and therefore allow him to
continue oppressing the Africans. This is only a warning against the revival of
imperialism and capitalism through neo-colonialism by post-independence
privileged. Justification for this call is found in Ngugi’s Writers in Politic.
Where the writer quotes Karl Marx to support his vision:
Bourgeoisie progress resembles that hideous pagan idol who
would not drink nectar but from the skulls of the slain. The
reign of the idol in Africa is doomed. African writers must be
with the people in burying the imperialist idol and his band of
 154

white and black angels, forever. (N. w. Thiong'o, Writers in

Politics).
All these petitions to the conscience of Kenyans succeed in raising the
awareness of Kenyans about the common enemy; the devil besides Wariinga
gains the consent of her companions such as Wangarii, Muturi, and Mwireri.
These are the pioneers who have understood that they have to unite and unite
the proletariat for the common cause; to crucify the Devil. Even though they
end by being arrested, Wariinga has succeeded in uniting the exploited to
revolt against the Devil and crucify him.
Wariinga seems to have succeeded at the end of this novel so far as she
kills her main foe Gitahi. This success conveys a message to all Kenyans, seen
as a microcosm of Africans that capitalism, neo-colonialism and imperialism
must be fought by unity and communism. In this way, the protagonist of Devil
on the Cross becomes a heroine whose lifeline has been paved with trials
rescued from suicidal attempts, then she restores the harmony she has lost in
her early age due to sexual abuse by Gitahi.
From the very beginning of the novel Wariinga the protagonist is
witnessed moving from one trouble into another. Misfortune has been her
companion as she has been under oppression for many ways, first of all she
has lost her virginity with the Rich Old Man who impregnated her and then
abandoned her, then she has lost her dream to become an engineer. She has
tried to commit suicide to get rid of her burden, but she has been saved by the
guard. Wariinga is convinced that her appearance is the root cause of her
problems; being beautiful and attractive will always make her a prey to the
corrupt men. She hates her blackness so she protests against her own color by
applying skin-lightening creams forgetting the saying: that “which is born
black would never be white”. Wariinga also hates her stained teeth so she tries
to hide them. She seldom laughs openly, this proves that Wariinga has a
rebellious character and she is ready to bring a change into her life and those
who later on, become inspired by her.
The nightmare that Wariinga used to have when she was a student at
Nakuru Day Secondary School is revisiting her again after her second try to
commit suicide. This nightmare is symbolic in its interpretation. The people
who are dressed in rags symbolize the workers and peasants who later on in
 155

the novel gather after the feast to claim their rights from the thieves and
robbers. Those people are thrusting the Devil towards the Cross. The Devil
itself is symbolic for all the evils in the society together with its acolytes who
are the watchdogs of the Imperialists. Whereas, the Cross is symbolic of Jesus
Christ, salvation and assertion. Number 7 which is repeated frequently is
symbolic for the Seven Deadly Sins in Christianity that are: Pride, Lust, Envy,
Greed, Wrath, Gluttony And Sloth. All are characterized and embodied in the
demonic competitors in the feast. The followers of the devil practice all the
evil acts in life, they commit murders then they shed tears over the corpses,
they show false pity and then wipe the tears from the faces of widows and
orphans. They rob the nation and the poor. They steal their food at midnight
and during the daytime, they dress the gown of charity and offer them a bowl
full of the grain which they have stolen. They preach and wear robes of virtue
and urge men to repent while they are mere debauchers and sinners. Those
people, dressed in suits and ties are mere slaves for the Western Imperialists
who are keeping their business running in Africa after independence. Wariinga
witnesses the people dressed in rags crucifying the Devil on the Cross. They
have gone away singing songs of victory but after three days the people who
are dressed in suits and ties come and lift the devil down from the cross, they
kneel before him and they pray to him in loud voices, beseeching him to give
them a portion of his robes of cunning. Through using this analogy, Ngugi
intends to draw attention to the evils that are revived after independence, in
which the figure of the devil stands for the imperialist and the men in suits
stand for the neo-colonialists.
This nightmare projects what has happened to Africa after
independence. People have truly gained freedom from the colonizer but things
become worse as neo-colonialism is started by the African thieves who
maintain robbing the wealth of Africa and the sweat of the poor. It is true that
the people have defeated the European colonizer by getting independence, but
they have not overcome the evils which it has bred in their own land. They
need to unite altogether as workers, peasants and educated people in order to
get rid of the Devil and its disciples. This is a direct invitation from the author
for those people to communism thus; communism is one solution to the
oppression practiced upon the exploited. Out of the experience of the
 156

protagonist Wariinga, many examples of oppression can be drawn. Wariinga

was born when Kenya was ruled by the British Empire, under very oppressive
laws that went by the name of Emergency Regulations. The Kenyan patriots
swore an oath of unity and that they would struggle against the British
imperialists until all torture and oppression in the land would end. The sound
of guns and bombs at the Mount Kenya was like thunder. When the British
together with their African allies predicted their defeat by the Mau Mau
Guerrilla forces. They increased their indiscriminate torture and oppression on
the peasants and workers of the country.
A year later, Wariinga’s father and mother have been arrested and
detained at Langata and Kamiti prisons. Years passed on until Wariinga’s
parents are released from detention, only to find that their small piece of land
has been sold to the home guards by the colonial regime. They are forced to
work as slaves but they still have a little hope in their own daughter that she
will complete her learning and free her parents from the bonds of poverty.
Wariinga was the top of her class. She was very talented in maths. She had a
sheer love of learning and ambition to complete school with high honor. At
these days, she knew only two stops, school and home. She was honest and
pure. Her desolate dream is to finish school and gain a place at the university
to study engineering but this dream is shattered when she has met the Old Rich
Man from Ngorika to whom her caregiver has sacrificed Wariinga, as he
offers her to this old man on a gold plate. She is the spring peahen whose
feathers will be plucked one by one leaving the flesh naked and unhampered,
soft food for a toothless old man. “When a white man grows old he eats veal”
(N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross). Wariinga is sexually exploited by this
old man; she becomes the hunted in the game of life; her dreams of learning
and of ending up at the university to have a degree in engineering are vanished
in the air like the morning dew after sunshine. She has lost her virtue and her
righteousness and she grows a big liar. During her journeys with the old man,
Wariinga watches the fishermen at work, the old man lectures her how the
small fish are used by men to trap bigger ones and how the big fish survive on
the small ones. This lecture is symbolic of what happens to Wariinga, as her
uncle uses her as a bait to trap the old man who figuratively eats her flesh and
throws her bones.
 157

The Rich Old Man teaches Wariinga the game of the Hunter and the
Hunted. In the beginning of the novel, Wariinga was the Hunted, but later on,
she becomes the Hunter. She does not miss her target as when she holds the
pistol for the first time. Wariinga is obsessed by the old man’s wealth and the
false happy things she has promised herself during her relationship with him;
she does not predict that he will neglect her together with her child when he
gets to know about her pregnancy. He runs away and leaves her facing all the
difficulties of life alone. Wariinga keeps calm even she does not protest or
weep, but she decides to avenge herself on her oppressor. Poverty is to be
blamed for Wariinga’s misfortune together with negligence, lack of parental
observance, greed and hypocrisy. All of these social evils have led to
Wariinga’s tragedy and misfortune.
Nairobi and almost all other cities in Africa are afflicted, soulless and
corrupt due to colonialism. The people of these cities witness all kinds of
oppression starting from poverty, famine, exploitation, theft, idleness and
ending with homelessness. After independence, neo-colonialism takes part in
Africa as the new modern thieves and robbers have adopted the American way
of running the economics of the nation. They become experienced in theft and
robbery to the extent that they have the courage to gather in one place to
compete among themselves and to find out new methods and techniques for
robbing the national resources. In such a corrupt atmosphere, it is very
difficult for a girl to find a job that fits her qualifications and ethics. To gain
this opportunity she has to sell her honor and show her body since all the
bosses are the same, as they share the same cunning smile and the same
interests in women’s private parts. The Modern Love Bar and Lodging has
become the main employment bureau. The girl who refuses to share her bed
with Mr. Boss finds herself roaming the streets jobless and homeless. This is
exactly what has happened to Kareendi; the fictitious female character who
represents all the exploited women as Wariinga. It is not only Kareendi’s boss
who oppresses her but also her young lover who is motivated by hypocrisy. He
accuses Kareendi to be Boss Kiharah’s mistress claiming that he knows very
well that Kareendi is the type of women who share their beds for the sake of
money. Page 25 of the novel offers a complete illustration of the accusation
and the exploitation of African women by either their bosses or by their lovers.
 158

As regarding the characterization of Devil on the Cross, Ngugi creates

his fictitious characters by giving them names and types suitable to his views.
These characters are used as devices that analyze the socialist reality in the
novelist’s writing. In the Matatu, Ngugi intends to let his characters meet and
discuss the current issues of Africa. The characters share their stories during
the journey to Ilmorog but the most significant ones are those of Wangari and
Muturi who stand for protest and assertion. The characterization will be
clarified in details according to the position and the role of each character.
Beginning with Wangari’s from the very beginning, she mentions that she is
from the Mau Mau movement which has fought for the independence of
Kenya but she has not attained her right yet. She is jailed for false accusation
and has suffered from the neo-colonial system in Kenya through the
unspeakable horrors she has experienced in Nairobi. She wonders where a
poor man can run to in order to escape poverty. Rain in almost every place in
Africa becomes scarcity for peasants and workers. Because of the draught,
Wangari’s small piece of land has been auctioned by the Kenya economic
Progress Bank as she has failed to pay back a loan of 5000 shillings. The land
is sold and she is forced to search of a job in Nairobi. Ngugi shows how the
money the peasants cultivate in towns will participate in the growth of big
cities, so all the hard work of the laborers will fatten Nairobi and other big
towns. The industrial growth of big cities will affect the peasants whose lands
are auctioned because they cannot pay the heavy loans, so they are drifting to
the big cities in search for jobs. This is Wangari’s situation, therefore, she
decides to find any job no matter if she will sweep out offices or wipe
children’s bottoms. She goes into a hotel and finds Europeans there. She asks
one of the employees about vacancies telling him that she is ready to dust the
shoes of the whites, even to clean the toilets for them; just she wants a job not
caring for the oppression she will come across because being jobless itself is a
humiliation.
Wangari hints to a very crucial issue in her story, she mentions that the
Whites have been ruling Kenya still after independence, which means that the
Blacks are just mere servants and tools in the hands of the Whites and in their
own land. This is why it is very tough for a black man to find a job in such
neo-colonial towns “and we black people, aren’t we all of one kin, one clan”
 159

(42)? “And weren’t you told by the European owner that there were no jobs
here for the likes of you” (43). Then this man calls for the police to take
Wangari under the accusation of her intention to steal the hotel. The police
inspector’s words are very ironic “yes, yes it is a woman like this one who are
now employed by thieves and robbers to spy on shops, hotels, and
banks.”(43). This proves that even the police authority is corrupt and under the
service of the colonialists. The following extract by Wangari illustrates the
situation in neo-colonial Kenya:
I was taken to court this very morning, charged with intending
to steal and with roaming about Nairobi without being a
resident of the city, without a job, without a house, and without
a permit. Vagrancy or something like that, that is what they
called it. But, our people, think: I Wangari, a Kenyan by birth,
how can I be a vagrant in my own country? How can I be
charged with vagrancy in my own country as if I were a
foreigner? (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 43).
This poor woman is now regarded as a threat to the property of her
own nation which she has earlier defended, while the real thieves are enjoying
the freedom and robbing the wealth of the nation. Those thieves, who are
protected by the police should be punished but in neo-colonial Kenya,
everything goes in the wrong way. Responding to the judge’s questions,
Wangari replies in a defiant and protesting language as illustrated in the
following extract:
Look at me properly. I am not a foreigner here like you. And I
am not a vagrant here in Kenya. Kenya is our country. We
were born here. We were given this land by God and we
redeemed it from the hands of our enemies with our own blood.
Today you see us clothed in rags but we the peasants and the
workers are the same people who were around at the time of
Kimaathi. I am not a thief. I am not a robber. If you want to
know who the real thieves and robbers are, follow me and I
will show you their lairs and caves in Ilmorog. (N. w. Thiong'o,
Devil on the Cross 44).
 160

She is set free because she has promised the court to cooperate and
show them where the real thieves and robbers are. During the journey in the
Matatu, the passengers discuss the present condition of Kenya, the starvation,
poverty, slavery, and robbery. Inspired by Wangari’s story, Muturi starts up
the conversation describing the ill condition of the Kenyans as:
This country, our country is pregnant, what it will give birth to,
God only knows, Imagine! The children of us workers are fated
to stay out in the sun, thirsty, hungry, naked, gazing at fruit
ripening on trees which they can’t pick even to quieten a
demanding belly! Fated to see food steaming in the pantry, but
unable to dip a calabash into a pot to scoop out even a tiny
portion! Fated to lie awake all night telling each other stories
about tears and sorrow (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 46).
The second character is Muturi wa Kahonia Maithori who can be seen
as a sentence in itself, which means “the builder or maker of that which heals
the tears”. He is a multi-talented worker specialized in carpentry, stone
working, and plumbing. In trying to help the workers to get higher wages in
Boss Kihara’s company, he mobilizes the Ilmorog workers to confront their
oppressors. Muturi’s role in the novel appears to be the one who links the
workers in the various places. He has traveled widely in Kenya, doing all sorts
of jobs. He shows that his confrontation with the workers and the owners of
capital is part of an ideal to usher in a more just society. The gun he gives to
Waringa has an inevitable presentiments and it indicates the imminence of the
rich old man. The implication could be that the gun will be used to confront
the armed presence of the capitalists in a bid to wipe away the tears of the
exploited. Through his efforts, the owners of capital are made to fight against
the owners of labor, as the representative of the workers, Muturi becomes the
maker, the builder, and the healer of the workers’ tears. That is the explanation
behind Ngugi’s intention in making his character, Muturi a multi-professional
worker. Muturi is a champion of the workers’ revolution, which is invariably
aimed at a restoring the power from the dominant class. He is a typical
Marxist revolutionary character.
The third passenger is Gatuiria, a junior research scholar in African
culture. He laments the all-pervading influence of the earlier colonial powers
 161

which are observed in every sphere of natives’ activities. “Our culture has
been dominated by the western imperialist cultures. That is what we call in
English Cultural imperialism. “Cultural imperialism is the mother of the
slavery of the mind and the body” (58). Here it is important to note that
cultural imperialism is another type of colonialism which affects the culture of
the colonized country during colonialism and extends even more to post-
independence i.e. neo-colonial period. As literature is part of man’s self-
realization and identity. It is a symbol of man’s creativity, of his historical
process and of being and becoming. It is an enjoyable product of man’s artistic
labor. It shapes man’s attitude to life, to the daily struggle with nature, the
daily struggle within a community, and the daily struggle within his/ her
individual souls and selves. Gatuiria mentions that he has worked in the
department of music. His ambition is to compose a piece of music for many
human voices accompanied by an orchestra. Gatuiria tells the other passengers
that he is the only son of a very rich businessman who wants him to inherit his
business but he refuses. Later on in the last page of the novel, Gatuiri’s father
is the same Old Rich Man with whom Wariinga has lost herself. Gatuiria’s
character serves the anti-capitalist and the communist who is ready to share his
fortune with his fellow men and women. He resembles the educated elite who
will bring the change through his communist beliefs and acts. He is also a
socialist who celebrates the communal and traditional heritage rather than the
newly bred modernity. This is the reason behind his interest in composing the
African anthem by using many human voices, not instruments.
The last passenger who is in dark spectacles and seems to be offended
by Muturi and Wangari’s attitude is Mwireri wa Mukiraai. He has studied at
Harvard University and his ambition during the university days has been to
teach at the university. He does not believe in equality nor in communism. He
shows that the opinions expressed by others have been ruining the country.
Mwireri serves the anti-communist, who stands in the way of eliminating the
neo-colonialism. He is intended by the author to show that there should be
unity among all the layers of the African society and that the ones who
opposed the communal unity are the ones who are exploiting the masses.
In the matatu bus Muturi, Wariinga and wa Mukiraai have the
invitation cards of the Devil’s feast to choose the seven cleverest thieves and
 162

robbers in Ilmorog. Mukiraai is in favor of the competition and he believes

that the feast is not organized by Satan but by the organization of Modern
Theft and Robbery in Ilmorog to commemorate a visit by foreign guests from
an association of thieves and robbers from the Western world. The creation of
a Devil’s feast provides Ngugi with the space for enacting or deconstructing
through the grotesque and the obscene, the triviality of power in a neo-colonial
African society.
During the feast, the boastful thieves and robbers are in the cave as the
cooperation of the Kenyan bourgeoisie is seen as fruitful by the international
representatives. The boss of the foreign delegation from the international party
of thieves appreciates the good work of the local robbers and excludes from
the competition the thieves who steal out of hunger. Ndaaya wa Kahuria
provides a good example of this category. In order to stop these noisy
competitors who are watchdogs of imperialism, Wangari decides to invite the
police, while Muturi who believes in the ability of the unity of workers to
arrest the thieves goes ahead to mobilize them. However, the police who ought
to arrest the thieves turns round to arrest Wangari, who should have been
treated as an informant. The unity of workers, students and other members of
the exploited class are gathering outside the cave in a very encouraging scene.
The call and song of the masses in their revolutionary movement to overthrow
capitalism and the rule of its agents are resonating:
Come one and all,
And behold the wonderful sight
of us chasing away Devil
And all his disciples:
Come one and all (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 201).
The author has intended the discussion among the characters to be
inside the matatu during their journey to Ilmorog for two main reasons. The
first one is to share the points of view of the exploited and the exploiter. The
second is that the matatu is the only place where people can speak freely
without any fear of arrest or imprisonment because Kenya lacks democracy:
“In a matatu you can speak your thoughts without first looking over your
shoulder to see who is listening.”( 56). In reply to the question of belief Muturi
said: “I believe that God and Satan are images of our actions in our brains as
 163

we struggle with nature in general and with human nature in particular, in our
search for something to eat, to wear and to shelter behind to keep out the sun,
the cold and the wind. The nature of Satan is the image of the evil we do here
on Earth (57). This extract is very important because it simply exemplifies the
nature of the human being, which is either good or evil due to his/her belief in
God or Satan. Gatuiria also touches a very crucial issue in his discussion; that
lies in the importance of language and culture in defeating imperialism, as he
denotes that:
Cultural imperialism is the mother to the slavery of the mind
and the body. It is cultural imperialism that gives birth to the
mental blindness and deafness that persuade people to allow
foreigners to tell them what to do in their own country, to make
foreigners the ears and mouths of their national affairs. Our
stories, our riddles, our songs, our customs, our tradition,
everything about our national heritage have been lost to us (N.
w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 58-59).
The previous extract clarifies Ngugi’s lament for his traditional
customs and communal roots. He intends to invite his people to go back to
their roots and abandon the newly adopted habits. Gatuiria’s study of
traditional instruments mostly, drums, flutes and all kinds of string instruments
like the lyre and the one-stringed violin, stresses Ngugi’s wish to go back to
traditional customs and his deep-rooted communal heritage.
The author uses the technique of Hypodiegesis (a story within a story).
These stories are allegories and every symbol in them is significant to the
story it belongs to. For example, the following story which Gatuiria tells about
an ogre and a peasant:
The ogre had sunk his long nails into the neck and shoulders of
the peasant. The peasant was the one who went to the fields to
get food, the one who went into the valleys to fetch water, the
one who went to the forest to get firewood, and the one who
did the cooking. The ogre’s job was to eat and thereafter to
sleep soundly on the back of the peasant. As the peasant
became progressively thinner and more depressed at heart, the
ogre prospered and flourished, to the extinct of being inspired
 164

to sing hymns that exhorted the peasant to endure his lot on

Earth with fortitude, for he would later find his rest in Heaven.
(N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 62).
This story is figurative in meaning; for it denotes that the ogre is the
imperialist who sinks his nails in the farmer’s flesh and sucks his blood. The
ogre stands for the exploiter, while the peasant is the exploited who enslaves
all day in getting the food, water, firewood and all the needs of the exploiter.
The hard work is done by the worker while the imperialist is enjoying himself
on the shoulder of this worker. The oppressed is hypnotized by the falsely-
assumed grandeur of the imperialist.
The second story about the beautiful girl named Nyanjiru is also
symbolic because the girl aspires for something beyond her reach, so she
meets a fatal end. Though black, she refuses all her black suitors and aspires
for someone out of her skin and clan. As a result, she is sexually abused and
torn into pieces by the white outsider. This story tells that Pride is one of the
deadliest sins and it leads to a tragic end, as this black girl who has abandoned
her clan and skin to meet her horrifying end. In a way, Ngugi is telling his
people to fight the white invaders and never abandon the cultural customs and
unity among the Africans.
The third story is about Nding’uri who embodies all the evils of the
exploiters. He has sold his soul to the devil in order to gain property, and he
feasts on people’s flesh and blood. Whenever there is famine, there is a feast
for him because people will give up their lands for the sake of food. He
commits all the evils with his villagers until the time is up with them and they
unite with each other hand-in-hand to get rid of him. They have wrapped
Nding’uri up with dry banana leaves and burned him along with his house.
This story is a kind of invitation for the African people to join their hands
together and unite to get rid of the imperialists. The act of burning the
exploiter is a kind of assertion. “Many hands can lift the heaviest of loads”.
(N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 66).
The story that Mwaura tells about the white American tourist reveals
how the white man looks at the Kenyan woman. He can abuse her and please
himself by treating her as a whore, he admires the beauty of the Kenyan
woman, but this beauty is only for sexual pleasure. “I’ll come back with even
 165

more tourists so that they can see Kenya’s wild game and women for
themselves”. (71). Here, Ngugi is directly referring to the sexual exploitation
of African women by both the white colonizer and the African neo-colonizer,
this exploitation leads to a kind of trade that flourishes in post-independent
Africa. This idea is stressed in Petals of Blood too as the author intends to
condemn the neo-colonial acts by highlighting these motifs.
All the passengers in the matatu have an invitation to the Devil’s feast.
Ngugi is inviting all the proletariat to the devil’s feast to revive them from
their stagnation. He wants them to be aware of what is going on in their
country; this awareness will lead to their assertion. Mwireri wa Mukiraai
explains to the other passengers that there are true invitation cards and there
are false ones; the latter are printed by university students who are on the
opposition side and have roots in communism. They are against the
imperialists and they want to take part together with the proletariat to demolish
capitalism and its tools in Africa. While the original cards are arranged by the
Organization for Modern Theft and Robbery in Ilmorog to commemorate a
visit by foreign guests from an organization for the thieves and robbers of the
Western world particularly from America, England, Germany, France, Italy,
Sweden and Japan called the International Organization of Theft and Robbery.
Thus, this explanation reveals the truth about the feast, which includes
foreigners who are the real capitalists and imperialists of the world and their
tools in the national countries. He moreover, stresses the fact that the origin of
the wealth of the great Western world is from theft and robbery as he connects
the development of each of these countries to theft and robbery. “It is theft and
robbery that have made possible the development of the western world” (79).
According to Mwireri wa Mukiraai the property of the nation should
be in the hands of the nation’s successful men, those who are born with the
ability to manage wealth. Therefore, this is the solution he offers to run the
economics of the country which of course is not good for the Africans. The
story of the rich man who is travelling to a far country and dividing his
possessions among his five loyal servants is very symbolic. This man
resembles the colonial rule prior independence. Due to the national
movements and protests against colonialism, this man (resembling all his
colonial power) is obliged to leave but he will not leave simply without
 166

ensuring the maintenance of his properties so he divides his money among his
slaves who are his ready tools to maintain his control over the colonized
country and this is neo-colonialism. The slaves cried out when they got sure
that their master is going to leave them.
This imperialist gives his slaves amounts of money according to their
loyalty, he gives the first slave a capital of 500000 shillings and the second
one 200000 while he gives the third 100000 shillings and the white man leaves
from the front door voluntarily and intentionally with his own will. (This
refers to Independence). After many days, the white man comes back again
but this time from the back door, that means sneakily and undercover (this is a
reference to neo-colonialism) and he asks his slaves what they have done with
the money. The first one has doubled the profit by buying things cheaply from
the rural peasants and selling them to the urban workers at a higher price, for
which he is rewarded by his master by appointing him the managing director
of the local branches of the banks owned by the master and also a director of
certain companies; he is also to acquire a few shares in the same companies.
The second slave also has doubled the profit of his capital by buying cheaply
from the producers and selling dearly to consumers. He is rewarded by being
appointed as a sales director of the local branches of the master’s insurance
houses and a director of the local branches of the industries and many
companies owned by the master. The master tells his two loyal slaves that he
will appoint them as the watchdogs of his investments in the slaves’ own
country and that his own face will be invisible from now on, but their own
faces will be his facade.
The last slave understands the game, as he does not do anything to
increase the capital that is bestowed upon him, instead he has buried the
capital he has got in a tin and wanders whether the capital will yield profit
without being watered with his sweat and blood. He waits till the master
comes back and asks him about the amount, and the salve protests that he has
discovered the white lord’s tricks, and he dares to name him Imperialist;
describing him as a cruel master because he reaps where he has never sown.
He grabs things over which he has never shed any sweat, and he appoints
himself as a distributor of things which he has never produced. He is doing all
 167

these things just because he is the owner of a capital. The slave asserts himself
and in a language full of dignity and self-respect tells the lord:
Your money would yield anything without being fertilized by
my sweat or that of any other man. Behold, here is your
100000 shillings exactly as you left it. I now give you your
capital. Count it and check that not a single cent is missing.
The most remarkable thing was this: my own sweat provided
me with food to eat, water to drink and a shelter in which to
sleep. I will never kneel down before the lifeless god of capital
again. I will be a slave no more. My eyes have been now
opened. If today I joined hands with all the others who have
opted to be masters over their own sweat, there would be no
limit to the wealth we could produce for our people and
country (85).
This extract provides a full illustration of the capitalist’s nature and the
last lines come to assure Ngugi’s beliefs in unity and in communism as the
best solutions in freeing his country from the colonial and neo-colonial
impacts. The slave expresses a real protest against his master. In addition, he
reveals his communist ideas. These ideas themselves represent real threat to
the imperialist, so he takes immediate action by arresting the slave in order to
get rid of him and assure that he will not spread his ideas among the other
slaves. The master admits directly that the power of organized unity is more
powerful than ammunitions and armored vehicles. He is afraid of such unity
which will lead to a revolutionary assertion of the peasants and workers
against the oppression practiced upon them by the imperialists.
After calling the military forces to arrest the rebellious slave, the white
lord turns back to his loyal slaves and assures them that he will no more call
them servants in public, instead, he will call them his friends because through
them he will continue his grip over the properties of their country. They will
continue fulfilling his instructions and protecting his advantages making his
capital increase its profit. The white master cries out in a victorious voice:
“Long live peace, love, and unity between me and my local representatives!
You bite twice and I bite four times. We will fool the gullible masses. Long
live stability for Progress! Long live progress for profit! Long live foreigners
 168

and expatriate”. (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 86). This extract is an
evident example of the sound relationship between colonialism and neo-
colonialism, where the latter assures the continuity of the former in another
way than direct occupation.
The second part of Devil on the Cross is about the celebration of the
Devil’s Feast which is in the form of a competition among Kenyan thieves and
robbers to elect the best among them. The competition is held in a cave near
Ilmorog. Waringa, Wangari, Muturi. Mukiraai, Gatuiria, and Mwaura attend
the feast to witness the election of the best thief. The organizers of the feast
shamelessly declare and introduce themselves as thieves and robbers in neo-
colonial Kenya and thus lend legitimacy to their exploitation of the Kenyans.
The setting in the cave has the classic characteristics of the epic
tradition such as the invocation of the muse, the introduction of the heroes, the
descriptive list of the subsidiary heroes, the competitive games and speeches,
which are all an imitation of a serious action. However, all these devices add
up to the novelist’s mockery of the neo-colonialism and capitalism in Africa.
The feast is declared open by the master of ceremonies with the Biblical
parody of the gospel parable “for the kingdom of earthly wiles can be likened
unto a ruler who foresaw that the day would come when he would be thrown
out of a certain country by the masses and their guerrilla freedom fighter”. (N.
w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 82).
The master of ceremonies calls the leader of the foreign delegation of
the thieves and robbers to the platform to address the crowd of competitors.
His speech gives a summary of what is going on in Africa; how the greatest
imperial countries are keeping hold economically and financially in Africa and
how these imperialist countries are still exploiting the natural resources and
the wealth of Africa after independence through their national watchdogs.
The English man reveals the truth behind his coming to Africa together
with all the other imperialists, which is to rob Africa’s wealth. He mentions
that through financial institutions they govern the world. The barons of finance
houses are the governing voices in the world today. “Money rules the world!
These houses are also the only reliable safes in which to deposit the assets that
one has grabbed from here and there. (89). The plan of the devil’s feast is to
choose seven disciples out of the competitors, these seven thieves will
 169

represent the seven greatest imperialist countries. They also will teach other
thieves and robbers how to expertise in theft. Number (7) once again occurs,
this time on the invitation card as in the following:

The Devil’s feast

Come and see for yourself
A Devil sponsored competition
To choose Seven Experts in Theft and Robbery
Plenty of prizes!
Try your luck
Competition to choose the Seven Cleverest Thieves and Robbers
Prizes galore!
Hell’s Angels band in attendance
Signed: Satan
The King of Hell

Number 7 carries many meanings in Christianity; it refers to the Seven

Deadly Sins, which are: Pride, Wrath, Envy, Sloth, Greed, Lust and Gluttony,
one at least of these sins is embodied in the competitors. Number 7 also refers
to the seven greatest imperialist countries. Each country of these needs a local
representative to continue governing its grip over the colonized country. This
is why they want to elect seven thieves. The leader of foreigners continues his
speech by telling the audience that theft and robbery are the cornerstones of
America and Western civilization. Money is the beating heart that keeps the
Western World on the move. He then confesses that America and Western
Europe have wiped out the Red Indians with guns because the latter have tried
to protect their wealth and property from the Americans. He is proud of his
shameful bloody history “we wiped them out with the sword of fire and with
the gun and we spared only a few, whom we later forced into reservations as a
reminder of our history.”(89). It is from the colonizer’s own tongue, the truth
is revealed about what kinds of oppression those people have practiced upon
others for the sake of money. The speech of the foreign delegate has its
impressive impact on the audience; it is welcomed with heavy and thunderous
 170

applause, yes the disaster lies in the ignorance of the natives who really
welcome the new form of colonization without any hesitation, they ignore the
fact that all of their national properties and riches will be taken from them
under the name of “mutual relationships”. They furthermore, regard the
imperialist as their savior, they are misled and they have mistaken the
American colonizer for Christ. The Imperialist will never be a savior for
anyone. He is evil, advantageous and bloodsucker. Surprisingly, Muturi
comments on the color of the foreigners due to their red skins as it is acquired
from the blood they have sucked from the colonized. Ngugi’s description of
the location is intended to add full details about the nature of the neo-
colonizers, as the seat which is taken by the leader of the foreign delegation is
a little higher than the others’ on his right sit three foreigners, and on his left
sit the other three. This denotes that America centers the world of capitalism
and imperialism, the rest countries lay on its right and left sides. As if Ngugi is
telling that America centers and controls the world, the location of the chair
here is an embodiment of the centrality of the greatest imperialist country. The
description of the foreign delegates is so meaningful and symbolizes the whole
scene. The suits they wear, as the one worn by the leader is made of dollars,
the Englishman’s of pounds, the German’s of deutschmarks, the French man’s
of francs, the Italian’s of lire, the Scandinavian’s of kroner, and the Japanese
delegate is of yen. This is symbolic of the identity of each capitalistic country
in reference to its currency. Each suit is decorated with several badges made of
metal bearing one or two slogans, like Exploitation banks, Money Swallowing
Insurance Schemes, Cheap Manufactures for Export abroad, Traders in
Human Skin, Loans for a Profit and many others in similar vein.
The competition starts by the testimony of Ndaaya wa Kahuria who
seems ill at ease. He confesses that he has learned how to steal out of hunger,
he steals because he needs food, outfit and shelter “I only steal because I’m
hungry because I need clothes. Because I have no job and because I have
nowhere to lay this small head of mine at night” (94). This man is experienced
only in small theft like stealing hens from villages or snatching women purses,
he makes the audience angry with his silly demonstration; of course, they
expect real big thieves who have reached international standards, not such a
 171

wretched one who steals to silence his empty belly. Moreover, the foreigners
are dissatisfied and disappointed to listen to such a testimony.
The second competitor is Kihaahu wa Gatheeca a school teacher. He is
bored of teaching and being choked by the chalk particles. He says that time is
up to say goodbye to this profession and start his way in stealing and robbing.
In his opinion, the country is under the oppression of education, but not any
kind of education. Only the one that hungers for foreign language, so he wants
to take advantage out of this hunger and he follows the method of cheating
people by opening a nursery school for the rich Kenyans, this school is
specialized in foreign languages and English as the medium of instruction,
with a European principal. Kihaahu buys white child mannequins and clothes
them in expensive clothes to deceive the parents as if these mannequins were
real human kids at play. In this way, he attracts the people and makes them
hurry to register their kids in the nursery school. Kihaahu’s way of deceit gets
its fruit as the parents have rushed to reserve places for their kids. After trying
this method to get money, Kihaahu finds out another fruitful method, that is
politics, he wants to enter the parliament, then he follows many tricky ways to
win the elections including bribery, buying votes, false stories about his false
heroism that tell how he has fought for freedom and has provided people with
land and education. He also employs a youth wing whose task is to destroy the
property of his opponents and beat those who murmur complaints about him.
He bribes two of his opponents but the third refuses to be bribed so, Kihaahu
orders his thugs to do their job, so he wisely opted for life. All these actions
explain how Kihaahu is using all kinds of corruption in order to reach his ends
and win the elections only for the sake of money; he easily regains the
campaign money from the houses he builds for the people. It is from their own
pockets of course, because they pay the loan of the Italian bank in the form of
taxes. These are merely other faces of oppression. Kihaahu represents the local
capitalist who sucks the blood of his own people. To add more to his rudeness,
he boasts that he is exploiting his own people and that he thanks them for their
ignorance, blindness, trust and their inability to claim their rights. This enables
Kihaahu and all his likes to feed on the blood and sweat of the masses without
asking them too many awkward questions. Those man-eaters’ only fear is
from the communists whose task is to awaken the blinded masses and make
 172

them rebel against them, so they follow the principle of feeding the hungry
masses through the charitable donations to silence them and add more to their
blindness. According to Kihaahu, there are many ways to follow in order to
avoid the rebels or the communists from awakening the blind, which are
whipping, detention, prison or for those who are so obstinate is to ply them
with alcohol, drugs or opium which will lead them to their ultimate death in
the wild. Those oppressors believe only in autocracy not democracy, they are
not ready to welcome the other point of view that opposes their own interests.
The reactions to Kihaahu’s speech are very aggressive and full of
anger. One man stands up and comments that he would not mind that Kihaahu
would have cheated the poor people only because from them only those man-
eaters are taking their money but to cheat his own class is so great and
shameful. “To thieve, to rob and to cheat the poor is all right. Where else our
wealth would come from. (121). This man’s comment about the nursery
schools that Kihaahu owns and runs is also so important, through it this angry
man reveals the false image about the Europeans that is because they are
white, it gives them the chance to rule others and how those black people are
blinded and cheated by these counterfeit ideas. “A European is a European
even though he may be deformed what matters is the whiteness of his
skin!”(121). The other man named Fathog Marura, is very angry to the extent
that he gnaws at his fingers and lips, he asks the chairman to expel Kihaahu
from the competition, what makes him angry is that Kihaahu boasts of his
relationships with the married women and that for the coincidence that this
man’s wife escapes from his house and now he is sure where she is. Through
his comment, he reveals the truth about how the circle of these thieves and
robbers is highly corrupt to the extent they spoil each other’s honors by the
adultery they commit with the wives of the others. There is no moral life, no
ethics, no limits to their greed and lust.
The song sung by Muturi and other patriots on the page (129) is a
direct implication of protest and assertion together, as the author is directly
telling that there will be a mass unity soon and the masses will kick out the
imperialists from their country. Wariinga tells Gtauiria about the miserable
situation on the outskirts of Nairobi and the villages, the images of the slum
residency and the flies, bedbugs and the oozing smell of human soil, the
 173

carcasses of animals, the smoke of dangerous gases from the industrial area,
all these images are used by the author to show the limit of exploitation of his
country by the Imperialists and their local representatives. As well as to stress
his socialist realism. Wariinga compares Njeruca to Hell because of all the
above mentioned miserable situations. Gatuiria comments satirically that all
these fleas, jiggers, and bedbugs are not worse than the human parasites which
are there in the cave. Gatuiria reveals to Wariinga the truth about his father
and the business he runs, he says that his father is a very rich man who does
not leave any field empty without dealing with. The father sends Gatuiria to
America in order to study business administration and learn how to run
property and profit but the son is not interested in such kind of learning, so he
turns to music. This is an illustration that Gatuiria stands as the anti-capitalist
and the rebellious person who disobeys his own father for the sake of his
fellow African people. During his time in Nakuru, Gatuiria used to listen to
the peasant’s songs in the tea plantations that his father owns, he loves to
mingle with the workers and listen to their miseries and he even hates his
father when he whips any peasant. Gatuiria is affected by the communist ideas
and he rebels against his father who resembles the imperialist, capitalist and
the feudal lord, all these idols Gatuiria despises and abhors. Gatuiria
sympathizes with the workers and peasants, he has witnessed their poverty and
suffering, he even explains to his father that what he is doing with his workers
is exactly the same what Gatuiria has witnessed the Americans doing with the
descendants of the Africans who were taken to America as slaves before 300
years.
Mwireri wa Mukirai is the third competitor. He does not believe in
tribal or racial discrimination. He believes in family planning, this is why he
has only a girl and a son. He is a member of an international organization for
regulating births, the International Planned Parenthood Association. He has
one point of view which is to some extent very realistic; that is the children are
the greatest enemies to the development of any underdeveloped country. A
little increase in the population is contrary to our interests. This is always the
case with the underdeveloping countries, they breed children without taking
into consideration their needs to education, health, nurture, and shelter. The
breeding of so many children becomes a burden on the parents’ shoulders as
 174

well as on the society. The increase in the number of children in the

underdeveloping countries leads to the increase in poverty level as well as
illiteracy so that these countries need to put plans for regulating childbirths in
order to get rid of poverty and other evils that stand as obstacles in the
progress of any country. Childbirths planning comes as a solution to countries
like Africa which are still under development. The greatest threat to such a
country is the increase in the number of people who demand food, clothing
and shelter. According to Mwireri the target of such an association, apart from
regulating childbirth is to decrease the conflict between nations especially, the
conflict between those who grab wealth and those who have been grabbed.
Moreover, a man’s stand depends on the development and exploitation of the
wealth of a nation. He believes in the god of modern theft and robbery, his
belief depends on his experience derived from his studies that let him
conclude: ‘all countries and nations that have made progress and have
contributed to modern civilization have passed through the stage of
exploitation’. Among such nations, power has been taken away from the
workers and peasants and given to the leaders of theft and robbery. The
modern culprits of Africa are those who know about creative investment, those
who know how to market their talents, so that they will bear fruits simply
those who are experts at sniffing out that rare delicacy which is called ‘profit’,
those who will look for conditions that will ensure an ever-increasing rate of
profit. According to him, modern theft is of two kinds. The first one is
domestic or a national affair; in this case thieves and robbers of a given
country steal from the workers and peasants of their own country. The second
type of robbery involves foreigners, in this case, the thieves and robbers of one
country go to another country and steal from the masses there and take the loot
back to their country, those are called the Imperialists who exploit the sources
of the other countries together with the aid of bands of local thieves and
robbers. These foreigners build stores and granaries in the countries they rob
and employ local watchdogs to look after them.
Mwireri believes only in the first kind of theft that is the theft and
robbery of the nationals of a given country who steal from their own people
and consume the stolen goods right there in the country itself. However,
regarding the foreign thieves, he says no thousands of times. This direct
 175

speech in front of the foreign delegation in the cave is itself a direct protest to
the greedy intentions of the foreign imperialists who are in the cave.
Moreover, he asks the national experts in theft and robbery not to join hands
with foreigners in order to stop them from seizing African national wealth and
exporting it to their own countries leaving the national thieves only the
crumbs. He dares to call the foreigners as hypocrites. He warns the audience
and encourages them not to be their spies, their disciples, their soldiers and
their blind followers. “Let them leave us alone to exploit our own national
fields” (168).This speech will cost Mwireri his life because the imperialists are
not pleased with such a request and an awakening of the masses. In order to
get rid of him and prevent him from spreading his ideas, they will hire a killer
who is Robin Mwuara to kill him. The master of ceremonies declares clearly
that this action will take place and will be executed not only verbally but also
physically “Don’t worry about Mwireri wa Mukirai we shall take care of him.
His fate will be decided here today. I hope that this apology will be adequate.
What remains is the apology of actions.” (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross
174). Mwirei’s protest is clear in the following extract:
So I asked myself: Mwireri wa Mukirai, how can you allow the
imperialists to milk their country and yours? Do not we have
people of our own who can milk the masses, soothing the
workers with a little fodder as they are being milked? Are
foreigners the only ones with skill at milking? Are they the
only people who know how to eat what has been produced by
others? Can’t you Mwireri wa Mukirai step forward to exploit
your own people’s sweat, use it to produce things and then sell
the things back to the owners of sweat …. We don’t want
eaters of what has been produced by others to come from
foreign countries, we can encourage the growth of a class of
eaters of other people’s products, a class of man- eaters in our
own land (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 168).
Mwireri wa Mukirai does not only protest and rebel but also humiliate
and abuse the foreigners directly in their presence and this makes the
delegation angry to the extent they decide to demolish him in revenge “I’ll
show you that even here we have men who have been initiated into the modern
 176

art of stealing and robbing the workers! You foreigners will have to go back
home and rape your own mothers, and leave me to toy with my mother’s
thighs”. (168). Mwireri asks very important questions about the foreigners
which are “Are these foreigners employing me as an individual, or are they
employing the color of my skin. Are they buying my abilities or my
blackness? And all at once I realized that I was being used as window-
dressing”. This illustrates that the foreigners are using the black people as their
slaves or labors because of their blackness they are regarded as slaves.
Nevertheless, this is also another kind of oppression which is demonstrated in
race discrimination. He goes on explaining the ideology of the foreigners in
which they maintain their grip over Africa and that he is persistent to drive
them away. “The foreigners still monopolize the whole field of robbing the
sweat of our workers. But I have never abandoned my ambition to drive them
out of the arena”. (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 170).
What Mwireri wa Mukirai is seeking in order to monopolize the local
market of his country is the unity among the local thieves and robbers which
will allow them to build native capitalism free from foreign ideologies.
Therefore, in his oration, he calls the other African thieves to unite in order to
develop their own machine tools because the sweat and blood of their own
people are cheap and permanently available as long as there are poor people
ready to be enslaved and they accept any kind of work in order to survive. At
last, he offers a solution to quit the presence of the foreign imperialist in
Africa that is to unite with the other local thieves and robbers and get benefit
from the natural resources which will allow them to invent machines, the spare
parts and whatever they need for their industry without the need of foreign
machinery. His strategy is to take all the raw material of Africa outside,
manufacture them and then bring the ready-made material back to Africa to
sell it in a very high profit.
The speech of Mwireri wa Mukirai leads to anger and disgust among
the other thieves inside the cave, those who have been insulted and hurled by
Mwireri wa Mukirai and one of them stands up and speaks in a defensive
language that:
We who come from the developed world have had many years’
experience of modern theft and robbery. I might also remind
 177

you that we are the owners of the houses, and stores, and
granaries that contain all the money that has ever been snatched
from the peoples of the world. You can see for yourselves that
even our suits are made of bank notes. Today money is the
ruler of all industry and commerce. Money is the field marshal
of all the forces of theft and robbery on earth. Money is
supreme. Money rules the world. We came here to see if we
could acquaint a few of you with our secrets so that you could
become the eyes and ears of the international community of
thieves and robbers here in your country (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil
on the Cross 173).
The master of ceremonies stands up and speaks defending the white
foreigners in a very humble and humiliating language stressing on the neo-
colonialism motif, he says:
Distinguished guests we are your slaves, you have come back
to see what we have done with the talents you bequeathed to us
in grateful recognition of the services we rendered you in
suppressing those of our people who used to call themselves
freedom fighters. That is good I would like to remind you that
even today we have continued to hoodwink our people into
believing that you did actually leave the country, that is why
we don’t call you foreigners, or imperialists, or white robbers.
We call you our friends (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross
174).
Commenting on the character of Mukirai, Ogunjimi Bayo says
“Mukirai is a very strategic character in the novel is encountered both in the
Matatu and Cave. Such positioning is symbolic as an authentication of the
dilemma of a petty bourgeois, who aspires to the bourgeois class”. (Ogunjimi
8).
The fourth participant is Nditika wa Nguunji is a very fat man, his head
is very huge, his belly is big and arrogant, his eyes are the size of two large red
electric bulbs. He explains to the audience that he pays his workers seventy-
five shillings a month plus a daily ration of flour and a weekly bottle of
skimmed milk. He boasts that he has dismissed his workers when once they
 178

have asked for higher wages without notice and has gone out to the villages
and hired new hands. He even mocks and criticizes the workers who dig up
the grass in his farms, those are the same men who once have carried their
weapons and fought for their liberty and independence but because of the
heavy oppression practiced upon them, they are now working as labors under
the mercy of such greedy and exploitative men. He goes on telling that he tells
his workers in a very irritating language that he has been their lord during the
Emergency and he is now theirs and will continue to be theirs as long as they
are still humble, weak and are still not reclaiming their freedom. “We are
lording it over you during the Emergency, and when freedom comes, we shall
continue to lord it over you!” (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 177).
Nditika’s own motto is to grab, to extort money and to confiscate; he
regards this motto as something holy in the world of theft. He even advises the
other thieves not to leave anything belonging to the masses without robbing
and stealing it. Nditika attributes his success in theft and robbery to the field of
smuggling and the black market. He has many sources of expensive stones,
rare animal skins, elephant tusks and rhino teeth, snake poison, and many
other things all from the public mines and the game reserves. He exports them
to the great capitalist countries like Japan, Germany, and China; he gets big
orders from these countries which reward his efforts very dearly. He explains
how such deals are possible only because of his partnership with foreigners
who are experts in handling the customs and because also they own the
airfreight companies, simply they make the illegal legal through such
manipulation.
Moreover, Nditika uses famine to exploit the African people much
more; he buys food at harvest time and sells it dearly at famine’s time.
Moreover, he uses some of the corrupt officials in the government to get
information about the goods which will go up in price at the time of the
Budget day, meanwhile he buys and hoards large quantities of these goods,
when the new prices are announced, he floods the market with these goods in
a very high profit. Briefly, Nditika monopolizes the market for his own good.
According to Nditika education is not property, for him, he does not complete
his primary school and he is employing arts alumni as his clerks. This makes
him pompous and underestimates the high degrees of others. He thinks that
 179

too much education can be a form of foolishness and that what is profitable to
all thieves and robbers is their partnership with foreigners and he encourages
the others to strengthen it. Nditika’s thinks that he deserves the crown of
robbery for the idea of the transplant of the human body. For him, what makes
human being distinguishable is that his own for an extra part, so the wealthy
people will be distinguished from their slaves in this thing. He is suggesting
something extraordinary and against the laws of nature. God creates human
beings from the same clay and no one has the right to play with the Divine
rules. Nditika suggests that he and the rest of the robbers should have a factory
for manufacturing human parts like mouths, bellies, and hearts and so on. This
means that a rich man who could afford them could have two or three mouths,
this would mean that a rich man will never die; he could purchase immortality
with his money and leave death for the poor. Of course, this will not happen;
the competitor is speaking about something extraordinary and against the rules
of nature.
The cave is metaphorically suffocated with the rotten smell oozing
from the competitors who are boasting of their theft and their alliance with
foreigners in robbing their own motherland. This makes Wariinga nauseated
and dizzy. She yields to sleep under a tree outside the cave and she starts
hearing voices, the most important one is that of the revolutionary voice.
During her sleep, Wariinga hears a voice, she decides not to run away from
life’s struggles again and that she is not afraid of that voice. Here, Wariinga
shifts from her passivity into activity. On asking about the voice’s being, it
answers Wariinga that it is a roaming spirit but she recognizes the voice to be
the Tempter’s.
In spite of the fact that Wariinga is religious and attends the church,
she is allured into some extent by the voice of the Tempter, the voice itself
asks her why she is there inside the cave because only the corrupt are
attending and they are competing there. Too many words of wisdom are
uttered by the voice which leaves Wariinga astonished and dazzled by. The
voice explains to Wariinga the meaning of home which is not only the place of
residence or where we are born, but it has more broad meaning that is the
place inside our soul, what we love and we are ready to defend when anything
happens to it. This what Muturi and Wangari are doing, they rush to save their
 180

home from the corrupt people when they know them and sense the menace
which is endangering their own home. “Those who look at Ilmorog as their
home show their loyalty through their actions when they see their home
burning, they cry out for help, they went to seek help”. (185).
The voice tells Wariinga that there are two worlds only, which are the
world of the robber and that of the robbed, the world of the lords of theft and
that of the victims of theft, of the oppressor and of the oppressed, of those who
eat what others produce, and the producers themselves. Only the illuminated
and the educated can understand the meaning of these opposites. Muturi, for
example, knows this fact very clearly and he will defend his country with his
soul. Mutrti’s blood and sweat have been stolen from him and from all the
proletariat he represents. The spirit goes on telling Wariinga about the nature
of the thieves and robbers who are now gathering in the cave just to share the
wisdom of “I eat this, and you eat that”. The spirit explains to her the source of
the thieves’ wealth which comes from the sweat and blood of the poor, those
thieves know where they can drink water, that they have not gone to fetch,
they know where they can dam the water so it does not reach those who are
downstream, they know all the games of exploitation. The spirit goes on
telling Wariinga that while they are now discussing, Kimeendeeri wa
Kanyuanjii is standing on the platform and performing his skills, the spirit
even describes her how this competitor looks like, “his mouth is shaped like
the beak of the red-billed ox-pecker, his cheeks are as smooth as a newborn
baby’s. His legs are huge and shapeless”. (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross
188).
The competitor has acquired the name of Kimeendeeri, which means
the Grinder in English, during the Emergency due to the way he used to grind
workers and peasants to death. He was the District Officer, he used to make
men and women lie flat on the ground in a row and then he would drive his
luxurious car over their bodies. During Independence, this opportunist has
directly climbed the ladder to become a permanent secretary and then he has
worked with foreign companies especially those connected to finance. He
owns countless farms, his import and export business are equally numerous.
He has dozens of tricks up to his elbow, his skill in theft and robbery is visible
from a great distance. From all this description, it is clear enough that Mr.
 181

Kimeendeeri is a good example of the oppression, savagery, and cruelty,

which are widespread in the society and must be plucked up as soon as
possible. Inside the cave, such a man like Kimeendeeri deserves to be crowned
a king of theft and robbery because he understands that “the sweat and blood
of the workers are the wellsprings of wealth”. Kimeendeeri is not even
attempting to hide the fact, he is telling the other delegates that “our drinking
of the blood of the workers, our milking of their sweat, our devouring of their
brains, these three activities should be put on a scientific basis”. The scientific
plan would be as if this Kimeendeeri wants to set up a research farm fenced
with prickly wire just like that one used in detention camps, the plan is to cage
workers inside the farm like animals. He will then fix electrically operated
machines to their bodies for milking their sweat or the energy that produces
the sweat, their blood, and their brains. The three commodities will be
exported to foreign countries to feed industries there because Kimeendeeri will
get a commission for every gallon of blood, sweat or brain. He will construct
pipelines just like petroleum oil pipelines in order to transfer the blood to the
foreign countries. The workers will not be able to protest or even ask what is
happening to them because of the brainwash they will get through. This
brainwash will be applied in many ways; as the first way is to hire priests for
the workers who have religious inclination either( Muslims or Christians).
Every Sunday or Friday the workers will be read sermons that will instruct
them that the system of milking human sweat, human blood and human brains
is ordained by God and that has something to do with the eventual salvation of
their souls. To make this lie looks real; the priest enforces his sermon with
references from the Holy Scriptures thus:
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for
they will be filled, blessed are they that think ill of no man, for
they shall see God. Blessed are they that daily observe the four
commandments ‘thou shall not kill’, ‘thou shall not lie’, ‘thou
shall not steal’, ‘thou shall not covet other people’s property’,
for they shall inherit wealth in Heaven. (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil
on the Cross).
The second method they will follow is to build schools for the
worker’s children in which they will be taught that the system of drinking
 182

human blood and eating human flesh has been existed since the world is
created and will continue until the Day of Judgment and that there is nothing
people can do to put an end to the system. The children will be allowed only to
read those books that glorify the system of drinking human blood and eating
human flesh. They will not be allowed to ask questions about the conditions of
their lives or those of their parents or that might raise doubts about the sanctity
and necessity of exploiting the human sweat and blood. They will sing only
those songs and hymns and read only that literature which glorifies the system
of cannibalism. The third method Kimeendeeri will follow is that he will build
a hall where people will be shown films and will be entertained by concerts
and plays but all these diversions will glorify the traditions and cultures of the
bloodsuckers, the victims of cannibalism will always be presented as happy
and content.
The fourth way is that Kimeendeeri will publish a newspaper; its role
is to denigrate those opposed to the system of flesh eating and to celebrate the
charitable hand-outs of Kimeendeeri and his associates. The fifth method is
that Kimeendeeri will build breweries and clubs for strong alcoholic drinks, in
this way liquor will play the role of making the opposed people idiots. This
means that the churches, mosques, schools, poetry, the cinemas, the bars, the
clubs, the newspapers will act as brainwashing poisons which sole purpose is
to convince the workers that in this world there is nothing as glorious as
slavery to the Kimeendeeri class, so that each worker will look forward to the
day of his death, when his body will be a fertilizer to make the farm even more
productive. The intellectual, spiritual and cultural brainwashing toxins will
make the workers believe literally that to obey the Kimeenderi class is to obey
God and that to oppose their lords is to anger and oppose God. Moreover, to
ensure his safety and that of all his class Kimeendeeri will build prisons and
law courts and will hire armed forces, so that anyone who opposes his system
of laws and wishes to leave the confines of the farm will be punished by being
jailed or detained in pits of total darkness or shot and thrown to the wild
animals.
The spirit once more tries to seduce Wariinga by shaking her belief in
Christianity by telling her that all this cruelty is found in the sacred Bible itself
and in the religion itself there is an encouragement to cruelty and that the
 183

oppressed people are blessed by God in Heaven. The spirit gives Wariinga
pieces of evidence from the Scriptures that Jesus Christ encouraged his
followers to eat the flesh of each other’s in order to gain paradise after life
“Take eat, this is my body. Do this until I return Corpus Christi. Amen” (190).
The spirit tries to convince Wariinga that the Kimeendeeri class is
acting out of the central symbolism of the Christian religion. The Kimeenderis
are the true Christian disciples. Christianity according to the spirit or the
Tempter is a religion that is not fare with the oppressed, there is no equality
between the slave and the master. It is the same religion that tells the
oppressed not to observe the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
Violence spread when a poor man only demands his return of his eye or his
tooth. When the likes of Kimeendeeri poke out the eyes of a poor man with
sticks, rip him with whips or knock a worker’s tooth out with a rifle butt, the
likes of Kimeendeeri, Gitutus, and Ngunjis will go on celebrating all their
lives on the shoulders of millions of workers this way. Here is vividly clear
Ngugi’s attack on Christianity and on the missionaries.
The spirit goes on mocking the believers of Christianity and Islam who
are persistent to go to church or to the mosque every week to listen to the
Catechism of slavery. It criticizes Wariinga for her attempt to commit suicide
when the rich old man from Ngorika has defiled her and she has never fought
and demanded the return of her right but Wariinga defends herself by telling
that she is a woman, a weak creature and she has nothing to do in return. This
has something related to the patriarchal society where women are treated as
tools and second-hand citizens, they are treated by men as slaves and preys,
the women are very fragile and weak to the extent they dare not defend
themselves and protest against their oppressors and demand their rights as
human beings. These women must have faith in themselves first in order to
start the act, the faith that enables them to protest, that they have the potential
inside themselves, they can say no and unite to gain their freedom from the
patriarchs. The ignorance of one’s own capacity, the lack of faith, the inability
to change, the ignorance of the strength that lies in unity, all these things
sustain the slavery, oppression and the ill-treatment of women.
The spirit acts as the mouth of wisdom. It gives Wariinga a solution for
her own problems that is she should trust herself, she should stop using
 184

bleaching creams and singeing her hair, she should accept her blackness and
the curly hair she has, she should have faith in her own beauty and youth. Life
is still ahead of her, she should add the power of wealth to the powers she
already owns, in this way she can rid herself of the troubles she has faced.
Here, the irony lies where the Tempter, which is a bad spirit gives Wariinga a
piece of advice, while her fellow human beings are busy exploiting each
other’s and eating their own flesh. The wisdom is uttered by the devil himself,
while the human beings are turned into mere devils even excel the devil
himself. The spirit says:
Take a good look at yourself. You have a young body, singeing
your hair with hot combs and your skin with lightening
creams….Now add the power of youth and beauty the power of
property and you will rid your heart of all the troubles that
poverty is heir to. Men will kneel before your body some of
them content merely to touch the soil on which your feet have
trodden. (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 192).
The spirit tries to tempt Wariinga with the glories of property, the
palaces rounded with flowers of all different colors of the rainbow, the golf
courses, nightclubs where there is music that lures the birds in the sky,
luxurious cars, young men, perfumes all of these wonders will be Wariinga’s
if she kneels down before the devil and sing him praises, and sell her clean
soul to him. “Give me your soul and I will guard it for you”. But, Wariinga
refuses to obey the spirit and she still has strong faith in God and she will
never ever surrender her soul to the Devil. “Go away! Leave me alone, Satan!
Take your wiles and offer them to your own people. If I were to give you my
soul, what would I be left with?” At this stage comes Wariinga’s decision to
help the protestors to put the devil on the cross. She now turns into an activist,
a rebellious and a leader
On asking the voice about its real name, it replies Wariinga honestly
“Oppressor, Exploiter, Liar, Grabber. ‘I am worshipped by those who love to
dispose of goods that have been produced by others’. (192). Wariinga now has
a full understanding of what is going on in the cave, she realizes now that the
songs that are sung by the competitors in the cave are in self- praise of the
 185

Devil. These thieves are the followers of the Devil and their cunning gift is
from him, in exchange, these thieves give their souls to the Devil.
The Tempter resembles the voice of the author, which is the anti-
religious one. Ngugi employs the character of the Tempter giving it the good
characteristic of wisdom in order to condemn the falsehood of the Christian
Missionaries who have come to Africa to rob its natural resources not to
spread the true essence of Christianity. The tempter can also refer to the
dormant certainty that has been unadmitted by Wariinga for a long time.
Wariinga’s faith, which represents the true Christian faith that cannot be
shaken by any temptation, is juxtaposed by the false belief that is preached by
the colonial priests.
The news about the murder of Mwireri wa Mukiraai surprises
Wariinga, the spirit has told her that Mwireri will be murdered because the
words he uttered will cost him his life, because he calls for national self-
reliance in theft and robbery, because he refuses to share his loot with
foreigners. The foreigners grow very angry with him, the imperialists are not
satisfied with such a man, so they have decided to put an end to his life and to
ensure their interests safe.
It was not only Mwireri wa Mukiraai who has been punished but
Wangarii and Muturi have been also, in such a corrupt and imperialist world,
there is no place for justice. Protest against the imperialist rule in Africa is
mandatory but it cannot be fulfilled unless unity is accomplished, unity of the
entire social classes especially the Proletariat who are the majority of the
people and who have been subjected to oppression for decades.
Instead of the thieves who are gathered in the cave Wangari is arrested
under the accusation of spreading rumors, hatred, and planting seeds of
conflict in a country that is committed to peace and stability. Wariinga
ironically comments on the word ‘peace’ which Wangari is accused to ruin, by
telling Gatuiria that this ‘peace’ is only been ruined when the poor demand
their eyes or teeth. No one will speak about the peace of the nation that is
being raped by the foreign imperialists. This is the very nation whose people
have sold it to the foreigners and let themselves be used by those foreigners as
their slaves, tools, and watchdogs, even the police which is supposed to
protect the poor and the innocent people is now corrupt and protecting the
 186

robbers. The rule in Africa now becomes like the one in a jungle where the
strongest rules, there is no place for the weak, meek, innocent and clean
people.
Wangari is the one who has courage to protest and to denounce the
thieves inside the cave, in spite of that she is arrested instead of them, but yet
she is still a national hero, a true patriot who could not stand silent and passive
watching her country robbed by foreigners, she takes her part bravely and
delivers her message honestly.
These are the men who have always oppressed us peasants,
denying us clothes and food and sleep. These are the men who
stole the heritage bequeathed to us by Waiyaki wa Hiinga and
Kimaathi wa Wacuiri, and by all the brave patriots who have
shed their blood to liberate Kenya. These are the imperialist
watchdogs, the children of the devil chain their hands…throw
them into eternal jail…for this is the fate of those who sell
foreigners the heritage of our founding patriarchs and patriots.
(N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 196-7).
The embarrassment that Wangari causes inside the cave has troubled
all the thieves and the foreigners as well, the master of ceremonies orders the
corrupt superintendent to act at the moment, the latter being very humble,
offers his apologies to them but his speech is very ironic and meaningful:
I am sorry sir truly sorry to tell you the truth I did not know
that you were the people who had gathered here I thought it
was the ordinary small-time thieves and robbers from Njeruca
you know those who play around with your property and
sometimes break into banks that belong to foreigners like the
guests we have here that woman brought reports that the
thieves and robbers who have troubled and bankrupted the
whole country were hiding in this lair bragging about their
exploits (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 197).
The irony of this quotation lies in the fact that the real thieves and
robbers, whom the police inspector is talking about are the foreigners
themselves whom he is extending his apologies to.
 187

Though the fate turns against her, Wangari does not display any fear,
she merely asks in a voice that is quite steady: “So you, the police force are
the servants of one class only? And to think that I stupidly went ahead and
entrusted my love of my country to treacherous rats that love to devour
patriotism!” (198). During this time, Muturi advances near the cave with the
hurling sounds of his crowd of peasants, workers, and students. The
procession is full of people carrying posters bearing different slogans such as
‘we reject the system of theft and robbery’. ‘Our poverty is their wealth’. ‘The
thief and the witch are twins, their mother is exploitation’. Muturi is leading
the procession of workers, peasants, and university students also; the unity
which combines all these people is the only solution to break out from
exploitation. The socialist trend of the author is clearly illustrated in the
following extract by Muturi:
We must struggle and fight against the culture of fear. And
there is only one cure, a strong organization of the workers and
peasants of the land, together with those whose eyes and ears
are now open and alert? These brave students have shown
which side education should serve. My friends, you should
come to join us too bring your education to us and don’t turn
your backs on the people, that’s the only way. (N. w. Thiong'o,
Devil on the Cross 205).
This extraordinary spectacle of masses will chase away the exploiters’
class from their den in the cave. The power of arms together with the power of
mind unite the masses and will be the only solution as well as assertion for the
oppressed. The angry crowd rushes into the cave and the drama starts by
running away the fat thieves who look funny and terrified by the crowd,
Muturi ascends the stage to deliver his speech, he starts by saluting the fellow
clansmen, the clan of workers, he mocks the fat bellied thieves whose tummies
are swollen due to exploiting the hard work of the workers, the workers build
houses while others occupy them. The workers make clothes, others take them
and dress well, while the tailors go naked, the peasants grow plants; others eat
the food while the farmer strives. The builders build schools, other people’s
children find places in them, while the workers’ children go looking for food
 188

in rubbish heaps and in dustbins, but today these workers are taking a stand
they refuse to go on being the pot that cooks but never tastes the food.
The next one who speaks is the leader of the students who happens to
rescue Wariinga from death under a bus in Nairobi. He welcomes the mass
and assures it that the students are standing hand by hand together with the
workers in their struggle against the exploiters. This is the real revolution, the
final solution for the people to put an end to Imperialism and neo-colonialism
all over the world, the unity of the proletariat should be supported by the unity
of the illumined, hand in hand, arm in arm, together they will banish and
destroy all kinds of exploitation, oppression, and imperialism.
We the mass of students in Ilmorog, support the workers fully
in their just struggle against the system of modern theft and
robbery, the workers are the forefront of the fight against neo-
colonialism, the last stage of Imperialism. When the
organization of Ilmorog workers got wind of the gathering of
local and international thieves and robbers, they informed us as
a student organization, it was then I printed cards to indicate to
people the nature of the feast, to show them it was going to be
like a Devil’s feast organized by Satan. Let’s all now join
hands with the working people in their just war against the
drinking of human blood, the eating of human flesh and the
many other crimes perpetrated by imperialism in its neo-
colonial stage. (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 209).
The Ilmorog worker’s leader is the last to speak; he pays tribute to the
university students’ courage, then the voice of the workers unite in one voice
to tell that all belong to one clan, there is no difference among them, the cause
of fighting neo-colonialism unite them, communism unite them and in their
unity and solidarity lies their strength. This is the real revolution that Ngugi
preaches and aims; this is the true assertion of the masses.
I believe that we, the workers, are of one clan, and hence we
should not allow ourselves to be divided by religion, color or
tribe. I believe that in the organization of the workers lies in
our strength. For those who are organized never lose their way,
and those who are not organized are scattered by the sound of
 189

one bullet. I, therefore, believe in the unity of the workers,

because unity is our strength. I believe that imperialism and its
local representatives are the enemies of the progress of the
workers and peasants and of the whole nation. I therefore vow
always to struggle against neo-colonialism, for neo-colonialism
is the last vicious kick of a dying imperialism. (N. w. Thiong'o,
Devil on the Cross 210).
The protest ends with several causalities; those are killed by the
military forces which rush to the cave in order to protect the imperialists and
to practice more oppression upon the workers. Muturi is arrested together with
the student’s leader and many others. The national radio does not mention that
many workers are killed by the military forces but mentions that two
policemen are killed. This is another proof that all the institutions of the local
government are involved in the corruption and the practice of oppression
Furthermore; they have reported the news about Mwrieri wa Mukiraai who is
killed in a car accident.
Two years have passed after the death scenes of the cave, the most
important thing in these two years is that Wariinga has changed and started a
new life; it is obvious that the previous experience she has undertaken has
taught her a lot and led to this change. She lives now in Ngara area at Nairobi,
Wariinga takes the decision that she will no more be a mere flower, whose
purpose is to decorate the doors, windows and tables of others, waiting to be
thrown on a rubbish heap the moment her splendor withers. The Wariinga of
today decides to be self- reliant all the time to plunge into the middle of the
arena of life’s struggles in order to discover her real strength and to realize her
true humanity.
The new Wariinga has stopped singeing her hair and using whitening
creams long time ago. She is now using a scarf over her hair and wearing the
traditional dress of Kenya. Wariinga now is a mechanical engineer specialized
in motor vehicles and other internal combustion engines, she is now an expert
at fitting and turning, at forging and welding, at shaping metal to suit a variety
of services. She protests now against all those people who denigrate the
capacity and intelligence of women and telling that women are created for jobs
like cooking, household and to offer sex. Wariinga must accord all her
 190

faculties, their proper role and proper time and place and not let any part of her
body to be the sole ruler of her life. She says goodbye to being a secretary and
swears that she will never type again for the likes of Boss Kihara. Wariinga
goes to the polytechnic college to study the same engineering course she has
always dreamed of, she is now working in a workshop and is very pleased
with what she is doing. Ngugi has intended to bring the change in Wariinga’s
character to stress the need for the Kenyans to go back to their traditional roots
and abandon the newly bred customs and trends. It is never late to bring the
change in one’s life, no matter how passive one has been, the most important
thing is to wake up and start over.
Wariinga has many challenges during her study; she faces financial
problems because she does not have a sponsor like the other students who are
supported financially by employers who pay all their fees and other costs.
Gatuiria has offered her his help but she refuses to take any penny. Therefore,
Wariinga manages only by undertaking all sorts of odd jobs, like hairdressing
in a beauty salon, or typing research papers and dissertations which Gatuiria
brings her from the university. When she is not doing any work she attends
Karate and Judo classes at the Kenya Martial Arts Club in her area. She
understands the necessity to be able to defend herself and stand on her own in
every way. Wariinga goes to the workshop to find out that the workers are
gathering there and looking very sad because their site has been sold off to
Boss Kihara and a group of foreigners from the USA, Germany, and Japan.
They intend to build a tourist hotel on the site; Wariinga comments rightfully
and ironically that they are going to build a factory for modern prostitution.
The likes of boss Kihara are going to sell African women to foreigners,
this is the main reason for building such tourist hotels which are meant to
nurture a nation of prostitutes, servants, cooks, shoeshine boys, bed makers,
porters …in a brief to nurture servants to meet the whims of foreigners. Ngugi
is particularly concerned about the treatment of women as sexual tools for
men: “people love to denigrate the intelligence and the intellectual capacity of
our women by saying the only jobs a woman can do are to cook, to make beds
and to spread their legs in the market of love” (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the
Cross 218).
 191

Ngugi’s intention behind creating the Devil’s feast is to portray how

the Kenyans have detached themselves from the cultural and traditional values
that glorify the principle of fighting for a communal aim and adopted the
system of self-interest that celebrates the acquisition of money
In Devil on the Cross, Ngugi deliberately avoids a simple solution
showing that the attack of the peasants and workers on the middle class’ elite
and the foreign thieves and Wariinga’s elimination of the Rich Old Man mark
the beginning of an arduous struggle that lies ahead. The masses have not
overthrown the political system. Five of them have been killed in the
confrontation. Wariinga in all probability has lost her fiancée and her future is
fraught with danger, as the forces of bourgeoisie law are certain to catch up
with and charge her with murder.
Devil on the Cross is “an experimental novel” in which the author
attempts to “communicate with Kenya’s underprivileged majority” (Kabir). As
Devinder Mohan observes that the novel “presents a literary form which
captures the nature of revolution in the humanistic contest by differentiating
the psychological and universalized motives in the working class against the
materialistic acquisition” (Mohan). Ogunjimi Bayo in his turn has the view
that:
The general philosophical debates in Devil on the Cross
are based on the concept of Evil and Good. But Ngugi's
philosophy is a characterization of the conflicts of the capitalist
mode of production and ethics. Antithetical juxtapositions
such as Heaven and Hell, God and Satan, Life and Death, Body
and Heart are thematic syndromes for explaining such a
materialist culture. Ngugi's strong logic about the natural and
physical law governing the Body and the Heart is a way of
depicting the social contradictions of our real world…The
concept of Evil and Good extends to the level of
characterization. The novel makes a dramatic tabloid where
characters act their virtues and vices. (Ogunjimi 11).
The characters of the novel are grouped into the creators (the workers)
and the destroyers of life (the imperialists). Ngugi uses Wariinga’s story as
common to many young women in Kenya to criticize the political workings of
 192

contemporary Kenya as faced with the so-called “Satan of Capitalism”. Ngugi

justifies his creating of Wariinga’s character as such: ‘because the women are
the most exploited and oppressed section of the entire working class, I would
create a picture of strong determined woman with a will to resist and to
struggle against the conditions of her present being’ (Ngugi wa Thiong’o,
1981: 10). Jacinta Wariinga is the most powerful character in Ngugi’s novels
and the “heroine of the toil” (Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 1981:3) and a “resourceful,
productive and dynamic woman” (Ogunjimi 67), and the “flower of Ngugi’s
text” (Florence Stratton.1994: 164).
When Wariinga attends the Devil’s Feast, the gloomy phase of her life
is over and she becomes more assertive and critical of the system. Her
revolutionary optimism is strengthened by her rescuer Muturi who trusted her
by giving her the gun he has got from a thieve in the cave, he encourages her
and enhances her self-trust. Wariinga proves to be equal to man and plays a
constructive role in the novel by emphasizing that women can be more than
sex gratifying and childbearing machines, women are not men’s commodity,
or an edible thing to be devoured, an inanimate object or a jewelry to be worn
by man.
Like Wanja in Petals of Blood, Wariinga suffers from colonial
situations and could not complete her education because of poverty and she
has to strive for survival, her life runs parallel to Wanja’s up to a point. Both
women hail from Ilmorog, both run to Nairobi when they were pupils,
pregnancy shatters their dreams of academic success. Both are seduced by rich
old men, both of them have difficulty finding work and both are tempted to
resort to prostitution. Both of them can attain assertion through education.
This is exactly what Wariinga pursues in this novel and what Wanja has tried
to do for Josef to let him continue his learning because Wanja has got to
understand the real power of education and that it is a weapon in the hands of
the oppressed.
As Ngugi points out, Wariinga is a “fictional reflection of the
resistance heroine in Kenyan history, conceived along the lines of Mau Mau
women cadres” (N. w. Thiong'o, Writers in Politics 10-11).When Wariinga
shoots the Rich Old Man, she at one level kills the destroyer of women, the
exploiter of women’s virginity and the eater of women flesh. She stresses the
 193

need to see the humanness behind the beauty. At another level, Wariinga
eliminates a respective of the exploiting force. Since this Old Man means ‘the
one who scoops’, here the scooping is characteristic of the bourgeoisie.
Through the character of Wariinga, Ngugi wants to attain the liberation of
women in the society. Here, it is relevant to quote Gichingiri Ndigirigi:
While Wariinga appears a credible protagonist exemplifying
the liberation of women, even going through a revolutionary
change, she fails as a reflection of the “resistance heroine of
Kenyan history”. She is a character who develops from passion
to purpose instead of vice versa. (Ndigirigi).
It is crystal clear that Ngugi champions women’s rights in Kenya. He
argues for the education of women especially practical education: Waringa is
training to become an auto mechanic. Ngugi is particularly concerned about
the treatment of women as the sexual possessions of men. Ngugi also deplores
women’s attempts to lighten their skin, straighten their hair and follow the
current fashions and celebrates the beauty of African women who are strong
and independent. Wariinga’s murder of the old man is a decisive gesture of
self-assertion. This is corroborated by the fact that she chooses to dress herself
in the traditional Gikuyu costume at this fateful moment. This stresses the
coming of Wariinga back to her traditional roots. The other main female
character in this novel is Wangari. Most of Ngugi’s female characters are
usually dynamic with a strong sense of heroism. Ndigirigi says:“Wangari
exemplifies the conscientization of the peasant. (Ndigirigi 105).
When Wangari was young, she used to carry bullets and guns to the
freedom fighters in the forests. She is aware of the movement’s goals, to shed
blood as she says “ so that our children might eat until they are full, might
wear clothes that keep out the cold, might sleep in beds free from bed
bugs”(40). She is arrested for being a vagrant and not possessing essential
documents for entering Nairobi; she is taken to the court and charged with the
motive of stealing. She is released when she promises to show them where real
robbers and thieves are in Ilmorog. Inside the cave, she is involved in the
revolutionary struggle against “the Robbers” of her country.
Ngugi stresses that the wretched of the earth cannot be allowed to
remain under repression and he endorses that such people are compelled to
 194

wage decisive wars against any oppressive order. Ngugi suggests that glaring
inequalities among people in various parts of the world should be vehemently
resisted and unity and solidarity among the subjugated people should be
motivated. These factors certainly constitute a potential force to fight against
imperialism. Ngugi is committed to the side of the people in their liberation
struggles for a ‘communal home’ to be built on a new foundation. At the
second international conference of African literature in the English language
held at the University of Calabar in Nigeria in 1982, Ngugi states the cultural
background, linguistic and social vision that inform African oration in general:
I was born in a large peasant family: father, four wives and
about twenty-eight children. I also belonged as we all did, in
those days that is my generation, to a wider extended family
and to the community as a whole. We spoke Gikuyu as we
worked in the fields. We spoke Gikuyu in and outside the
home. I can vividly recall those evenings when we sat around
the fireside and grown-ups and we, the children would tell
stories in turns. (N. w. Thiong'o, Decolonizing the Mind: the
Politics of Language in African Literature 384).
Not only Wariinga who has changed but also Gatuiria in the last two
years. He completes his composition by mixing the various voices and the
various sounds in harmony, each voice taking its own separate path, and
finally, they come together again. The various voices floating in harmony like
a river flowing through flat plains towards the sea, all the voices blending into
each other like the colors of the rainbow. The same is true for the instruments.
This mixture of voice is similar to the union of all layers of the Kenyan society
that have been come together in their march to dismantle the devil.
Although Ngugi champions writing in African languages and now
writes only in Gikuyu, he considers the question of how to reach readers
outside. Ngugi’s declaration that his writing in Gikuyu language is a part of
the anti-imperialist struggles of Kenyan and African peoples might not have
impressed his fellow writers as well as a number of scholars. His answer has
always been that they will be reached through translations: “Writing in Gikuyu
does not cut me off from other language communities because there are
always opportunities for translation”.(Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 1985: 155).
 195

In this novel, Gatuiria has the fluency in English but likes to speak in
Gikuyu which denotes that he is rooted in his own land and adores his
language even he excels the language of his enemies(the English). In the same
way, Ngugi is committed to his mother tongue and other African languages.
Ngugi’s decision to write in his native tongue is totally unique. African
literature is produced in all of the tongues of the continent, Ngugi takes part in
the reconceptualization of language and in the reorientation of African
literature studies which become the hallmarks of the program of
decolonization that has characterized the post-colonial era. S.V. Srinivas
comments on the nature of language and its relation to politics and culture in
the context of Ngugi’s program:
Ngugi’s intervention as a writer has to do with the interrogation
of linguistic dependency. In deciding to write in Gikuyu
instead of English, he revises significantly the political agenda
of the African writer. Ngugi may not have succeeded in getting
many writers to follow him, but his achievement may be in the
undoubted fact that those who have questioned socio-economic
dependence but not linguistic colonialism can, after his
discussion of the politics of language is no longer at ease (S.V.
Srinivas, 1993: 103).
As regarding the style, Devil on the Cross is written in a unique style
akin to an oral performance. It begins and ends with the third person
omniscient voice of the “prophet of justice” who provides poignant social and
existential commentary. The novel can be easily performed as a play and
thereby used to educate and inform its mainly illiterate audience of their
political situation. Ngugi has successfully employed aspects of Gikuyu oral
tradition in order to reach out to the Kenyan peasants and workers, the sector,
which he feels that it is his duty-bound to mobilize into revolutionary action.
Although by writing in the vernacular language Ngugi aims to reach all
Kenya’s dispossessed, “that 80% of the people are living below the breadline
standard” (N. w. Thiong'o, Decolonizing the Mind: the Politics of Language in
African Literature 25). In reality, he can only reach those Kenyans who
understand Gikuyu, just one out of the forty linguistic groups existed in
Kenya. Arguing along this line would mean that Ngugi’s message in Gikuyu
 196

could only reach members of his ethnic community or those Kenyans who
have learned to speak this language. The novel is read in buses, bars and other
public premises have had Ngugi to describe his novel’s reception in terms of
the “appropriation of the novel into the oral tradition” (N. w. Thiong'o,
Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature 83).
Once Ngugi in an interview said: “when I came to the Devil on the
Cross, two things have happened. I changed language … I had to shift the
language to Gikuyu … I can rely more and more on songs, proverbs, riddles,
anecdotes”. Ngugi’s arrangement of proverbs in the story is highly creative. In
the cave to prove the robbers’ skills in exploiting the poor of Kenya, the
master of ceremonies opines “a homestead with a whetstone at the get never
has a blunt knife”(87). He also suggests that the trialed robbers should learn
from the veterans of the trade because “the leopard did not know how to kill
with his claws until he was taught by the herdsman”(87). Mwaura, the driver
of the matatu car and a member of the devil’s Angels, a professional hit gang
used by the wealthy in neo-colonial Kenya draws the attention of the
passengers “the Mwaura you see has not been sharpened on one side only, like
a matchet”(33).
Some proverbs are traditional: “the forest of the heart is never cleared
of all its trees”(7)“aping others cost the frog its buttock”(12); “a man who
doesn’t travel think that it’s only his mother who cooks wild vegetables”(71).
These proverbs connect the narrative with oral tradition. They also provide a
rhythm to the narrative with development and logic for conversations between
characters different from that of traditional western narrative. Not all the
proverbs are traditional; some are taken from contemporary experience:
“Money can flatten mountains” (117). Through these proverbs, Ngugi directs
his narrative to Gikuya audience. At the same time, he shows that traditional
wisdom alone is not enough to guide the contemporary African society; it can
be called upon to support both African socialism and neo-colonial corruption.
Ngugi applies two other important aspects of the oral tradition to serve
his revolutionary perspective, they are parables and songs. One of the parables
is narrated by Wariinga early in the story. It records the misfortunes of Mahua
Kareendi, a Kenyan girl. She will not get a job until she liberally reconcile
with the sexual offers of the bosses. When she rejects boss Kihara’s advances
 197

she loses her job and when she describes her tale of woe to her boyfriend, John
Kimwana, he walks out accusing her of being Boss Kihara’s mistress. The
parable ends with an observation:
To the Kareendis of modern Kenya, isn’t each day exactly the
same as all the others? for the day on which they are born is the
very day on which every part of their body is buried expect
one-they are left with a single organ. So when will the
Kareendis of modern Kenya wipe the tears from their faces?
When will they ever discover laughter? (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil
on the Cross 26).
On his turn, Gatuiria tells one more parable. It is about the old man of
Bahati states its origin to him. Gatuiria begins research on African traditional
music, using songs to rewrite the history of Kenya. He in the course of
research meets the old man of Bahati. The first movement of the song is an
evocation of an old tradition in an era when the Gikuyus danced, told stories
and cultivated the land since the post-independence era brought more
repression and oppression, this time by the local elite, the fifth movement of
the song dwells on the resurgence of the Mau Mau announcing :
Sounds and voices of a new struggle,
To rescue the soul of the nation.
Horns
Drums
Flutes
Voices of rebirth
Voice of our heroes
Voices of Mau Mau
Voices of revolution
Voices of revolutionary unity of workers and peasants
(N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 229-230).
By using songs, the author employs a form very close to the heart of
his audience. Historically, songs have played an important role in Gikuyu
society. The landless peasants also used work songs to reduce their
psychological tension.
 198

Devil on the Cross is a form of resistant political discourse. The novel

is a continuation of Ngugi’s earlier works. The novel bears a Marxist stamp
and belongs to the category of socialist art. Ngugi is in ultimate agreement
with the aims of the working class and the emergent socialist world. As Harish
Narang points out:
Devil on The Cross deals with post-independence Kenya well
established on the path of ‘development’, what with the
wholesale exploitation of the masses, both rural and urban-
particularly the most vulnerable sections of the society namely
workers, peasants students….There is rampant corruption,
thuggery, nexus between business and crime, politicians and
swindlers- both national and international. (Narang).
In many ways, Ngugi’s goal is reminiscent of Marxist ideology, as the
novel is in the long run meant to educate the Kenyans on the necessity to fight
the corruption of their society. The central event in the novel is the “Devil’s
Feast”. In allegorical form, the “Devil’s Feast” attest to the exploitation of
peasants and workers by foreign business interests and a greedy indigenous
bourgeoisie.
Devil on the Cross depicts the predicament of the masses and the
proletariat particularly in the most recent political set-up in Africa in
accordance with the belief of the socialist Ngugi that African authors should
stick “to the crisis or conflict between the emergent African bourgeoisie and
the African masses.” (N. w. Thiong'o, Writers in Politics 34). According to
Edward Shills, “Ideologies arise in conditions of crisis and in sectors of
society where the prevailing situation has become unacceptable” he states “ an
ideology arises because there are strongly felt needs which are not satisfied by
the prevailing outlook, for an explanation of important experience, for the firm
guidance of conduct and for a fundamental legitimating of the value and
dignity of the persons who feel these needs. (Shills 9). Ngugi’s ideological
commitment to the masses of Kenya must consequently be seen as an outcome
of loss of confidence in the capability of the leading section to construct a
successful society along the lines of capitalist ideology. In this novel, as the
devil appears profoundly ingrained. Even throughout Wariinga’s nightmare, it
is obvious that the devil does not suffer and die on the cross because it is soon
 199

released by the dark-suited neo-colonial followers. Resistance is hushed, and

the rebellious voice is muted. This state of affairs has forced suffering
Wariinga and her likes to seek compensation and join the masses. By the time
Wariinga decides to join the masses at the cave, she is transformed from
passivity into activity and it is at this stage that she gets a gun from Muturi
which she later uses to kill her oppressor the rich old man from Ngorika.
In conclusion, Devil on the Cross as a political and communist novel
affirms that the concord of the peasants and the workers in a united and
collective manner against their exploiters will liberate them from the present
state of bondage and life of misery and poverty.
 200

CHAPTER ѴІ
CONCLUSION
 201

This study is carried on analyzing the themes of oppression, protest, and

assertion in the novels of Mulk Raj Anand and Ngugi wa Thiong’o and to
restate that Marxist ideology is more pronounced in their novels. As the
writings of both the above- mentioned novelists prove to be committed to the
communal cause of humanity. An endeavor has been made in the present
dissertation to take up all these strains as are embedded in their works into a
process of synoptic evaluation and assessment, with an emphasis particularly
on Anand and Ngugi’s commitment to their own communities.
In regards to Mulk Raj Anand, the analyses and the arguments in the
first two chapters clearly testify the novelist’s commitment to the cause of
untouchability, caste system, class distinction, and poverty. Anand’s social
realism theory has its roots in the humanist tradition within the conceptual
framework of Marxism. He is the founder of “All India Progressive Writers
Association”. (Ram 8). He has denounced “arts for art’s sake” school for
writing as irrelevant since he has sensed that every writer is a committed one
in one way or another. His commitment to social radicalism makes him an
activist engaged in championing the cause of Indian freedom under the
guidance of socialist leaders as Gandhi and Nehru. He abhors the imperialist
hegemony of the British. He is a social reformer engaged in the campaigning
war against all forms of social oppression and religious authoritarianism. The
well-known socialist writer Maxim Gorky remarked once: “We are enemies,
implacable, I am certain. An honest worker is always an enemy of society and
even more an enemy of those who defend and justify, agreed and envy, these
base pillars of modern social organization”. (Gorky 144).
Anand does not have any elaborate artistic theory of his novels but he
evolves his own mode of viewing at the novel as an artistic communication of
the real as well as the replica of the real. In his adoption of the technique of
realism with naturalistic determinism, he interprets the problems besetting
man and society and comes out with a mature view of life with his strong
belief in the perfectibility of man, in the “togetherness of life”. As K.R. Rao
rightly observes:
Mulk Raj Anand, however, reveals a total commitment to
socialist doctrine and gives credence to ideological analysis and
humanistic evaluation. He merely presents a cross-section of
 202

Indian society through the national survey of the prevailing

conditions in the twenties subordinates, rather than highlights
the historical experience. (Rao.K.R 4).
Anand’s being a fictionist can be marked out through his “fictionalized
autobiographies” which are written in the later phase of his career. Anand
wrote his personal reminiscences in 2000 and added pages at the behest of
Irene. (Ram 18). Anand has adopted the confessional mould aiming to reach
out and understanding Man and the Universe in terms of his social
assumptions and evaluations. His projected series of autobiographical novels
are in fact the products of lifetime creativity and thus contain some of his well-
set insights on “Life, Man, and Society”. Anand has attempted to project not
only the details of his life experiences but also provided a panoptic picture of
India which is struggling for its selfhood. In all his novels, individuals are
suffering due exploitation, hypocrisy, rigidity and oppression. He is adhered
and tied up with his own community and he is aware that it either needs a
revolution and a protest or even a “change of heart” to cleanse his society of
its corruption.
Anand’s novels Untouchable and Coolie are the most valiant because
they contain Anand’s revolutionary idealism, his ideas about various kinds of
determinism and the place of man in the contingent structure of society have
contributed to the success of these books. His idealism has been changed from
revolutionary socialism into what he calls “comprehensive historical
humanism” (Ram 18). This transformation in him might be due to his
influence by radicals like Karl Marx, Fredrich Engels and a number of
socialists. Moreover, there is no difference between what Anand has so loudly
professed and what he has finally achieved as a fictionist.
Anand believes that literature and life are parallel expansions and it is
this inherent belief in man’s perfectibility which leads him into a series of
epiphanies clashes. He is a socialist who puts his fictional art at the service of
his propaganda. He seems to have excelled in many ways, contradicted a good
many literary theorists to hold out the view that “the primary condition of art
is not form but sensibility” (Cowasjee, So Many Freedoms A Study of The
Major Fiction of Mulk Raj Anand 165). According to Arnold Bennett
“Anand’s novels contain an all-embracing compassion and social gesture”.
 203

Anand’s volcanic outbursts are not so much directed against the individuals as
with various kinds of social determinism. His protestations are so powerfully
cogent. Sometimes, when his anger burns and when the vehemence of his
propaganda loses its edge, he turns a humanist empathizing with the lot of the
India’s “lost generation” (S.A.Khan 90). The stories of the first two selected
novels are centered round the chief characters who are unheroic-heroes who
suffer social indignities. Anand projects the tragedies of Bakha and Munoo in
a very sensitive manner, he aims to touch the soul of every one reads these two
novels, tears will drop spontaneously on the tragic end of Munoo who is just
fourteen and Bakha who is eighteen both died with unfulfilled dreams. Anand
attempts to cover the saga of suffering from Untouchable to Coolie, the
themes and forms of these novels are so geared as to bring out a cohesive
vision of the social milieu of his present time, almost with a pointing accuracy.
Anand leads a protest in these two novels, he expresses his revolt
directly against the social strains which the caste Hindus have put in
Untouchable and the upper rich class people practice upon the poor in Coolie.
The theme of oppression is dominant in all the four novels. Respectively, this
theme with its various forms where in Untouchable there is the oppression that
is practiced upon the downtrodden outcastes from the high caste Hindus, the
molestation of the untouchable girls by the upper caste men, the oppression
that is found among the low-castes themselves and the game of the one who is
higher in birth statue is the most dominant and powerful. In Coolie there is the
domestic child oppression, the social one, the physical, the mental, the
oppression which is practiced upon the low classes, the hill folk, and the
workers. In Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross, there is the political
oppression which is practiced by the politicians over the locals. There is also
the economic exploitation practiced by the neo-colonial agents upon the
peasants. There also is moral repression practiced upon the African women by
turning them into commodities to trade in. There are other forms of oppression
such as the cultural, psychological, educational, religious and authoritarian
oppression.
In Untouchable, the British and the Sahibs are justified by the novelist
for being more merciful to the untouchables than the upper caste Hindus, in
spite of the fact that former are the colonizers of India, yet they are more
 204

compassionate with the untouchables than the ones who share them the same
flesh and blood. Anand spots light on the hypocrisy of the religious people and
accuses Hinduism of being the main cause of dividing the Hindu society in
accordance with the religious background. As regarding Munoo in Coolie, the
social assumptions are overstretched; Munoo is pitted against regimentation of
a class-system which impedes Munoo’s development as an individual as he is
forced by the circumstances to move from one place to another in search of a
job and foothold in life. In his journeys, he is exposed to brutalities, pain,
insults, and humiliation. He also finds cheering gesture of friendship from
sympathetic fellow-oppressed like Hari. The theme of oppression is very vivid
in the cotton mill chapter, where not only adults are enslaving inside the cotton
mill but also the children are hired and are exposed to the danger of the
machines for a trivial salary. This is exactly what has happened to Hari’s son,
who accidentally cuts his hand in the machine and gets a serious injury. Anand
here draws attention to the child labor issue and exposes clearly the cruelty of
the employers. The serial of exploitation continues wherever Munoo goes; at
the pickle factory, he together with the other coolies and his master Prabha are
exploited by Ganpat and the moneylenders until the bankruptcy of Prabha and
his final collapse. Anand draws a clear distinction in the pickle factory scene
between the simplicity of the hill folk and the cruelty of the city dwellers. In
Sir George White Cotton Mills, Anand’s comprehension of the colonial state
is seen in the vague equation he makes between native and employer and
between the white imperialist ruler and the capitalist landowner. Munoo who
is from the abused and oppressed class of workers finally understands that his
low status is only a partial expression of the slave-like status of workers.
Hence, Sauda’s speech arouses the indignation of the mill workers by
contrasting their real existing condition with the white colonial contempt for
them. This is the real intention of Anand behind the writing of Coolie, he
wants to awaken the lethargic coolies to claim their rights. Anand’s Marxist
views are illustrated through the character of Sauda.
In Coolie, Anand criticizes class discrimination. He explains that the
Indian society is divided into two main classes according to money power;
there are the rich and the poor. The oppression is practiced upon the low-class
people. Anand portrays poverty as a major evil in his society; the proletariat is
 205

being exploited by the landlords and the factory owners. In Coolie, Anand
criticizes the British and the rich Indians for being the main exploiters of the
people. He revolts and protests through the strikes that took place in the
factories, as what Ratan, the wrestler did twice, then he suggests Marxism i.e.
communism to be the solution for the proletariat quest for self-assertion. The
Mumbai cotton factory scene signifies the main theme of oppression where
innumerable lads like Munoo are condemned to a subhuman reality. As Anand
writes “the coolies are shivering, weak, bleary, with twisted ugly faces, black,
filthy, gutless, spineless, with unconscious, vacant looks” (Anand, Coolie
247). He adds:
These coolies toil with their sweat and blood, while the
oppressors discuss the weather over a cup of tea. What is
revolting is that their employers like Mr. Little should think
that they should all be put up against a wall and shot, the whole
darned lot of them (Anand, Coolie 257).
By brilliantly exposing the dilemma of coolies, Anand brings out the
inhumanity bred by avarice and cash power. In Coolie, Munoo spends his life
wandering from place to place in search for self-identity; he changes many
professions and tries different jobs just to survive and to find his real
personality in a class-ridden society, where money is power. Death becomes
Munoo’s true assertion that marks the end of his turmoil. Sometimes death
would be a more merciful end for the miserable when other ways fail to solve
the complications of life. God being so mercy would set his peace upon His
men and save them from the claws of the harsh life. This elucidation might be
little philosophical but yet it seems a better alternative than surviving without
dignity and self-identity. The same tragedy happens to Bakha, the tragic hero
of Untouchable, who also died of consumption, his death ends up the
harshness of his life. The author’s intention behind letting his heroes die at an
early stage of their life not only to save them from the harshness of life but
also stresses the author’s failure in finding a true practical solution for their
sufferings.
While describing the tragic woes of his teen-aged boys, the novelist
condemns the religious men. The chubby yogi of the shrine of Bhagat Har Das
is a sly person who seduces young childless women on the pretext of granting
 206

them children. Munoo, taken in by his appearance, seeks his help to initiate
him into spirituality so that he could prove to be a worthy son of his master,
Prabha Dayal. Nevertheless, he is overpowered by a sense of shame when he
discovers the wicked reality of the voluptuary priests who wore the saintliness
mask of purity. There are many good examples of Anand’s anger and his
critique of the religious men. He unveils the hypocrisy of the religious men by
picturing their debauchery in Coolie as well as in Untouchable.
Anand becomes a committed writer by both choice and inclination. He
searches for “Faith” which can provide him conceptual framework to work
with and his reading of Karl Marx’s Letters on India and the Communist
Manifesto seems to have opened new horizons of meaning for him and an
experiential awareness. Anand wears the cloak of a humanist and envisions the
need for massive revolution in India, through his realistic fiction without
overstepping the boundaries of the molecular view of life.
By joining the peasant revolt, Anand becomes an ideal political activist
who tries to find out solutions for the suffering humanity. From alienation to
rootedness and then on the purposive social action that appears to be the
frequent pattern in the lives of his fictional heroes. Anand juxtaposes the
economic-social valuations in terms of the strides made by industrialization in
India. Machine thus becomes the fused symbol of human betterment, as he
introduces it as a solution in Untouchable but at the same time, this very
solution becomes an agent of self-destruction, when the human becomes idle,
thrown out of job without any other supportive fulcrum along with his
community. He finds no other alternative than to halt the very process of rapid
mechanization that has thrown him out of job. This solution becomes a
double-edged weapon when on the one hand, it rids the untouchables of their
dirty profession of cleaning others’ dirt and at the same time, it annihilates the
problem of untouchability. On the other hand, it increases the risk of idleness
when the machine replaces the human hand, the average of poverty increases.
Revolutions will start by the idle people demanding the government for jobs
and vacancies when the latter fails to fulfill the demands of the protestors,
more oppression will be put upon the shoulders of the poor citizens.
Anand’s struggle is a lone man’s fight against the mighty forces of
rapid industrialization and against the machinations of capitalists who are out
 207

to exploit the poor and the underprivileged. Here, the intensity of Anand’s
anger and social protests seems to have been softened as he finds the social
order to be irrevocable, and strong enough to resist any cozy
conceptualizations. Nevertheless, Anand succeeds in revealing the
mindlessness of it all.
In Untouchable, the main theme is the caste system that in it the status
of an individual on social, cultural and political levels is not assessed based on
the individual’s assets or potential but on the basis of his birth in a particular
caste. Social justice is on social determinism rather the on the individual’s
merit, this division often leads to disastrous consequences. It pays no heed to
the dignity of an individual as a human being. Therefore, the untouchables
suffer unspeakable miseries; they become victims of physical and mental
torture and are reduced to the sub-human level of existence. Anand’s desire to
see these people in an equal status in the society compels him into the
messianic role of championing their cause. He is burdened with perseverance
of commitment to their uplift; he denounces all caste barriers which construct
a bridge between an individual and another. His intimacy with the people
around him allows him necessary idealizations and fictional transmutation. He
loves the Indian masses from the core of his heart and can never remain a
passive observer when they are subjugated and suppressed by the hierarchical
stiffness of social custom. As K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar rightly observed: “He
had first seen his heroes as pieces of trembling humanity and loved them
before he sought to put them into his books” (K. S. Iyengar 335).
Untouchable is a faithful recordation and a transcription of the pathetic
plight of the untouchables who are subjected to unforgivable social indignities.
Anand’s Untouchable is written with this messianic affectation aimed at
revealing the traumas which the underprivileged in India suffer. In spite of the
fact that the book is hardly hundred pages, yet the vehemence of the novelist’s
pronouncement makes it almost “a classic” in Indian English fiction. It is what
Saros Cowasjee calls, “a miniature epic in its sweep and grand conception”.
(Cowasjee The Epic of Suffering). Anand grants his novel the technical
brilliance of Joyce; by adopting the stream of consciousness technique and the
amplitude and profundity of Dostoevsky; the theme and the form are so
 208

ingeniously merged that it is difficult to evade this strain. It is almost a

wonderful journey of fiction.
The novel with its magnificent details is obviously inspired by Anand’s
own experiences in Sabarmati Ashram where he has accepted Gandhi’s
invitation and his prolonged stay there which has helped his initiation into
Gandhian principles. It has been an experience which enhances the young
novelist’s vision who is about to launch himself into the role of a creative
writer. As Anand writes: “the book poured like hot lava from the volcano of
my crazed imagination” (Anand.Mulk.Raj 29).
Anand has witnessed the humiliations of the untouchables and carried
with him umpteen memories of his childhood. He has desired to pour
everything into the novel thus encapsulating his felt experiences and the
various forms of social determinism in order to dramatize the whole saga of
suffering and the pathetic outcome of the irrational social order. The whole
drama of human depravity compressed into a few pages of the novel makes it
more or less an exciting sociological document. Anand’s anger is directed
against man’s inhumanity to man and a good number of social evils,
collectively symbolized by the Indian society. Anand wants to rid the Indian
society of all these social evils so that there could be “a world without caste,
class and without social regimentation”. He thus makes this novel a sort of
“proletarian protest” novel and turns all his anger against the society which
dehumanizes the individual which saps and drains the potential for growth,
and graduation into a millenarian happiness.
Untouchable could be regarded as quintessential since it projects most
of Anand’s characteristic concerns and points of views and above all, his
characteristic way in attacking the dehumanizing social evils like the caste
system and religious hypocrisy. Anand is an ardent believer in democratic
socialism, a transformation that is particularly needed in the Indian society.
This justifies his influence by Marxist ideology and in building a utopian
society where equality prevails. Bakha’s earlier traumas and later awareness
are all traced by the novelist, since the touched man scene which marks the
beginning of Bakha’s self-awareness. The novel turns out to be a profited
intimation for there are hints of radical social transformation at the end of the
novel. Bakha’s struggle is against the whole caste-system, against the
 209

environmental fate, against the birth fate, the inherited profession, and against
the cruelty of the followers of the system. In general, Anand is passionately
concerned with the tyranny of caste and class systems that hinder and restrict
the movements of individuals not against the individuals. Bakha is thus
enforced into visualizing his redemption.
Anand’s concern with the evils of untouchability leads him to seek
finding solutions. His recordation of every pitiful state of the outcasts, their
innumerable sufferings and their somatic and psychological agonies marks his
social realism. This is clearly exposed in the treatment of Bakha and his sister
Sohini where the latter suffers from both the low caste and the upper one’s ill-
treatment. The scene of the priest molesting Sohini deeply hurts Bakha, he can
tolerate any abuse he gets during his day but this incident affects him mentally
and psychologically. It touches his honor, his name, and his own dignity. This
has made him aggressive to the extent he thinks of killing the priest and
avenge himself upon him, moreover, he has that hate feeling for he has got a
beautiful sister, for her attractiveness, would bring disgrace to her family.
Anand sheds light on this social evil which is more common among the
untouchables in general who are harassed by the upper castes, moreover, he
wants to tell this is common and widespread in the Indian community and
must be radically eradicated. Thus due to all the bad treatment and tension that
the family of Lakha suffers from, Bakha turns into a rebel. His anguish is
beyond tolerance and patience. His protest is evident in his cleanliness and his
appetite for sweets which are only associated with the upper-castes, his
mimicry of the British soldiers by wearing the ammunition boots, his desire
for the hat of the sahib and his looking for being like sahibs.
Bakha has a sense of alienation due to the rigid and the harsh society.
Cleaning three rows of latrines in a single day and starting his day with his
father’s hail of abuses and unconcealed threats are the rituals he has to
undergo countless times. The real problem of the untouchables is their dirty
profession, which their low status of birth enforces them to take it up; their
conditions are shocking no one can share their aches and agonies. Their plight
is so dreadful that even for the fulfillment of the basic needs like water and
food. They have to depend on the mercy of the high-caste Hindus. The English
on the contrary to the caste Hindus, are pictured as good and more humane for
 210

they consider Bakha and his like human beings and act accordingly. Here lies
the irony of Anand in this novel, where the people of the same color of skin
and the same blood discriminate their own people on basis of birth-law
whereas, the foreigners, the colonizers of the country treat these discriminated
people kindly and humanely. Anand clearly criticizes the segregation of “man
from man” Bakha is more happy with the English, he loves them and tries to
ape them since he finds temporary escape from the routine drudgery of life in
imitating them. Anand shows a remarkable empathy for his hero who
symbolizes the predicament of a hapless victim, pitted against the forces of
orthodoxy and conservatism. Even for the gesture of kindness, Bakha is
abused and insulted, when he carries an injured caste-boy to his home, the
boy’s mother abuses him for defiling her son and her home instead of
reciprocating this action with a generous praise.
Anand’s novel is both a metaphor for life and an epic of suffering.
Bakha is both a representational figure and an individual trying to grapple with
the forces of religious orthodoxy and social regimentation. Even when Bakha
is trying to seek a foothold in the society, he is confronted with a formidable
enemy in the form of caste. In trying to find a solution for personal problems
and in overcoming the “crises of consciousness” Bakha turns not merely its
victim but a victor, for he is deflated back to his innocent self-certitude.
Anand, in fact, has created an Indian tragedy out of Untouchable.
At the end of the novel, Anand suggests three solutions for the
untouchables, which could possibly bring transformation into the life of the
“dispossessed”. He even goes to the extent of accepting solutions offered by
his enemies, the British in order to rid his society from the evil of
untouchability, as the Christian Missionaries which the British have brought to
India. For Anand untouchability is an evil related to religion and by converting
to Christianity or to any other religion, the untouchable might find his quest
for identity and get rid of his/her untouchability. Bakha gets to know a little
about Christianity from the Colonel who tries to convince Bakha in converting
to his religion, where all the people are equal in the eyes of God, where there
is no discrimination between men for any reason as all of the people are born
from the same clay. The untouchables could seek religious conversion in order
to be free from the clutches of the caste system and of the stigma of
 211

untouchability. This solution would have brought a change to Bakha, if he has

not been distracted from the main essence of the Christian religion, through
the boring hymn singing which made him lose interest in the Colonel’s
religion. This solution fails to bring an assertion for the untouchable Bakha
because of the insufficient knowledge of its honorable principles , moreover,
the one who is appointed to present it is interested only in gaining numbers of
men, that is his main goal not really to instruct these men the honorable
essence of this religion. Otherwise, if the Christian religion were presented by
a true religious preacher, it might have become an assertion but Anand intends
to create the unqualified character of Colonel Hutchinson in order to satirize
the representatives of Christianity and the failure of the Christian Missionaries
in resolving the problem of untouchability in India.
The second solution is the one that involves Gandhi’s promise of
eradication of the evils of untouchability, where Gandhi directs a speech to the
downtrodden and asks them not to take the leftovers of the caste Hindus unless
they are offered in a good and polite manner to them. Gandhi wants them to
regain their self-esteem and dignity by such acts. His promise is little spiritual
than physical where their real trauma cannot be solved in the way they stop
taking the leftovers or change their habits. Their burden is much more
complicated and bigger than their dirty professions or their poverty. They need
to be looked at as humans, to be treated as fellow men and women, to be
allowed to use public wells and residential areas, to be given the right of
education, to be allowed to let their children mingle with the children of the
so-called ‘upper castes’. The problem of untouchability will not be solved
unless the Hindu religion declares that all its followers are equal and share the
same clay, there should be no discrimination on basis of birth or any other
thing. Communism in its social context is the true solution for the caste-ridden
society. The promise of Gandhi calls for equality, mercy, and humanity
among the Indians; this is exactly what humanity lacks nowadays.
The third solution which is introduced is the flush system or the
machine in general that will replace the human labor. While the untouchables
are regarded dirty and filthy due to their dirty profession of cleaning lavatories
and touch the human dirt, the flush system comes to replace this manual work
and rid the untouchables of their burden. Therefore, machine is a suitable
 212

solution offered by Anand to save the untouchables from their miseries and
suffering moreover, it is a good choice for them to seek a better profession that
suits their humanity. For the second time, Anand seems more sympathetic
with the foreigners in this novel as the machine is totally a foreign invent, yet
he is ready to accept it and introduce it as a solution for the sake of his people.
This solution is offered by the revolutionary leader Bashir who is Anand’s
mouthpiece, as the poet says:
We must destroy caste; we must destroy the inequalities of
birth and unalterable vocations. We must recognize an equality
of rights, privileges and opportunities for every one…. We
must accept the machine, which clears dungs without anyone
having to handle it-flush system. Then the sweepers can be free
from the stigma of untouchability and assume the dignity of
status that is their right as useful members of casteless and
classless society. (Anand, Untouchable 173).
This revolution, though is not ingenious, the continual is a slow
process and is transparently unsure, though the poet is endorsing the novelist’s
social utopia. As he observes “We can destroy our inequalities easily .The old,
mechanical formulas of our lives must go, the old, stereotyped forms must
give place to a new dynamic”. (Anand, Untouchable 173).
All the three solutions offered by the novelist seem to be too facile to
be accepted as efficacious for they cannot even combinatively bring in the
solace for the untouchables, though they are socially relevant. The rigidities of
the caste-system cannot be changed overnight. Thus, the novel ends on a
resounding note of optimism, implied as it is in Bakha’s adolescent dream of
millenarian happiness. As prof. Balarama Gupta observes, “There is some
hope, may be very vague and rather distant and this relieves the book from
becoming utterly gloomy.” (Balarama).
Untouchable is undeniably Anand’s masterpiece, with all its phalanx
of commitments and loud protestations that go to make it a cohesive work and
the themes of anger and commitment get further reinforcement and perceptive
angularity since Anand presents everything on a global scale. Commenting on
the basic issues involved in the writing of the novel, Prof. C.D. Narasimahaiah
observes: “In the novel, Untouchable, doctrine, and dogmas are assimilated
 213

into a total sensibility which shapes his imagination and gives life an epoch
and its hope and aspiration and its curse”. (C.D.Narismahaiah 70).
In Coolie, Anand attempts to project the hardships of the low-class
Munoo caught as he is in the grinding processes of social determinism. His
diligent campaign is against all forms of evils, poverty, cruelty and of any type
of exploiting the oppressed class. Saros Cowasjee points out: “It’s Anand’s
most representative work and has within it the germs of many of his strengths
and weaknesses as a novelist.” (Cowasjee 63).
In Untouchable Anand reveals man’s ruthlessness to man in the form
of the hegemony of the caste system as it is widespread in the Indian society.
Whereas in Coolie he undertakes in dealing with the malicious class-system
based on money power and social inequality and a gap between the
advantaged and the disadvantaged, the possessed and the dispossessed, and
capitalists and laborers. Briefly, Coolie is connected with the themes of
exploitation and oppression. Anand chooses Munoo the gullible boy as the
pivotal character of his novel who is burdened by poverty and class
segregation.
Coolie is regarded as a common slum-life social tragedy. Anand’s
Munoo is essentially a tragic character who is pathetic. Anand raises the hill
boy to the status of a hero and invests him with dignity. From a Marxist
perspective, Anand in Coolie does not romanticize the proletariat but expose
the social forces of tragedy, capitalism, and industrialism, as they are seen
operating in the robot-hidden modern society. This is a good illustration of
Anand’s social realism where his fiction is aimed for finding solutions to his
fellow men and women rather than glorifying and romanticizing their agonies
and turmoil. Anand moves the pitiable from Untouchable to the tragic in
Coolie, whereas the problem of Bakha is particularly Indian; Munoo’s is
universal. Bakha’s experience is limited in time and space but Munoo’s
struggle for survival takes him through the cross-section of the whole country,
this denotes the universality of Munoo’s issue. As S.C. Harrex points out,
“whereas catastrophe for Bakha has an aftermath of enlightenment and the
vision of a new order, catastrophe for Munoo is a series of personal disasters,
punctuated by moments of tragic illumination and leading to inevitable doom”
(Harrex.S.C 90).
 214

Interpreting Coolie from a Marxist perspective will be seen as a

genuine protest against the emergence of a new world of money, exploitation
and class-distinction. There are vast examples which illustrate how coolies
like Munoo are completely beaten down by the curse of money power. The
prevailing social order and the new values created by the modern civilization
take the natural warm-heartedness and the zest for life of an individual and
lead him to anguish then to his disastrous end. Munoo is not able to redeem
himself because he is made to think that people like him are born to suffer. He
expresses himself: “We belong to suffering! We belong to suffering!” (247).
Coolie is as influential as owing to its presentation of a general human
tragedy. It is also the artistic treatment of the cruel and inhuman social forces
of poverty and exploitation which are responsible for the disastrous
denouncement. The untimely passing away of Munoo becomes even more
tragic because he is just an innocent kid. The narrative is restricted to a period
of little more than a year in order to stress the proletarian misfortune of the
premature death. As a Marxist, Anand invests Munoo with sociological
significance by letting him represent various levels of proletarian existence in
specific settings in the course of the narrative, thereby organizing the action in
a structurally meaningful way. Furthermore, the pattern he adopts indicates his
desire to exploit the Indian scene for a panoramic background as well as to
give narrative credibility.
Coolie is Munoo’s catastrophe, as it exposes the hardships of the
orphan who moves from a place to another in search of livelihood driven by
hunger, poverty, exploitation and oppression until he finally dies. In the words
of C.D. Narasimhaiah, “the situations Anand creates are convincing on the
whole and reveal aspects of life hitherto generally kept out of fiction as though
they were tabooed from it” (C.D.Narasimhaiah 119).
The poverty that breeds exploitation is the root cause of Munoo’s
tragedy. Before he begins his inglorious journey. Munoo is a sensitive and
intelligent rustic adolescent, highly spirited and full of zest for life but poverty
and hunger compel him to be apprenticed to live even at the age of fourteen.
His birthright seems to be the terrible destiny of being a victim of exploitation
and maltreatment. Munoo gets to know of how the feudal proprietor has seized
his father’s five acres of land because of the interest on the mortgage covering
 215

the paid rent has not been forthcoming when the rains have been rare and
harvest bad. Moreover, he knows how his father died a slow death of
bitterness and disappointment and left his mother a penniless beggar to
support a young brother-in-law and a child on her lap. Munoo is far from
being ambitious in life, his expectations are extremely modest. His only desire
is to live, to know and to work and earn his living. After a close study of the
novel, in the words of Saros Cowasjee it shows how “even in the midst of
untold misery and horrible sordidness, his instinctive yearning for life compels
him to continue his steadily weakening struggle for existence”. “And the novel
is a dramatization of the tragic denial of what Munoo wants to be in life. The
merciless, mechanic rhythm of urban life into which he is thrust churns the
spark of his life”. (Cowasjee, So Many Freedoms).
Munoo’s first encounter with the urban world is in the house of Babo
Natho Ram, where he is oppressed and badly treated by the Babu’s wife and
the neighbors’ boys. Driven by the necessity of independent livelihood, he sets
out with his cruel uncle, Daya Ram, who takes all his pay and leaves Munoo a
penniless boy. Obviously, he starts on the wrong foot. His total ignorance of
the urban ways brands him as a stupid rustic, the household wife is an arrogant
woman who underfeeds Munoo, nags him and humiliates him. The climax of
his suffering is illustrated in the way he is beaten by a bat and his escape from
the Babu’s house to his vague fate.
In spite of the fact that the Sham Nagar episode is the first act in
Munoo’s tragic drama of exploitation, yet he learns from it his first lesson: “
he was to be a slave, a servant who should do odd jobs, some are to be abused
even beaten” (Anand, Coolie 33) and that “ there must be two kinds of people
in the world: the rich and the poor”. (Anand, Coolie 69) However, he is
blinded into forgetting that “he was condemned by an inquisitor system
always to remain small object and drab” (Anand, Coolie 37).
The second episode in Munoo’s tragedy is concerned with his being a
laborer in a pickle factory and as a coolie in the bazaar of Daulatpur where life
is somehow pleasing in the beginning due to the warmth of Prabha and his
wife Parvathi. However, “happiness is an occasional episode in the general
drama of pain” (Hardy 333). Life becomes ugly and hellish because of
Ganpat’s wicked behavior. Munoo becomes jobless and homeless when the
 216

factory is closed down owing to Ganpat’s counterfeiting and treachery in

business. As a result, Munoo not only loses his natural vivacity but also is
possessed by modes of extreme melancholy and “dark feelings of self-distrust”
(Riemenschneider.D 31).
The third act of Munoo’s tragedy is demonstrated in his being a worker
at Sir George White Mills “the factory is a huge octopus with its numerous
tentacles clutching the laborer in its deadly grasp, slowly paralyzing and
poisoning him” (Anand, Coolie 125). Anand’s vivid portrayal of the harsh
lives of the workers and their families, the filth of their slums and their
victimization by over-seers and money-lenders, only proves his social realism.
The working hours are too long and tedious. In the city, the creditors are more
numerous and more wicked than at Daulatpur. As Saros Cowasjee puts it,
“there is the same foul smell and stink, damp and sticky sweat, dust and heat,
incense and dung” (Cowasjee 75). Here, in the big city of Bombay Anand
wants to tell that the theme of exploitation is more complicated than in the
hills, the more the bigger is the city, the more the exploitation will be.
A close reading of the text Coolie shows its complexity, which it is
created by its tension where Anand links together the opposites such as poor
and rich, employer and employee, master and slave, city and hill and many
others to mention. The following excerpt will give more illustration:
The complexity of a literary text is created by its tension, which
means the linking together of opposites…. Tension is created
by the integration of the abstract and the concrete, of general
ideas embodied un specific images, such concrete universal or
images and fictional characters that are meaningful on both the
concrete level where their meaning is literal and specific, and
on the symbolic level, where they have universal significance
are considered a form of tension because they hold together the
opposing realms of physical reality in a way characteristic of
literary language. (Tyson 140).
In other words, the character of Munoo represent both himself and all
the coolies like him or all the poor of the world. In terms of the theme of
Coolie, it serves as a commentary on human values, human nature or the
 217

human condition. In other words, Coolie is a great literary work because it has
a universal theme with a moral significance.
Anand clearly describes in the Mills’ chapter the intolerable conditions
of the workers, as a result of all the exploitation, a strike is erupted and
diverted into a Hindu-Muslim riot. As the ill-paid, ill-housed, undernourished
and bullied laborers like Hari and his family are broken both physically and
mentally. Munoo is the horrified witness of communal murder and senseless
killings between Hindus and Muslims, which are stirred by the colonialists and
their followers just to divert the people’s attention from claiming their rights
when the workers go on strike. The coolies’ attempt has failed and aborted due
to the riots. Munoo bewildered and shocked; flees “to enter the last and fatal
phase of his absurd existence” (H. Williams). The riots are the product of the
anti-communists who are afraid of the mass awareness and are ready to
murder thousands for their own interests. Anand’s intention in this scene is to
educate the workers of the necessity to wake up and stand for their rights as
what they have done through the strikes.
The final turn of Munoo’s tragedy commences with Mrs. Mainwaring
taking him to Shimla when her car knocks him down. She makes him her
personal servant and rickshaw-puller. It is easy for her to enslave the boy and
controls his life as if he were anything rather than a human being. As the
author comments on her persona “It is a deep-rooted feeling of inferiority to
superior people who lived in Bungalows and wore Angrezi clothes” (Anand,
Coolie 267). This makes Munoo accept without hesitation his present lot. As a
rickshaw-puller, Munoo gradually grows weaker and dies at the age of
fourteen. Thus, Coolie ends in a dirge-like movement with the death of Munoo
of consumption as much as of the ills of society. As S.c. Harrex observes “it is
the conventional tragic ending of the naturalistic novel; the life principle is
wiped out. Death completes the hero’s victimhood” (Harrex.S.C 97).
Munoo’s obligatory journey from his tranquil surroundings through the
jail-like house of the shrewd life of the Babu Natho Ram, the short respite at
Daulatpur under the roof of the kind compassionate Prabha, the sordid cotton
industry of Bombay and lastly the world of a highly debauched and
pretentious Anglo-Indian woman, with death following on its heels. As Saros
Cowasjee points “is a veritable ceaseless quest for life which is most brutally
 218

and tragically denied to him. Thus, “Anand dramatizes in Coolie the evils of
poverty, cruelty and exploitation that crush a bud of youth before it has the
chance even bloom”. (Cowasjee The Epic of Suffering).
Munoo’s tragedy seems to be Anand’s petition for reform. Humanism
could be the only answer to his concern in the current socio-political set-up.
The novel highlights the need for restoration of compassion to the world lost
in industrialism, colonialism, and capitalism, so this restoration can be attained
through Communism where egalitarianism prevails and everyone takes his/her
right, where all the industries are for the people, where they can work and
share the benefits equally. The strikes that took place in the cotton Mills and
other factories in the novel, are served as a kind of protest towards the act of
exploitation and the bad conditions of the workers, in spite of the fact that the
attempt of protest is aborted by the riots that are stirred by the British, yet
there is another solution that is what Karl Marx offers through communism. In
other words, if only the social and industrial systems have been put under the
service of humanity and the enactment of democracy, life-enhancing and
egalitarianism, all might have turned out differently. For Munoo has aspiration
and talents, he could feel love and arouse love and loyalty in others. But,
poverty that puts handcuffs in the way of his advance imprisons him in the
inescapable prison of the coolie’s life and finally kills him. Nevertheless,
beneath this pervasive pessimism, there is an essential undercurrent of
optimism in that the protagonist’s death poignantly exposes the rotten state of
society and the consciousness of the need for its drastic reform.
Anand universalizes the individual tragedy of Munoo. He presents him
as a victim of irrational systems and the inhuman cruelties of society. What
happens to the obscure hill boy is by no means an isolated example of human
suffering and exploitation. Munoo’s destiny symbolizes the tragic situation of
the poor and the underprivileged who are not responsible for their unalleviated
suffering; however, they are all the same victims of ruthless exploitation. As in
the case of the previous novel, Untouchable, the very title of the novel is
emblematic. It is not “the Coolie” or “A Coolie” but Coolie encircling all
coolies and their fate. Anand thus gives a universal touch to his basic theme.
Munoo is not merely an individual who is an effective doll in the crooked
game of fate, but an epitome of the downtrodden, the substance of whose life-
 219

stories is always the same unendurable apathy and perpetual suffering. Munoo
is a ransom to the remorseless cruelty and exploitation of industrial colonial
society. Thus, “Munoo is archetypal in literature belonging to a long line of
‘innocents’ ranging from Don Quixote and Prince Myshkin to Billy Budd and
Candide” (H. Williams 27).
In conclusion, Anand suggests reconsideration of humanity in both of
the selected novels for this will be the best solution that will abolish the caste
system and will also terminate the class barriers as well. If the individuals stop
being selfish and uppish this will lead to harmony and egalitarianism amongst
all the citizens of any society.
On the other hand, African writers, Ngugi included, have played an
important role in the struggle for political independence. They successfully
depict the way the colonizers have exploited African masses and Africa’s
natural resources. At the same time, they have urged Africans to be aware of
the real intention of the white colonizers that is to continue exploiting the
African resources after independence to enrich the Western capitalist countries
through neo-colonialism. Ngugi particularly, has tried to educate Africans
about the issues of white exploitation at different levels, especially through the
revolutionaries; he wants to educate the Africans of the necessity to be aware
of the dangerous presence of colonialists on the African continent through the
betrayal of the native elites.
Ngugi is an important socialist writer and certainly the best known
from East Africa. Ngugi’s compassion for the people of his fictional world is
far and wide apparent and as he sees in the plight of his Kenyans the plight of
a larger number throughout the world. Terry Eagleton rightly comments:
I think what we are striving for is a form of organization that
will release this tremendous energy (of the people of East
Africa). I think there is the danger of a black bourgeoisie
blocking this energy of the bourgeoisie, but of the middle class
everywhere, trying to block the energy of people. But even
more important in Africa, there is the problem of sheer
economic development the colonial government left Africa,
especially Kenya or Uganda in a state of sheer primitive
underdevelopment, so the problem is clearer in these countries
 220

because of the smallness of the bourgeoisie and because of the

enormous underdevelopment of the countries. And, also on the
whole, the economy of the country is not always in the control
of the people inside so there are a lot of troubles in East Africa
(Eagleton 47).
Being a committed writer who believes in class war and in the seizure
of political power by workers and peasants through violent struggles. Ngugi
wa Thiong’o is an ardent champion of African identity and culture and pleads
for the decolonization of mind from all traces of subservience and
enslavement that smack of the white man’s hegemony in areas of culture,
language, capitalistic, imperialistic, economic and political domination.
Commenting on Ngugi’s fiction, K. Indrasena Reddy says “all his novels
abound in optimism and fit finely into the pattern of socialist realism”. (Reddy
127).
While writing his novels, Ngugi keeps in his mind the prevailing social
and political problems and his duty towards his people as he says: “A writer
needs people around him for me; in writing a novel, I love to hear the voice of
the people” (N. w. Thiong'o, Decolonizing the Mind: the Politics of Language
in African Literature 8). Ngugi’s early fiction historicizes the heroic resistance
to colonial power and his later fiction is concerned with the people’s liberation
struggles against the neo-colonial order. The novels cover the period in
Kenya’s history dating roughly from the first arrival of the Europeans in
Kenya late in the late century to the attainment of independence in the sixties.
The novelist uses the Christian religious symbolism to reinforce the motif of
rebellion against the indigenous corrupt and anti-people regimes. The two
motifs of religion and rebellion elucidate the pivotal argument in the novels of
Ngugi in his early fiction.
In Petals of Blood Ngugi attacks the neo-colonial government which
does not rule according to the will of the people, but according to the elite’s
power and interests as they take advantage of the colonialist and continue
benefiting the colonial rule through neo-colonialism. This creates social
problems such as exploitation, poverty, prostitution and corruption that lead to
underdevelopment of Kenya.
 221

The novelist clearly draws attention to the exploitation of the Africans

in the field of education conveyed by the colonizers. In fact, the education
imparted to the students in the Siriana missionary school is directed mainly to
advance interests of the British Empire. They want to convert the Africans to
believe in their faith and help them spreading Christianity. They also want the
help of the students in administrating the natives. Illmorog resembles the
underdeveloped and disadvantaged area in Kenya that suffers from the
exploitation of the natural resources. Ngugi criticizes the processes and effects
of neocolonialism on the colonized subjects of the Kenyan nation-state. The
neocolonial nation-state controlled by an indigenous bourgeoisie does not only
exploit the oppressed economically but also deprive them of their history. As
Peter Nazareth notes “colonizers steal not only labor and resources, they also
steal history. If a people believe they had no history before the coming of the
colonizers, they can be exploited more easily” (Nazareth 122).
Despite attaining independence, Ngugi illustrates that the neo-colonial
nation-state is a replica of the colonialist controller's political system negating
the history of its own people and preserving colonial authority and legacies.
The temporal focus of the novel is post-independence Kenya in the 1970s and
through his characters; Ngugi explores how the fruits of freedom have been
unfairly eaten. How the ideals of the national liberation are betrayed by the
new ruling classes who line up themselves with the exploitative ideologies of a
transnational neo-colonial bourgeoisie and how those who actually fight for
freedom have been forgotten in Kenyan history.
Petals of Blood is Ngugi's depiction of the manipulative features of
neocolonial capitalism and his being a mouthpiece of the marginal. One of the
frequent themes that Ngugi explains in Petals of Blood is the appearance of
the local African elite and the petit bourgeoisie as the new ruling classes in the
post-independence Kenya who confederate themselves with the manipulative
ideology of neocolonialism and deceive the masses on whose behalf they have
got their power. In the novel, Ilmorog’s villagers set out on a mission to see
Kimeria their MP in Nairobi asking for a solution for their drought-stricken
village. The drought significantly means the hardships of the villagers in neo-
colonial Kenya who suffer not only from the scarcity of rains but also from the
neglect of their local representatives in the government.
 222

Ngugi’s Petals of Blood is a typical example of contemporary African

novels. The issue of revolutionary temper and how the novel reflects it are all
discussed. Therefore, this novel sensitizes the consciousness of the oppressed
Africans to the exploitative and ugly nature of colonialism. It reflects the
conflicts between labor and capital, the oppressed and oppressor and the
attempts made by the oppressed to achieve political and economic
emancipation. With the Marxist undertone, Ngugi makes the masses aware of
their condition and makes them fight for liberty and freedom. Such attempts at
improving the people’s standard of living cannot but involve revolutionary
actions. It is noticeable that the ability of the fictional author to portray the
travails of the people in the society is linked with Ngugi’s emotional ties with
the people whose problems, hopes and aspirations he shares.
Petals of Blood deals with the socio-political situation in Africa. This
has aroused the interest of Ngugi to find solutions and change the status quo.
According to Kolawole Ogungbesan: “A writer is a member of society and his
sensibility is conditioned by the social and political happenings around him.
These issues form a part of the substance of life within which his instinct as a
writer must struggle”. (Ogungbesan 5-6).
Ngugi in Petals of Blood pleas and alerts the awareness of his people
who are in a political stagnation by portraying the different realms of
contemporary African experience as the forces of imperialism governed them.
Africa’s contemporary situation captures Ngugi’s attention to inspect the
nature and scope of the imperialist exploitation of the African continent.
Ngugi states at the launching of his novel Petals of Blood that:
Imperialism can never develop a country or a people. This was
what I was trying to show in Petals of Blood; that imperialism
can never develop us, Kenyans. In doing so, I was only trying
to be faithful to what Kenyan workers and peasants have
realized as shown by their historical struggle (N. W. Thiong'o
97).
Being a communist, Ngugi’s Petals of Blood mirrors the African
Revolution. Ngugi intensely embraces the view of socialist realism that
revolution is a powerful weapon of social change without which the continent
will remain under perpetual enslavement and subjugation. In Africa, the
 223

socio-political and economic situation during the colonial era was so

nauseating that the people of Kenya, in particular, had to rewrite their own
history. They wake up from a contemplative position to restore their own
land from alien squatters. At this very moment of history, fighting is a way of
life. Kenyans take their destiny in their hands and by the power of revolt.
Kenyans have had enough of dehumanization. There is always a time for
hope under the sun, which is a general belief. The time is up to put an end to
the exploitation of Kenyan’s natural and human resources and the denial of
their rightfully owned land. In order to achieve this aim, there is the need to
revolutionize the society. In human history, nothing is static. Revolution
simply means a struggle that is more or less successfully and completely
accomplished in which the ruling power of the country passes from an
economic class or political group to another class or group. Man’s society is
an embodiment of dynamism. Change is like death which is inevitable.
Change is the only constant theme in nature, society and human thought. This
is a justification for the title of the fourth chapter in this dissertation, where
the people of Kenya and the Illmorog in particular are subdued to constant
changes due to the colonial and post-colonial influences and moreover the
winds of modernity which blow away the traditional habits and uproot the
cultural heritage.
The novel pinpoints the mindlessness of the African professors and so-
called educators trained in imperialist universities and other institutions of
“higher learning “of their national cultural heritage. Hence, when the young
teacher Karega tries to further his African education, he is confronted with
incoherence, incomprehension, and pointlessness as he tries one area of
learning after another. Karega looks in vain for anything clarifying
colonialism and imperialism. Occasionally there are abstract phrases about
inequality of opportunities or the ethnic balancing act of modern governments.
Petals of Blood is concerned with exposing vividly the nature of the
post-colonial state’s opportunists in Africa. It also depicts the miserable state
of the proletariat who suffer under the neo-colonial rule. The moving of the
setting from Ilmorog to the suburbs of Nairobi and to the edge of the Trans-
Africa Highway delineates the theme of proletarianization. Ngugi like Karl
Marx can predict the revolutionary side of poverty in which engenders
 224

resistance, revolt and insurgency as well the search for a way out of
exploitation and misery. The novel’s title refers to the potent lily which is a
plant grows widely in the area, this plant symbolizes devastation, exploitation,
evil, the abnormal and death during the colonial and post-colonial era, while
before the coming of the colonizers and their agents this flower refers to
regeneration, fruitfulness, and luxuriance. The Petals of Blood might have
derived their red color which looks like that of the blood due to the many
sacrifices which have watered the land of Africa during the freedom struggle.
The imagery suggests the distortion of things from the normal and natural to
the abnormal and evil and the introduction of chaos and destruction where
there should be beauty and order. However, the flower with the petals of blood
is itself a victim of evil and modernity. The agents of corruption have
destroyed its innocence. The flower thus becomes a symbol of the entire
society, potentially healthy, beautiful and productive but its potential is
unrealized and destroyed by the agents of corruption and death. The plant with
petals of blood is actually the Theng’eta plant, which grows wildly on the
plains that is associated with extravagance, vitality, and vigor. It symbolizes
truth and purity that is why the people of Ilmorog under the leadership of
Nyakinyua, the staunch upholder of traditional values, decide to re-engage in
the production of Theng’eta. It signifies a resolution to return to the pureness
of traditional values and the transformation of Theng’eta into a corrupted
modern spirit produced in breweries owned by the neo-colonialists advocates
the destruction of traditional innocence by the corrupt and deprived agents of
modernism.
The allegory of infertility that permeates Ilmorog also metaphorically
encompasses characters who are spiritually and physically impotent. As
Wanja, Munira, and Abdullah. They live aimless, meritless and sad lives.
These characters long for self-fulfillment. Abdulla, the unrecognized hero of
Mau Mau whose leg is amputated due to his participation in the liberation
struggle. Being upset, he travels to the drought-ridden Ilmorog to set up a
small shop, creating the rhythm of his life pattern. Wanja, who drops out of
school, so she flees to the city then after she has experienced the evils of the
city she decides to come back home, to her grandmother’s village to seek a
new type of living. Karega, who is dismissed of Siriana because of his
 225

involvement in several strikes against colonial educational policies, wanders

the entire country until he finally settles in Ilmorog. He decides to fight the
neo-colonial agendas through spreading his communist ideas and raising the
awareness of his fellow Africans to the ills of the system characterized by the
directors of the Ilmorog Theng’eta Brewery. The last one is Munira, a fanatic
who finds compromise in Ilmorog by isolating himself from the mockery of
his more effective brother and sisters, from his father and even from his wife.
There are characters around which the disillusionment of independence
revolves. The revolution against the system is that of all Kenyans is what
Ngugi preaches in this novel. The characters’ search and yearning for self-
fulfillment is an expression of protest against a system whose motto is “eat or
be eaten”. The characters and indeed all the people of Ilmorog are in
stagnation; hence, they walk with their eyes wide open without actually
identifying the cause of their poverty and general unfruitfulness.
Petals of Blood displays the manipulation of Africans by their own
representatives. During the fight for independence, all the Kenyans have
united for the common cause. Nevertheless, after independence, the truth of
the African elites is exposed when they surrender to the capitalist ideology and
continue benefitting the capitalists through neo-colonialism. In his
independence speech, Jomo Kenyatta, the first Prime Minister of Kenya,
remarks that:
Our march to freedom has been long and difficult. There have
been times of despair, when only the burning conviction of the
rightness of our cause has sustained us. Today, the tragedies
and misunderstandings of the past are behind us. Today, we
start on the great adventure of building the Kenya nation
(Brown, Land, Freedom and Fiction 184).
The African nation today is constructed on the capitalist-imperialist
foundation, rather than on its ethnic communalism. Most of the Kenyan
proletariat lives below the poverty line. Moreover, the life of the city poor
dwellers is made worse by unspeakable housing conditions, bad infrastructure
and lack of services. The socio-economic position of the Kenyan masses is
desperate J.M. Kariuki describes the situation in Kenya as: “A small but
powerful group, greedy, self-seeking elite in form of politicians, civil servants,
 226

and businessmen, which has steadily but very surely monopolized the fruits of
independence to the exclusion of the majority of the people” (Kariuki 48-49).
Thus, the novel calls for Communism as the only solution for the proletariat to
regain their country from the neo-colonial government.
Petals of Blood explores the difference between patriots and traitors.
While the true heroes like Abdulla are ignored in the neo-colonial time, those
who have cooperated with the imperialists appear as government officials and
main business industrialists. The march to the city marks the beginning of the
people’s awareness of the inefficiency of their government and their
representatives. The government response to the plight of the people is not
poured in the people’s own advantage; however, this attention exposes
Ilmorog to the winds of change through modernity, which devastated the
traditional values. The people are once again disillusioned and have to reunite
to fight the neo-colonial enemy, as capitalism now fully entrenches itself in
Ilmorog. Businessmen move into Ilmorog with roads, banks, factories and
estate agencies. This is a method of cultural dispersion and thus, the traditional
Ilmorog has vanished. The destruction of the people’s Oracle ‘Muathi’
figuratively symbolizes the whole devastation of a community that once has
boasted of its traditional values. As Ilmorog is transformed into an industrial
and capitalist complex, the associated problems of prostitution, social
inequalities, and inadequate infrastructure. Ilmorog undergoes destruction
twice, once by white colonizers and now by their representatives, the black
exploiters.
The system of destruction also affects characters as Wanja whom the
system forces to play the tough city game. She is dismissed of school, she
becomes a professional prostitute. She is a practical individual, a realist, who
recognizes that to survive in this new system, the individual must be prepared
to use his/her weapons. Wanja is associated with fire throughout the novel.
She has to undergo the ordeal of fire several times to be exposed to the horrors
of existence. It is a process of testing her character and even though she
emerges tarnished, she becomes toughened and is now prepared to fight the
system. The resort in the new Ilmorog and her building a whorehouse are all
protests against the system. Briefly, Wanja who was once a victim, now turns
to be a victimizer in the neocolonial Kenya.
 227

Nyakinyua, the old woman also has suffered the evils of the system. As
the new rulers of Kenya ingrain themselves in Ilmorog, she finds herself out of
the tempo. She is evicted of her premises and so she tries to revolt, to fight
back with her previous enthusiasm she has once when she was a Mau Mau
activist, she appeals the people of Ilmorog to gather and unite to fight it out.
However, it seems everyone has lost the voice of reason. She gets a negative
response. Those who still retain their land refuse her call for a protest. In
disappointment, she dies before Wanja redeems her land. The destruction
pervades Ilmorog and the individuals together and this is what made Ngugi
through his character Karega call for unity to regain the people’s rights and
fight the tools of corruption.
Petals of Blood portrays the contemporary disgraceful socio-economic
and political situation in Kenya. Politicians and the state forces of oppression
do the acts of savagery and brutality carried out on individuals. Ngugi’s
ultimate thematic insistence is to underline the inevitability of a Marxist
revolution of the workers and peasants and the overthrow of the dispensation
of the comprador bourgeoisie. As Ime Ikiddeh articulates:
It should be noted from the outset that Ngugi’s parabolic thesis
is a realistic, fictional dramatization of the social situation set
out in the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engel’s, that is,
the well-known history of class struggles and workers’
solidarity through unions. According to Marx, it is the
economic arrangement, which shapes the consciousness of men
in society, just as its further development inevitably brings
conflict in economic relations into the open, leading to “an
epoch of social revolution, of change in the economic
foundation, and the transformation of the entire superstructure.
Remarkably, the society of Ilmorog in Petals of Blood lends
credence to Marx’s dialectic, for the economic relation is
everywhere discernible, developing to a point where a
revolution and transformation are imminent. (Ikiddeh).
Petals of Blood actually reveals Marxist vision, which states that the
proletariat “the comradeship of the down-trodden” will achieve revolutionary
change in the society especially as a mirror of the African revolutionary
 228

actions in the wake of mass political awareness in the novel. This means that
the novel is being portrayed as a mirror of the African revolution that is the
demonstration of truth and reflection of African revolution in the society as a
whole. Therefore, on the one hand communism is one key to Africa’s
proletariat assertion. On the second hand, education based on history basis not
only facts is another solution that is mentioned throughout the novel, trade
Unionism is the third solution that is suggested by Karega. But the best
solution is that of revolution against the neo-colonial tools that continue
exploiting the Africans from within.
In Devil on the Cross Ngugi continues his commitment to the struggle
against neo-colonialism and imperialism. This novel is an invitation for the
oppressed to act and claim their rights. Though the main plot is about
Waringa’s tragic story which represents only one side of the oppression that is
practiced upon women in the underdeveloped countries. Another type of
exploitation is seen in the novel when the bodies of African women become a
successful commodity for the corrupt Africans who encourage such a trade to
attract the old White tourists to such type of tourism i.e. sexual one. A Marxist
interpretation of the novel illustrates how intentionally Ngugi aims to highlight
such an issue in order to criticize and condemn the capitalist culture, which
commodifies the African women and contributes in the decay of personal
values.
The title of the novel is metaphoric, it suggests that the Devil should be
crucified on the Cross; the Cross is the symbol for the proletariat’s assertion.
Ngugi uses the Marxist approach due to class conflict and the fortification of
class distinction portrayed in the novel. The Marxist concept uses traditional
methods of literary analysis, but subordinates artistic apprehensions to the
final social and political meanings of literature. The approach champions
authors concerned with the working masses and embodies economic
discriminations found in capitalist societies. The Marxist view of fictitious
texts concentrates on their social significance. Thus, Devil on the Cross is a
great novel of social significance. It has a great impact on the social level and
the improvement of the working class living conditions. Ngugi clearly appears
as a socialist novelist and a committed writer. Socialist realism calls on the
 229

writer to commit his art to the cause of the proletariat and portrays the heroic
deed of his protagonists. This is exactly what Ngugi did in his novels.
Devil on the Cross exposes the plight of the masses and workers in the
contemporary political set up in Africa. It is Ngugi’s opinion that authors
should take their parts in demolishing the conflict between the emergent
African bourgeoisie and the African masses. Ngugi’s role is to invite the
proletariat to gather for fighting the neo-colonial representatives and denounce
the prevailing evils. He says people are disillusioned by independence, as they
did not get rid of all the evils of the colonialists, because their followers
continued benefitting the colonizers through neo-colonialism as this excerpt
reads:
And there and then the people crucified the Devil on the Cross,
and they went away singing songs of victory. After three days,
there came others dressed in suits and ties, who, keeping close
to the wall of darkness, lifted the Devil down from the cross.
And they knelt before him, and they prayed to him in loud
voices, beseeching him to give them a portion of his robes of
cunning. (N. w. Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 1)
Ngugi shows that the independence for which Africans fought and got
and which aimed at crucifying the devil, that is uprooting colonialism,
imperialism and capitalism has not been effective so far as the Devil has been
resuscitated after three days through neocolonialism which the new African
political leaders have adopted. Terry Eagleton comments on Ngugi’s ideology
in inviting his people to communism as thus “Ngugi uses social realism to
picture the evils of the Devil and convince the proletariat to gather for
crucifying him and making sure his acolytes will not lift him down. Social
realism, according to Eagleton implies besides truth details, the truthful
reproduction of typical characters under typical circumstances. (Eagleton 47).
Ngugi intends to show that Kenya lacks democracy when he assures
that the conversation among the characters should be in the Matatu, not
anywhere else. “Likewise, the cave is a typical place for people of profit and
leisure”. (Uwasomba, The Politics of Resistance and Liberation in Ngugi wa
Thiongo’s Studies). By doing so, Ngugi interprets the literary language into
that of sociology and finds the social equivalent of literary facts. He converts
 230

social facts into literary ones. Besides, he presents a socially insightful text,
which is only a component of social realism.
Throughout the narrative, Ngugi in Devil on the Cross speaks about
neo-colonialism as a negative acquisition. According to Ngugi, the situation is
badly spread in all Africa, as this passage reads:
But it is not Nairobi alone that is afflicted in this way. The
same is true of all other cities in every country that has recently
slipped the nose of colonialism. These countries are finding it
difficult to stave off poverty for the simple reason that they
have taken it upon themselves to run their own economies from
American experts. So they have been taught the principle and
system of self-interest and have been told to forget the ancient
songs that glorify the notion of collective good. (N. w.
Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 56).
The narrative stresses that ‘the Modern Bar and Lodging has become
the main employment bureau for girls, it also shows how African women are
exploited and oppressed to the extent they become commodity for sexual
trade. This is also one side of oppression which Ngugi detests and sheds light
on in this novel.
Moreover, the novel illustrates how African hearts have got rotten
because of the search for interests, dishonest and immoral ones. It also shows
how people are taught to sell everything including their bodies due to their lust
for money. After picturing all these evils and others, Ngugi calls the oppressed
to fight against new capitalism preached by the heirs of colonialists. He invites
the exploited to unite for efficient productiveness in order to modify nature
and make things meet their needs, like a shelter to keep out rain, clothes to
keep out the cold and heat, food to nourish the body, schools to allow the
children to learn and defend themselves and so many other needs. It is from
unity, the writer thinks that humanity is born as this passage reads:
That humanity is in turn born from of many hands working
together, for as Gikuyu once said, a single finger cannot kill a
louse; a single log cannot make a fire last through the night; a
single man however strong cannot build a bridge across a river;
 231

and many hands can lift a weight however heavy. (N. w.

Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross 56).
The strength of unity the passage preaches is also stressed when the
novelist speaks about the miserable aftermath of bourgeoisie and peasant life.
However, in addition to this and more importantly, Ngugi invites the
proletariat to pay attention after crucifying the Devil, for fear that, his disciples
can lift him down and therefore, allow him to continue building his devilish
kingdom on earth. This is but a warning against the revival of imperialism,
and capitalism through neo-colonialism by post-independence leaders.
All these appeals to the conscience of Kenyans succeed to raise their
awareness about the common enemy; the devil and Wariinga gains the consent
of the characters; Wangarii, Muturi, and Mwireri. These are the pioneers who
understand the need to unite and unite the proletariat for the common cause, to
crucify the devil. Even though they end by being arrested, Wariinga has
succeeded in uniting the exploited to revolt against the devil and crucify him.
Wariinga teaches Kenyans that common advantage is beyond private one for
she chooses to shoot dead the Old Rich man from Ngorika and his guests
rather than enjoying love with the Old Man, who proposes her or with
Gatuiira, the Old Man’s son and Wariinga’s new lover. The story ends with a
clear note of communism which proves to be the best solution for the Africans
in order to get rid of all the colonial and neocolonial evils that have bred
various diseases in the African society.
A distinction is to be made in the concluding paragraph between Ngugi
and Anand in order to explain how these authors have dealt with the issues
they have raised in their novels. The differences and similarities between Mulk
Raj Anand and Ngugi wa Thiong’o are well evident. As they belong to two
discrete cultures; Indian and Kenyan. A generation separates the two
contemporaries. Anand’s career as a novelist began with the publication of
Untouchable in1935, three years before Ngugi’s birth. The latter’s first novel
Weep Not Child was published in 1964. The bond between them is colonialism
and in Ngugi’s case neo-colonialism as well. Their youthful days coincided
with their nation’s struggle for liberation from the oppression of the foreign
rule; they grew up amongst confusion. Born in 1905 Anand witnessed the
most intense phase of the Freedom Movement in India when the Mahatma
 232

Gandhi came back from South Africa in 1915. Anand was arrested and jailed
even caned for breaking the curfew during the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in
1919; also in 1921, he was jailed once more but this time for participating in
the Civil Disobedience Campaign against the British. Anand records all these
incidents in his autobiographical novels Morning Face and Confession of a
Lover. Anand says, “The era into which I was born was the turning point of
my country”. (Anand, Apology for Heroism 71). That can be as well applied to
Ngugi who was born in 1939 and grew up during the high noon of colonial
oppression and the native resistance. The years 1952 to 1957were those of
Emergency and the Mau Mau freedom struggle in Kenya. His family and most
of his relatives were detained also he was jailed. He painfully recollects all
these details in his Detained, A Writer’s Prison Diary. Once he returned from
school in 1955 to find his village totally ruined by the colonial forces.
Both of Anand and Ngugi have recurring memories of the hard
experiences of arrest and imprisonment, these experiences are manifested in
their works, where both of them condemn the prison-image in order to
describe the predicament of the exploited native under colonial rule.
Both of them studied in English schools which were run by the British.
As for Anand, he was in a totally British school, where he was instructed to
hate everything Indian. As he grew up, he used to hate everything relating to
his culture or tradition. As he acquired “a bias against all indigenous customs
and grew up hating everything Indian” (Anand, Apology for Heroism 12-13).
While on the other hand, Ngugi has the precise term describing such
kind of child upbringing “colonial alienation” which means “disassociation of
sensibility of that child from his natural and social environment”. (N. w.
Thiong'o Decolonizing the Mind 17) Initially, Ngugi went to a school run by
nationalists, but soon after this school and others were taken over by the
colonial regime after the declaration of Emergency in 1952. He experienced
drastic changes in the mode of education as he commented, “in Kenya,
English became more than a language, it was the language and all others had
to bow before it in deference. (N. w. Thiong'o Decolonizing the Mind 11). In
the colonial schools either in India or in Africa, the students dare not speak
any of their native languages lest of punishment and public humiliation. Both
of the authors share the same memories of such kind of oppression.
 233

Anand’s career meets Ngugi’s in their pursuit of education in England,

as for Anand he went to England in1925 in order to escape his prison-like
condition in search of “personal freedom” (Anand, Apology for Heroism). The
intellectual climate of England is juxtaposed sharply with that of his home
India. In the Bloomsbury circle and in the “study circle of Marxist’s thoughts
and practice” Anand met major novelists and radical thinkers like D.H.
Lawrence, George Orwell and others. The same thing happened to Ngugi who
got the chance to meet radicals and big thinkers and attend literary conferences
in the United States, Damascus, and Moscow. Both of the writers were
influenced by the Marxist’s theories and they adopted the politico-economic
theory in most of their works. Even more accounts of their past experiences
abroad were evident in their works. Anand’s understanding for the global
situation in the 1930s increased his own political “responsibilities as a writer”
he said, “in India, life was politics and politics was life” (Anand, Apology for
Heroism 79). Ngugi too, stresses the political imperatives of a writer in his
own age, as the following passage reads:
The relationship between writers and politics is particularly
important in our situation where our culture, our literature,
music, songs, dances…are developing under the strangulating
embrace of western industrial and finance monopoly capital
and the fierce struggle of our people for breath even. (N. w.
Thiong'o Writers in Politics 72-73).
In the process of pronouncing the people’s collective consciousness,
writers are led into active political struggles. For Anand and Ngugi, political
awareness means the realization of human suffering and predicaments as they
see it disentangled in the struggle of non-European centers. They understand
the mentality of the colonizer, and they use their acquired British education as
a weapon for protest.
Ngugi and Anand’s political, social and moral conflicts are rendered
through the way in which they approach collective consciousness. The
awakening of the masses is the main concern of the two socialist authors who
expose the social and political predicaments of their societies under the
colonial rule and after it. They employ young protagonists like Bakha, Munoo,
Wariinga, Karega, and others to serve domestic awareness in terms of
 234

maturity. Their yearning for adulthood is symbolic of their need for a

generation that is well educated about its needs and dues; this is allegorical of
the nations’ need for independence and reforms after independence. At the
same time, the authors keep their protagonists deep-rooted in their cultures
because they refuse the newly bred customs of the colonizer, though they
portray some images of these adopted habits. This is well manifested in the
manner the protagonists are dressed or the way they imitate the British as
Bakha does in Untouchable, when he wears the ammunition boots and Munoo
in Coolie when he admires the black boots of the British man who has visited
his master in Daulatpur. Also Wariinga in Devil on the Cross who was not
happy with her black skin, yellow teeth and curled hair in the beginning of the
novel but later on she goes back to her roots as her traditional dress strongly
symbolizes. In the four novels, the young heroes are tragically placed at the
threshold of adulthood to dramatize the conflict between traditionalism and the
modernism. Both natives and colonizers make urgent and mutually contrary
demands on the young. The difference between Anand and Ngugi is
unblemished in the process of awakening their own people. Anand, when he
somehow fails to bring about the change he wants, lets his protagonists die at
an early age before they are able to accomplish their mission in the arousal of
the Indian masses and accomplishing their assertion. This is manifested in the
case of Bakha who is under the caste oppression and dies early before even he
is able to witness the machine flush system which India has adopted years
later after Gandhi’s promise of eradication of untouchability. In Munoo’s case,
the author deals with the issue of class more than caste. His inability to find a
proper solution for the poor, not only in India but everywhere, forces him to
save his protagonist from the clutches of poverty when he lets him die before
he even completes his fourteen years.
On the contrary, Ngugi succeeds in bringing out a change in the way
his protagonists transform from ignorance into enlightenment. They have
mastered the game of power and they have understood that the colonizer has
not come to develop Africa but to push it backward to ignorance and diseases.
The protagonists undergo moments of transformation as Wanja does in Petals
of Blood, who develops from a prostitute into an owner of a brothel. She in
this way plays the game of the victimizer over the victimized, but the act of
 235

burning which Ngugi adds brings Wanja back to her innocence and purifies
her from her sins. This is what Ngugi aimed at by letting his protagonist
survive and start over her mission in the way she takes care of Josef by
sending him to school. She gets to know the impact of education in the
awakening of the lethargic masses. In Devil on the Cross Wariinga, who has
been once sunken in her miseries, has been granted the power of
determination. She has sharpened her skills and accomplished her dream of
becoming an engineer. At the end of the novel, she proves to be a real African
nationalist in the way she dresses in the traditional African dress and by killing
her victimizer who is the main oppressor of the African masses. She asserts
herself and the proletariat as well. This is the optimistic end which Ngugi has
planned for and accomplished. This end proves Ngugi’s socialist vision where
tragedy and pessimism are expelled. What is important is that the future
should bring the change.
There is another point of dissimilarity between Anand and Ngugi that
is to be noted down as related to their backgrounds and education abroad. As
for Anand, he pursued his higher studies at the University of Cambridge; and
while he was there, he became politically active in India’s struggle for
independence. He was known to be the founder of Indian English novel, he
was a bold and outspoken writer and he exposed several of India’s evil
practices through his writings. He was associated with the British Labor Party
as well as the Indian National Congress. This association with the British did
not allow him to give up his writing in the colonial language. In spite of the
fact that he attacks the British colonization in many of his political and
fictional works, in a work like Untouchable, there is one flaw which is the
language used as it should have been written in Hindi or any local language.
Why Anand even bothered himself in translating the Indian proverbs into
English? It might be that he wanted to raise the cause of the Indian outcastes
globally, but who is really interested in solving others’ internal issues? Who
tried to solve this totally Indian-religious based problem? No one is the answer
because the solution is only Indian and it is inside the consciousness of every
Indian. It needs only to deal with it from a humanitarian point of view
neglecting any religious or social barriers. To quote Dr. Lingaraja Gandhi
commenting on Anand “the intensity of Anand’s anger and social protest seem
 236

to be softened as he finds the social order as irrevocable and strong enough to

resist any cozy conceptualizations. Nevertheless, Anand succeeds in revealing
the mindlessness of it all and the proliferating obsolesce of such an order”. (L.
Gandhi 255).
On the contrary to Anand, Ngugi though has learnt the English
language and educated in the British institutions, he understands that he shall
fight the colonizer from within, he should be a critical insider, so he abandons
his writing in English even he drops his Christian first name James as a kind
of protest on the missionaries’ role in Africa and to emphasize his cultural
pride. His writing in Gykuku verifies his rebellion against all the new trends
that will affect the traditional values. In an interview with the Financial Times,
Ngugi speaks about the African writers including his son Mukoma, a professor
at Cornell University and one of four published authors among his nine
children that such writers are part “a metaphysical empire”, contributing to the
expansion of English. Ngugi’s style has changed over time. (N. w. Thiong'o,
‘It was defiance’: an interview with Ngugi wa Thiong’o). He primarily wrote
realistic works, but in the latest years, he explored more experimental magical
realist aesthetics. Despite all his stylistic shifts, Ngugi’s main concern in the
legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism remains consistent. In 1977, Ngugi
publicly announced that he would no longer write in English and campaigned
for other African writers to do the same. Since then, he has published most of
his novels in Gykuyu; his native language before translating them himself for
English-speaking audiences abroad. (B. o. Thiong'o). His critical work
corresponded with the aftermath that followed many African independence
movements. In 1968, along with two fellow academics, he published a treatise
calling on Nairobi University to rename its English department and rewrite its
curriculum in order to bring African literature into the center of its study, an
argument that has influenced postcolonial studies throughout the world. (B. o.
Thiong'o). In another work, Decolonizing the Mind (1986) he elaborated on
his rationale “the bullet was the means of the physical subjugation, language
was the means of the spiritual subjugation. (N. w. Thiong'o, ‘It was defiance’:
an interview with Ngugi wa Thiong’o).
Ngugi’s work is often highly political, which has caused him so many
troubles in Kenya. He was imprisoned in 1977 for a year of solitary
 237

confinement after his politically confrontational play I Will Marry When I

Want was first performed. In his plays, Ngugi tries to involve the audience
openly, which makes his political messages more intimidating to authorities.
After a decade of exile from Kenya, Ngugi and his wife returned to Africa in
2004 and were assaulted in their home in what is believed to have been a
political attack. However, the couple recovered and continued to travel and
promote Ngugi’s books in Kenya. (B. o. Thiong'o).
In conclusion, each writer adopted a method in order to find a suitable
solution for his people in spite of the fact that both of them are associated with
Communism. They use their novels to make broad attacks on various elements
of India's social structure as well as on British rule in India; as for Anand, who
adopted social realism as a technique in Untouchable and Coolie. He records
faithfully every detail of his protagonists’ lives to expose their present
predicament and to help them find solutions to their social-origin problems.
While according to Ngugi, he uses his art to criticize the neo-colonial practices
in his country Africa, which affects not only the political field but also the
socio-economic one as illustrated in this dissertation.

WORKS CITED
 238

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. William Heinemann Ltd. 1958. English.
Print.
Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays. 1971.Print.
Ambuji, Kumar Sharma. The Theme of Exploitation in The Novels of Mulk Raj
Anand. H.K Publishers and Distributors. Print.
Amuda.A. Code Swiching and Code Mixing. 1989. Print.
Amuta, Chidi. The Theory of African Literature: Implications for Practical
Criticism. London: Zed Books, 1989.Print.
—. The Theory of African Literature: Implications for Practical Criticism.
London: Institute for African Alternatives, 1989. Print.
Amuzu, Kohu. Beyond Ideology: Literary Technique in Ngugi's Petals of
Blood and Devil on the Cross. London: Minerva Press, 1997. Print.
Anand, Mulk Raj. Apology for Heroism. Bombay: Popular Kutub, 1946. Print.
—. Coolie. London: The Bodley Head, 1972. Print.
—. Morning Face. Bombay: Kutub Popular, 1961. Print.
—. Untouchable. New Delhi: Hind Pocket Books Publications Ltd. 1970.
Print.
—.Why I Write, Indian Writing in English. (1979). Print.
__. The Story of My Experiment with A White Lie, Indian Literature. Vol. X.
1967. 3 vols. Print.
Anyidoho, Kofi. African Creative Fiction and A Poetic of Social Change.
Komparatistiche Hefte, 1986. Print.
Appadorai.A. The Substance of Politics. London: Oxford University Press,
1986. Print.
Asnani, Shayam M. Mulk Raj Anand and the Bloossbury Elite Group, Mulk
Raj Anand : A Home Appraisal. Ed. Atma Ram Hoshiarpur. Chaarvak,
1998. Print.
Balarama, Gupta. G.S. Mulk Raj Anand. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1974.
Print.
Bheemaiah.J. Caste and Class in Literature , The Fiction of Harriet B. Stowe
and Mulk Raj Anand. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2005. Print.
Brown, David Maughan. Land, Freedom and Fiction. London: Zed Books,
1985. Print.
 239

—. "Mau Mau and Violence in Ngugi's Novels." English in Africa (1981): 1-

22. Print.
C.D.Narismahaiah. The Writer's Gandhi. Patiala: University of Punjab, 1970.
Print.
Cabral, Amilcar. Unity and Structure. London: HEB, 1980. Print.
Chesaina, James. Busara. Vol. 8 no.2. 1976. Print.
Chijioke, Uwasomba. "Ngugi wa Thiong'o works Petals of Blood and Devil on
the Cross." Journal of Pan African Studies (2006): vol. 1 , No. 6. Print.
Cook, David and Michael Okenimkpe. Ngugi wa Thiong'o: An
Exploration of His Writing. London: Heinemann Educationa Books LTD.
1983. Print
Cowasjee, Saros. So Many Freedoms. New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1977. Print.
—. So Many Freedoms A Study of The Major Fiction of Mulk Raj Anand.
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1977. Print.
Eagleton, Terry. Ideological Scholarship. Historical Studies and Literary
Criticism. Ed. Jerome.J.McGam. Wisconsin: The University of
Wisconsin Publications. 1985. Print.
—. Marxism and Literary Criticism. London: Metheum and CO. LTD. 1976.
Print.
Eustace, Palmer. The Growth of the African Novel. London: HEB, 1979. Print.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of The Earth. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967.
Print.
__. Black Skin White Masks. United Kingdom: Pluto Press, 1986. Print.
Forster.E.M. In Preface M.R.Anand, Untouchable. Bombay. Print.
—. Preface, Untouchable. New Delhi: Hind Pocket Books Publications Ltd.
1970. Print.
Gandhi, Lingaraja. Connecting the Post Colonial Ngugi and Anand. New
Delhi: Atlantic, 2006. Print.
Gandhi, M.K. An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth.
Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1927. Print.
__. Untouchability. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1954. Print.
Gautam.G.L. Mulk Raj Anand's Critique of Religious Fundamentalism. Delhi:
Kanti Publications, 1996. Print.
 240

Gorky, Maxim. "Letter to Jean Richepin." Aritcles and Pamphlets (1950).

Print.
Gulgelberger, George M. Marxism and African Literature. Great Britain:
James Curry Ltd., 1985. Print.
Hans.J.Morgenthau. Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and
Peace. New York: Alfred.Aknopf, 1948. Print.
Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge. London: Macmillan, 1974. Print.
Harrex.S.C. The Fire and the Offering: The English Language Novel of India
1935-1970. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1977. Print.
Henderson, Philip. The Novel Today. London: The Bodley Head, 1936. Print.
http://www.ranker.com/list/famous-writers-from-Kenya/reference. Web.
Ikiddeh, Ime. "Introduction to Weep Not Child by Ngugi wa Thiong'o."
(1964). Print.
Iyengar, K.R. Srinivasa. Indian Writing in English. Bombay: Asia Publishing
House, 1973. Print.
Jeyifo, Biodun. The Truthful Lie. London: New Beacon Press, 1985.
Jha, Rama. Gandian Thought and Indo-Anglian Novelists. Delhi: Chanakya
Publication, 1983.
K.N.Sinha. Mulk Raj Anand. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972. Print.
Kabir, Ahmed. "Oral Tradition as an Instrument of Revolutionary Change in
Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Devil on the Cross." Ufahamo, a journal of
African Studies (1992): 18-32. Print.
Kahani, Kala. http://www.kalakahani.co.uk/13843.html. Web.
Kaintura.D.S. Humaism in Indian English Fiction. New Delhi: Creative
Books. Print.
Kapur, Harangunjot Kaur. Humanism in Indian English Fiction. Ed. T.S.
Anand. New Delhi: Creative Books. Print.
__. Humanistic Concerns in Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable and Coolie. New
Delhi: Creative Books. Print.
Kariuki, J.M. Mau Mau Detainee. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964. Print.
Keer, Dananjay. Dr. Ambedkar : His life and Mission. Bombay: Popular
Publications, 1962. Print.
Khan, Farhana. "Mulk Raj Anand A Critical Spectrum." Epics of Suffering.
Shree Niwas Publications, n.d. 67.62.63. Print.
 241

Killam.G.D. African Writers on African Writing. London: Heinemann, 1973.

Print.
Klass, Morton. Caste: The Emergence of the South Asian Social System.
Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of the Hyman Issues, 1980. Print.
Knapp, Peter. Crisis and Change Today: Basic Questions of Marxist
Sociology. Laham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. Print.
Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. New York: Routledge, 1998.
Print.
Lukacs, Gyorgy. Marxism and Human Liberation: Essays on History,
Culture and Revolution. Dell Pub.Co, 1973. Print.
Malembanie, Neuvic Kalmar. "Satirical Art in Ngugi wa Thiongo's Novel
Devil on the Cross." Social Science Research Network (2012): 103.
Print.
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. London: The
Workers' Educational Association, 1884. Print.
Masela, Ntongela. Ufahamu. Vol. ix. 1979. 2 vols. Print.
Maxwell, Ugwanyi. "Postcolonialism and the Politics of Resistance in Ngugi
wa Thiong's Wizard of the Crow." Journal of Pan African Studies
(2011): 218. Print.
McLaren, Joseph. Ideology and Form: The Critical Reception of Petals of
Blood The World of Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Ed. Charles Cantalupo.
Trenton: Africa World, 1995. Print.
Mohan, Devinder. "Semiology of Wariinga's Dream in Ngugi's Devil on the
Cross." Commonwealth Fiction 1988, 2nd ed.: 203-19. Print.
Narang, Harish. Politics As Fiction. The Novels of Ngugi wa Thiong'o. New
Delhi: Creative Books, 1995. Print.
Nath, Shruti. Mulk Raj Anand Novel's Delineation of the Disadvantaged. New
Delhi: Ashok Gosain and Ashish Gosain for Har-Anand Publications
PVT.LTD. Print.
Nazareth, Peter. Marixsm and African Literature. 1986. Print.
Ndigirigi, Gichiingiri. "Character Names and Types in Ngugi's Devil on the
Cross." UFAHAMU 1991: 19:2-3. Print.
Ngara, Emmanuel. Stylistic Criticism and the African Novel. London: HEB,
1982. Print.
 242

Niven, Alastair. Untouchable, The Yok of Pity, A Study in the Fictional

Writings of Mulk Raj Anand. New Delhi: Arnold Heineman, 1978.
Print.
Nwankwo, Chimalum. The Works of Ngugi wa Thiong'o. 1992. Print.
Oguede, James. Ngugi's Novel's and African History. Sterling: Pluto Press,
1999. Print.
Ogungbesan, Kolawole. Literature and Society in Africa. Spectrum Books
Limited. 2004. Print.
Ogunjimi, Bayo. "Language, Oral Tradition and Social Vision in Ngugi's
Devil on the Cross." Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies (1984).
Web. <http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0002c67n>.
Okigbo, Christopher. Literature and Modern West African Culture Donatus
Nwoga. Benin City: Ethiope Corp, 1978. Print.
Okolo, MSC. African Literature as Political Philosophy. London: Zed Books,
2007. Print.
Palmer, Eustace. Petals of Blood: African Literature Today. Vol. 10. 1979.
Print.
—. The Growth of African Novel. London: HEB, 1979. Print.
Paul, Premila. The Novels of Mulk Raj Anand. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers,
1983. Print.
__. "The Rigidity of Caste System." The Novels of Mulk Raj Anand : A
Thematic Study. New Delhi: Sterling, 1983. 14. Print.
Paul.S.K. http://somusagar.blogspot.com/2010/03/Mulk-Raj-Anand.html.
Monday March 2010. Web.
Perez, Rosa Maria: Kings and Untouchables: A Study of the Caste System in
Western India. New Delhi: Chronicles Books, 2004. Print.
Perry, Graham. Anand, Orwell and The War. Ed. R.K.Dhawan. Vol. 113. New
Delhi: Classical Publication Company, 1988. Print.
Prasad, Shaileshwar Sati. The Insulted and the Injured Untouchables, Coolies
and Peasants in the Novels of Mulk Raj Anand. Janaki Prakashan
Panta. Print.
Rajan, P.K. Psychology of Aggression in Anand's Untouchable, The Novels of
Mulk Raj Anand. Ed. R.K. Dhawan. New Delhi: Prestige, 1992. Print.
 243

Ram, Atma. Mulk Raj Anand: A Reader. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi
2005. Print.
Rao.K.R. The Fiction of Raja Rao,Parimal Prakashan. Aurangabad, 1980.
Print.
Reddy, K. Indrasena. The Novels of Achebe and Ngugi : A Study in the
Dialects of Commitment. Delhi: Prestige Publishers, 1994. Print.
Riemenschneider.D. An Ideal of Man in Mlulk Raj Anand's Novels, Indian
Litrerature. Vol. 10. 1967. Print.
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London:
Bogle.L'ouverture Publications, 1972. Print.
S.A. Khan. Mulk Raj Anand: The Novel of Commitment. New Delhi:
Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2000.Print.
Shills, Edward. The Concept and Function of Ideology. Vol. 7. International
Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, 1972. Print.
Singh, Vaidyanath. Social Realism in the Fiction of Dickens and Anand. New
Delhi: Commonwealth Publishers. Print.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Socialist_Realism.Web.
Strauch, E.H. The Modality of Literary Art. ISALA, 1982. Print.
The Indian Caste System,. https://www.ritiriwaz.com/the-indian-caste-system/.
Web.

Thiong’o, wa Ngugi. Writers in Politics. London: Heinemann Educational

Books, 1981. Print.
__. ‘It was defiance’: an interview with Ngugi wa Thiong’o Neil Munshi. 15
November 2016. Print.
—. Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature.
London: James Currey, 1986. Print.
—. Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary. Nairobi: Heinemann, 1981. Print.
—. Devil on the Cross. London: Heinmann, 1982. Print.
__. Homecoming Essays on Africa and Caribbean Literature,Culture and
Politics. London: Heinemann, 1972. Print.
__. Interview with Michael Pozo in St Johne's University Humanitires Review
Michael Pozo. May 2004. Web.
<www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/pozo.html>.
 244

—. Petals of Blood. London: Heinemann, 1977. Print.

—. The Metaphor of Devil and the Cross. 2010. Print.
—. The River Between. London: Heinemann, 1965. Print.
—. UFAHAMU. 1983. Print.
—. Writers in Politics. London: Heinmann Educational Books, 1981.
__.http://www.gradesaver.com/author/Ngugi-wa-Thiong'o.Web.
Thomas, A.J. "Champion of the Underdog." The Hindu Sunday (2004). Print.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print
Uwasomba, Chijoke. "The Politics of Resistance and Liberation in Ngugi wa
Thiongo’s Studies." Pan African 1. Print.
Williams, H.M. Studies in Modern Indian Fiction in English. Vol. 1. Calcutta:
Writer's Workshop, 1973. Print.
Williams, Patrick. Ngugi wa Thiong'o. New York: Manchester UP, 1999.
Print.
245