#mulkrajanand

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Mulk Raj Anand Biography

Mulk Raj Anand, prominent Indian author with hundreds of novels, short stories, and critical essays in English and is also considered as a founder of the English-language Indian novel.

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UNTOUCHABLE :BOOK REVIEW

The story is setup in pre independence India.

It starts with the description of the outcasts colony, outcasts from the Hindu society.

Manual scavengers, leather workers, washermen, barbers, water carriers and grasscutters.

But there was an internal hierarchy in the outcasts society too where the scavenger lies in the bottom. Lowest of them all.

Manual scavengers who do the work no one wants to do. Discriminated by the society including other outcasts.

It is the story of Bakha an attractive young man who cleans the latrines annd sweeps the roads. The book describes a day in his life filled with crushed dreams, humiliation, servility, weakness of the downtrodden.

He lives in the outcasts colony where there are dingy lanes engulfed with pungent fumes from the filthy brooke and public latrines situated about it.

Then it describes the sad state of affairs

How they were not allowed to fetch water from the well and how they used to beg every passerby to fill their pitchers. How he begs for food and gets humiliated. How he was ashamed to be seen in the street events that psychologically scarred him.

An incident in the book that enraged me was when poor bakha gets public humiliation in the street and even got slapped when an upper cast accidently got brushed to him.

The whole crowd sympathize with the one being touched and he he suffered terribly which was pathetic.

There were so many description of events that made me exasperate. "INHUMAN"! Was the word that came out of my mouth. Especially the Hakim ji's incident.

Later in the story he came across a Christian missionary who wanted him to convert to Christianity and assured him how this UNTOUCHABLE tag will vanish he also came across a congregation which was addressed by Mahatma Gandhi himself who called dalits Harijans and didn't wanted dalits to be separated from Hindus.

There were only a couple of events in the book where he was not abused and it went like" I am very grateful Halvidar ji, it is very kind of you" were Bakha's words when he was offered tea by halvidar ji in a pan from which sparrows drink water.

"Mahatma had talked of a brahmin who did scavenging in his ashram, did he mean i should go on scavenging? Bakha asked himself.

Yes, came a forceful answer.." YES" said bakha i shall go on doing what gandhiji says.

But shall i never be able to leave the latrines? Came a disturbing thought.

The story is an act of fiction but reflects realism in the society. Its reflects the hypocrite society.

Sad truth Cast system still prevails. Untouchability still prevails. This captivating narrative and melancholy described in its proses is soul crushing. But it is a must read to see where our society came from.