The Glimpses Of Human Rights And Society Struggle in the Novels

Of Mulk Raj Anand -- “Untouchable and Coolie”

Abstract:- Human rights are held by all persons equally, universally, and forever. Human
rights are those basic standards without which people cannot live in dignity. To violate
someone’s human rights is to treat that person as though she or he were not a human being.
Mulk Raj Anand is one of the few prolific Indian writers in English who have earned a good
name as major novelists. He still continues to enjoy the reputation of being a stalwart in the
field of Indian writing in English. Perhaps no other writer has been so intensely and actively
associated with literary creation, with arts and with the cultural mainstream of the country as
Anand has. His novels and stories are read and admired all over the world. All his novels
deal with the underprivileged sections of Indian society. The most recurrent theme in his
novels that strikes the reader is his treatment of the oppressed and suppressed classes of
society. His subject is man. It is this kind of Anand's love of humanism, a principle of all
embracing humanity, and his immediate and ultimate concerns as a writer and passionate
sincere sympathy for the downtrodden sections that continually inspire and stimulate him to
write continuously and prolifically. In Untouchable, human rights appeared to be restricted to
those who control the civil society based on religious interpretations and the political regime.
Hinduism prevents the Hindus from touching the sweepers or even touching anything a
sweeper has touched. For example, in Untouchable we see the confectioner throws the
"jalebis" to Bakha and his assistant splashes water on the nickel coins Bakha has placed on
the shoe-board. Furthermore, human rights are denied and abused because of the social and
religious structure in India during that time. The high castes Hindus are given the authority to
degrade the lower-caste. Are the human rights an arrival to the acceptance of equality and
freedom of all people or is it a departure from the beginning of a process? Human rights can
be interpreted as principles of moral propriety, a set of objectives toward achieving a better
world. They advance mostly legal, sociological, psychological, philosophical and political
discourses. The focus of this paper however is how human rights connect to literature, mainly
to a particular form of literary text, the novel.
Here in this chapter I will examine Mulk Raj Anand’s “Untouchable” and
“Coolie” with a focus on their elaborations on human rights. It is divided into three parts. In
first part, I would like to point out the history and development of human rights in the world
and an attempt has been made to point out the close relation between human rights and
literature. In the second part of chapter, the novels will be examined from point of view
human rights and in the last part certain conclusions have been drawn
Keywords:- Human rights, humanistic writing, Hinduism, violations of human rights,
Untouchablility , colonial system , upper castes, out castes, low castes, values and ethics ,
caste differences
Introduction :-

Human rights are the rights a person has

In the post globalization scenario, the human rights have become a serious
topic for perennial debate among social scientists, scholars, philosophers, intellectuals,
statesmen, when the issue of human rights is a focal point literary works about socially
backward, marginalized, down trodden and oppressed classes have automatically acquired a
great deal of significance. Human rights are almost a form of religion in today's world. They
are the great ethical yardstick that is used to measure a government's treatment of its people.
A broad consensus has emerged in the twentieth century on rhetoric that frames judgment of
nations against an international moral code prescribing certain benefits and treatment for all
humans simply because they are human. In recent times, Dalit literatures in India are on the
rise to focus experiences of discrimination, violence and poverty of Dalits. Till now all their
experiences without being highlighted were silenced often with social and religious sanction
and they were dubbed as non-literary and unfit for reading. Human rights are held by all
persons equally, universally, and forever. Human rights are those basic standards without
which people cannot live in dignity. To violate someone’s human rights is to treat that person
as though she or he were not a human being. To advocate human rights is to demand that the
human dignity of all people be respected. The concept of Human Rights is as old as Art.
Being about life, Art takes its sustenance from life and, as such, it is not only an artistic
manifestation revealing a profound aesthetic construct but also a bearer of social and human
significance. At one level, this artistic concern manifests itself through the exploration and
postulation of Human Rights. And perhaps the art that deals and depicts life in its spectrum
manifestations is literature. Literature in this process not only engages itself with human-right
concepts, their vicarious possibilities, but also paves way for interdisciplinary readings of
these two interrelated disciplines. These seemingly distinct subjects inform each other at the
level of theory, praxis and pedagogy. Literary works can, therefore, be seen as potent and rich
resources to correlate and study the concepts of Human Rights as both literature and Human
Rights become complementary to each other.
Are the human rights an arrival to the acceptance of equality and freedom of
all people or is it a departure from the beginning of a process? Human rights can be
interpreted as principles of moral propriety, a set of objectives toward achieving a better
world. They advance mostly legal, sociological, psychological, philosophical and political
discourses. The focus of this paper however is how human rights connect to literature, mainly
to a particular form of literary text, the novel.
Here in this chapter I will examine Mulk Raj Anand’s “Untouchable” and
“Coolie” with a focus on their elaborations on human rights. It is divided into three parts. In
first part, I would like to point out the history and development of human rights in the world
and an attempt has been made to point out the close relation between human rights and
literature. In the second part of chapter, the novels will be examined from point of view
human rights and in the last part certain conclusions have been drawn.
I
What are human rights?
Human rights are held by all persons equally, universally and forever. Human
rights are universal: they are always the same for all human beings everywhere in the world.
You do not have human rights because you are a citizen of any country but because you are a
member of the human family. This means children have human rights as well as adults.
Human rights are inalienable: you cannot lose these rights any more than you can cease to be
a human being. Human rights are indivisible: no-one can take away a right because it is ‘less
important’ or ‘non-essential’. Human rights are interdependent: together human rights form a
complementary framework. For example, your ability to participate in local decision making
is directly affected by your right to express yourself, to associate with others, to get an
education and even to obtain the necessities of life. Human rights reflect basic human needs.
Th ey establish basic standards without which people cannot live in dignity. To violate
someone’s human rights is to treat that person as though he or she were not a human being.
To advocate human rights is to demand that the human dignity of all people be respected. In
claiming these human rights, everyone also accepts responsibilities: to respect the rights of
others and to protect and support people whose rights are abused or denied. Meeting these
responsibilities means claiming solidarity with all other human beings.
History and Development of Human Rights in the World
Human rights are both inspirational and practical. The principles of Human
rights hold up the vision of a free, just, and peaceful world and set minimum standards for
how individuals and institutions everywhere should treat people. Human rights also empower
people with a framework for action when those minimum standards are not met, for people
still have human rights even if the laws or those in power do not recognize or protect them.
We experience our human rights every day in our life. Although we usually
take these actions for granted, people both here and in other countries do not enjoy all these
liberties equally. Human rights violations also occur every day in our country when a parent
abuses a child, when a family is homeless, when a school provides inadequate education,
when women are paid less than men, or when one person treated differently from another i.e.
untouchability . Following the terrible experiences of the World War II, and amid the
grinding poverty of much of the world’s population, the human rights were drafted to capture
the hopes, aspirations, and protections which provide all people a life of human dignity. It
recognizes health care, homelessness, environmental pollution, and other social and
economic concerns as human rights issues.
Human rights cover economic, social, cultural, political, and civil rights. They
are both universal (it applies to all people everywhere) and indivisible (all rights are equally
important to the full realization of one’s humanity.) It restores social, economic, and cultural
rights to their rightful place on the human rights agenda. The right to eat is as fundamental as
the right not to be tortured or jailed without charges!
 A Short History of Human Rights
Human rights are a product of a philosophical debate that has raged for over
two thousand years within the European societies and their colonial descendants. This
argument has focused on a search for moral standards of political organization and behaviour
that is independent of the contemporary society. In other words, many people have been
unsatisfied with the notion that what is right or good is simply what a particular society or
ruling elite feels is right or good at any given time. This unease has led to a quest for
enduring moral imperatives that bind societies and their rulers over time and from place to
place. Fierce debates raged among political philosophers as these issues were argued through.
While a path was paved by successive thinkers that lead to contemporary human rights, a
second lane was laid down at the same time by those who resisted this direction. The
emergence of human rights from the natural rights tradition did not come without opposition,
as some argued that rights could only from the law of a particular society and could not come
from any natural or inherent source. The essence of this debate continues today from seeds
sown by previous generations of philosophers.
The History of Human Rights can be traced back to the earlier tradition and
documents of many cultures. One can find its glimpses in the Hindu Vedas, the Bible, the
Quran (Koran) which address questions of people’s duties, rights, and responsibilities. In fact,
all societies, whether in oral or written tradition, have had systems of propriety and justice as
well as ways of tending to the health and welfare of their members. The earliest direct
precursor to human rights might be found in the notions of `natural right' developed by
classical Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle, but this concept was more fully developed by
Thomas Aquinas in his “Summa Theologica”. Certain humanists and thinkers of the world
had propagated their views about the importance to individuals worth, wisdom and creative
potential and they advocated for individual to be free and endowed with rights and liberties.
As the reformation caught on and ecclesiastical authority was shaken and challenged by
rationalism, political philosophers argued for new bases of natural right. Thomas Hobbes
posed the first major assault in 1651 on the divine basis of natural right by describing a State
of Nature in which God did not seem to play any role. Perhaps more importantly, however,
Hobbes also made a crucial leap from `natural right' to `a natural right'. In other words, there
was no longer just a list of behaviour that was naturally right or wrong; Hobbes added that
there could be some claim or entitlement which was derived from nature. Further the
reinforcement of natural rights came with Immanuel Kant's writings later in the 17th century
that reacted to Hobbes' work. In his view, the congregation of humans into a state-structured
society resulted from a rational need for protection from each other's violence that would be
found in a state of nature.
The philosophers and thinkers like John Locke (1632-1704) who have
expressed views on the theory social contact and expressed that the man enjoys natural rights
and no government can abolish them. John Locke wrote a strong defence of natural rights in
the late 17th century with the publication of his Two Treatises on Government, but his
arguments were filled with references to what God had ordained or given to mankind. Locke
had a lasting influence on political discourse that was reflected in both the American
Declaration of Independence and France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen,
passed by the Republican Assembly after the revolution in 1789.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the French revolution , the communist
revolution in Russia the establishment of American colonies the horrors of First World War
and Second World War gave momentum to the thoughts of human rights which were fully
expressed in Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on 10th Dec;1948.
Human right is an idea whose time has come. The Universal Declaration of
Human Rights is a call to freedom and justice for people throughout the world. Every day
governments that violate the rights of their citizens are challenged and called to task. Every
day human beings worldwide mobilize and confront injustice and inhumanity. Like drops of
water falling on a rock, they wear down the forces of oppression and move the world closer
to achieving the principles expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Contemporary notions of human rights draw very deeply from this natural rights tradition. In
a further extension of the natural rights tradition, human rights are now often viewed as
arising essentially from the nature of humankind itself. The idea that all humans possess
human rights simply by existing and that these rights cannot be taken away from them are
direct descendants of natural rights.
 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
 Rights for all members of the human family were first articulated in 10 th Dec.
1948 in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Following the
terrible experiences of the World War II, and amid the grinding poverty of much of the
world’s population, the human rights were drafted to capture the hopes, aspirations, and
protections which provide all people a life of human dignity. It recognizes health care,
homelessness, environmental pollution, and other social and economic concerns as human
rights issues.
The attraction of human rights is that they are often thought to exist beyond
the determination of specific societies. Thus, they set a universal standard that can be used to
judge any society. Human rights provide an acceptable bench mark with which individuals or
governments from one part of the world may criticize the norms followed by other
governments or cultures. With an acceptance of human rights, Moslems, Hindus, Christians,
capitalists, socialists, democracies, or tribal oligarchies may all legitimately censure each
other. This criticism across religious, political, and economic divides gains its legitimacy
because human rights are said to enshrine universal moral standards. Without fully universal
human rights, one is left simply trying to assert that one's own way of thinking is better than
somebody else's.
The prime rhetorical benefit of human rights is that they are viewed as being
so basic and so fundamental to human existence that they should trump any other
consideration. Human rights cover economic, social, cultural, political, and civil rights. They
are both universal (it applies to all people everywhere) and indivisible (all rights are equally
important to the full realization of one’s humanity. It restores social, economic, and cultural
rights to their rightful place on the human rights agenda. The right to eat is as fundamental as
the right not to be tortured or jailed without charges!
 Precursors of 20th Century Human Rights Documents
Documents asserting individual rights, such the Magna Carta (1215), the
English Bill of Rights (1689), the French Declaration on the Rights of Man and Citizen
(1789), and the US Constitution and Bill of Rights (1791) are the written precursors to many
of today’s human rights documents. Yet many of these documents, when originally translated
into policy, excluded women, people of color, and members of certain social, religious,
economic, and political groups. Nevertheless, oppressed people throughout the world have
drawn on the principles these documents express to support revolutions that assert the right to
self-determination.
Government officials who understand the human rights framework can also
effect far reaching change for freedom. Many United States Presidents such as Abraham
Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Jimmy Carter have taken strong stands
for human rights. In other countries leaders like Nelson Mandela and Vaclev Havel have
brought about great changes under the banner of human rights.
Human rights exist in order to protect the basic dignity of human life. Indeed,
the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights embodies this goal by declaring that human
rights flow from "the inherent dignity of the human person". Human right is an idea whose
time has come. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a call to freedom and justice
for people throughout the world. Every day governments that violate the rights of their
citizens are challenged and called to task. Every day human beings worldwide mobilize and
confront injustice and inhumanity. Like drops of water falling on a rock, they wear down the
forces of oppression and move the world closer to achieving the principles expressed in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
 Literature has substantially contributed to the protection of human rights. The
goal of literatures relating to human rights is to combine the literary driving force with the
motivation for action, what are fundamental and integral elements of the struggle for
protection of human right. The literature which deals with the human right issues thus
directly or indirectly, promote values of human rights. The literary creations in Indian
Writing in English are the mirror of society. The novelists of Indian writing in English are
keenly aware of the fundamental incongruities which life and world are confronting us in day
to day life. They accept the reality as it is presented before them. They see the society and its
development with an ironic detachment and accept reality ungrudgingly. Some of the
novelists like Mulk Raj Anand react sharply against social injustice, deprivation and
discrimination existing in the society. According to Anand, Dalit Literature has a distinct
ideological purpose. Seeing the people suffering from poverty and squalor around him,
Anand devoted to the cause of the “poor and disadvantaged” through creative narratives of
those people who never entered into the realms of literature. Mulk Raj Anand is keenly aware
of society and he choose a central character through whose view point he stares at the various
absurdities, eccentricities and other ills of society where basic human rights are denied to
anybody. Anand, therefore, is great humanist and his prime concern is human predicament.
The major thematic concern of Anand’s novels is the economics exploitation of weaker
section of society and existing class discrimination causing serious inequality.[10] Anand’s
“Untouchable” (1935) highlights the pitiable condition of down trodden people in Indian
society. “Coolie” (1936) highlights the pains and predicaments of poor working people. His
novels present minute pictures of Indian society with special focus on the plights of poor
people.

(II)

Mulk Raj Anand is one of the few prolific Indian writers in English who have
earned a good name as major novelists. He has written more than a dozen novels and about
seventy short stories and a host of essays and articles on a number of subjects. His novels fall
into two categories namely social and autobiographical novels. He focused his attention on
the sufferings, misery and wretchedness of the poor as a result of the exploitation of the
downtrodden class of the Indian society. Religious hypocrisy, feudal system, East-West
encounter, the place of woman in the society, superstitions, poverty, hunger and exploitation
are his common themes. Besides numerous short stories, his famous novels are
“Untouchable”, “Coolie”, “Two Leaves and a Bud” and “The Village”. He still continues to
enjoy the reputation of being a stalwart in the field of Indian writing in English. Perhaps no
other writer has been very intensely and actively associated with literary creation, with arts
and with the cultural mainstream of the country as Anand has. His novels and stories are read
and admired all over the world. All his novels deal with the underprivileged sections of
Indian society. The most recurrent theme in his novels that strikes the reader is his treatment
of the oppressed and suppressed classes of society. His subject is man. It is this kind of
Anand's love of humanism, a principle of all embracing humanity, and his immediate and
ultimate concerns as a writer and passionate sincere sympathy for the downtrodden sections
that continually inspire and stimulate him to write continuously and prolifically.
He was the first Indian novelist to make downtrodden - an
untouchable, Coolie- the hero of a novel. Untouchable describes one day in the life of 18-
year-old Bakha, who is treated as dirt by all Hindus just because his profession is to clean
latrines. While Coolie describes Munoo, an orphan, naïve hill boy of hardly fourteen is
compelled to move from place to place against his will in order to earn his living. His father
dies of the feudal exploitation and mother of poverty and hunger. An orphan faces domestic
exploitation at the hands of his uncle and aunt. In his novels Anand reveals the inhumanity
inflicted on the oppressed section of the society which is nothing but the violation of their
right to life and physical safety. In his early days he observed the large scale of exploitation
of poor by rich. His novels display the impact he received in the childhood. Anand’s writing
display the violation of the human rights of the under privileged people during the pre-
independence period.
“UNTOUCHABLE” is a novel written by Mulk Raj Anand in the
nineteen thirties during which Indian struggle for independence was at its peak. Anand’s
hatred of imperialism and of hypocrisy of Indian rites with its castes, habits and customs were
the greatest motifs for his art. He was aware of the immense suffering of people from poverty
and humiliation due to the political and social system conflicts of that time. Exploitation is
the major theme of Untouchable; it deals with different types of exploitations such as social,
economic, political, religious and sexual exploitation. But social exploitation is at the root of
all other exploitations. The class discrimination on the basis of birth, which gives some castes
undue advantage over other castes, can be called social exploitation. Anand wants to awaken
the exploited, suppressed, dehumanized classes of the society. He feels that exploiting the
proletariat has been our national sin which we have been committing for centuries together.
They are forced to such a depth that they will sink lower and lower and cannot rise above.
They have been pushed to such a lowly life that it makes them feel subhuman. He wants to
uplift them from the deeps. In Untouchable, human rights appeared to be restricted to those
who control the civil society based on religious interpretations and the political regime.
Hinduism prevents the Hindus from touching the sweepers or even touching anything a
sweeper has touched. For example, in Untouchable we see the confectioner throws the
"jalebis" to Bakha and his assistant splashes water on the nickel coins Bakha has placed on
the shoe-board. Furthermore, human rights are denied and abused because of the social and
religious structure in India during that time. The high castes Hindus are given the authority to
degrade the lower-caste. For example, the low castes are deprived from their simplest and
basic right which is water. "The out castes were not allowed to mount the platform
surrounding the well, because if they were ever to draw water from it, the Hindus of three
upper castes would consider the water polluted." They are also not allowed to come near the
stream for the same reasons. Additionally, they cannot afford the money to make themselves
a private well. So, they have to wait all day long for some caste Hindus, who would be kind
enough, to fill their pitchers with water. The working class consists of many levels, the
lowest, and most discriminated, is the sweeper. The sweeper is a polluted object to the
orthodox who must identify himself loudly in public streets 'sweeper's coming'. The highest
degree of caste among the low-caste is washer men, then leather men, and then sweepers. In
Untouchable, Gulabo thinks of herself as superior to every outcaste, "because she claimed a
high place in hierarchy of the castes among low-caste" which gives her the right to fill her
pitcher before Sohini, Bakha's sister. In addition, Bakha and Chota dare not to attend
Gulabo's daughter's wedding due to their social status. Instead, they watch the wedding party
from a distance and wait for their friend Ram Charan to bring them sweets.
In addition, human rights in this novel are in conflict because they
undergo the British colonial system. Freedom is only enjoyed by colonial subjects. By
contact with the British, Bakha rejects his own culture, seeing the colonizer as 'superior
people', and guarding his new English cloths from 'all base taint of Indianness'. Any contact
with the colonizer distorts and renders the cultural aboriginal.” Bakha feels ashamed of his
father and uncle for which they adopt a spitting habit that the Tommies would never do.
Bakha's horrors of humiliating are never ending. It is only a bit of sympathy he craves for but
he gets nothing except hatred, abuses, segregation and loneliness. Arnold feels the essential
loneliness of the modern man and Coleridge's Ancient Mariner feels the loneliness of a
repentant sinner .Bakha does not feel lonely as a modern man nor as a repentant sinner but as
a discarded being, perhaps a bit like Lear who considers himself a discarded father . Like
Hamlet, Bakha finds himself struggling all alone against a hypocritical shameless callous
society. Like Hamlet, he fights with his own miseries and agonies.
Denial of education to the outcastes is a part of social exploitation.
Bakha aspires after education and wishes to go to school when he was a child. The reason is,
the education would have made them revolt against injustice. The ignorance of the exploited
is a bliss for the exploiters. The abject humility among the untouchables is the result of the
sense of inferiority complex and docile acceptance of the laws of fate. They do not blame the
high caste ones for their exploitation, neither do they hate them.
Anand has sympathy for the low castes but he does not spare them for
their meek submission to the exploiters and condemns their passive abject acceptance of
exploitation. He does not fail to show the social discrimination even in the low castes. Many
a time people are kind hearted but the rigid system does not allow them to show their
kindness. They do not listen to their conscience when Lakha violates the religious bindings
and touches Hakim’s feet to request him for his son’s life. The Hakim gets angry for defiling
him by a bhangi but when he realizes the seriousness, he rushes to Lakha’s house and saves
his child.
Sexual exploitation of Bakha’s sister is symbolic. The molestation of
the untouchables by the high caste landlords, moneylenders and the so called custodians of
religion is very common throughout the countryside of India. They look at the low caste
women as objects of sexual satisfaction. When Sohini protests against the sexual assault by
Pundit Kali Nath, he abuses her for defiling him. The people who gather around, know the
truth well but the indecent aggression of the priest towards the untouchable girl is tolerated
by them because of the superiority of Brahmins in the caste hierarchy. Even the teen-aged
Sohini who suffers humiliation understands that the attempt made by the Pandit cannot be
retaliated. Even her brother’s impotent anger has no value.
They have to accept it. However, through the temple incident Anand has succeeded in
showing that the outcastes have the potential to hit back. Mere advance of Bakha with
clinched fist makes the crowd run away. The same incident shows the cowardliness of the
high caste exploiters too.
Anand's project is to increase the education of human rights and to
improve human rights practices. His work conducts a public awareness campaign. He offers a
huge improvement in human rights throughout fiction. Many human rights themes appear in
this novel. He also expresses the right to education throughout Bakha's impulse for paying a
boy an anna per lesson because he always wished to learn how to read and write. The cast
system would prevent him from sitting side by side with children of the high-cast. Anand
concludes his project by implying that “everyone has the right to work, to free choice of
employment…” Bakha hears a poet's remark about a proper drainage system which simply
would eliminate the whole problem of untouchablity . The poet, Iqbal Sarshar, suggestion is a
way out for the untouchables from the practice of untouchabilty . The young poet, Iqbal
Sarshar, believes that "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 everyone."
Gandhiji is presented in this novel to establish a transformation in
human rights. He provides an understanding of and empathy with people with different
values or ways of life. Gandhi is very keen for uplifting the untouchables. He calls them
'harijans' meaning "men of god". He regards untouchability as the greatest bolt on Hinduism,
and asserts that it is "satanic" to assume anyone in Hinduism is born polluted. Gandhi also
prays that he gets to reborn as an out- caste untouchable. Bakha finds relief in Gandhi's
words. Gandhi speaks to the common man mind in order to improve the effort of protecting
human rights. He links emancipation of untouchables with the protection of the cow , which
the Brahmins worship.
Through the novel ’Untouchable’ Mulk Raj Anand attempted to make
use of literature for the noble cause of upliftment of untouchable. The novel displays his
sympathies for the speechless and right less. He portrays about the doomed lives the
downtrodden, oppresses who are deprived of their rights. Anand shows his concern over the
organized evil in the society which is the cause of the miseries of the outcaste downtrodden.
This organized evil is the real enemy of the society. It deliberately denies the basic human
rights to the unprivileged class. Caste system kills the human dignity by giving an unfair
advantage to a certain class over the others on the basis of their birth which damages the
homogeneity of the society. Anand wants to awaken the exploited, suppressed, dehumanized
classes of the society. Bakha endures his social exploitation for quite a long time in the novel.
Anand wants to highlight that even the untouchables are human beings. Though the patience
is the badge of the low caste, there is limit to human endurance. The awareness of this abject
humility in the blood of the untouchables does not allow Anand to make his protagonist
revolt against the exploitation. He neither revolts nor runs
away. He does not try actively to change the circumstances. The protagonist’s revolt against
the exploitation would have been unrealistic in the Indian social scenario of Pre Independent
India. Anand only wants the readers to realize the pangs of an untouchable who for no fault
of his own is exploited by the high caste. The verbal and physical abuse and humiliation
which he faces creates sympathy for the low caste exploited and anger at the high caste
exploiters. He wants the reader to listen to the untouchable’s cry. Anand’s exploration of the
theme of untouchability when Gandhi was raising his voice against it through mass
movement is not a sheer coincidence. It shows Anand’s faith in Gandhi’s ideology and his
own concern about untouchability .
Mulk Raj Anand’s second novel “Coolie” is written within three
months and got it published without much difficulty in 1936, within a year after the
publication of Untouchable. Child labor is the greatest of maladies that has spread across the
world. Leading reason for child labor is poverty. India is the second highest number in the
world. Child laborers in India work in agriculture sector, factories, heavy industries, cottage
industries. Child labor deprives a child of happy and innocent childhood. They don’t get
nurture and care which is essential for proper development. They remain uneducated. The
deprivation of one right adversely affects the other. It means they are deprived of their human
rights: Right to education, Right to life, Right to development and physical safety. Mulk Raj
Anand raised this issue through his fiction writing. The story moves round the central
character of Munoo, an orphan, naïve hill boy of hardly fourteen is compelled to move from
place to place against his will in order to earn his living. His father dies of the feudal
exploitation and mother of poverty and hunger. An orphan faces domestic exploitation at the
hands of his uncle and aunt. They find their nephew, fourteen year old boy, old enough not
only to earn his own living but also to support his uncle who works as a ‘chaparasi’ in one of
the banks in the town. They send him to work as a servant in a middle class family in a small
town. Here he is exploited by the wife of his master. She treats him like an animal and other
members of family treat him like a monkey; an instrument of amusement. In one of such
entertaining act in the role of a monkey he bites the daughter of his master. Nathoo Ram, the
master considers it as a sexual assault on his daughter and beats him mercilessly. Munoo can
no longer bear the cruelty and slips out of the house.
‘Coolie’ is a great work of art. Its central theme is the exploitation of
the poor and the under privileged by cruel, inhuman forces of capitalism and
industrialization. Such forces always prove a great threat to human rights of common people.
Munoo is an orphan so he is forced to take whatever he can in order to survive. In search of
livelihood he becomes a domestic servant, a coolie, a factory worker and a rickshaw puller. In
each of these situations he is subjected to harassment, beating which is against humanity and
is also the violation of his right to physical safety. Munoo is denied his fundamental right to
life and happiness. He struggles for existence, Munoo’s struggle is a quest for life which is
most brutally denied to him. His birth rights seem to be destined terribly. He is totally
deprived of his human birth rights. Poverty is the root cause of all the evils in the life of the
protagonist. Poverty makes his father lose his land and makes his mother unable to bring up
her son. Both of them die, leaving their child, an orphan. Thus the root cause of the feudal
exploitation is poverty. Even Daya Ram, Munoo’s uncle, tries to get rid of his nephew due to
poverty. Munoo desperately fights for his survival in every phase of his life. The constant
fear of poverty and hunger makes him accept various occupations at various places. He
continues his weakening struggle for existence with the dreams of bright future. But he
always remains abject and drab.
As the central theme of the novel is exploitation, Anand portrays two
classes of characters: the exploiter and the exploited. Munoo is the only major character and a
number of minor characters are placed around him in every phase of his life. The characters
of British origin in Anand’s novels can be divided into two categories. In one category there
are owners of the capitalist machinery like cotton mills, tea estates and banks. In the other
category there is the entire British bureaucracy. In Coolie most of the British characters
belong to the first category. They are shown as racist. They willfully ostracize the natives.
They are paragons of the capitalist exploitation. All the whites support each other in their
brutal exploitation of the natives. They do not assimilate with the natives, because they think
that they survive only through the brutal and outright exploitation of the ignorant natives. The
characters like Thomas, Mr. Little and Mr. White eke out their existence on the exploitation
of the natives only. They are the symbols of callousness of capitalists. They are not only
unmindful to the problems of the natives but also reticent about them. They look at the
Indians as disease-ridden dirty people.
The novel is a dramatization of the tragic denial of Manoo’s human rights. His
tragedy seems to be Anand’s plea for reforms. ‘Coolie’ is a sincerest protest against the
exploitation of powerless and voiceless by the powerful. He upholds the need for humanism
and restoration of human rights for all. Anand does not want to present merely a gloomy
picture of a coolie in the capitalistic society but he wishes to arouse the conscience of
humanity against the ruthless exploitation of the downtrodden. Anand is criticized for his
pessimistic view in the novel. Being a realistic novelist, he makes his protagonist die. His
protagonist gets defeated in his struggle against class system.
Considering Gandhian influence on the novel we do not find any real
Gandhian character in it. We get some glimpses of it in Seth Prabha Dayal. None else is
sketched as a symbol of Gandhian philosophy, however, the entire novel can be called
Gandhian critique of capitalism or industrialization. Anand reflects Gandhian ideas about
industrialization. Gandhi related the issue of imperial economic exploitation of India to the
indictment of machinery. It is the reason of man’s indifference to man. Gandhi was against
the capitalistic civilization due to its inhumanity. Anand’s protagonist first gets fascinated by
the machine but, later, the factory appears to be the inferno for him. Through the incident of
Ratna’s termination from the job and the union leaders’ appeal to start a strike he tries to
expose communist leaders.
III
Mulk Raj Anand is keenly aware of society and he choose a central
character through whose view point he stares at the various absurdities, eccentricities and
other ills of society where basic human rights are denied to anybody. Anand, therefore, is
great humanist and his prime concern is human predicament. He shows his concern over the
organized evil in the society which is the cause of the miseries of the outcaste downtrodden.
This organized evil is the real enemy of the society. It deliberately denies the basic human
rights to the unprivileged class. Caste system kills the human dignity by giving an unfair
advantage to a certain class over the others on the basis of their birth which damages the
homogeneity of the society. The note of reforms of India’s political, social and cultural
institution is the major element in Mulk Raj Anand’s writing. His novels disclose his
sympathies and compassion for the underdog. He portrayed the lives of a sweeper, coolie, a
peasant etc. who are all victims of exploitation, class hatred and inhuman cruelty which
deprived them of their birth rights. He portrayed the sufferings of the socially excluded
section of society in utmost realistic manner. His novels are more important in the sense that
they signify an attempt to create a society in which men and women are free and equal.
Moreover, Mulk Raj Anand highlighted the issue the child labor is wrong and measures
should be taken to end it. His novels encompass a literary relationship in understanding the
changing social structure. The process of change comes overtly from social and political
institutions. To a large extent social structure and institutions shape the behavior of individual
and society. These structural changes trap people in a particular social situation and leads to
inequality of power and denial of basic human rights.
Anand is passionately concerned with the inarticulate Indian men and
women and the atrocities perpetrated on them by the complicity of social and economical
orders which in fact constitutes the cause for his vociferous protestations. He writes in an
angry reformist way, like a less humorous Dickens of the personal feelings induced by
moribund social values and touchingly speaks of the miseries of the countless Indian
untouchables, coolies and laborers. As professor K.R.S. Iyengar points out:
“Thus, when Anand started writing fictions, he decided he would prefer the
familiar to the fancied, that he would avoid the highways of romance and
sophistication but explores the by-lanes of the outcastes and the peasants, the
sepoys and the working people. It was, however, no laborious exercise of the
self-conscious proletarianism. To Anand it was merely the easier and more
natural way; he was himself of the proletariat. It is the atmosphere of the late
twenties and early thirties, the air was filled with the dust of politics and
infected with the fumes of man’s inhumanity to man, but it was not altogether
unrelieved by hope. It is also worthy of mention that Anand is a committed
writer.” (334)
Anand is no doubt a true humanist whose heart bleeds for the cause of
common people who are neglected and oppressed. He writes out of an acute social
consciousness that is vitally concerned with politics and society, that is with the function of
power in a given society and its effect on the moral, social and cultural and even aesthetic
values of the people in that society. Human Rights are articulation of the need for justice.
Mulk Raj Anand’s novels contain passion for justice. Through his writings he attempts to
spread awareness about human rights. He, no doubt, is writing a massage for his own culture.
He voices the need for restoration of Human Rights to every downtrodden, underprivileged
and deprived section of society. His novels create a link between fiction and politics through
its promotions of human rights. It appeals to its reader that salvation of mankind depends on
human rights adoption and actual practices. Anand's project was the first step to human rights
in universal declaration.

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Primary Sources
 Anand, Mulk Raj.,Coolie. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1993.
  Anand, Mulk Raj. ,Untouchable. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2001.
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