Mulk Raj Anand is a pioneer novelist of Indo - Anglian literature. His novels have won acclaim not only from critics in India but also from foreign critics. He believes in art for life's sake. His novels are a mixture of reality and dream. They have a philosophical depth and through them he reveals his preoccupation with humanity. There is plenty of action, excitement and surprise in all his novels.
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| Mulk Raj Anand: Characteristics As A Novelist |
He has full faith in the principle that art must be employed for the service of humanity and in fact, his novels are the works of protest. In them, he has portrayed the tragic existence of the Indian masses with a view to bringing about a change of hearts. Coolie is the picture of the plight of the outcastes! We find the pictures of poverty, wretchedness and misery! He powerfully describes the sufferings of the people, the injustice and cruelty of the whole class. There is hardly any depressing aspect of social life which has not been depicted in his novels. They aim at denouncing the social evils of all kinds. He had faith in the role of a writer as a crusader in the cause of humanity. He is thus a missionary artist. His early work is primarily a literature of protest and he shows deep sympathy for the working classes. It has been remarked that his creative writings are doubtless saturated with this protest against exploitation. In this reference, Untouchable and Coolie are the most powerful.
Anand's fiction presents him as a writer of commitment to his subject. He favours the poor folk of India whose misery, poverty and hunger he depicts with social hunger. He is a humanist who reveals the essential dignity of the underdogs of Indian society. He cannot be charged for propaganda because he keeps out of the characters and situations which he presents in his fiction. ‘Untouchable’ and ‘Coolie’ show this quality in abundance. Munoo and Bakha are innocent and dignified and lovable in spite of the humiliation they have to undergo. Anand relieves the lot of men by creating sympathy for them. It is this marvellous, capacity to bring out the essential human element in such a variety of characters that makes him the laureate of humanity.
In addition to exposing the social evils which are eating the roots of Indian society, he has clearly advocated the need of integration which can be found in his autobiographical work Confession of a Lover. Here we are shown the evolution of the youthful Krishan Chander's soul as being unconfined by any narrow religious or sectarian walls. He plays a leading role in the strike and Satyagraha against the authoritarian management of the college in suspending some of the teachers. He is strongly opposed to the caste system and he feels the highest admiration for all kinds of manual work such as sweeping. Similarly communal riots have been condemned strongly in Coolie. In The Death of a Hero, Maqbool Sherwani stands firm as a rock against the forces of communal discord and sacrifices his life for his ideal of a secular India. Almost all the major novels of Anand reflect his strong opposition to orthodoxy, which includes communal discrimination and caste prejudices.
His portrayal of characters is quite realistic and he is able to infuse life into all the characters who figure in his novels in very large number. Almost all of them are quite convincing. One reason of this realistic portrayal is that most of his men and women are individuals who were actually known in his life. They cover the entire scene of Indian life. Characters belonging to the middle class and upper class also appear but mostly they care sweepers, coolies, labourers, villagers and such others socially exploited. They emerge alive from his novels, anguished and hungry but essentially human, superstitious and drudging. It is with these characters that Anand started the novelistic tradition. Anand has himself remarked about these down trodden, “All these heroes, as the other men and women who had emerged in my novels and short stories, were dear to me because they were the reflection of the real people I had known during my childhood and youth.” But they do not lose probability and realism. They have a vision of the new world order in which there will be no misery, no humiliation, no poverty and no exploitation. In their portrayal, Anand does not leave the track of reality because they are the part and parcel of human nature. Anand's realism is to be found in the plots of his novels nor are his characters figments of the imagination. The stories correspond to the facts of Indian life and the characters are real human beings, men of flesh and blood and no puppets at all. This forms the real greatness of Anand as a novelist. He is a delineator of characters who strike us as real and convincing human beings.
Anand is a specialist in portraying Indian life in a logical manner. There are simpletons, heroes as well as social rebels. They are alienated people from their environment because of their revolutionary views. The alienation of his early characters like Bakha and Munoo is obvious and inevitable. His heroes are youthful, energetic sensitive and idealistic. Bakha and Munoo win our sympathy because they are the helpless victims of social injustice. They suffer because of social barriers. But in his later characters, we find a fear of loneliness, a sense of guilt and an inclination to believe in superstitions: In The Sword and the Sickle, Lalu Singh's self-awareness has an important bearing on his behaviour. Moreover, the themes of Anand are contemporary problems of India. They are mainly socio - economic problems. He is essentially preoccupied with one broad theme the theme of confrontation between tradition and modernity. His novels, plots and characters focus attention on the basic condition in which man is living in modern times.
As a novelist, Anand is endowed with a remarkable variety of mood. They are the peculiar mixture of satire, humour, irony, pathos, tragedy and farce. His gift in all moods from farce to comedy, pathos to tragedy, the realistic to the poetic are remarkable. The pathos in his novels is very touching. In Coolie and Untouchable, there are extremely pathetic scenes but there is no fuss about Munoo's death. Similarly in Untouchable there is pathos without any sentimentality.
Moreover, Anand has made ample use of the technique of stream of consciousness. But he does not go to the extreme depth of analysing the mind of his character. The thoughts passing through Bakha's mind in Untouchable are quite natural and logical in the conditions he is facing in his life. He does not take us into the inner life of Bakha. He finds this technique of consciousness a convenient device for the purpose of depicting the essential humanness and internal experience of the character. In Untouchable, he was confronted with the problem of maintaining the artistic detachment. Anand shows no inhibitions in his treatment of the female form and of sex. He does not believe in any false shame and is astonishingly frank in his description of feminine charm and sexual impulses. In Untouchable, he describes Sahini's bust and hips frankly though he is not obscene anywhere. In Coolie he shows the lust of Lakshmi and the sexual corruption among the Anglo Indian women like Mrs. Mainwaring but his scenes never hurt the feelings of a normal Indian.
One remarkable feature of his style is that everywhere he shows the perfect command of English. He has developed a style of his own. It is nowhere ornamental and artificial but forceful and highly expressive. He uses even Hindustani words and phrases, specially the language of Indian abuse. Sometimes he has translated Punjabi terms of abuse into English and uses Urdu words. We should not be annoyed or irritated with this language because it is quite realistic in the Indian atmosphere. Anand considers their use necessary because such words not only impart native fervour to his work but also render the dialogues more effective. In fact, as a writer of fiction, Anand's notable marks are vitality and his sense of actuality. His early novels come fresh from contact with the flesh and blood of everyday existence. He is content to let his characters live and speak and act. In this work, there are no merely sentimental portraits but he paints curiosity and deep compassion.
Anand In spite of all these great achievements as a novelist, there are some great defects in his fictional art. He does not invent new characters but repeats them under different names and situations. There are three main figures of evil - landlord, moneylender and the priest and they appear in almost all his novels. But he has in fact covered the entire society. Moreover, the concept of the heroine is almost totally absent from his novels. The female characters like Sahini and Lakshmi have not been given any importance in the plot and it seems as if he has altogether ignored the women class. Some critics believe that his plots are loose. He believes that a novelist should not sacrifice the formal value of a work of art for the sake of philosophy but he has not himself practised this principle in his art. His plots are generally inorganic. Only in Untouchable he has created a perfect plot. In Coolie the events are separate and disjointed. The relation between one event and another is not natural and the past incident is totally left behind. Coolie practically ends with the Bombay episode but it is pulled to the Simla incident to show the capitalistic exploitation and corruption. His art of characterisation is also weaker. They are either like Prabha or Ganpat of Coolie. They are sufferers, oppressors and good men. The heroes are the mouthpieces of his philosophy. Still there is no doubt that Anand is the champion of the underdogs. He is firmly and centrally rooted in the Indian tradition of fiction. The novel for him is not a mere fantasy but a vehicle for the opinions of the writer. This makes him an immortal novelist.