Humanistic Approach In the Novels of Mulk Raj Anand

combination of Gandhian love for humanity and Marxian gospel of classless and casteless society. He admirers the ethics of Tagore based on a deep study of eastern and western cultures but he does not approve of spiritual sanction in his philosophy. Anand pins his hope on ameliorations of mankind on karma and bhakti yoga that dead against fatalism of another Indians, he wants men to organize themselves and dedicate themselves to the cause of mankind. It can be possible if there is a feeling of brotherhood among man and if they selflessly fling themselves in the arena to fight against all those forces which condemn them and their breathen to sub human life. This feeling of brotherhood, again, can further by art and literature. Anand’s faith as a humanist and his faith as a writer are well revealed in his speech delivered at the second Afro-Asian writers’ conference held at Cairo: “Our literature and arts are thus the weapons of the new concepts of man that the suppressed, disinherited and the insulted of Asia and Africa can rise to live, in brotherhood with other men. But in the enjoyment of freedom, equality and justice, as more truly human beings individuals, entering from object history, into the great history when there will be no war, but love will be rile the world, enabling men to bring the whole of nature under self-conscious control for the uses of happiness : as against despair.” And he dedicated the gathering of the conference “to the task of healing the wounds of the insulted and injured, through full engagement in the widest areas of knowledge and action, so that all the tears of all the children can be wiped and in the words of the Spanish poet Garcia Lorca “the black boy come announce to whole of the world the beginning of the rain of an year of corn.” He reiterates his faith in the capability of artist to liberate mankind from the shackles of pain: “this, then, seems to me true mission of the writers today. To act as the conscience of the people be aware of their pain. To have a creative mission of all that efforts joy in life, to release the vital rhythms in the personality, to make man more human, to seek appreciation of freedom from all forms of slavery and to give this freedom to other throughout the world – in fact to awaken men to the love of, liberty, which brings life and more life.” and that is what Anand himself is doing vigorously even at the risk being called a writer with propagandistic leanings. Anand’s humanistic philosophy is sufficient explanation for his choice of characters-the sufferers and the saviors. The sufferers reveal the real plight of contemporary India and the Saviors provide hope however differs in various novels. The present study categories my paper on the basis of the relationship between the sufferer and the savior. The relationship depends on the suffering hero’s own personality. When he is too passive and weak to fight, a savior figure is introduced from a higher stratum of society. When the sufferer attains maturity of sensibility and strength of mind, he himself fights for the liberty of all those who suffer like him. And when the plight of the sufferer is beyond redemption, and when he is a man of high social profile, no savior character is brought in. In other words, no savior characters are introduced when either the suffering protagonist himself is strong and combative enough to throw a challenge to the iniquitous and suppressive forces of society or when the conditions are so terrible as to be irremediable. In addition there are also some novels in the Anand canon which are fairly free from the shadow of suffering syndrome and therefore have a more disinterested aesthetic dynamic of their own. This study intends to trace the effect of the introduction of the savior characters on the overall aesthetic appeals of Anand’s novels. The greatness of Anand lies in his bold stride both in the choice and treatment of themes. He fearlessly chooses his protagonists from the “dregs of humanity” and tries to identify them with the so called high-caste and high-class people. Anand’s delineation and use of the sufferer and savior characters is all his own, and to me, it seems to be a very important features of his fictional output, right from Untouchables. The present study proposes to analyze this essential component of Anand’s fictional art and use.

REFRENCES

1. Mulk Raj Anand, “The story of My Experiment with a White Lie, in Critical Essays on Indian Writing In English, ed. M.K. Naik et al. (Dharwar: Karnataka University, 1968). 2. Mulk Raj Anand, “Reflection on the Novel”, in Commonwealth Literature: Problems of Response, ed. C.D. Narsimhaiah (Madras: Macmillan India Ltd., 1981. 3. Mulk Raj Anand, “How I Became a Writer,” Contemporary Indian Literature, Vol.-V, No. 11-12, (Nov-Dec, 1965). 4. Mulk Raj Anand, Apology for Heroism (New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1986). 6. Quoted by Bala Ram Gupta, Mulk Raj Anand: A Study of His Novels in Humanist Perspective (Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1974).