Agony of Downtrodden Class in M. R. Anand’s Novels

composed by Indian in English was by Sake Dean Mahomet, titled Travels of Dean Mahomet distributed in London. This was basically Mahomet's movement account that can be somewhere close to a nonfiction and a travelog. By the beginning of the nineteenth Century, Britain—East India Company was pretty much the ace of the circumstance in India. In 1813, the business syndication of the organization was finished and the British in India accepted, next to police work, educating and civilizing mission also. History of English Literature in India, had at this point, taken much gigantic extents, with the incipient buds starting to blossom a yet uncertain way. In any case, in such a specific circumstance, a taken give of rupees on lakh every year was allowed for training and the proposition was to advance just oriental instruction. Since the start of the eighteenth century, printing presses in various parts of the nation and books in the vernacular language also in English were started to be issued. The first ever newspaper—James Augustus Hickey‘s Bangal Gazette and others came after in due course. Last to land in the renowned history of Indian English Literature were the non-public school that conferred English training. Such schools had been started as early as 1717 at Cuddalore near Medras, in 1718 in Bombay and 1720 in Calcutta, endowed by the Thomlinsons, closing in the establishment of Hindu College in 1817. History of English Literature in India was thus gaining higher grounds by being uplifted and rejuvenated under the still good-hearted Britishers, striving for excellences in the Indian native scenario. The Indian novels have developed not just as an unadulterated scholarly exercise, yet as an aesthetic reaction to the socio-political circumstance existing in the nation for the variables that shopped and moulded the growth of the Indian novels, since the mid-nineteenth century, arose as much from the political and social problems of a colonized country as from indigenous narrative traditions of the novels of Ramesh Chandra Dutt, Bankim Chandra Chatterji & Ravindranath Tagore in which ―the socio-political circumstance existing in the nation is reliably reflected directly from the early period of reformist richness to the development of a progressive awareness among the normal masses of India‖. If R. C. Dutt brought realism and reform to the Indian novel (Sansaar); B. C. Chatterji invested the Indian novels with a feeling of patriotism and revolution. Tagore had breathed into the Indian novel social relevance and psychological depth (Gora and the Wreck). illuminated Indians parallel to this battle for political opportunity was a social battle a battle against superstition, casteism, destitution, absence of education and numerous other social shades of malice that were eating into the vitals of Indian culture. The socio-political movement that had gotten the creative ability of the whole country likewise propelled the Indian novelists in English who appropriately understood that novel also had a fundamental task to carry out in it. If the Indian novelists in English, right from the end of the 1920s, started turning away from the romantic phase focusing their attention on contemporary problems. Motivated by the political and social questions arising from the changed historical situation they began to conceive of the relationship of man and his surroundings in a new and realistic manner. Though they did not completely break away from the central concern of man‘s gust for self-realization, the modified it by no longer emphasizing only its spiritual nature. Raja Rao emphasized the role of religion in the struggle for freedom that is why religion and politics are often intermingled in the novel. The significance of independence is expressed in a religious metaphor. The political activity of the citizens of Kanthapura gathers strength from their religious faith. Novels have been and are being distributed in twelve Indian Languages, and furthermore in English; and are corresponding impact between the novel in English and the novel in the territorial dialects have been preferably progressively private and purposive over such impact in the fields of poetry and drama. And this has of course, been facilitated by the comparative ease with which a novel can be translated from one to another— many languages current in the country. While a truly and comprehensive and reliable literary history of modern India is yet to be undertaken, the main sign posts seem to be clear enough. Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao were among the most punctual Indian novel writers in English, who started in the mid-thirties. The nineteen thirties were the seed-time of modern independent India; the Gandhian salt Satyagraha movements of 1930 and 1932, the Third Round Table Conference, the passing of the government of India Act of 1935, the introduction of provincial autonomy in 1937, the Gandhian movements for Harijan uplift and Basic Education, the organization of Marxist parties of diverse hues, the involvement in the war in 1939, Although normally residing in England, Anand too could not but respond to the impact of events of India. Mulk Raj Anand best known for his short story The Lost Child, has composed various works of composition, poetry and drama. His novels Coolie and Untouchable revel his concern for the downtrodden and underprivileged in India. R. K. Narayan is another productive figure in Indian English writing. Most of his works, starting from his first novel Swami and Friends, is set in the fictional town of Malgudi, which captures the Indian ethos in its entity while having a one of its very own kind character. Malgudi is maybe the absolute most charming character, R. K. Narayan has ever made. Bachelor of Arts, The Financial Expert, The Guide and Waiting for Mahatma are his other popular novels. The remainder of the harbingers of Indian English literature is Raja Rao whose novel Kanthapura, set in provincial India, set up him as a noteworthy figure on the Indian Literary scene. Raja Rao's different novels are The Cat and Shakespeare and The Serpent and the Rope. Anand has very remarkable shown the status of Indian women in his novels like Prem Chand. The difference is that Anand has written in English and Prem Chand in Hindi. Both have shown the status of women in Indian Society, Prem Chand‘s Nirmala and Anand‘s Gauri are the two important novels which present the real condition of women. Among Anand‘s women, only Gauri is there who protests against the atrocities done to women. Other Anand‘s women are either too idealized or do not appear substantial enough. Sohini, in Untouchable is almost without speech, pretty, gentle, young and thoroughly civil. She is without any flaw. Maya, who appears in the village and The Sword and the Sickle is not seen in any activity. She is seen only as Lalu‘s lover Rukmini in The Road is seen from a distance. She does not belong to the class of oppressed. The white woman who appear in across the Black Waters are realty outsiders to Lalu‘s consciousness. Mrs Mainwaring in Coolie is not an Indian. She is complex character, but very conscious of her complexion and of the English. Dominated by a physical passion. She relates herself to more than one man, but without intensity. Raja Ali Shah the Persian Captian and Guy Mainwaring, she dies not mind trying her charms on men to get her work done. Among all of Anand‘s women, Gauri is the only one in whom the scape of to dramatize tensions between the traditional wife and the free women is maximum. This is why Gauri is considered. Indian English novels is purely Indian, not just the weak extension of English Fiction. Now, it has grown bigger and its movement as expected is being Bhabani Bhattacharya, Salman Rushadie, Vikram Seth, Kamala Markandya, Anita Desai, Nayantara Sahgal and many others enjoy a prerogative place as novelist of the front rank in the comity of nations. The critical analysis of the works of major novelists clearly shows that the majority of writers since 1947 evince little interest to recapture a recent historical past and have turned inwards to more private and personal concerns. These novels turn upon East-West encounters and the conflict between old and the new. Mulk Raj Anand is compared with Charles Dickens as far as the treatment of social theme is concerned. He is a messiah of the downtrodden with understanding compassion for the waifs, the disinherited, the lowly, the lest. Minutely features almost all the events of a single day in the life of the low-caste boy, Bakha. In this manner, the writer intends that a far-reaching change in relation to Indian social fabric is quite at hand, and it would by and large dispel the pall of gloom and introduce a casteless and uncouth society. One of the most famous novels Kanthapura written by Raja Rao is widely acknowledged as: perhaps the finest evocation of the Gandhian age in Indian English Fiction. (45) It is the story of the struggle of a South Indian Village influenced for the first time by the Gandhian principle of freedom, The story told by an old woman, Rangamma highlights the Gandhian agitation launched by Moorthy in the village. What gives the novel an eternal Indian Puranas or the Harikathas, mixing freely narration, description, reflection, religious discourse, folk-lore etc. The Serpent and the Rope is Raja Rao‘s first attempt in making Indian mysticism and Vedant Philosophy a subject of regular novel. The ‗serpent‘ and the ‗rope‘ are the symbols of ‗illusion‘ and ‗reality‘ in Indian tradition and it is Raja Rao‘s found hope to weave into his novel his ideas, illusion and reality. The category bran deal as Indian literature virtually encompasses the whole of India and its very single aspect, both symbolically as well as realistically. And his this certainly is not an overstatement or hyperbole, as writers beginning from the pre-historic age have tried to mirror their society, their times at large, as work to which they have additionally been fruitful. Surely the idea topic in Indian literature comprehensively holds inside itself a glorious yet surreptitious vision, whenever saw in an open point. Prior to starting with a novel poetry, short story or play, an essayist dependably needs to manage as a main

Therefore, the writer can never move out from his society and publish out of this world creation. On the off chance that such wonder ever appears, the essayist, no doubt is to be marked as social outcaste, or made 'incommunicado'. Thus, themes in Indian literature always have to be created keeping in mind the on-going Indian society or the people associated with it. Manohar Malgonkar‘s protagonists suffer from cross-cultural conflicts. The quest of the self and identity, despair and despondence caused by the feeling of rootlessness and the solution of existential problems characterize. Indian English novel is a major source for a systematic study of culture contact and departure of the British rule the compulsory necessity of learning English literature, the importance of English for international cultural contact and as a decision vehicle of economic and scientific progress of our nation. Anand‘s abstract career was propelled by family catastrophe, prompted by the unbending nature of the standing system. His first prose essay was response to the suicide of an aunt, who had been ex-communicated by her family for sharing meal with a Muslim woman. His first primary novel Untouchable distributed in 1935, was a chilling uncover of the everyday existence of an individual from India's untouchable station. It is the tale of a solitary average day for Bakha, who accidently chances upon an individual from a higher station. His 1953 novel The Private Life of an Indian Prince was increasingly self-portraying in nature. In 1950, Anand left on a venture to compose a seven-section a start in 1951 with Seven Summers. One past, Morning Face (1968), won him the Shitya Akadami Award like much of his later work, it contains elements of his spiritual journey as he struggles to attain a higher sense of self-awareness. The reason for his death was pneumonia on 28 September 2004 at the age of 98 in Pune. Anand who was related with socialism, utilized his novels to make expansive assaults on different components of India's social structure and on British standard in India. They are considered important for their social statement. Literature and society are complement to each other the way human heart and mind do. The superiority of one upon the other cannot be established in a hurry. Literature records dreams and desires, fears and furies, fact and fiction in its minutest details to soothe and soften mankind in hours of agony and anguish. It also creates the background saga of man‘s emergence from the savage to the civilized stage is nothing but the result of the transforming power of literature. Mulk Raj Anand the prolific practitioner of Indian writing English, through his novels has described the transformation of Indian life and society in a very subtle manner. The portrayal of a variety of characters shows not only the hue and cry of individual against system but also the whispering notes which the individual feel but fail to hum against the noises of the maddening crowd. The paper endeavours to trace the impact of the restrictions imposed by society on individuals as delineated in the works of Mulk Raj Anand. The reaction of his characters to the social issues bespeaks the exciting and the inspiring tale of their struggle and quest. The growing concern of Anand for his characters in this hydra-headed world does not go a waste but keeps mankind reminding of its hush-hush hissings. Anand through his novels shows how his characters in their search for identity find themselves at war with society, the masses. Their desire to earmark a little space in this vast world mass their hopes and harmony offering them pains and peril in return. In their struggle they shine forth like gold in furnace. Anand‘s Bakha in Untouchable finding himself trapped and humiliated is full of despair but it is not a moment of defeat. The individual in him rises. He is full of rage. Anand writes: The accumulated strength of his boy glistened in him with the desire for revenge, while horror, rage, indignation swept over his frame. Mulk Raj Anand, one of the founding fathers of Indian English Literature, through his many novels has portrayed Indian literature and its conditions at various stages. Dr. K. N. Sinha in one of his perspective remarks calls Anand: Nothing less than a novelist of the human condition, a novelist whose province is human nature. Anand may appear a social history to many but a novelist, he is not stuck up in his socio-political materials. Gradually he moves towards a more comprehensive and more assimilative vision of life. Each novel of Anand has several layers of despair and delight. One can hear in his fictions ―Echoes of all Kinds”. If we look at the evolutionary process, we will modify the conventional perception about his I have been evolving a philosophy of human person which is miscellaneous. It is not doctrinaire through. It is a number of insights, possibly arising from my experience. I think we are part of a much bigger universe, we are part of the whole world. Anand‘s major novels highlight the individual‘s fight against society in various forms. His characters become reels. In addition, this can be traced back, in his personal life. Anand rebelled not only against his father but also against all other realization and self-actualization. He returns to his village, which is still in the grip of dirt, debauchery and disease. Lalu‘s return is not a defeat but it shows the emerging self of Lalu as an individual against a crippling climate of Indian society. What brings delight to Lalu is his individual will, which conflicts continuously with the social facts of Indian life. The fight between the individual and the society will not be completed if we leave Anand‘s The Big Heart, The Road and The Death of a Hero. The heroes of the novels experience the seriousness of various types. The fight of the hero in these novels means the conflict between the social reality and the fantasy of the hero. Anand the Big Heart symbolizes the new upsurge in opposition to the old orthodoxy. The novel ends with Anand‘s death but his death becomes a heroic act of resistance against the orthodoxy. Anand is a big hearted revolutionary who stands for the redness of heart and not for the blackness of hatred. Anand chooses to die to let others live hopefully and harmoniously. What the poet says after Anand‘s death is a glowing tribute to the triumphant assertion of Anand‘s will and spirit: One man can die, but life cannot be extinguished in the world altogether until the very sun goes bold and the elements break up. Bhikhoo in The Road and Maqbool in Death of a Hero show the same resistance and symbolize a new myth without which nation‘s resurgence cannot have any meaning. Anand‘s women characters are very traditional, confined since he considers them the apostles of love, warmth, and of security i.e. home. But in the Old Woman and the Cow (1960), Anand puts in them more voice to oppose their silent suffering Gauri the heroine of the novel become conscious of her individual talent and self-esteem and she defies the traditional society and decides to live freely and fearlessly. Gauri‘s struggle for survival can be viewed as Individual‘s self-discovery and self-actualization. Gauri will not sulk like Narayan‘s Savitri in The Dark Room or Anita Desai‘s Monalisha in Voices in the City. She rejects the narrow world of orthodoxy and slams the door against her husband. She does not allow her cultural conditioning to deform her into an image of self-surrender. She Anand and Anita Desai seem close in voicing their protests against persecution of women in their writings. The women in their writings. The women in Anand‘s early novels seem to bear the brunt under the age-old legacy of man‘s subordinate being who keep the oven burning to ensure the health and harmony of family in a traditional set-up. The cause of women‘s suffering in Anand‘s early novels is lack of education, the blind faith in Gods and Goddesses and the age old belief of being man‘s subordinate or secondary. The social taboos appear like mountains in their way to blur their vision. Anand portrays them as devoted, docile and dedicated wives but recognizes in them a great potential to pave the path to their progress. The need to allow his women characters to subjugate and silently suffer the pangs may be traced in Anand‘s revolutionary fervour. The social reformer in Anand perhaps wanted the women characters to boil and burn as individuals and not as women. Hence the projection of new women in his later novels is born out of the need to show the other facets of the women. Anand, unlike Anita Desai, allows his women characters to raise their heads the wage war against the system. No doubt, those women characters with their new light of learning want to guard their own faces rather than digging holes in the wall through the sharp nails and hammers of pride and falsify. Anand‘s women, like his male protagonists, fight but they also realize the importance of mending walls. The idea of togetherness never skips their mind. One may come across examples where they adjust to the changing times and trends yet for the idea of being one with their husband or lover, they continue the mission even after their counterparts demise. I is an ample proof of their being individualistic and revolutionary. One of the prime worry of an extraordinary creator is to feature the reason for the idiotic and the abandoned, the humble and the lost of an antagonistic society. The creator additionally tosses a cruel incongruity on the vainglory and pietism, conspicuousness and manufacture of noble individuals who some of the time stoop low to accomplish the end. An essayist, The Prince of the Pen, is the genuine voice of the million mass especially of the untouchable and the helpless misled by undeserved oppression and treachery from the time immemorial. What's more, that is the thing that provoked Mulk Raj Anand to introduce the despicable portrayal of the penniless. Anand's novel Untouchable communicates his incredible support of the underestimated and helpless against their age long embarrassment, abuse and mistreatment. Anand himself watches:

individuals I had known amid my adolescence and youth. Also, I was just reimbursing the obligation of appreciation I owed them for a great part of the motivation—They had offered me to develop into masculinity, when I started to decipher their lives in my works. They were not ghosts. They were the tissue of my fragile living creature and blood of my blood and fixated me in the way, in which certain individuals fixate a craftsman's spirit. And I was doing no more than what a writer does when he sees to interpret the truth from the realities of his life. The blame of casteism emerged through confusion of our sacred texts. The sanctuary episode of Untouchable excursions a cruel and rough parody on the deception and ostentations of the upper rank individuals like Pandit Kali Nath who, however detests the untouchables, yet welcomes Mohini, the sister of Bakha, to the sanctuary so as to extinguish his lustful thirst. He influences ill-advised to propose to her. On her denial he deigns to shout—polluted, polluted, polluted. Anand strongly believes in the upliftment of the downtrodden specially the concern as a novelist to present a humanitarian compassion for the Dalit and the deserted. He himself admits: I hope for a world in which the obvious primary degradation of poverty has been completely removed. So that man can have enough food, clothing and shelter to grow up as strong and healthy human beings, physically and mentally and procreate a fine race to people the universe. I need this for all people, independent of race, shading and statement of faith with extraordinary arrangements for arranged wellbeing and housing offices for the regressive and extra-special provisions for the care of the very old and the very young.

His words influenced Bakha: The way that we address God as purifier of the dirtied spirits makes it a transgression to respect any one conceived in Hinduism as contaminated—it is evil to do as such. I have never been worn out on rehashing that it is an incredible sin. I don't state that this thing solidified in me at 12 years old, yet I do say that I did then see untouchability as a transgression. (164) stating his character in a position ruled societal support that comforts Bakha's for some time smothered heart broken by regret and loses hope. Thus the beam of expectation and tolerance dives throughout his life. This concise review demonstrates that Anand's essential business as an author of fiction is to assault the social self-importance and partiality, superstitions and untouchability. He seem to urge for an attitude full of love and sympathy for the millions mass living under the poverty line and leading the life worse than an animal. Thusly his frame of mind is equivalent to G. B. Shaw and Tolstoy, Balzac and Zola, Sarat Chandra and Prem Chand. In the historical backdrop of Indo-Anglian fictions the credit at first goes to Mulk Raj Anand who distinguishes himself with the frail and powerless, the detested and the offended. Mulk Raj Anand is a proletarian humanist. He has fully sympathy with the working class. His novels serve useful purpose of arousing the conscience of the people. He demands upliftment of the poor and destitute with a missionary zeal. He shows the struggle of the oppressed for the betterment. Observations by M. K. Naik: The author‘s empathy for the abused and down-trodden is unadulterated and extreme however does not decline into mix hysterics or dull lecturing. One perspective abuse is displayed in Coolie. This is abuse of the Indian by the White men and poor by the rich. K. R. Iyengar says: As a novelist tending to himself to the errand of uncovering certain disasters, Anand has been viable nearly as Dicken himself. According to C. Paul Verghese: In his two novels Coolie and Untouchable, Anand manages the hopelessness and wretchedness of poor people and their battle for a superior life. Saras Cowasjee observes well: The magic of the book is in Munoo‘s innocence in his native warm tenderness; his love and comradeship his irresistible curiosity and zest for life. Mulk Raj Anand is a minute observer of life, society and people. He does not leave even the ugliest and most unpalatable situations aside. He sees both the seemly and ugly sides of the life and portrays them

He is thus a proletarian novelist. So through the study of life and works of Mulk Raj Anand, it is seen that he has done a lot for the downtrodden class through his novels. He has tried to give a strong message to the society in his novels. Margaret Berry in her study of Mulk Raj Anand rightly probes the question of values in Anand himself and in his writ and seeks to determine whether they have been transmitted through his fiction. She also examines, how Anand failed to achieve detachment, disinterestedness and freedom from commitment to causes. (114) It is evident that novels like Coolie and Untouchable present the hard reality of life in the Indian society. Anand has thus brought a tinge of realism to the literature. A. C. Thorat opines connecting Anand‘s writings with that of Gandhian ideology as: Anand was profoundly influenced by Gandhiji, his ethics and his way of life. One thing remains to be seen that there is a decided difference of view between R. K. Narayan and M. K. Anand. The former essentially projects in his novels the middle class whereas the latter attempts to expose the age-old agony and anguish of the downtrodden and the aggrieved section in the Indian Society. (76)

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Research Scholar, Jai Prakash University, Chapra kspriye@gmail.com