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3 days ago
- Politics
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Mulk Raj Anand and his imagination of global resistance against caste, colonialism, propaganda
In 1937, as India struggled to gain independence from the British, a more global battle was raging thousands of miles west in the war-torn city of Madrid. Of the many foreign nationals serving in the Spanish Civil War in different capacities was Mulk Raj Anand, who saw Spain's struggle as a key point to decide the fate of democracy in Europe. With the revolt of General Franco to overthrow the government, Anand's anti-fascist principles led him to defend the Spanish Republic. During the battle, Eric Arthur Blair, a friend of Anand, was shot in the neck by a sniper but miraculously survived, as mentioned in DJ Taylor's definitive biography, Orwell: The Life. Years later, their paths realigned during the Second World War to counter the Axis propaganda led by Subhash Chandra Bose. Prompting Indians to revolt against British rule, Bose presented a formidable challenge to the British government in India, writes Stanley Wolpert in A New History of India. Today we recognise Mulk Raj Anand as the author of groundbreaking classics like Untouchable and Coolie. His novels depicted disturbing realities, holding a mirror to the plight of the lowest orders in Indian society. Recounting a day in the life of a sweeper boy who dreamt of a dignified life like the Sahibs, Anand presented the world with a side of India nobody talked about. However, Bakha was not the only one on the receiving end of societal brutality. There was Orwell in Paris (Down and Out in Paris and London), Bigger Thomas in Chicago (Native Son), and several others carrying their own untold stories. Anand's life was about much more than writing novels. As a committed Marxist deeply involved in left-leaning politics, Anand was also a vocal advocate for the values he profoundly believed in, willing to raise his voice in their support. From the trenches of the war-torn city of Madrid amid exchanges of gunfire to the broadcasting studio of the BBC, his fight continued. Let's revisit Mulk Raj Anand's journey from the jails of Amritsar to joining the International Brigade in Madrid, shaping the political and literary landscape of global resistance in the 1900s. Anand's early radicalism An avid reader of Dickens, Shakespeare, and Gorky during childhood, Anand was drawn towards underground politics during his teen years. During the Non-Cooperation Movement launched by Gandhi, he joined a revolutionary rebel group in Amritsar that the British government recognised as a terrorist organisation. Deeply embedded in the revolution, Anand was arrested twice before completing his degree from the University of Punjab. Anand's father, a military clerk loyal to the British Indian Army, was not proud of his son's altercations with the government. As detailed in Saros Cowasjee's biography, Mulk Raj Anand: His Life and Work, his father's background in the British Army helped Anand secure a scholarship to pursue a PhD at University College, London. With high regard for the British model of democracy, Anand was shocked to find that the condition of the working class in London was no different from that in India. He concluded that the British government was organised and it functioned in the interest of a small minority that controlled the whole state. Driven by his rebellious nature, Anand ended up fighting for the rights of British coal workers during the strike of 1926. These events not only solidified Anand's anti-imperialist views but also prompted him to join a Marxist study circle for a better understanding of the struggles of the working class. It did not take Anand long to find the like-minded company of left-leaning intellectuals during his university years in London. 'He'd frequent the British Museum to meet eminent writers and artists,' recounts Irish poet Louis MacNeice in his unfinished autobiography, The Strings Are False. As Anand's network widened, he cultivated some valuable friendships that would shape his literary career. It was the friendship and mentorship of notable author EM Forster that opened doors for him into the established British literary scene. Soon, Anand became a familiar name in influential literary circles in London, most notably the Bloomsbury Group, founded by English writer Virginia Woolf and her siblings, artist Vanessa Bell and author Thoby Stephen. Although not a permanent member, Anand attended several of the literary meets held on Thursday evenings, mostly at 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury. Despite the intellectual exchanges and collaborations, Anand observed pro-colonial sentiments and a racist attitude that he perceived as 'ignorance of other 'cultures' and the club's 'disengagement' with both national and international politics.' Remarks like 'lesser breeds beyond the law' about Indians left him 'feeling anger and shame,' as he recounts in his memoir Conversations in Bloomsbury (1981). Untouchable and its global echo Although Anand had finished writing Untouchable in 1927, his first published work was an essay, 'Persian Painting' (1930). The printed edition of Untouchable did not see the light of day until 1935, after rejections from 19 publishers. Books on Mughals, mysticism, and the extravagant lives of Nawabs fascinated publishers more, not the disturbing reality of outcasts, which many considered 'dirt.' At last, a moving preface by EM Forster encouraged Lawrence and Wishart, a small left-wing publisher, to take a chance on Untouchable. Upon publication, the novel successfully found a reader base in left-liberal circles, especially among Marxists and anti-fascists. The disturbing horrors of societal brutality against outcastes linked Untouchable with broader, parallel struggles unfolding across the globe, from the industrial underbelly of Britain to the Jim Crow South. Richard Wright, an African-American writer, uncovered systematic racism in the US, robbing Black communities of dignified life with Native Son (1940). Like Bakha, Wright introduced the world to Bigger Thomas, a young African-American boy from Chicago who was crushed and criminalised by structural violence. Although Anand and Wright never met, through Bakha and Bigger Thomas, they powerfully held up a mirror to societal brutality. Orwell, Anand, and the BBC In the 1940s, when the Second World War was at its peak, Anand was offered the position of Talks Assistant at the BBC's Indian Service in London. Citing political turmoil in India, Anand politely declined the offer, which was then passed on to George Orwell. His desire to serve his country, his wife's ill health, and financial setbacks led him to accept the job. As the new Talks Assistant, Orwell wrote a letter to Anand to convince him to write and broadcast for the BBC. Anand readily agreed. Together, tasked with encouraging anti-imperialist sentiments in India, they worked on several radio talk series. In New Weapons of War, Anand explained the meanings of war-related phrases such as 'Pluto-Democracy,' 'Propaganda,' and 'New Order,' terms commonly spoken yet poorly understood. According to Abha Sharma Rodrigues' doctoral thesis, George Orwell, The BBC, and India: A Critical Study, despite several ideological differences, the early life experiences of Anand and Orwell bore striking similarities. Not only did the zeal of reform motivate them to write, but they also went to great lengths to experience the pain of the lowest orders of society. While Anand spent time at Sabarmati Ashram, living with the untouchables and performing the tasks of a sweeper, Orwell resigned from the Indian Imperial Police and chose to live in slums, working menial jobs like a dishwasher in restaurants. As Anand uncovered casteism in Untouchable, Orwell exposed classism in Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), laying bare the grim realities of poverty and exclusion in Europe's capitals. Often criticised as hypocritical and ironic, it remains debatable whether the BBC's wartime efforts to encourage anti-imperialist sentiments in India were successful. However, Orwell and Anand's experiments with language resulted in innovative broadcasts like New Weapons of War. Due to rising differences with the organisation, Orwell left the BBC in 1943, while Anand overlapped his tenure and continued to freelance as a scriptwriter and broadcaster until the end of the war. With India inching closer to freedom, he returned home and founded MARG (Modern Architectural Research Group) magazine in 1946. Drawing together the threads of his remarkable life, Anand emerges not just as a writer but as a fearless combatant whose participation in the global politics of resistance will always be remembered. From the prison cell in Amritsar to the trenches of war-torn Madrid, and from debates in Bloomsbury to broadcasting radio talks at the BBC, Anand's journey was not limited to writing. It was about proactively utilising every platform to challenge power and expose violence against the lowest orders of society, be it outcasts in India or coal miners in London. As we enter the age of renewed censorship and systemic oppression, the legacy of Anand reminds us that literature is not merely a mirror; it can be a weapon. You just have to wield it with some empathy forged in conviction and finally aim squarely at the architecture of injustice.
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25-04-2025
- Entertainment
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Adil Jussawalla's Bombay: When writer Mulk Raj Anand visited the poet at his home
When I decided to settle in Bombay in 1970, I didn't know I'd rise to soaring heights within a year. The heights can be measured. Their location is a flat on the 18th floor of a building in Cuffe Parade, a space that four members of the family, including myself, bought in 1970 itself; it was impossible not to. Someone had booked the flat and then withdrawn, leaving it free just for us to take over, or so it seemed. As we walked in through the door into the vacant flat, the sea and sky rose before our eyes in dazzling splendour. The view from the balcony overlooked a building with two Saracenic domes, beyond them a mill, a fishing dock and trawlers floating in the sea. The view clinched the deal for us. It would have been mad to look elsewhere. I knew Mulk Raj Anand lived in the building with the Saracenic domes but I didn't know in which part of the building. Sometimes I thought he had a whole floor to himself, sometimes I felt he occupied a room under one of the domes. Used to living by myself for long periods at a time, and sometimes wanting to get away from the tumult of family life, I had the urge to visit Mulk, imagining that he surely lived under one of the domes, or at least that the room under one of them was his study. The visit never took place. Instead, he visited me. He came with the artist Vivan Sundaram and the art theorist Geeta Kapur, whom I knew from our days in London. I was touched and a little surprised by the visit. I had only a book of poems to my credit, he had several novels to his. Very few people had read my work though many people knew I was working on an anthology of Indian writing. Or did the visit take place in or after 1974, when the anthology was finally available in India? Mulk wasn't included in the anthology since he already had a fairly wide readership outside India, and one of the purposes of the anthology was to introduce lesser known or unknown writers (unknown to nonIndians, at least), especially through translations of their work, to non-Indian readers. The visit went off well but had repercussions. I visited Mulk in turn (he doesn't live under the cupola-like domes – they may have been cupolas once – nor does he have a floor to himself. He has a couple of spacious rooms on the ground floor of the building). It was much later that I realised that Mulk wanted me to visit him more often, especially in the evenings, when he would entertain several visitors, some of whom would drop in unannounced. Running into me in the street one day, he reminded me of our first meeting, that it was he who had called first. He thought it was discourteous of me not to have called on him more often. He told me he thought I was too arrogant and aloof ever to cross the street to see him. Which perhaps I was, or still am. The truth is I dislike visiting people without an appointment, and am generally tongue-tied or resentful in the presence of strangers, some of whom, I've sometimes discovered in the course of an evening, may even have reasons to dislike me. I never knew what or whom to expect at Mulk's. The unpleasantness caused by this encounter has long passed and I have spent many pleasant evenings chatting with Mulk on the makeshift porch near the entrance to his rooms. Often, from my eyrie on the 18th floor, I see brightly dressed young people dart through the gap between the gates of the building. I'm sure they must be visiting Mulk. (A tiny woman in red, a scarlet minivet perhaps, has just popped through the green gates.) Hardly anyone else lives in the building. There was a move, not so long ago, to pull it down. At ninety, Mulk himself is at least as agile as his young visitors, hopping in and out of trains with the gait of a school boy. His reputation as a novelist hasn't weathered as well as he has but there are signs of a long-overdue reassessment. I myself have grown to see the importance of his use of language – 'pidgin' as he calls it – a conscious attempt to subvert the ruler's English during a time of Empire, and after. The coolies and untouchables of his early novels were also part of his overall strategy to make such invisible people visible, as much to British eyes as to our own. Mulk believes in intervening in public issues, a busybody to some, a nuisance to others, but always an activist. We need people like him to remind us that without an active involvement in what is loosely called 'culture', important books will be allowed to disappear from view, just as precious buildings will be. But I'm beginning to think the tide has turned, that the activists are winning, and that what will be allowed to go is only that which is no longer viable. – 1997.
