Fear of Pollution, A Study of Humiliation in Untouchables by Mulk Raj Anand

Abstract

Man has always been plagued by the fear of pollution. The idea of avoiding pollution and remaining pure has been an obsession with different communities and social and religious groups in India. Pavitrita and Shudhita1 remain as two great ideals forming the very foundation of human existence in Hindu society. Most of the individuals, however, fail to acknowledge the inner filth within them thereby living in a permanent denial of this inward pollution. The hierarchical system which assigns social identity to different social groups helps the upper caste Hindus in placing this unacknowledged filth / pollution on the lowest of the castes who are regarded as untouchables. Such sections of society are further humiliated so as to maintain the distance between the privileged and the pollution they very much fear. In an effort to distance this pollution further, the same fear is inculcated in low castes by rendering them the title of the untouchables who are condemned to live their lives in a constant fear, oppression, guilt, pain and hurt. Mulk Raj Anand in his novel Untouchable registers the mute fury of the untouchables through an analysis of a single day’s activities of a sweeper boy Bakha. Narrating the story of Bakha, a representative of the large sections of mankind ousted and condemned to the misery, Mulk Raj Anand unveils the layers of subjugation and humility which an untouchable is wrapped in. Though the focus remains on his helplessness, despair, failing hopes and agony all of which find no outlet, yet the novelist, at no point, fails to record the feeling of uncleanliness which all the superiors around Bakha are trying to get rid of. The novel ends on an emphatic note that true purification may only be acquired if one acknowledges the dirt within and without and is ready to cleanse it himself.