Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand is a novel that re-creates one day in the life of Bakha, an eighteen-year-old Indian youth of the Untouchable caste. It is set in Bulashah, a fictional town in India, and was written against the backdrop of Mahatma Ghandhi’s 1930 campaigns against British colonial rule.

During this one day in the life of a young Untouchable, we are introduced to Bakha and his family – his widowed father, the Foreman of all the sweepers in the area; his younger brother and his beautiful sister, Sohini. Bakha had worked in the barracks of a British regiment for a few years and had been captivated by the glamour of the ‘white man’s’ life. The pay he earned at the barracks had gone to his father but the bakshish he collected allowed him to buy some English clothes, which he coveted. After his mother died, he became the breadwinner of the family and worked as a sweeper and toilet cleaner. When she was alive, she would make Bakha  a hot, sweet drink early in the morning and he would dress and go to work at the latrines happy and contented. When the burden of looking after the family fell on him, he had to do without that little luxury and home life with his father became very uncongenial.

The Tommies had treated him as a human being and he had learnt to think of himself as superior to his fellow-outcastes…he had soon become possessed with an overwhelming desire to live their life…He had felt that to put on their clother made one a sahib too. So he tried to copy them in everything, to copy them as well as he could in the exigencies of his peculiar Indian circumstances.

On this one day, Bakha went out to do his work and over the course of the day was subject to verbal abuse and shame. As he was walking through the marketplace, he accidentally touched a man of a higher caste thus defiling him. As the man yelled abuse other people gathered around Bakha and joined in the attack, keeping their distance to avoid being made unclean. Bakha was a strong, handsome and dignified young man but he cowered beneath the contempt shown by others and displayed a servile humility. His sister was asked by a Brahmin to clean the latrines in the temple and while she was there, he made inappropriate suggestions to her. When she screamed he cried out, ‘Polluted! Polluted!’ Bakha saw her in the temple and rushed in and dragged her out, despite the prohibition against Untouchables entering the temple. When he discovered what had happened he felt he could kill the man.

A superb specimen of humanity he seemed whenever he made the high resolve to say something, to go and do something, his fine form rising like a tiger at bay. And yet there was a futility written on his face. He could not overstep the barriers which the conventions of his superiors had built up to protect their weakness against him. He could not invade the magic circle which protects a priest from attack by anybody, especially by a low-caste man. So in the highest moment of his strength, the slave in him asserted himself, and he lapsed back, wild with torture, biting his lips, ruminating his grievances.

Towards the end of his humiliating day, Bakha came to the Grand Trunk Road where a crowd was gathered in anticipation of Mahatma Ghandhi’s visit. Just released from prison, Ghandhi addressed the crowd:

‘As you all know, while we are asking for freedom from the grip of a foreign nation, we have ourselves, for centuries, trampled underfoot millions of human beings without feeling the slightest remorse for our iniquity. For me the question of these people is moral and religious…I regard untouchability…as the greatest blot on Hinduism.’

The term ‘Dalit’ dates back to the 19^th Century but has come into popular use in India only very recently and has been used increasingly to demonstrate the rejection of derogatory names given by outsiders and further, to refer to their pain, suffering and hope for liberation. In Sanskrit, the word Dalit means suppressed, smashed, broken to pieces. Dalits who make up almost 20% (200 million) of the Indian population were considered untouchables as a result of the Hindu understanding of ‘ritual pollution and purity.’ Dalits were not even included in the four castecategories and were considered extremely polluted. They were assigned occupations such as removal of dead animals, scavenging and cleaning of the village. They were also landless agricultural labourers and tanners. They were barred from using village water tanks and public roads. Temple doors were closed on them.

Untouchability was banned by the Indian Constitution in 1950, but despite this, caste atrocities are a daily occurrence with as many as five being committed against Dalits per hour. Despite attempts at social reform, the Brahmanical elite and upper caste Hindus have ensured that this ancient hierarchical structure continues to hold sway in India even today.

India is well known for its caste system, but not many associate the world’s biggest democracy with what Dr Sonkar (who holds a PhD in Law), and many other Dalits, call an apartheid-style state.

The Jogini tradition – marrying a girl to a village deity – though officially banned in 1988, is still prevalent in impoverished parts of India. The deeply entrenched caste system plays a pivotal role in perpetuating the practice.

Linking to Rose City Reader’s TBR 23 in ’23