MULK RAJ ANAND AS A NOVELIST

Anand is one of the major novelists of Indo- Anglian fiction today. He may not have the philosophic depth of Raja Rao and wit and humour of R.K.Narayan, yet as a novelist of the child life and under-dog his place is supreme. Like R.K.Narayan he too has shown “stamina and stern consistency” and “talent”. He has now to his credit a corpus of creative fiction of sufficient bulk and quality to merit serious study. His first five novels appeared in the following sequence: - Untouchable (1935), Coolie (1936), Two leaves and a bud (1397), The Village (1939), and Across the Black Waters (1940). There are however, several novels and collections of short stories to his credit: The Sword and the Sickle, The Barber’s Trade Union, The Tractor and the Corn Goddess, Seven Summers, Private life of an Indian Prince and Morning Face. “In his novels, for the first time, the Indian people had been clearly and intimately described with unflinching realism and deep understanding and the exploiters, whether imperialists or feudalists exposed with uncompromising truth” (Saros Cowasji, introduction to private life of an Indian Prince). Anand’s place may not be near Tagore, but he is certainly the Munshi Prem Chand of Anglo- Indian fiction. Much of his fictional work can be compared with that of Charles Dickens. K.R.S Iyengar says, “As a novelist Anand has been as effective almost as Dickens himself”. Like Dickens’s novels, his novels also offer reformatory zeal, blend of humour and pathos, depiction of child life, union of experience and imagination. Though an original writer, Mulk Raj Anand has been influenced by writers such as Tagore, Bankim Chandra, Sharat Chandra, Munshi Prem Chand, Gandhi, Urdu writer Ratan Nath Sarshar, Muhammad Iqbal, Bhai Vir Singh, ancient Indian fable of the Panchatantra. Punjabi folk tales from the east. The western writers who have influenced Anand are Gorky, Tolstoy, Victor Hugo James Joyce. Dostoevsky and Virgina Woolf. Many of these taught him the art of plot construction and perfected his craftsmanship. They also sharpened his appetie for realism and strengthened his humanism. The handling of the material of his famous novel Private Life of Indian Prince was influenced by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Anand became a novelist with a mission and his theory of the novel is naturally in line with his commitment to his creed. Explaining his choice of this form in preference to others, Anand says:- “The form of creative writing which is the nove came to me much more naturally than any other form, because through this I could live through the experiences of other people and realize what silent passions burst in their hearts, what immediate and ultimate sorrows possess them, where they want to go and how they grapple, in their ways, with their destinics”. To Anand thus the novel is more and more a weapon of humanism. He, however says “the novel states the problems of man’s destiny; it does not solve them, as did the old epic and bardic recital”, but it can focus attention on “the real drama of the body-soul..truth life, with all its suffering and its mightiness which may resurrect genuine humanity through the writer’s ability to bear the yoke of pity”. Through a committed novelist, Anand does not believe that a novel can be a piece of pure philosophy nor does he believe that it can become a piece propaganda, sacrificing all its formal values. Anand’s novels are remarkable for their humanism. “Deep down in him there is the faith that man is by nature lovely and that all his errors and sins and failures are but dust and mud sticking on the outside, they may be shaken off in a moment and man reinstated in his glory”. In this novels Dr. Anand combines Tagore’s humanism, Bankim’s romanticism, Prem Chand’s sympathy for the poor and afflicted and Sharat Chandra’s boundless human sympathy. The theme of his work is “the whole man and the whole gamut of human relationship”. Mulk Raj believes that man is the master of his destiny. So he rejects fatalism. That is why he condemns all obstacles which come in the way of man’s happiness and comfort such as fascism, feudalism, imperialism, caste and creed, exploitation and poverty. He says that all people must have liberty and equality. Mulk Raj Anand deserves a district place because of his realism. In the other words of Iyengar, ‘For all their nationalistic fervor, Bankim Chhandra’s novels were but romances distantly imitative of Scott, with a historical or mystical slant: Tagore was chiefly interested in the upper and middle classes, and Sharat Chandra in the lower middle classes, and Munshi Prem Chandra, to show to the west that there was more in the orient than could be inferred from Omar Khayyam, Li Po, Tagore or Kippling, and so he described a waif like Munoo in Coolien and set them right at the centre of the scheme of cruelty and exploitation that held India in its vivious grip”. Anand’s novels are born of the union of his experience and his imagination. Just as Sir Walter Scott wrote about the life of Scotland in his Waverly Novels and Hardy about the peasant’s life. There is a powerful undercurrent of autobiographical element in Dr. Anand’s Novels. We find in Anand’s novels of a variety of moods- a veritable feast of satire, humour, irony, pathos, tragedy and face. His satire is aimed at social evils and society rather than individuals. Anand’s themes are socio economic. As a novelist he is free from the ‘east past complex’ he does not write about glories of past or the spiritual heritage of India. His themes are the socio economic problems of contemporary India. He is essentially confronted between tradition and modernity. Dr Anand’s language is fine specimen of Indian English. He once wrote, “I found, while writing spontaneously that I was always translating dialogue from the original Punjabi into English”. He freely uses the English translation of Indian abusive expressions in his novels. Such abusive expressions as “son of a pig”. “Ohe, ohe scoundrel of a sweeper’s son”, etc.., abound in untouchable and many other novels. When he describes typical Indian scenes, situations and characters (which do not occur in English life and for which the English Language has no adequate expressions), he uses a language which is the literal translation of Indian utterances and experiences. Dr. Anand uses highly polished and refined language, sometimes tinged with emotions , when he champions the cause of the under dog.