The postcolonial element in the novel "Untouchable" by Mulk Raj Anand

1. UNTOUCHABLE
by
Mulk Raj Anand
A Postcolonial Perspective

2. THE RATIONALE OF BRITISH
COLONIALISM IN INDIA
1.Politico-Economic
2.Moral
3.Epistemological

3. THE POLITICO-ECONOMIC
RATIONALE
• To achieve a monopolistic trading position
• A major market for British goods
• A source of raw materials
• Lucrative employment for the British upper
middle class
• Control of India was a key element in geo-
political strategy

4. THE MORAL RATIONALE
• The concept of terra nullius
• Land which belongs to nobody
• Edmund Burke’s concept of trusteeship
• The white man’s burden
• J. S. Mill’s concept of the savage
• Savages do not have the capacity for self-
government because of their excessive love of
freedom

5. THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL
RATIONALE
• ORIENTALISM
• Orientalism is a way of characterizing Europe by
drawing a contrasting image or idea, based on a series
of binary oppositions… that manage and displace
European anxieties. --- Edward Said
• EPISTEMIC VIOLENCE
• The narrow epistemic violence of imperialism gives us
an imperfect allegory of the general violence that is the
possibility of an episteme. – Gayatri Spivak
• "...the black man who wants to turn his race white is as
miserable as he who preaches hatred for the whites.“ --
- Frantz Fanon

6. FORSTER’S COMMENT
“The sweeper is worse off than a slave, for
the slave may change his master and his duties
and may even become free, but the sweeper is
bound for ever, born into a state from which he
cannot escape and where he is excluded from
social intercourse and the consolations of his
religion.”--- E. M. Forster in the Preface

7. CHARAT SINGH
Charat Singh was feeling kind,
though he did not relax the grin which
symbolized six thousand years of racial
and class superiority. (p.12)

8. LAKHA
You should try and get to know
them. You have got to work for them all
your life, my son, after I die. (p.47)

9. BAKHA THE SWEEPER *
‘ No, no,’ his mind seemed to say, ‘ never,’
and there appeared before him the vague form of
a Bakha clad in a superior military uniform,
cleaning the commodes of the sahibs in the
British barracks. ‘ Yes, much rather,’ he said to
himself... . (p.47)

10. BAKHA THE SWEEPER **
Now that he had been to the British
barracks and known that the English didn’t
like jewellery, he was full of disgust for the
florid, minutely studded designs of the
native ornaments. (p.34)

11. BAKHA THE SWEEPER ***
The undertone, ‘ Untouchable,
Untouchable,’ was in his heart ; the warning
shout, ‘ Posh, posh, sweeper coming !’ was in
his mouth. (p.33)

12. BAKHA THE TRAPPED LION *
It was a discord between person and
circumstance by which a lion like him lay
enmeshed in a net while many a
common criminal wore a rajah’s crown.
(p.57)

13. BAKHA THE TRAPPED LION **
...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. (p.40)

14. BAKHA THE TRAPPED LION ***
Why didn't I go and kill
that hypocrite !’ he cried
out silently. (p.40)

15. COLONEL NICHOLSON
He had swamped the overbearing
strain of the upper middle-class Englishman
in him by his hackneyed effusions of
Christian sentiment, camouflaged the
narrow, insular patriotism of his character in
the jingo of the white-livered humanitarian.
(p.74)

16. BAKHA THE LEADER
The beautiful garden bowers planted by
the ancient Hindu kings and since then
neglected were thoroughly damaged as the
mob followed behind Bakha…It was as if they
knew…that the things of the old civilisation
must be destroyed in order to make room for
those of the new. (p.83)

17. IQBAL NATH SARSHAR…The Poet *
It was as if, in order to give a philosophical
background to their exploitation of India, they
ingeniously concocted a nice little fairy story: “
You don’t believe in this world ; to you all this is
maya. Let us look after your country for you and
you can dedicate yourself to achieving Nirvana”.
(p.92)

18. IQBAL NATH SARSHAR…The Poet
**
Right in the tradition of those who
accepted the world and produced the baroque
exuberance of Indian architecture and
sculpture, with its profound sense of form, its
solidity and its mass, we will accept and work
the machine.

19. IQBAL NATH SARSHAR…The Poet
***
We can steer clear of the pitfalls, because
we have the advantage of a race consciousness
six thousand years old, a race-consciousness
which accepted all the visible and invisible
values… We can be trusted to see life steadily and
see it whole. (p.92)

20. BAKHA THE REVOLUTIONARY *
The burning flame seemed to ally itself with
him. It seemed to give him a sense of power, the
power to destroy. It seemed to infuse into him a
masterful instinct somewhat akin to sacrifice. It
seemed as if burning or destruction was for him a
form of physical culture. (p.14)

21. BAKHA THE REVOLUTIONARY **
‘Perhaps I can find the poet some
day and ask him about his machine. ’ And
he proceeded homewards.

22. THANK YOU