No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Teaching Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable: Colonial Context, Nationalism, Caste
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2017
Abstract
Mulk Raj Anand’s novel Untouchable (1935) offers opportunities to introduce and explore a variety of theoretical, historical, and ethical issues in the classroom. A canonical text of Indian writing in English, the novel presents a day in the fictionalized life of a Dalit (“untouchable”) boy in colonial India. As such, it is situated aesthetically in the triangular tension between colonial modernity, Gandhian nationalism, and Ambedkarite anti-caste radicalism. Untouchable enables rich discussions in relationship to these aspects through contextualization and comparison. Especially fruitful is re-evaluating the novel in the light of new work in relationship to caste.
Keywords
- Type
- Explication de Texte
- Information
- Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry , Volume 4 , Special Issue 2: Special Issue: African Genre , April 2017 , pp. 332 - 341
- Copyright
- © Cambridge University Press 2017
References
1 Anand, Mulk Raj, Untouchable [1935] (London: Penguin, 1940)Google Scholar.
2 Untouchable, 118–19.
3 Untouchable, 121.
4 Untouchable, 157.
5 Shankar, S., Ghost in the Tamarind (forthcoming from University of Hawa’i Press); Flesh and Fish Blood (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012)Google Scholar.
6 Anand, Mulk Raj, Conversations in Bloomsbury (New Delhi: Safdarjang Enclave, 1981), 5–6 Google Scholar.
7 Srinivasa Iyengar, K. R., Indian Writing in English, revised and updated [1957] (New Delhi: Sterling, 1985), 768 Google Scholar.
8 Untouchable, vi.
9 Untouchable, vi–vii.
10 Narayan, R. K., Swami and Friends (London: Hamilton, 1935)Google Scholar; Rao, Raja, Kanthapura [1938] (New York: New Directions, 1967)Google Scholar.
11 Sarkar, Sumit, Modern India: 1885–1947 (Madras: Macmillan India, 1983)Google Scholar.
12 Modern India, 254–348.
13 Sometimes Ahmed Ali, author of Twilight in Delhi (New York: New Directions, 1994), originally published in 1940, is included in this grouping. Standard nationalist Indian literary histories (such as Iyengar’s) problematically exclude him, however, because Ali migrated to Pakistan in 1947. Is that enough to cause him to be regarded not as an Indian writer? Or is this exclusion not, rather, a symptom of the religiously polarized constructions of nationalist histories in South Asia?
14 Rao, Raja, Kanthapura [1938] (New York: New Directions, 1967)Google Scholar, v.
16 Rege, Sharmila, Writing Caste Writing Gender: Narrating Dalit Women’s Testimonios (New Delhi; Zubaan, 2006)Google Scholar; Gupta, Charu, The Gender of Caste (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2016)Google Scholar.
17 Geetha, V. and Rajadurai, S. V.. Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium (Calcutta: Samya, 1998), xiii Google Scholar.
18 Ambedkar, B. R., Annihilation of Caste: An Undelivered Speech, ed. with preface by Mulk Raj Anand [1936] (New Delhi: Arnold Publishers, 1990)Google Scholar.
19 Annihilation of Caste, 9–10.
20 Some works written originally in English by Dalit authors also exist, but by far the more celebrated are those in other languages.
21 Surve, Narayan, “Lifetime,” The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry, ed. Vinay Dharwadker, trans. Vinay Dharwadker (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 159 Google Scholar.