Demi's Post for Wednesday's discussion

I think the point made in lecture today about the possibility and purpose of incest in “Untouchable” is quite interesting. Personally, I feel that there is definitely something that needs to be examined here because the feelings that Bakha has for his sister seem to cross the line between protection and jealousy. It is normal for siblings to love each other and to want to protect each other from people who are mistreating the other, but to feel jealous of the possibility of them getting married to someone that isn’t you is kind of creepy. In this sense, I think Anand’s point in adding this aspect of Bakha’s lust for his sister is to show that Bakha longs for virtually everything that he cannot have. He wants to live life as the Tommies do, smoke cigarettes, move in his social class, and possibly marry his sister, all of which are forbidden in the Hindu community. This is a stretch, but I also can see how this may just be one of the other ways Bakha is trying to rebel submissively from the Hindu rules and system. Maybe his secret longing for his sister is him rebelling against the fact that his community says that he cannot have her, so in his mind he longs for her beauty and thinks about the possibility of possessing her in marriage to defy their rules in his mind, which is the first step in him finally being able to rebel against the system physically. If Bakha can overturn the caste system in his mind, or deprogram his mind from the old Hindu ways, then he will be closer to being free to try to liberate himself from the system and stop thinking like an Untouchable.