Untouchable

Untouchable written by Mulk Raj Anand depicts life in India during the early 1900’s for a low class individual. Bakha is a boy who has been born into the lowest class of society. The class system in India during this time was called the caste system and related to the Hindu religion. Untouchable shows societal issues through Bakha’s experiences. The “untouchables” to which he belongs to are suppressed and degraded by their own society. An example of this can be seen when Bakha is attacked for accidentally bumping into another individual. What is unique about this experience is how Bakha feels that he should fight back and rebel as well as be submissive and let himself be abused. In this Indian society individuals of the lower class believe the upper class is superior to them and have the right to abuse them. When Bakha explains what happened to him in town to his father, his father replies with this ideology. Bakha is upset with the caste system and toward the end of the novel begins to realize there are other ways to live. He starts to listen to a Christian missionary who says Jesus love the rich and the poor. Later on he sees Gandhi who also believes that the “untouchables” should no longer be so degraded and rather calls them “men of God”.