What is the theme of Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable?usru

Untouchable is Mulk Raj Anand's first
novel and it brought to him immense popularity and prestige. This novel shows the
realistic picture of society. In this novel Anand has portrayed a picture of untouchable
who is sweeper boy. This character is the representative of all down trodden society in
pre-independence of India. The protagonist of this novel is the figure of suffering
because of his caste. With Bakha, the central character, there are other characters who
also suffer because of their lower caste. They live in mud-walled cottages huddled
colony in which people are scavengers, the leather-workers, the washer men, the barbers,
the water-carriers, the grass-cutters and other outcastes. The lower castes people are
suffering because they are by birth outcaste. But Mulk Raj Anand had depicted the
hypocrisy of the upper caste people that men like Pt. Kali Nath enjoy the touch of the
Harijan girls. Mulk Raj Anand exposes all this hypocrisy and double standard or double
dealing. In this novel Bakha is a universal figure to show the oppression, injustice,
humiliation to the whole community of the outcastes in India. Bakha symbolizes the
exploitation and oppression which has been the fate of untouchables like him. His
anguish and humiliation are not of his alone, but the suffering of whole outcastes and
underdogs.

Untouchable shows the evil of untouchability in
Hindu Society The novel's emphasis on an individual's attempt to emancipate himself from
the age old evil of untouchability.Anand is here, concerned
with evils of untouchability and the need for radical empathy. He describes the pathetic
conditions of the untouchables through the character Bakha, their immitigable hardships
and physical and mental agonies almost with the meticulous skill of historical
raconteur. In the words of Marlene Fisher:

…Anand's first
novel, then, is at one and the same time a fine piece of creative work in terms of its
own artistic integrity and an indication of it author's humanistic commitments and
future novelistic directions.1

Untouchable is a faithful
recordation and a transcription of the pathetic plight of untouchables who are subjected
to immitigable social indignities, "only because of their lowly birth." Anand depicted
the miserable condition of the small family of Lakha, the jamadar of the sweepers. Anand
not only throws light on their object poverty and suffering but also focuses its
attention on their low-caste. As K.N. Sinha comments:

…The
novel has a tragic beauty of its own. The will to revolt and the sheer impossibility of
successful doing so under the circumstances constitute the basic tension in the novel.
The hero is simultaneously a rebel and victim. His anguish becomes our sorrow. But Bakha
has no tragic status as scapegoat and a victim, tyrannized by a recalcitrant society. He
is the lowest of the lowly whose destiny does not suffer any appreciable
erocion.2