Penguins on Parade: Untouchable!

Some Penguin Classics remain almost as startling on some levels now as they were when they were first published, and surely one such is the slim, darkly 1935 memorable novella Untouchable by the great Indian novelist Mulk Raj Anand, which chronicles the life and personal awakening of the handsome young boy Bakha, a member of India’s scorned “Untouchable” caste. As Ramachandra Guha (author of the magnificent India After Gandhi) points out in his short, stimulating Introduction to this new Penguin paperback, Anand wrote his book at a time when Gandhi was fasting and pleading for a change in the ways his countrymen treat these lowliest among them, who’ve in most cases inherited their professions through many generations, and now, nearly a century later, there’s still a great deal of progress to be made:

Untouchability has been challenged, but by no means ended. Scavengers, sweepers, barbers, washermen and leather-workers still face stigma and discrimination across the country. Locked int their degrading occupations, they are often denied access to the schools, colleges, factories and offices that might help finally to emancipate them.

Such a situation is ripe for an awareness-raising work of fiction, and Anand provides just such a work in Untouchable, where young Bakha is imbued with a both a humanity and a natural sweetness that – as the book opens – make him immediately sympathetic. When he receives a trivial kindness one day, it fills him with a pathetic burst of happiness that Anand contrasts wickedly with the mundane nature of his work:

A soft smile lingered on his lips, the smile of a slave overjoyed at the condescension of his master, more akin to pride than to happiness. And he slowly slipped into a song. The steady heave of his body from one latrine to the another made the whispered refrain a fairly audible note. And he went forwards, with eager step, from job to job, a marvel of movement dancing through his work. Only, the sway of his body was so violent that once the folds of his turban came undone, and the buttons of his overcoat slipped from their worn-out holes. But this did not hinder his work. He clumsily gathered together his loose garments and proceeded with his business.

This new Penguin volume features not only the Introduction by Guha but also, wonderfully, as an Afterword a 1935 appreciation by E. M. Forster, who enthusiastically delights in the book’s subversive power:

Some readers, especially those who consider themselves all-white, will go purpose in the face with rage before they have finished a dozen pages, and will exclaim that they cannot trust themselves to speak. I cannot trust myself either, though for a different reason: the book seems to me to be indescribably clean and I hesitate for words in which this can be conveyed.

Not nearly enough examples of the massively rich tradition of Indian fiction have made their way to the august Penguin collection, and this new edition of one of the lucky ones is most welcome. It’ll take you an hour to read, and it’s an hour that will change the way you think about all the invisible workers around you every day.