MULK RAJ ANAND'S "COOLIE"

                      MULK RAJ ANAND'S

                                'COOLIE'

Speaking of the contribution of the Trinity of Indian Literature, that is, R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand, the legacy has endless masterpieces. Earlier during my bookstagram journey I never thought of reading any works by Indian authors for I had the notion that to read English Literature one has to read the literature written by Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte or the translated works from French and Russian Literatures. But my perception changed when I first read a book by Raja Rao called ‘Kanthapura’, which was one of the classics in Indian Literature. The books written by Indians in English during the colonial period came under ‘Indo-Anglian Literature/Fiction’. Then there was no turning back. I read R.K. Narayan’s The English Teacher and The Guide and then I finally read Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable and Coolie leaving me completely blown away in one fell swoop.

It is really important to read the authors who have written during the colonial rule specially ! Why is it important to read and know about the events which are past behind us? Well, the events of the past have always their never ending impact on the years to come by and here the British Raj and the partition have their effects on people even at present times. You may read George Orwell or Margaret Attwood but your take on political fiction will remain incomplete without reading the works of the above mentioned authors in Indian Literature.

Mulk Raj Anand has always written about the state of society during colonial rule. Whether it is about the oppression by the britishers on the poor people of India or the self deprecating caste system within our own society, India has been hollowed from within in the 19th and 20th century. We can surely sing praises for the britishers for their system and technology that they brought and implemented in India but we can never forget how they made a living hell for the people of India specially those who worked on daily wages doing meagre jobs like cleaning toilets and working in the textile factories that they owned. It was easy for them to study and pick the weaknesses of the Indian society’s system which ran then and still is running currently. In the novel ‘Coolie’, Munoo, an orphan in his teens, living with his aunt and uncle in a village near Kangara, begging his journey to the city for the employment. Realisation soon falls on him when he sees how the world works, discriminating the lower strata of the society with humiliation. He never gets the compassion from his employers except one in Daulatpur, be it Indians Sham Nagar or the white man in Bombay owning a textile factory. He does every kind of handwork with some days sleeping uneaten. Munoo starts his journey from a village in Himachal, from there going to the cities like Sham Nagar and Daulatpur to the big city of dreams, Bombay and ends up back in Simla. The poor boy witnesses every aspect of life in his little life. 

I am not much into persuading a reader into reading some stuff just because I liked it, but this work by Mulk Raj Anand is an exception. The author has seen and inked the same. He has not confined application of the exploitation just on the English but has depicted how our own men have destroyed our own men in those days too.