1

“MULK RAJ ANAND’S COOLIE AS A SOCIAL TRAGEDY”

A PROJECT REPORT

Submitted to

MAHATMA GANDHI UNIVERSITY

in partial fulfilment for the award of the Degree

Of

BACHELOR OF ARTS

in

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE MODEL-II

[VOCATIONAL TEACHING]

By

BINU T

Reg. No. :

Year of study: 2014 - 2017

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

ST THOMAS COLLEGE THAVALAPPARA, KONNI,

PATHANAMTHITTA,KERALA- 689691
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CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the Project entitled “MULK RAJ ANAND’S COOLIE AS A

SOCIAL TRAGEDY” by Mulk Raj Anand, is a record of studies and research carried

out by Binu.T of St Thomas College, Konni, under the guidance of Ms. Luna Johny and

submitted to Mahatma Gandhi University in partial fulfilment for the award of the

Degree in Bachelor of Arts in English Teaching.

Ms. Luna Johny Ms. Sherin John

Supervising Teacher Head of the Department

Department of English Department of English

St Thomas College, Konni St Thomas College, Konni

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost I express my gratitude to God, the Almighty, for helping me in every step

of this project.

I owe my sincere gratitude to Ms. Sherin John, Head of the Department of English for her

encouragement and support during my course period.

I thank my respectful supervisor and guide Ms. Luna Johny, Department of English for her

support and all possible help towards the successful completion of this project.

I remember the love and respect, the help and guidance rendered by all the teachers of the

Department of English, who have made our course a fruitful and memorable one.

I wish to express my thanks to the Librarian and other staff of St Thomas College, for all the

help they have rendered by providing me the relevant study material. I pray for the blessing of my

parents in all my endeavours.

BINU.T
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CONTENTS

 INTRODUCTION

 CHAPTER 1 MULK RAJ ANAND and COOLIE

 CHAPTER2 TRAGEDY and COOLIE

 CHAPTER3 MULK RAJ ANAND’S COOLIE AS A SOCIAL TRAGEDY

 CONCLUSION

 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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INTRODUCTION

Reading novels in Indian English writing written by writers such as Mulk Raj Anand

is a sort of eye opening part of life. In the paper I tried to point out some of the interesting

things such as the problems of caste which has divided the whole Indian nation into several

communities and religions. Coolie is one of the most interesting novels in 1930s which

describes the story of Munoo as a victim of an exploitative system. My paper, apart

from comprehending and understanding his suffering and exploitation take place in his

psychological, emotional and spiritual growth; a dialogue that continues between h is

existential problem and his questioning of basic tenets of humanism that he is constantly

denied of, it also tell why the guy has to undergo such problems. Finally, he is forced to

accept his existential condition as determined by his fate, his karma and accepts his class

identity, for many others suffer like him.

My paper also studies how the novel revolves around the migration of a young boy

Munoo from his home in the hills of Kangra to the towns, the city finally, embracing the end

of his life in Simla. Anand uses humanism to bring Munoo to life and follows his sexual

awareness, his adolescence, his innocence and his simplistic view of life. Munoo’s innocent

life is crushed under the cruelty of the world. The experiences he gather in life’s journey are

pitiful, a saga of misery that finally bring his life to an end. Anand invokes pathos of the

readers as well as exposes the exploitative system that victimizes Munoo.

Munoo is born poor and for the rest of his life is unable to get away from his poverty

that leaves him broken. The class system ensures that assimilation to a higher class is not

possible. The bourgeoisie expand their class through institutions and ideology. But the reality
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of the working class in Coolie is that it itself is without demarcations. Thus the Coolies can

move in and out of this class. There is no ideological barrier that demarcates the working

class. Anand himself refers to the striking mill workers as Coolies; the word means unskilled

workers.
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` CHAPTER 1

MULK RAJ ANAND and COOLIE

Mulk Raj Anand, one of the most highly regarded Indian novelists writing in English,

was born in Peshwar in 1905.He was educated at the universities of Lahore, London and

Cambridge, and lived in England for many years, finally settling in a village in Western India

after the war. His main concern has always been for ‘the creatures in the lower depths of

Indian society who once were men and women: the rejected, who had no way to articulate

their anguish against the oppressors’. His novels of humanism have been translated into

several world languages.

The fiction-fiction include Untouchables (1935),described by Martin Seymour-Smith

as ‘one of the most eloquent and imaginative works to deal with this difficult and emotive

subject’ , Coolie(1936),Two Leaves and a Bud (1937),The Village(1939), Across the Black

Waters(1940),The Sword and the Sickle(1942), and much-acclaimed Private Life of an

Indian Prince(1953). His autobiographical novels, Seven Summers (1988),Morning Face

(1968),which won the National Academy Award, Confession of a Lover(1972) and The

Bubble(1988) reveal the story of his experiments with truth and the struggle of his various

egos to attain a possible higher self

Coolie portrays the class distinction between rich and the poor. It depicts the sad and

pathetic life of Munoo, a young boy from the Kangra hills of Himachel Pradesh. Munoo’s
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uncle took him to Shyamnagar where he was employed as a servant by Babu Nathu Ram,

Sub-Accountant in Imperial Bank. The Babu’s wife was a sharp tounged shrew. She

remained busy in cursing her children and kept the servant always engaged. Munoo was fed

up with his life. Shila, daughter of Babu Nathu Ram and her friends were playing. He too

joined them and in order to amuse them he performed his monkey dance. Shila tried to drag

him away. He bit her. He was mercilessly kicked and beaten by her parents.

Munoo stealthily ran away ran away from Babu Nathu Ram’s house. He went to the

railway station and slept in a train where he met Seth Prabha Dayal, the owner of a pickles

factory in Daulatpur. Seth took Munoo to Daulatpur where he engaged him in his factory. But

soon the factory got bankrupt due to quarrel between Prabha and another partner Ganpat.

Hence Munoo’s work was easy but the competition was tough. After some time Munoo

cultivated friendship with a worker in a circus with whom he left Daulatpur for Bombay.

In Bombay he got a job at a very low payment in a mill .The foreman, Jimmie, was

ruthless and dishonest and took commission out of the workes’ wages. Then there was labour

trouble and the employers cleverly converted the labour meeting into a communal riot and

Munoo ran and ran. He was over-run by a motor car, the car belonged to an Anglo-Indian

lady, Mrs.Mainwaring . She took pity on Munoo and took him in her car to Simla. There

Munoo worked as a servant in her house and used to pull her rickshaw. But soon he got

weaker, caught T.B and ultimately died in Shimla

Coolie is a ‘character novel’ for it extends primarily in space with the hero, the hill-

boy Munoo. It is the story, the epic of the adventures of Munoo, and with him we move from

his village, benefactor, Prabha, at Daulatpur ; to Bombay slums and chawls and India, that

mixture of the horrible and the holy, the inhuman and the humane, the sordid and the

beautiful’ (Dr Iyengar). Munoo is exploited all the time, one way or the other, by one person
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or another, and his fate is typical of the fate of millions whose only distinguishing badge is

patient suffering.

The novel is remarkable for its humanism, for its indictment against society as a

whole –a society that breeds such prejudices and cupidity and cruelty, for its realism and

narration. The plot is episodic in character. The style of Mulk Raj Anand is simple but

effective with a good sprinkling of Hindustani words. Humour and absurdities of human life

are finely worked out. The feelings of the Anglo-Indians have been clearly shown in

character of Mrs.Mainwaring.

.
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CHAPTER 2

TRAGEDY AND COOLIE

Tragedy (from the Greek: τραγῳδία, tragōidia) is a form of drama based on

human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. While

many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the

term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and

important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilisation. That tradition has

been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect

of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one

cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.

From its origins in the theatre of ancient Greece 2500 years ago, from which there

survives only a fraction of the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; through its

singular articulations in the works of Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Jean Racine, and Friedrich

Schiller to the more recent naturalistic tragedy of August Strindberg; Samuel

Beckett's modernist meditations on death, loss and

suffering; Müller's postmodernist reworkings of the tragic canon; and Joshua Oppenheimer's

incorporation of tragic pathos in his nonfiction film, The Act of Killing (2012), tragedy has

remained an important site of cultural experimentation, negotiation, struggle, and change. A

long line of philosophers—which includes Plato, Aristotle, Saint

ugustine, Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Ben

jamin, Camus, Lacan, and Deleuze—have analysed, speculated upon, and criticised the

genre.

In the wake of Aristotle's Poetics (335 BCE), tragedy has been used to

make genre distinctions, whether at the scale of poetry in general (where the tragic divides

against epic and lyric) or at the scale of the drama (where tragedy is opposed to comedy). In

the modern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama, the tragic, comic,

and epic theatre. Drama, in the narrow sense, cuts across the traditional division between

comedy and tragedy in an anti- or a-generic deterritorialisation from the mid-19th

century onwards. Both Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal define their epic theatre projects

(non-Aristotelian drama and Theatre of the Oppressed, respectively) against models of

tragedy. Taxidou, however, reads epic theatre as an incorporation of tragic functions and its

treatments of mourning and speculation.

Aristotle’s theory on TRAGEDY

Aristotle wrote in his work Poetics that tragedy is characterised by seriousness and

involves a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune (Peripeteia).

Aristotle's definition can include a change of fortune from bad to good as in the Eumenides,

but he says that the change from good to bad as in Oedipus Rex is preferable because this

induces pity and fear within the spectators. Tragedy results in a catharsis (emotional

cleansing) or healing for the audience through their experience of these emotions in response

to the suffering of the characters in the drama.

According to Aristotle, "the structure of the best tragedy should not be simple but

complex and one that represents incidents arousing fear and pity—for that is peculiar to this

form of art." This reversal of fortune must be caused by the tragic hero's hamartia, which is

often translated as either a character flaw, or as a mistake (since the original Greek etymology

traces back to hamartanein, a sporting term that refers to an archer or spear-thrower missing

his target). According to Aristotle, "The misfortune is brought about not by [general] vice or

depravity, but by some [particular] error or frailty." The reversal is the inevitable but

unforeseen result of some action taken by the hero. It is also a misconception that this

reversal can be brought about by a higher power (e.g. the law, the gods, fate, or society), but

if a character’s downfall is brought about by an external cause, Aristotle describes this as

a misadventure and not a tragedy.

In addition, the tragic hero may achieve some revelation or recognition (anagnorisis--

"knowing again" or "knowing back" or "knowing throughout") about human fate, destiny,

and the will of the gods. Aristotle terms this sort of recognition "a change from ignorance to

awareness of a bond of love or hate."

In Poetics, Aristotle gave the following definition in ancient Greek of the word

"tragedy" (τραγῳδία):

"Ἔστιν οὖν τραγῳδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας καὶ τελείας μέγεθος ἐχούσης,

ἡδυσμένῳ λόγῳ χωρὶς ἑκάστῳ τῶν εἰδῶν ἐν τοῖς μορίοις, δρώντων καὶ οὐ δι᾽ ἀπαγγελίας, δι᾽

ἐλέου καὶ φόβου περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν."

which means Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable, complete (composed of

an introduction, a middle part and an ending), and possesses magnitude; in language made
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pleasurable, each of its species separated in different parts; performed by actors, not through

narration; effecting through pity and fear the purification of such emotions.

Common usage of tragedy refers to any story with a sad ending, whereas to be

an Aristotelian tragedy the story must fit the set of requirements as laid out by Poetics. By

this definition social drama cannot be tragic because the hero in it is a victim of circumstance

and incidents that depend upon the society in which he lives and not upon the inner

compulsions — psychological or religious — which determine his progress towards self-

knowledge and death.[58] Exactly what constitutes a "tragedy", however, is a frequently

debated matter.

According to Aristotle, there are four species of tragedy:

1. Complex, which involves Peripety and Discovery

2. Suffering, tragedies of such nature can be seen in the Greek mythological stories of Ajaxes

and Ixions

3. Character, a tragedy of moral or ethical character. Tragedies of this nature can be found in

Phthiotides and Peleus

4. Spectacle, that of a hoororlike theme. Examples of this nature

are Phorcides and Prometheus

In the year 1925, Anand was awarded the Silver Wedding Fund Scholarship of 300

pounds a year (ironically for his father’s service in the British army) for his research on the

thought of Locke, Hume, Berkley and Russell at the University College, London under the

supervision of the Kantian scholar and realist G Dawns Hicks. The coal miners’ strike in

Great Britain in 1926 upset the balance of his student life. The repressive measures adopted
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by the Government to break the General Strike that followed the miner’s strike revealed that

British government was organized and run in the interest of a small minority. The violent

suppression of the majority in Britain was indicative of the kind of suppression the colonial

administration indulged in the colonies. To Anand who observed the violence from a close

quarter, international Socialism seemed to be the only solution to the problems of the world.

Anand observed that the West with all its wealth and its allegiances to democracy was not

free from a discreet despotic mind set. Soon after the strike Anand bought a copy of The

Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels and this had a great influence on him. He writes

in, Apology for Heroism, that, “a whole new world was opened to me. All the threads of my

past reading, which had got tied up in knots, seemed suddenly to straightened out, an d 1

began to see not only the history of India but the whole history of human society in some sort

of inter-connection” (1946:67-8).
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CHAPTER 3

MULK RAJ ANAND’S COOLIE AS A SOCIAL TRAGEDY

The tradition of social tragedy became very much popular in English literature with

the novels and dramas of Galsworthy and Shaw. They made ordinary men and women the

heroes and heroines of their functional works. They held society responsible for man’s

tragedy. Mulk Raj Anand, like Nehru is a socialist. He has faith in Marxism. He has

sympathy for the poor and the down trodden ,the under-privileged and underdogs of Indian

society. He is of opinion that exploitation generated by Capitalism and Colonialism is the

root cause of poverty in India.

Coolie is a social tragedy. It is neither Fate nor God , nor the flaw of individual

character but Society that is responsible for the tragedy of Munoo , the hero of Coolie . Like

tragic heroes of Galsworthy, Munoo too is a victim of social forces which go on operating

tragically. In Coolie, these forces arepoverty and exploitation. So the tragic flow lies with the

social milieu. Social shapes the destiny of common man.

Coolie is a devastating account of the poverty and exploitation faced, not just by

Munoo, but thousands like him. Anand shows how the racial and class hierarchies imposed

by British colonialism have intersected, or over his life; over the work he does or where he

lives or how he is treated. As he moves from one place to another. In his travels and through

the various people he meets and is employed by, he is exposed to the multiplicity of life in

India which is made vivid by Anand’s prose. Is the novel’s portrait of Munoo’s death raises

the question of whether there can be any future for a “coolie” if nothing changes.

There are five acts in the tragic drama of Munoo’s life. His native village , Sham

Nagar where he lives with Babu Ram and his wife Bibi Uttam Kaur; Daulatpur where he has
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to work as a coolie in the grain Market and Railway Station and is yet unable to meet both

ends together. The forth act takes place in Bombay where he has to work in a mill.and the

finale is in Simla, the summer capital of India where he has to work as a boy servant and

rickshaw-puller of Mrs. Mainwaring .he has to face starvation, startvation, humiliation and

insults. He also faces disease and drudgery. His body and spirit break. He at last dies

prematurely of consumption at the age of sixteen.

Poverty is the root cause of Munoo’s tragedy. Munoo himself realizes in his first

episode at Sham Nagar : “Whether there were more rich or more poor people, there were

more rich or more poor people, there seems to be only two kinds of people in the world.

Caste did not matter. I am a kshatriya and I am poor, and Varma, a Brahmin, is a servant boy

, amenial, because he is poor. No, caste does not matter. The Babus are like the Sahib-logs,

and all servants look alike; there must only be two kinds of people in the world: the rich and

the poor.” (p 69). In this novel therefore it is not the caste system of Indian society which is

questioned. In Untouchable, Mulk Raj Anand condemns the caste system. But in Coolie he

condemns poverty and exploitation.

Poverty gives birth to exploitation be it a village landlord, a business-baron or a

tycoon. This is a major social drawback and disease which causes sufferings to the teeming

millions of the poor. In the first chapter of the novel Mulk Raj Anand strikes the keynote of

Munoo’s tragic destiny when he says that Munoo had more than a vague idea of how Jay

Singh’s father died as a victim of the landlord who had seized his father’s five acres of land

because the interest on the mortgage covering the unpaid rent had not been forth-coming

when the rains had been scanty and the harvest bad. He knew how his father had died a slow

death of bitterness and disappointment and lest his mother a penniless beggar. The sight of
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his mother grinding grain could not be forgotten by Munoo. All this is the beginning of the

social tragedy of Munoo.

At Sham Nagar Munoo is beaten like slave. His glorious romantic vision of urban life

is shattered to pieces. Bibi Uttam Kaur is his tormentor-in-chief. But it is only an ordinary

kind of exploitation. Capitalism and Industrialism are full forces of exploitation, and they are

seen in full swing in Daulatpur and Bombay episodes. Colonialism as a force of exploitation

is shown in Simla episode. Writing about Munoo’s life at Daulatpur the novelist makes

touching remarks. Even in the pickle factory a terrible ghost of exploitation haunts the

workers ;

“It was a dark and evil life. He rose early at dawn before he had his full sleep

out, having gone to bed long before midnight. He descended to work in the limp, as if all the

strength had gone out of his body and left him a spineless ghost of his former self.”

In the fourth chapter on Bombay episode, Munoo’s exploitation is universalised. He is

put to the cruel force of capitalism. Like Hari he is a victim of money-lending, horro,

insecurity, low wages, slum life and inhuman treatment. The tragedy of the labouring class is

fully exhibited by Anand in this chapter. “ Capitalism and industrialism are not the only

forces which exploit Munoo and his life. Communalism too lends a hand. A worker’s strike is

easily broken by casual rumours of communal disturbances which divert the wrath of the

labourers from the mills to the religious factions among themselves. The fires of communal

hatred are further fanned by politicians, who have their own axes to grind. In the whole

process, the exploited labourer loses his job, his livelihood and sometimes even his life.”

In the fourth and the fifth chapters the novelist shows the exploitation of the Indians

by the British in the British Raj. Jimmy Sahib is an exploiter. The chief concern of Sir
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Reginald White, the president of sir George Whote Cotton Mills, is profit. There is also the

expoitation of Munoo by Mrs Mainwarin in whose service he dies.

These social forces which are at work in bringing then tragedy of Munoo are beyond

the control of the hero. He drifts aimlessly. He has no choice. His destiny is controlled by the

social milieu which victimises him. In showing this aspect of Munoo’s tragedy Anand is a

naturalist. But he not only raises the hill boy to the status of a hero, he also invest him with

dignity. “Anand relieves lot of men by bestowing dignity on the victims of cruelty.” It is

Munoo’s death which relieves him on social cruelty and exploitation and poverty. The young

man dies of consumption and thereby ends his struggle for existence.

Voicing the exploited

Anand’s Coolie represents the voice of the suppressed and exploited. The Coolie can

be seen what Marx and Engels term as: ” the lumpen proletariat, that passively rotting mass

thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, m ay, here and there, be swept into the

movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions for life, however, prepare it far more for

the part of a bribed tool…” (1992: 14). The Coolies as a class belong nowhere as Anand

points out even the lower caste rejects and casts away the Coolies. When Munoo arrives in

Bombay and goes for a refreshing drink, for which he pays, the moment he introduces

himself as a Coolie the proprietor tells him to sit on the floor and not on the chairs; he is

treated like a leper. “‘Oh! Look, Mummy! Our coolies are there cried little Circe. Her mother

shushed her and asked her to behave. The sights of the creatures were challenges to the

complacency of the ladies and gentlemen who had come for tea”(298). Munoo’s experiences

as a servant, a factory worker and a mill worker are his class identity. As a servant, he is of

the lower class, as a factory and a mil l worker he is of the working class; in each he has a

productive role whether as a servant or a worker. But as a Coolie his identity is reduced to
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nothing. In the class system the two extremes of the wealth y imperialist bourgeoisie and the

Coolie serve as objects of hope and fear. While each class emulates and aspires to attain the

status of next superior class it also harbors a fear of being de-classed. The anxiety in class

relations is a product of ideology rather than economics as seen in Anand’s introduction of

Prabha’s past as a Coolie who has risen to the ranks of a Seth. There is an ideological

undercurrent that moves in the entire class system. The imperialist bourgeoisie’s fear of the

‘native’ being equal to him both economically and socially infuses in him a sense of

insecurity for which he engages in abuse and exploitation in the name of racial superiority.

Introducing the marginalized into writing

He introduces the economically and socially marginalized sections of society into his

novels, making them the focus of his narrative. Anand however has a clear understanding of

his own position within society that he belongs to the upper class hence there is an economic

and social distance between him and those that he sympathizes with. He is also aware that as

a bourgeoisie he would be writing about the proletariat from a bourgeoisie point of view or

with the influence of bourgeoisie ideology. Thus he declares in Apology for Heroism that he

could not, of course, sense the suffering of the poor directly because I had always been

comparatively better off. No, mine was a secondary humiliation, the humiliation of seeing

other people suffer. I do not know to what extent envy of the rich on my part was disguising

itself as a hunger for social justice. Perhaps there was an element of this. Also the

inadequacies of our life in India may have contributed something to m y pre occupation. But I

do not apologize for this because it is not easy in the face of such wretchedness and misery as

I had seen in India to believe that material happiness and well- being had no connection with

real happiness and the desire for beauty. So I sought to recreate m y life through my

memories of India in which I grew up, with a view to rediscovering the vanities, the
 20

vapidities, the conceits and the perplexities with which I had grown up, indifferent to the

lives of the people around me. I felt guilty, for needless suffering was no matter for

complacent pride or gratitude (1946:76-77)

The novel Coolie (1936) presents the life of an orphan Munoo who is despised by

society, rejected by his relatives and oppressed by h is masters. He tries to avail chances of

progress but his ill fate produces obstacles in his way. Conceived on an epic scale, the novel

follows the tragic odyssey of Munoo as he finds himself in relation to different strata of

society in different locations- the village, the towns, the big city, the hill station- each is not

free from the ideology of exploitation and suppression. In Conversation s in Bloomsbury,

Anand writes that, ” …our epics have everything Love and War and death and jealousy and

utensils and dice and things out of the toilet” (1993:92). He introduces different ideologies

such as Capitalism, Imperialism, Industrialism and Communalism to show their influence on

the dispossessed and socially oppressed. Munoo experiences all the negative aspects of the

world. His journey from innocence to experience is mediated through ideologies of

suppression and empowerment.

At the beginning of the novel, we find that Munoo, a boy of fourteen years age, is

studying in class V in a rural school in the village of Bilaspur situated on the Kangra Hills on

the banks of the river Beas. In the company of his friends he grazes his cows all day. He finds

time to sit under the shade of a large Bunyan tree to enjoy the fruits of the season. His life in

the village comes to an end when his uncle Daya Ram decides to take him to Sham Nagar, a

town ten miles away from their village. His uncle, Daya Ram and aunt, Gujri believe that he

is quite grown up and therefore should earn his own living. Munoo’s father had died of shock

and disappointment when he could not pay the debt to the landlord. His mother died working

hard to support Munoo. Munoo‘s life in the village was hard and he could not forget the
 21

miserable deaths of his parents. In spite of these sad memories and the ill-treatment of his

aunt Munoo is happy and contented.

Driven by the dire necessity of an independent livelihood, he follows his uncle to

work as a domestic servant in the house of Babu Nathoo Ram, a sub-accountant in the

imperial Bank of Sham Nagar. But Munoo is badly mistreated by the Babu and his wife and

receives no sym pathy from his uncle. Munoo is held responsible for the loss of the letter of

recommendation that his master sought from the sahib Mr. W.P England. After degrading the

master’s house, unintentionally, by relieving himself in front it and accidentally hurting their

daughter while playing he cannot bear the abuse and beating and runs away and boards a train

with no definite destination to go to. In the train he meets a man named Prabha Dayal, who is

an orphan and was once a Coolie. But now Prabha is a Seth, the owner of a Pickle Factory at

Daulatpur and is in partnership with Ganpat Seth. Prabha takes Munoo with him to Daulatpur

and provides him with employment in the Pickle Factory. Prabha feels some affinity with

Munoo because they are both orphans and he himself was a hills man from Kangra. Anand

introduces in Coolie a complex and exploitative world.

Cruelty and Hypocrisy in Indian Feudal life

Munoo’s life in the village is not romanticized by Anand; he exposes the “cruelty and

hypocrisy of Indian feudal life…” (1946: 53). Munoo is full of life, high spirits and has a zest

for life. He is the leader of the village boys and an expert tree climber. But his life in the

village is not a joyful one; his mind is haunted by the death of his parents. Anand gives a

realistic portrayal of Munoo’ s life in the village which is not free from exploitation. The

novel speaks about the denial of basic necessities of life to a simple and landless peasant boy.

It seems that Munoo is aware of his deprivation:

He had heard of how the landlord had seized his father’s five acres of land because

the interest on the mortgage covering the unpaid rent had not been forthcoming when the

rains had been scanty and the harvest bad. And he knew how his father had died a slow death

of bitterness and disappointment and left his mother a penniless beggar, to support a young

brother-in- law and a child in her arms… the sight of her as she had laid dead on the ground

with a horrible and yet sad, set expression on her face had sunk deep into him ( I I ).

With the statement “I am Munoo, Babu Nathoo Ram’s servant,”, Munoo has realized

his position in the world and his self identity is also based on this role assigned to him b y

society. He accepts it without questioning the exhausting work, the abuse or the cruel

treatment. To him there are only two kinds of people in the world, ” …the rich and the poor.”

, and Munoo, the hill-boy, has realized from what kind of people he comes from and to which

kind of people he belongs to. The caste system is no longer relevant; it is the class system

based on economic status that has put its stranglehold on society and Munoo displays a keen

understanding by being able to grasp this turn in the history of society. He remarks, “I am a

Kshatriya and I am poor, and Varma, a Brahmin, is a servant boy, a menial, because he is

poor. No, caste does not matter. The babus are like the sahib logs, and all the servants Iook

alike…” .

The fiasco of the tea party set up by Babu Nathoo Ram for Mr. W.P England speaks

volumes on Anand’s view of Imperialism and its affect on the minds and outlook of the

‘natives’. The unquestioning sense of inferiority of Munoo is matched by his master’s sense

of inferiority with the sahibs. Nathoo Ram is on the look at recommendation from a sahib

which will facilitate his promotion. He knows that Mr. England has not been long enough in

India to turn down an invitation for tea from a native. After receiving some advice on how to

pick u p a conversation with a sahib, that is, talking about the weather, Nathoo Ram is able to
 23

extract an acceptance for the tea party from Mr. England; who realizes, a bit too late, the

importance of the warning of the Club members about being too familiar with the natives. At

the tea party, Mr. England is clearly uncomfortable in the sweltering heat, seated on a throne

like chair with the clay image of a Hindu God staring at him and the over powering sweet

smell of the gulabjamans making him sick. Dr. Prem Chand seeks advice on courses of study’

in England, a topic which the confused sahib has no idea about since he himself studied only

typewriting and shorthand. But in keeping with the image of the sahib he pretends to be more

than he is; as advised by his fellow Club members. Munoo, who has all along been in a state

of excitement and curiosity at the presence of the sahib, is asked to fetch the tea. He trips, and

the precious china smashes onto the floor destroying any chance of Nathoo Ram’s letter of

recommendation for promotion to the post of accountant.

This episode of the tea party reveals the bitterness of Anand towards the British

imperialist, and this can be seen in his portrayal of the character of Mr. W. P. England, a

colonial gentleman who is really a hollow individual d riven solely by the directives of the

Empire. Any traces of individualism are lost in Mr. England’s weakness; he sacrifices his

principles to the tenets of Imperialism. Thus we have the laws of the ‘Club’ being played out

in Mr. England ‘s mind- do not get familiar with the natives, always pose to be more than you

are- ” …his com patriots at the Club had always exhorted him to show himself off as the son

of King George himself if need be” . There is the ‘sahib’ Mr. England while the man Mr.

England is lost in Imperialism.

Contrasting the Rich and the Poor

Anand contrasts the rich merchants in starched muslims against the dark Coolies in

rags, the impressive bungalows of the English residents looks down on the congested slums

of the Coolies. The garish opulence exists alongside rampant filth, deprivation and poverty.
 24

As soon as Munoo emerges from the station, he is overpowered by the confused medley of

colours, shapes and sounds of Bombay’s strange, hybrid and complex character. There are

Europeans in immaculate suits, Parsis in frock suits and white trousers, Mohammedans in

long tunics, Hindus in muslim shirts and dhotis; there are Arabs, Persians and Chinese the

road swarming with trams, cars and motorcycles. And ever present are the lepers, the

beggars, and the Coolies in the dim damp alleys and slum s, filled with the groans of the sick,

the starving and the dying. The complexity and diversity of the city gradually disappears

subsuming whatever the social back ground, ethnic, racial and religious identity one might

have and ultimately classifying one either rich or poor. The pickle factory of Daulatpur is

now replaced by the Sir George White Cotton Mills where the working conditions are even

more grueling and the foreman Jimmie Thomas is more abusive and tyrannical than Ganpat.

The world of the poor is one of comradeship surrounded by foul smell, abuse, suffering,

torture, exploitation, dust, heat and sweat. The British management offers no security of

tenure. Jimmie Thomas rents out dilapidated huts at exorbitant rates. The Mill mechanic, a

money- lender and the Sikh merchant exploit the Coolies. The ill- paid, ill-housed, under-

nourished, exploited, cheated and bullied Mill worker is beaten body and mind as we find in

the case of Hari. Munoo is saved from such a fate by his youthful vitality. In the Mill we have

the ‘Red Flag Union’, a workers union led by the Communist leader Sauda who, ironically,

exhorts the poverty stricken workers to go on a strike when all they can think about is where

their next meal will come from. The preparation for the proposed strike leads to a bloody

Hindu- Muslim communal riot; instigated by the employers to divert the attention of the

workers. In the riot some of the workers lose their jobs, their livelihoods and even their lives.

In the last chapter Munoo finds himself in Shimla. Many critics have criticized the

over emphasis on Mrs. Mainwaring, who is a minor character in the novel; adding that the

accident is not in harmony with the flow of the narrative because all of a sudden Munoo
 25

emerges from the bloody communal riot in the mill into the caring arms of a memsahib. This

can be taken as an act of destiny, contradicting Anand’s disbelief in God, providence and

fate. But Anand is able to take Munoo away from the harsh life in the city and brings him

back to the hills to regain his identity where his life finally ends under the strain of pulling his

memsahib’s rickshaw. It is the correct finale to the concerto: the boy who has come from the

hills sees the world and goes back to the hills to die thereby ensuring a narrative circularity in

the novel. Some critics have pointed out Mrs. Mainwaring character being overemphasized.

The problem is that she is not authentically portrayed but it is observed that Anand

goes out of his way to chastise her thereby the entire Anglo-Indian community. The novel

does not substantiate the “bitch” , which Anand makes her out to be. Little or no information

is provided about the background of some of the more important characters in the novel.

Munoo’s background revolves around him being an orphan bullied by his aunt; his childhood

in the hills abruptly ends in the beginning of the novel itself when he is taken to Sham Nagar.

Prabha is a coolie from the hills and Hari a villager working in the Bombay Textile Mill.

Whereas we are given a detailed description of Mrs. Mainwaring’s childhood, her struggle as

an Anglo- Indian and her sordid history with men. But through her Anand gives a subtle

comment on the conflicts of the Anglo- Indian community who belong neither here nor there,

not being able to identify with the native nor being acceptable by the English. Mrs.

Mainwaring lacks a sense of belonging and throws herself to everyman who comes her way

because of this lack; she seeks a sense of belonging if not to a community then at least to

someone.

The Memories Of Village

The sight of the mountains and valleys of Shimla revive in Munoo the memories of

his village, and this section contains one of Anand’s best Nature descriptions. He is a painter
 26

of Nature in all its moods and has a remarkable flair for evoking the smells and colours of the

Nature. The steep hills overgrown with rich green foliage, the streams and the waterfalls, the

clouds rolling swiftly across the sky, the crisp cool air, all stand in sharp contrast to the heat,

the dirt and humidity of Bombay. Munoo responds mentally and emotionally to the beauty of

the world around him and observes the world of the rich upper classes of society and wishes

he too could belong to this class. His mistress is kind to him and her affection for him fires

his adolescent passion till he is unable to bear his feelings and crumples at her feet in an orgy

of tears and kisses. Sexual urges- half expressed and half understood- had tormented Munoo

from the very beginning, and like much of his life these feelings were never truly

comprehended or realized, as in an adolescent growing up without any guidance. Anand

prevents Munoo’s feelings from being diverted entirely to the physicality of his sexual

awareness rather he describes the effects of his sexual awareness on the emotional aspects of

his character. Thus Munoo when unable to understand why he finds himself looking at

Sheila’s body outlined in her wet garments feels ashamed. Later the warmth of Parbati’s body

as he nestles against her arouses confused feelings in him. The same confused feeling

prevails when he returns to them ill after a night out with Ratan at the local brothel. Hari’s

wife, who understands the boy’s feelings, takes him in her arms and whispers, “We belong to

suffering! We belong to suffering” .

The pace of the narrative throughout the novel is modulated to suit the changing

scenes such as the transition from the pastoral to the semi-urban and to the big city. Munoo’s

journey from Daulatpur to Bombay is another instance where the narration is attuned to the

varying speed of the train, vividly bringing to life the cities and the vegetation that Munoo

rushes past. Anand is perhaps among the first Indian novelists to render the Punjabi and the

Hindustani idioms and metaphors consciously into English. He finds that certain expressions

in the local dialect could not be expressed in any other way except in a literal translation into
 27

English. No doubt Indian idioms and metaphors give rise to fresh imagery and reveal the

unique quality of the narrative even at the cost of violating the norms of English usage.
 28

Conclusion

Coolie is ideologically loaded for it draws its strength from Anand’s social

commitment. British imperialism transformed the traditional economy of India into an

industrial economy. Furthermore it considered India as a vast market for its own industrial

goods. Thus the Imperialist system is identified with an oppressive capitalist system in which

the bourgeois rule the roost. Indian aristocracy and the feudal class are bought over to side

with the Empire and the old feudal caste system is replaced by the class system based on

capital and industrial productivity. Marx and Engels write that, “The bourgeoisie, wherever it

has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal r elations. It has torn asunder the motley

feudal ties …and has left remaining g no other nexus between man and man than naked self-

interest, than callous cash payment” ( I 992: 05). Colonialism forced India into a new

economic and social structure with the intention of maximizing profit unmindful of the

repercussions it would have on the traditional socio-economic structure of the colony. Marx

and Angels add that, “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the

instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole

relations of society” (1992: 06).

In spite of his ideological inclination, Anand is realistic that the old caste system

cannot disappear overnight even if it has been simply over- whelmed by the rapid

introduction of industrialization. The parasitic residues of the old system has mutated and

morphed themselves into the class system. In Munoo’s consciousness the notion of caste is

still there but even a young mind like his has been able to comprehend the powerful class

system of rich and poor that overshadows the caste system. But as the scene shifts from the

small town of Sham Nagar filled with the lower middle class such as assistant- accountants to
 29

the urban towns of Daulatpur to the city of Bombay and finally, to the hill station of Shimla,

the ideology of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the elements of the old caste system become

more and more subtle, rigid and at the same time more degenerate. Within the middle and the

lower classes, there are sub-classes based on income and within these sub- classes there are

caste and religion division. The m ill workers in Bombay Textile Mill belong to the working

class but even among them there are Hindus and Muslims. In Sim la Mrs. Mainwaring faces

the prejudice against the Anglo- Indian community from both the English and the Indians to

the extent that even the Coolies’ advise Munoo to leave her service since she is not a ‘pukka’

memsahib. Mohan comments that the English have a, “caste system more rigid than ours.

Any Angrezi woman whose husband earns twelve thousand rupees a month will not leave

cards at the house of a woman whose husband earns five hundred t he rich don’t really want

to mix with each other”.

The process of industrialization was not conducted in a manner conducive to the

Indian economic and social life. It was done in a manner benefiting only the British Empire.

Thus the changes that took place in the Indian society did not completely wipe out the old

feudal system although the class system replaced the caste system yet there remained traces

and residues of caste sentiments if not caste structure. And these sentiments clung

parasitically to the ideology of the class system of the British imperialists disseminated

through their educational and religious institutions, the ideology of the ‘Other’ attributing in

priority and savagery to the ‘native’. This mechanism of theorizations was employed by the

middle class to the lower classes of Indian society. The lower classes, in particular, the

Coolies fell prey to this new and even crueler social stratification that carried both the caste

and class sentiments.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCE

 Anand,Mulk Raj. “Coolie” (published in 1936, India.)

 Varshney,R.L . Narain’s Series (published by: Lakshmi Narain Agarwal.)

SECONDARY SOURCE

 Anand, MuIk Raj. Apology for Heroism. London: Lindsay Drummond,…

 Chatterjee, Satishchandra and Dhirendramohan Datta. An Introduction to Indian

Philosophy. Calcutta: Calcutta University Press…..

 Naik, N. Mulk Raj Anand. New Delhi: Arnold- Heinemann India, 1973.

 Weyer, Robert Van De, ed. 366 Readings From Buddhism. Mumbai: Jaico Publishing

House,

 Vishwanathan, Gauri. Masks of Conquest. New Delhi: OUP,