india author m 1- a-nan - University of Wollongong

1) Identifies Anand’s pervasive themes as the caste system, the class structure,
religion, education and the status of women. 2) Concentrates entirely on these five themes as
they are expanded upon in most fictions. 3) Concerned with existentialist issues such as loss of
identity, rootlessness and isolation and Anand’s empirical approach to these social realities.
PONTES, HILDA. "A Select Checklist of Critical Responses to Mulk Raj Anand's
Untouchable" Journal of Commonwealth Literature 23.1 (1988): 189-98.
Brief introduction notes origins in the autobiographical 2000-page ‘confessional’; social
radicalism presented through the “body-soul drama of Bakha”, a blend of folk-tale fabulism
and western realist short story plus Joycean stream of consciousness. Approximately 80
entries with rudimentary annotation.
PONTES, HILDA. "The Education of a Rebel: Mulk Raj Anand" Literary Half-Yearly 27.2
(July 1986):105-22.
1) Suggests British imperialism forced English language education and values on
Anand and his generation. 2) Biographical details concerning Anand’s schooling and its
ramifications on his personal educational attainments. 3) Sociological investigation of British
influence and control on Indian educational system.
PONTES, HILDA. "Untouchable: A Classic in Experimentation of Theme and Technique" in
GUPTA, G.S. BALARAMA., ed. Studies in Indian Fiction in English Gulbarga: JIWE
Publications, 1987: 128-41.
PRASAD, R. NARENDA. "Pollution in Untouchable and Scavenger's Son" Littcrit 6.2
(1980):32-8.
Compares Anand to Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai. Both focus on the idea of ritual
pollution as the basis for untouchability, but Pillai broadens his scope, surveying three
generations to show “the workers’ fight against all exploitation”. Anand individualises Bakha
and moves him to a visionary promise, whereas Pillai’s Chudalamuthu climbs materially to a
better future and alienates himself from his fellows. Pillai wrote after Independence and the
outlawing of untouchability in Kerala; for Anand the problem was still religious beliefs, hence
Gandhi’s importance. Bakha is a limited seeker after enlightenment rather than a workingclass
hero, and yearns for human touch and the warmth of nature; Pillai’s story is more
external and melodramatic.
RAJAN, P.K. "Conflict and Resolution in The Tractor and the Corn Goddess" Littcrit 9.2
(1983):15-19.
This “satirical commentary on the social life of precapitalist India” expresses Anand’s
consistent theme of industrialised modernity contending with tradition. Ambivalent symbolism
and resolution shows Anand’s Gandhian ambivalence towards social issues. A village narrator
‘storytells’ a modern short story in which the triumph of the tractor rests in its not affecting
ancient beliefs, and the comic victory of the villagers is stage-managed by the landowning elite
ushering in ‘progress’.
RAJAN, P.K. Studies in Mulk Raj Anand New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1986, viii +
122pp.
RAO, E. NAGESWARA. "The Dialogue Is the Thing: A Contrastive Analysis of Fictional
Speech in Forster and Anand" 138-47 in Shahane, Vasant A., ed. Approaches to E.M.