Discrimination: the Untouchable Life
Most people know what it is like to be the victim of discrimination. This evil rears its ugly head in all civilizations among all classes of people. Sometimes it is blatant, sometimes it is subtle, but rarely is it absent. Discrimination is among the qualities of human nature that remains persistent and difficult to change, even over long periods of time. It has many forms and many contexts in which it can exist and flaunt its being. In some unfortunate circumstances, its reach knows no bounds and can lead to great excess among its practitioners. Coming from a society that prides itself on its progressive nature and its recent historical attempts at conciliation among various groups, Americans try to believe that discrimination is in decline, at least in the United States. This idea is most likely applicable to people of most nations, as no one is apt to see their own pink elephants while chastising their neighbors for their own obvious disaffections. Few societies have historically been so blatant in their discriminatory practices for so long as have South Asians, particularly those practicing the Hindu faith, as pertaining to their treatment of their “untouchable” out-caste countrymen. While such a blanket statement is not intended to be singularly accusing of this one society, the Hindu brand of discrimination is particularly potent in that its endurance spans millennia. Furthermore, the complete alienation and ostracizing of such a vast group of “society” attests to the severity of Hindu discrimination. Mulk Raj Anand’s novel, Untouchable provides insight into the heart of life as an untouchable through the person of Bhaka, the kandala, or lowest stratum of Hindu society.
As the central figure in the novel, Bhaka is the reader’s view into the rigors of the daily life of a kandala. The physical process of the street sweeper’s daily routine is in itself revolting, but Bhaka accepts the job as his station in society. He frequently questions the purpose of his obligation to his job, wishing that he need not practice so low a task. However, he accepts his lot as a kandala even though it is not preference. He realizes he is locked into this employ, so if he wants to earn his pay, he knows there is no other job open to him. This is because of the rigidity of Hindu society. The system of varna and jati classification disallows the possibility of social mobility, permanently tying Bhaka to his job. The implications of this fact develop as the story continues to its end, with Bhaka eventually wrestling with the idea that if he could remove himself from his demeaning job, perhaps he would no longer exist as a demeaned person outside of society. In the interim, though, he remains an untouchable.
The exact nature of the untouchable is inherent in the word itself. Literally, it means that people of Bhaka’s jati were not to be touched by anyone, as they were emphatically impure, unclean, and polluted. To do so would corrupt a person so that they would be required to obtain an ablution to remove the impurity. Consciousness of this stigma mentally oppressed Bhaka and led him to censor his actions. Indeed, censorship of a kandala’s actions was a requirement, meaning they were not free to act as they pleased. Social expectation was that an outcaste would make his presence known to others as he or she moved about, so that they might warn others about the impending danger of contact and, thus, pollution. The mental weight of this necessity profoundly impacts Bhaka’s life and his actions, as he is essentially programmed by years of this experience to avoid any risk of contact with others. Evidence of this programming is clear, as in the incident wherein Bhaka will not touch his friend Chota because he is thinking about the morning encounter in which he had accidentally touched someone and polluted them. Though “among [his friends] they had banished all though to distinction,” in this case Bhaka is all too aware of his inborn duty to refrain from contact. Normally his low status does not intrude upon his friendship with Chota. Inside, though, he is burning with anger about the insults heaped upon him, which serve as a reminder to Bhaka that he is not allowed to touch anyone. With discomfiture, he momentarily subjects his will to the mores of society, increasing his anger.
In contrast to the relevance of Bhaka’s untouchability in this episode, later Bhaka is among a crowd of people rushing to see Gandhi and forgets his low status, accidentally touching some people. However, no one notices because everyone is in a hurry. Bhaka wonders why is this incident different than his normal existence. The implication is that only when people have time to remember their pretensions of hierarchy do they scorn his touch. This leads to an inquiry about the overall nature of the social hierarchical construct; is its continued existence a matter of religious determination, as the higher castes would claim, or is it a result of prevailing pretensions of social attitudes, a claim that could be made by all higher castes? In either case, the fact of discrimination remains evident because Bhaka could not be able to rationalize his questions to their conclusion and, even if he could, his low station would render him unable to do counteract the brutal reality.
Toward the end of the novel, though, Bhaka encounters a man who indeed sought to change the social status quo for the untouchables in the person of Gandhi. He cannot comprehend all that Gandhi says, but Bhaka clearly understands the Mahatma’s belief that to do good work everyone must set an example, even if it is a Brahmin working as a sweeper. In his Indian Home Rule, Gandhi elaborates, saying, “performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our minds and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves.” Gandhi appeals to Hindus to not only do the duty corresponding to their own station, but also be willing to accept others of lower station without any breach of moral treatment. Such a call would not be lost today, as evidenced by a CNN article involving the murder of two teenagers for an inter-caste relationship. For no other reason than the two involved teens’ love for each other spanned the rigid boundaries of society, they were killed. Bhaka could easily recognize the similarity to his own position, outside the toleration of society as he is. The key motivation in both this situation and in Bhaka’s endurance outside society is the discrimination caused by the stratification of Hindu society.
By the end, Bhaka takes in the words of Gandhi and the other men he heard at the gathering. In the process he comes to reevaluate some of his beliefs about his station in life. He is able to confirm his feelings of hopelessness and helplessness at the hands of the higher castes and, for the first time, gains a sense of hope for the future, embodied in the unknown concept of "the machine" he hears about that could do his sweeping work for him. With this hurdle thus cleared, the way would be open before him, and other outcastes, to advance from beyond the pale of society to a station somewhere within it. Now in Bhaka's mind was the idea presented by the day's speakers, that it was merely the outcastes’ low jobs that held them outside of society. Whether Bhaka could examine these men’s statements more comprehensively is doubtful, so it is unlikely that he would see that the matter had more than this single aspect. Bhaka would also need to inspect the fundamental attitudes of higher castes toward the untouchables and realize that their lowliness was not, in their eyes, due solely to the unclean work they did. Their station was also base because of the prevailing attitude of superiority each caste needed to impose upon a lower caste, so as to accept their own position of inferiority to another higher caste. For those at the top of the hierarchy, the Brahmins, this conscious motive of self-promotion could have been a justification for the wealth they possessed at the same time many other castes, particularly the untouchables, had very little. In any case, though, it can be seen that each group had its own rationale for justifying the station of the untouchables and, as such, Bhaka could not expect that he would be liberated from his plight by the salvation machines might provide for escaping his debasing duty as a sweeper. Nevertheless, the Machine could give him hope, something that he frequently lacked as a discriminated outcaste.