Mulk Raj Anand's World Literature: Humanism, Crowds, Caste, and Modernism

Abstract

Mulk Raj Anand (1905–2004) was a South Asian novelist who wrote primarily in English. He was loosely affiliated with both the Bloomsbury Group in London and the All India Progressive Writers' Association in India. His most famous novel, Untouchable (1935), explores a day in the life of an untouchable (Dalit) boy. This chapter uses Untouchable to draw out the relationship between modernist sociological thought and literary production; the relationship between South Asian English and British English; and the politics of literature in South Asia.