Subaltern Bakha In Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable

17/PELA/034

Subaltern Bakha in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable Mulk Raj Anand’s first novel Untouchable is a unique experiment in the art of fiction by its concentration on a single day’s experience in the life of its hero, Bakha. Anand’s achievement in the novel becomes more striking when we think that the hero is a sweeper boy of just eighteen. He was a member of the untouchable community whose life is nothing but uneventful to an ordinary observer. The novel becomes a great work by drawing into its world the life and culture of a whole village community. This novel concentrates on the issue of untouchability and the protagonist Bakha, the sweeper boy is an untouchable. This novel is a social and powerful criticism of the evil of untouchability that made life more miserable and intolerable to the poor section of Indian society. The novel, on the whole follows the stream of consciousness method of narration where events follow after events without yielding to a plot pattern. The development of the story is replaced by a development of narration. The author himself is the narrator. He is not simply the narrator, but the observer, interpreter and critic of the events, situations and characters.

The British Military officer used the term subaltern for their junior subordinates. Concise Oxford English Dictionary explains the term subaltern as, “an officer in the British army below the rank of captain, especially a second lieutenant” (1434). The term subaltern is used to