Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand

Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book started off really well, but for whatever reason as it went along it seemed more and more unreal to me. In Mulk Raj Anand’s defense, talking about the caste system and untouchability in India is no easy subject to write about so that a Western audience could comprehend, but I think he just missed the mark. I cannot imagine this world because I feel like it does not exist (in the book, I have no doubt that it did and may still exist in present India or that these instances he describes happened frequently). Maybe it was the compilation of all of the bad things that happened to our main character, Bakha, in one single day that made it so unbelievable to me, but aside from this complaint, let’s look at some other things I took home from reading Untouchable.

Since I am currently in India, the topic is already very fascinating for me. I wonder how the modern India looks and how caste functions. It may not look how it did when Anand published this almost a hundred years ago, but I can’t help but think about it when I walk down around town and see someone sweeping the street. Who is he? Does he have to do that? Who pays him? What is his life like? These are all things I might have easily overlooked if I had not read this book. I am left with more questions, which is always a good thing.


Of course there were also little insights I had not been familiar with in terms of what untouchability looked like—that they could not draw water from the public wells without someone to give it to them, that they had to warn others of their approach, needed to beg door to door for food, etc.

One thing that I think Anand did a good job doing was making Bakha a real person. His fascination with the “Tommys” and the upper caste also made him complex, especially once we get the take home message from the poet at the end of the book. Bakha was not dehumanized through pity or anything like that. He had real thoughts and real feelings, even if the situations he found himself in seemed and his reactions to them felt a bit out there, like it was the first time in his life he realized he was an untouchable. One way that people often refer to the caste system is that it is fatalistic, and that everyone has accepted where they have fit in because of bad karma in a previous life. This book, as E.M. Forster says in his introduction, shatters that illusion and shows that the Dalits, the Untouchables, are not all just content with their lot in life and long for better circumstances.

I think the obvious message that Anand wants us to take from this book is that it is Gandhi and not Christianity or Western thought that would be able to change India for the better by abolishing untouchability. This was clear in the juxtaposition to the silly Salvation Army missionary and the messiah figure, Gandhi. Anand’s hopes and dreams for what Gandhi could do for India were not hidden, and in a large degree I think he is right. Real change and improvement needs to come from within.

I might be a little too nitpicky with the writing. This is a short but informational read and I would recommend it, even if it would not be caught among my favorite books in the world.


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