Witness to a century
Almost a centurion, Mulk Raj Anand has been both a spectator and participant in epoch-making events. For a man who worked with Gandhi, was tutored by Bertrand Russell, counselled by Freud, inspired by Wittgenstein and influenced by Marx, it is a life fully lived, says Aruti Nayar

At first, he seems small and frail but once Mulk Raj Anand starts recounting his life’s journey and mission, his eyes flash and voice resonates with a fiery conviction, still undimmed. The energy and enthusiasm that Anand pours into his narration belie his 95 years. Hearing him talk about his fascinating, variegated life — led with an intensity that can be unnerving for some —is almost like watching the history unfold itself. Shadowy figures of great men become real, and events often relegated to the musty pages of books acquire a life and vitality of their own.

Almost a centurion, Anand has been both a spectator and a participant in the numerous epoch-making events and significant benchmarks. For a man who worked with Gandhi, was tutored by Bertrand Russell, counselled by Freud, inspired by Wittgenstein and influenced by Marx, Anand is amazingly humble and down-to-earth. It was he, along with Narayan and

Raja Rao, who formed the troika that laid the foundation of Indian writing in English. The rewards of those pioneering efforts are now being reaped by a more market-savvy generation of writers.

Despite the fact that Anand roamed the world and lived in England for many years, his fiction was specifically and exclusively Indian. For him, writing was not about media-hype or astronomical signing amounts or smart-alecky promotional gimmicks; it was always a mission and a life-purpose. For him, the novel never served as anything less than a vehicle of social reform. Though he interacted rather closely with the Bloomsbury group of intellectuals, it was in Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram that his quest began.

It was a chance meeting with E.M. Forster, who had given Anand A Passage to India to read, which proved catalytic. Thus stirred the seeds of a feeling that prompted him "to go beyond Forster". Untouchable was written after Anand came to Sabarmati Ashram on

January 1, 1927. As many as 19 publishers rejected the draft of the novel before it was finally accepted because it had a preface written by Forster. A turning point in his life, Untouchable was followed by Coolie, which was written as an answer to Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. Both the novels have been translated into 28 different languages and it was their success that "strengthened my inner quest." He sympathised with the dispossessed primarily because he was aware of how urbanisation had come to India in all its horrors.

As he traces the history of the English novel in India with graphic ease, he muses how "writing novels followed the sequence of inner causes." In India, we have the epics, Kathasaritasagar, Jataka tales, folk-tales and Puranas, but no tradition of the novel. It was Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the first graduate of Calcutta University, who wrote Rajmohan’s Wife — the first English novel in India. "That influenced Tagore’s Ghare Baire to a large extent," he says.

Though he ultimately made his mark as a litterateur, his initial training was that of a philosopher. And philosophy, as he put it, he "learnt in conversation with Bertrand Russell." He stayed with Russell as a "son of the house" and ultimately went on to complete his doctoral thesis on Bertrand Russell and the English Empiricists. Listening to him expatiate on the philosophy of Wittgenstein, one is wonder struck by his ability to simplify the most complex of his concepts. In a way, this ability is reflected in the conceptual frame of his novels as well.

Anand’s stay in England was not entirely a happy one. An experience that he recounts, with deep sadness lurking in his eyes, is about his meeting with and a tragic loss of Irene, his Irish girlfriend. Shot dead by the British police, Irene was also associated with Maud Gonne. In fact, it was Irene’s father who had given Anand and her money "to go to France and learn how

to make a revolution." After her tragic end, he recalls, he could not bear to go to the place they had both spent their time together. So he

went to Vienna, instead, to see Freud.

Commenting on the present scenario in English writing, where authors often play to the media gallery and overshadow their own works, Anand is forthright: "Books are more important than the writer, but the writer is more important than the author. However, the writer has to be actuated by considerations that are deeper than the superficial needs of the market." Anand bemoans the abject lack of awareness about the literary traditions of the world as well as India. Consciousness of tradition, he thinks, is extremely significant, almost necessary. According to him, it is Mahashweta Devi in Bengal whose work is extremely noteworthy and of consequence. It is Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan that, in the ultimate analysis, will outlive his In company of Women. "Imagine writing a 1400-page novel based upon a matrimonial advertisement in The Hindustan Times" is how he sums up Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy.

Anand admires the regard Bengalis have for their inheritance of Tagore. "Our publisers," he says with characteristic candour," are cowards. They don’t have the guts to put their weight behind the book they feel is good while the publishers in the West push a mediocre book and pass it off as good."

For someone who was one of the founding-members of the Progressive Writers Association, formed as it was under the presidentship of Munshi Prem Chand in Lucknow in 1939, it was but natural to regard the Russian writers "as a potent influence." "Of course, it is Marxism. I’m proud of it," says he to the charge that his novels are essentially propaganda-oriented. For a writer who believes in the Marxist variant of humanism, it is extraordinary Victorian fluency of communication that suffuses his work with a felt intensity.

It is this kind of intensity that asserts itself when he voices his anguish at the absence of translations of his work into Punjabi, his mother tongue. With the exception of Untouchable, which

was translated by Balwant Gargi and is now rotting away in the godown, none of Anand’s works are available to the Punjabi-reading public. Eleven of his books have, however, been translated into Bengali. It is the shallow teaching and the lack of a critical tradition that often deprives the Punjabi language of good literature, he laments.

"What to talk of the availability of world literature or the lack of it in Punjabi, we have also not owned up Buleh Shah, Waris Shah and Faiz. It is Pakistan that has inherited all those. We in Punjab are not proud enough of our legacy," he feels.

To the query whether his life’s work is done, Anand shoots back, "There is no room for complacence." He is now writing a 1000-page autobiographical novel.

Among other things, he is currently engaged in campaigning to make Gandhi the man of the millennium. It was Gandhi who spurred him on to travel across the length and breadth of the country so that he could familiarise himself with all the states and acquire a first-hand knowledge of how the people in the villages live. Anand looks upon Gandhi as "a rare synthesis of Buddhism, Jainism, Bhakti movement and the inheritance of the non-hurting principle." He was a unique example of a man, who, in a very homely, unassuming manner, converted the Gujarati principle of "non-hurting" into a world doctrine of Ahimsa. He imbibed "good sense" from the West but was quintessentially Indian.

No other leader, Anand is emphatic, has the same kind of genuine interest in "simple life as Gandhi had. Since Independence, with every successive government, there has been a continuous shift of focus in our polity from the dispossessed to the traders and merchants. The Indian middle class is acquisitive and not capable of initiating change. The middle class in England, on the contrary, was the result of Cromwellian Revolution. It’s only in the advanced states —Bengal, Kerala and Karnataka —that the transition has been made from feudalism to a modern commune.

However, what worries the man who has seen two world wars and nations being born, destroyed and rebuilt, is "the loss of liberal Hindu impact." His apprehensions are that due to the ongoing struggle between the forces that want to rebuild the temple and the others, "India will ultimately suffer the consequences of the intellectual backwardness of those who want the Ayodhya temple."

"Can you imagine a modern society fighting for a temple?" is how he gives vent to his anguish over the prevalent political scenario in India.

Both India and Pakistan, Anand feels, are regressing towards fundamentalism. Revival of tribalism of the Taliban is a cause for concern. "Even the Koran does not condemn women the way the ‘religion’ of Taliban does, " rues Anand, with a pained expression.

Social and political issues have never been very far from Anand’s life and work. So inextricably linked he is to each of them that it is rather difficult to say where the man ends and the writer begins. On being asked if he would like to pass a message on to the future generation of writers, a true Gandhian that he is, he simply says, "Peace. This is what we all have to work for, writers included, if we have to ensure our survial."