Gopinath Mohanty’s 1948 novel ‘Harijan’, still as relevant

Renu Sud Sinha

“Couldn’t he find another job that would let him fill his belly? He was young, healthy and strong. Surely the big city could provide something! Was it really God’s plan that he should survive by picking excreta off the streets?” asks a fictional character, Sania, a mehentar (manual scavenger), one of the protagonists of Gopinath Mohanty’s “Harijan”. First published in Odia in 1948, the novel has been translated into English by Bikram Das.

Seventy-three years later, cut to an Odisha village near Puri, reality hasn’t changed at all for Dalits. Their lives remain as miserable as the fictional characters of “Harijan”. According to a recent media report, 40 families were forced out of Brahmapur as young graduates refused to carry the palanquin in wedding processions of upper-caste families. “We are getting educated and are aware about our rights. Why should we follow a regressive practice?” a youth had asked.

The novel, among the few seminal works on untouchables, talks about the misery that manual scavengers are forced to face, because of the misfortune of their birth into a particular class and caste. Mohanty’s “Harijan” was inspired by Gandhiji’s Harijan Andolan. Counted among literary classics on untouchability, others being “Kafan” by Munshi Premchand, “Untouchable” by Mulk Raj Anand and “Thottiyude Makan” by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, these four works forced society’s attention to this ugly practice that was still prevalent in India as late as 1993 when the first Act was passed to ban it.

Mohanty (1914–1991), a prolific writer of over 300 short stories, plays, essays and 24 novels, was the first winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award, and was also awarded the Jnanpith Award. “Harijan” is a poignant story of a mehentar basti that exists next to the palatial house of upper-caste Avinash Babu. Jema mehentrani struggles to protect her daughter from their devastating occupation and her fate, but loses in the end as does the basti itself when it is burnt down after Avinash Babu buys it to develop it into a colony.