Citizen of the World with roots in the Punjab

Mulk Raj Anand (1905–2004) was an internationally known Punjabi novelist writing in English. Besides his literary achievements, he also founded the Progressive Writers’ Movement in India along with Munshi Prem Chand and Sajjād Zaheer. He smuggled Marxist literature from London to a whole generation of Punjabi political activists based in Lahore . After 1947, he was instrumental in establishing national academies of literature and arts in India on the suggestion of Jawaharlal Nehru.

            He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize and visited the Soviet Union 28 times. He served as chairman of Lalit Kala Akademi ( Academy of Fine Arts ) as well as the National Book Trust of India. He founded and edited Mārg (Pathway), an arts magazine of a very high standard. He was Tagore Professor of Literature and Arts at Panjab University Chandigarh and the Institute of Advanced Study Shimla during the 1960s.

            Born in Peshawar to a Sikh mother from Sialkot and a Hindu father from Jandiala Guru, he attended Khalsa College Amritsar. After graduating from Punjab University in 1924, he sailed to England ‘personally inspired’ by Iqbal, the poet, to study philosophy at Cambridge University . He received the PhD degree in 1929 from University College London for his dissertation titled Bertrand Russell and the English Empiricists.

            While in London he made friends with George Orwell, TS Eliot, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Herbert Read and EM Forster. The last named wrote an introduction to Anand’s first and best-known novel Untouchable (1935), which was issued as a Penguin Modern Classic in 1986. This novel and Coolie, published the following year, pioneered realist writing on the plight of the downtrodden in Indian society. Over the years he was to write four more novels and his seven-volume autobiography Seven Ages of Man. He published many books on the arts including Persian Painting (1930), The Hindu View of Art (1933), Homage to Tagore (1946), Homage to Khajuraho (1960), Is There a Contemporary Indian Civilisation? (1963), Indian Ivories (1970), Ajanta (1970), Maharaja Ranjit Singh as Patron of the Arts, 1981 (ed.) and Amrita Sher-Gil (1989).

            Reviewing his autobiography Khushwant Singh remarked on Anand’s ‘Punjabi English’ and suggested that he would be better off writing it in Punjabi. There was some truth in this sarcasm that Punjabi authors writing in non-Punjabi languages dare not face.

            I recorded a long interview with Mulk Raj Anand on some pertinent questions of Punjabi identity, writing in English, etc. when he visited London in 1982. The post-1947 generation of Punjabi writers was not influenced by his writings, the main reason being that unlike Lahore , East Punjab had no cultural centre and many Punjabi stalwarts like Anand made Delhi and Bombay their home and thus remained alienated from their roots. The mutual loss was immense.

– Amarjit Chandan

Excerpts from the interview:

Q. As a writer from the Punjab , how would you define Punjabi sensibility?

A. The Punjabi sensibility is not a fixed notion like that of the British nation. The British nation only comes to the surface when Mrs. Thatcher wins the Falklands war and the Punjabi nation comes to the surface when the Khalistanis assert their own ideas of Khalistan. Actually many Punjabis living outside are as Punjabi as the Punjabis in the Punjab . Punjabi sensibility is inheritance of Punjabi culture. This culture became tender and full of love through Guru Nanak and the Sikh movement. This movement represents the ethos of the previous centuries, also the period of Baba Farid.

It is important that the superficial interpretation in terms of politics cannot get away from the subterranean influences exercised by the medieval saints. I think it’s a question of collective consciousness which comes into people by inheritance.

Since the Punjabis had to fight for generations, they had to become heroes; also they were lucky in the sense that they had five rivers and good harvests. In regard to the cultivation of mind they were led to barbarism too. Only reformation which has happened in our country against the malpractices of religious rituals and all that was by Guru Nanak.

The Punjabi Hindus were saved from dissolution and they have deep respect for Guru Nanak and Sikh faith. In fact Arya Samāj was only taking on the most important aspects of Sikhism (anti-casteism etc). The revivalist counter movements in the Punjab in the end of the last century did not really touch the people.

The communal riots have been part of surface reaction; deep down you’d find that the reaction by Arya Samāj certainly led to contempt to those elements in Sikh religion which brought about the reformation. The main force of Hinduism was Sanatanis who were influenced by Sikh religion. Because we had not too many outcasts, the problem did not become acute. The Sikhism had already converted them into the new faith. But I don’t think one should catch many judgements in this matter. The important Hindus who were de-established during the Raj were neither Arya Samājis nor Sanātanis, but were mainly clerical community and they joined Arya Samāj for fashion and remained open to some of the ideas of the Sikh faith. But it was a great mistake of the Hindus to declare in 1948 that their mother tongue was not Punjabi. That was their attempt at the instigation of the British and Hindu Chauvinism to try and capture a position and power in whole of the northern India as the precursors of the Hindu raj. The people involved were from Gurukul Kangri, and who had affiliations with their counterparts in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat . One should look into the undercurrents; under the undercurrents are the Hindu intelligentsia who are guilty about the shameful conduct of Hindu community in regard to the language controversy, and I squarely blame this community for having brought on the
Khalistan movement.

Q. And what about the Punjabi muslims?

A. The Punjabi muslims were carried away by the economic situation under British rule. There was no consciousness among them because they did not come to education very easily. The British were against them because of the mutiny and Hindus and Sikhs were preferred in the services. The phenomenon of Hindu- Muslim antagonism was skin deep, actually however from Iqbal to the most important nationalists like Kitchlew the question of Hindu-Muslim did not arise until the first Round Table Conference. The British of course cannot be misinterpreted about their intentions; the mainstay in India was the Hindu-Muslim division. And the Sikhs also joined in wanting p referential treatment under Master Tara Singh. Ultimately he realised that the future of the Sikhs lay in India not with Pakistan . The subsequent history of the Hindu-Sikh rivalry is a different matter, because in the partition riots they fought together against the Muslims.

The whole situation depended on the stubbornness of Jinnah and others who were not Muslims really, who were again dominated by the class position they occupied in Indian hierarchy and wanted the Muslims of India who were very backward to enjoy the fruits of state power, which meant jobs, position and money. I think Pakistan was mainly the result of the economic pressures and demands of the Muslims for a fair deal. I don’t know whether they got it in Pakistan or not.

I think all the religious movements of modern Punjab are at least 80% dominated by cash nexus concentrations.

I’m not inclined to use the word hero when it came to it the Punjabis (including my father) sold themselves to British army for Rs. 11 a month. In my novel Across the Black Waters a Sikh turns into an anti-hero.

Q. How much Punjabi-ness is there in your works?

A. All my works express the ethos of the Bhakti movement led by Nanak which afterwards became nationalist and socialist movements before the second world war. The whole intelligentsia of the Punjab responded to my appeal and we had the first Progressive Writers Conference in Lucknow under Prem Chand with the support of Rabindranath Tagore and Muhammad Iqbal. The banner of progressive literature was passed on to the Afro-Asian literary movement. The rallying point of the struggle for a new consciousness and a new upsurge of protest movement in Asia and Africa came from the Punjab .

Q. In which language do you think?

A. Punjabi is my mother tongue. I presume I can write the English language quite well. But the reason my novel Untouchable was turned down was that it was in Indian English. I frequently use Punjabi vibrations. Vibrations of the characters of my landscape, my region could only express themselves in the versatile movements of the Punjabi speech. I could not perform an operation on my mother’s mouth to make her speak like an English woman, as do other writers. I have been doing what Joyce did earlier in making Irish words in the great book Ulysses; also in the Irish landscape Lady Gregory had formed a language called Kiltartan, Francis Stuart called it Pidgin Irish; so I call my language pidgin English i.e. Punjabi English. Others have done the same. Raja Rao has used Kanada for his sing song rhythms in the novel Kanthpura.

I think in Punjabi mostly and transliterate or transcreate in English.

Q. To which literary tradition do you consider yourself a part?

A. It’s a mixed business. I was born in Peshawar , I lived in Punjab , I grew up in the world outside. So I am a citizen of the world. But my roots are in the Punjab .

Q. Why did you choose to write in an acquired language?

A. At that time there were no publishers and the books written about India , certainly by me, were banned and there was no way by which even one could express oneself in Punjabi to the people who were around us in the Indian national movement. Also Punjabi was not used in courts under British rule, instead Urdu and English were used. Even Puran Singh started writing in English first. He was the writer of the Punjab in English language before me if you like. Bhai Vir Singh was a different case.

He belonged to the elitist Sikhs’ Singh Sabha movement and was the source of the whole movement. He did not express the sentiments of the Punjab but of the Sikhs only. I owe to Puran Singh much more than I owe to Vir Singh.

The question of language is bound with our national history. Vir Singh did not get known very far outside the Punjab , because he was conditioned to writing mainly on the Sikh revivalism. We were to go beyond Vir Singh’s generation. Our natural colleagues were Gurbakhsh Singh, Sant Singh Sekhon, Mohan Singh and Amrita Pritam and the others.

Q. So far Indian progressive literature has been on the underdogs but not for them. Did you choose to write on them out of pity, compassion or solidarity?

A. I don’t think anyone who has read my novels or the novels by my younger companions can say that. The first themes of my novels are certainly about the miseries of India and the Punjabi people. But the trilogy The Village, Across the Black Waters and The Sword and the Sickle depicts the active struggle of the underdogs to emerge into a consciousness. In the subsequent novels you find there is a struggle not only against the politics of the times, oppression, but it is also a struggle against the inner resistances offered by religious and rituals against growth. In Shiv Shankar Pillai’s Chemeen and in Fanishwar Nath Renu’s Maila Anchal in the books of Ismat Chugtai and Qurtul-an-Haidar, in the poetry of Faiz and Jafri, Bishnu De, the whole tradition of Bengali novel, you’d find a living awareness of the natural change. Every novel which concerns a lonely or oppressed person is a story of protest against it, because a novel is not an essay against caste oppression. In my novel Untouchable there is a core of humaneness, because Bakha’s dignity is dishonoured. Protest in itself becomes a very active part for the removal of oppression.

You can’t say that dictionary falls on your head from the shelf and you suddenly become wiser. It is a question of how many insinuations, persuasions become possible from vibrations of poetry and the sound of words and the deeper feeling of tenderness come into conflict of good and evil, of night and day.

Q. Has Bakha’s position changed after 50 years?

A. In Untouchable Bakha becomes aware but is not shown to be doing very much about it. But in The Road Bikhu, is caught in a situation where he has to fight back. This struggle is now going on in all part of India .

The Marxists in India have overlooked the problem of casteism. Marxism has to have an original interpretation in India , because most of the Harijans are not caste Hindus, and the recent murders of the untouchables were committed by the landlords who wanted the Harijans to come to work who refused to do on the basis of payment in kind, they wanted payment in cash. They fought back and the caste Hindus murdered them.

The conversion of the untouchability into the ostracism of a class of people (workers) itself shows the conversion to at least 60% a class phenomenon. This is very much evident in Karnataka. Unfortunately this great emancipative movement in other parts like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat has not been taken up by the Communist parties. Maybe that is inevitable that in India the class war will not be fought purely as a class war, but as a much more important war of the oppressed of all kinds against the oppressors who include not only the top of Mrs. Gandhi’s government, but include many of the opposition parties who claim to gain power. Because the party of Charan Singh the Lok Dal is the party of the upper caste people. In the voting in Haryana recently they showed their true colours. In relation to them Mrs. Gandhi’s party seems to me progressive, but I’d say the solution of this thing may lay in the kind of social democracy which is emerging in Bengal . The Communists of Bengal have shown the way by which they can combine the two struggles.

Q. As India is a nation in the making, is there any national identity of Indian literature being evolved?

A. It is not possible to conceive India as a nation in European terms. Historically speaking there is no revolutionary situation going in India (like the French revolution). India is surging with movements of all kinds. India as a state is going to last out and may ultimately be able to bring about a kind of union in the next hundred years, where the different communities have a national identity. The intelligentsia at the top is certainly Indian and is united and there is no doubt an Indian tradition of philosophical heritage. The miracle is that such a vast country is far more united than Europe which has been striving for nationalism for more than 200 years.

The nationalist movement also gave some ethos. The ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity, the ideas of class struggle are dominantly present in the emergence of a new individual in each novel.

Q. You have been a part of the Indian cultural establishment, and on the other hand you claim to be the champion of the people’s cause. Isn’t there a basic contradiction?

A. I am a minority of one. I’m the only Indian writer who has given his property away. I have not been part of any establishment. I was Chairman of Academy of Arts. [Lalit Kala Akademy]. I belong to no party. Nehru thought I was socialist and capable of organising. The mutually shared cultural values certainly helped Nehru to form the academies.

I’m independent judge of all situations in art and culture combined to develop and promote those cultural processes. I’ve been working with Russians in the whole movement of progressive writers, and with American intellectuals. I’ve never shunned bourgeois mainly because they are bourgeois when the aims are together. My ideology remains a commitment to the oppressed people everywhere specially my own people. The mechanical Marxists make a mistake. You have to have allies among the lower middle classes. On the issue of war I’ll join with the devil to oppose war.

Q. As a known author you have been entertained here by the white liberal society and perhaps have not experienced racism on the streets as we do in Southall or Brixton. In view of this do you feel that you have a licence to comment on the racism in British Society?

A. If you’d have heard my speech in the Commonwealth Institute Seminar in which I simply narrated the story of Untouchable being turned down by nineteen publishers. Racism is not a new phenomenon. This is part of imperialist psychology.

Q. Have any of your novels been filmed?

A. The film industry of India is mostly mollywood, wollywood, kollywood. It perverts the Hindi cinema and perverts everything that it takes up. The avant garde movement in our country led by Ray, Sen, Kaul etc., is not dominant and is not shown on the commercial network. I don’t wish to allow anyone to make my books into cheap commercial propositions in which the sentimentality of Hindi cinema projects itself. I’m inclined to do a few films by myself and other collaborators.

I’ve made 2-3 small films myself. I filmed my story Lost Child in Kangra valley, one for the Children’s Film Society in Haryana and for Films Division. I direct or write the script. If I got support from the community here, I’d like to make a film on colour and race and shoot it in Southall; I’ve drafted a novel already on this theme.

Q. Do you agree with the view that Indian English literature should be introduced in the British school curriculum?

A. There are already various text books in Indian universities. They are in American Universities and also in Canada and Australia . But the English school course system does not take them because there are few Indians involved in the system.

I am much more concerned about the second and third generation of Asians here. I don’t know in what way they are given orientation in their background. They should be given in Indian English the ethos of their culture. And there are many books that fulfil this need.

Q. What are your future plans?

A. My past is my future. At the moment I’m writing an autobiographical novel in seven volumes. The first three volumes have already been published. The fourth one The Bubble is in the press and I am working on the fifth one. They’ll be the personal history of a hero, anti-hero of my self converted into a novelistic form.

Q. For you does creative expression come from a work routine?

A. I learnt it from Gandhiji. I wake up at half past five in the morning, whether I am in London , New York , in Moscow or in Peking or Delhi , Bombay or my village. I’ve my tea at 6.30 and begin to write for one hour. The rest of the day I organise, rewrite. I’ve four secretaries, two for my mail and two for my articles etc.

Q. Has there been any uncreative period in your life?

A. After the partition of India , I couldn’t write anything for three years. Because I was dumb by the shock of fratricide on a large scale. It was the death of all the hopes we had. I only revived because I felt that I had to fight against all the things which came to the surface.   

 

Amarjit Chandan with Mulk Raj Anand. London . 1982.

Photo by Peter Moxley

[Courtesy: South Asian Ensemble. Vol. 2 Number 3. Summer 2010.

E: editor.sae@gmail.com]