Mulk Raj Anand (Ii)

Mulk Raj Anand, Say you, how to research you, A novelist Indian Whose novels read not the Indians, But the foreigners As for interpreting caste, class and society, The ismic India of the ismic people? While travelling in the trains and buses, People asked about the caste and class In touchable India With the untouchable people, The Aryans and natives, A clash it was. A coppersmith, you saw England, Read the frank and free society of it, But India was India, Vast and varied, A bundle of contraries and contradictions, Just go on feeling Hopkins' Pied Beauty In rock-built temples. Marx, Lenin, Stalin, engaged your space Irrespective of Indian caste, class and society And its narrow divisions, Breathed you freely, Widened your spectrum and horizon After meeting Gandhi at Sabarmati And the saint purged the impurities Of your heart. Gandhi as the critic, mentor and preceptor Barbered and pruned The book To be a literary text And other foreign thinkers and teachers You went ahead In highlighting their pity and pathos of living, But how many of us could understand it? Mulk Raj Anand as a writer of the have-nots, The under dogs, weaker sections of society, The proletariat and the downtrodden was he no doubt As for being a goldsmith, Bearing the brunt of caste and casteism then When India was most backward, superstitious and undeveloped As for poverty and misrule, The darker medieval age Full of raids, loots, plunders and coercions. Mulk Raj Anand was like Ambedkar Trying to think in terms Of caste and its impact, Inequality and injustice Meted out to, Subjected to The poorer sections of society Ethnic, racial and poor, Underprivileged and suppressed Which we could never feel in ethnic India. We do not the society and culture of Peshawar of then times, The house he was born, The people he lived with, The parents which they imparted to And the opportunities he availed of In being to England, English, Christian, Mohammedan and Hindu, All that he saw and understood, Did a remix of all that After taking to communism in full confidence. An Indian Charles Dickens, he lived and gossiped Which the Indians could not feel it then And even if they came to know of, This is as for a handshake with the local Angrez sahebs From whom learnt he The lessons in rationality, logic and reason And humanism Which we could never As Daridrnarayan concept could not take us far After offering the kangal bhojana. To comprehend the mind and vision of Mulk Raj Anand Is to understand Indian life and philosophy, The philosophies of Adi Shankaracharya, Kabirdas, Nanak, Buddha, Ekalavya and Karna As Dronacharya too was a conservative teacher, India regressed and lagging behind During the medieval times, Laden and reeling under, The unnecessary rituals too took a toll upon As dealt with superstitiously. The birds of a feather flock together is the with Krishan Chander, K.A.Abbas and so on Who tried to mix up And saw the things In all nudity, Genration gap, madness of conservatism and it trail, Communal disharmony, fundamental segregation Which but Khushwant Singh elaborated upon later on In his Train to Pakistan Which but Nehru could not feel it The wrath and vengeance of the Partition as for the chair. It was British education and scholarship, The bloombury influence, The communist mixing Which but you carried down To India, Marriage with Kathleen van Gelder in 1938 And its dissolution And again remarriage with Shirin Vajibdar, Say you something, Something about your life, Anand? Did it not sound a death knell to her with whom You had a daughter Named Susheila, Couldn't you feel for her, Didn't you, Mulk Raj Anand And again married you Shirin Vajibdar, A dancer To see life just by this way, But why did you leave alone, Why couldn't you afford and accommodate them? A propagandist were you no doubt Shavian, Orwellian, Dickensian, But in addition to these, of course a Red, A socialist writer Falling short of being a politburo member, Progressive, revolutionary and rebellious, But compromising with, A writer of the have-nots no doubt With the impressions Marxistic. The red flag with the hammer and the sickle fluttering, The wheat sheaves embossed upon, The festoons and banners all around, You holding a meeting with the peasants and the labourers To put human dignity on the right track, Trying to glorify Human toil, tears and sweat, Of course blood is the same, Blood red, So, why to differentiate in between?