Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Mulk Raj Anand published The Village in the year 1939 and its sequel, Across the Black Waters, was published later in the same year. The two novels describe the life and journey of Lal Singh, or Lalu as a nonchalant son of a well-to-do farmer from the village of Nandpur in Punjab to the battlegrounds of World War I. The third part of Lalu’s trilogy was The Sword and the Sickle which was published in 1942. As Lal Singh returns alive from Europe, he jumps into the freedom struggle of India as a common peasant and faces the duplicity of political leaders who hardly understand the troubles of poor farmers while trying to use them for their political gains. Mulk Raj Anand was a staunch socialist who often disagreed with Mahatma Gandhi on many issues and openly rebuked and ridiculed Gandhian stance of Non-violence as the solution to every problem faced by Indians. These three novels are about the Indian peasants and the troubles they faced because of imperialist government and social conventions. Lal Singh or Lalu of Mulk Raj Anand represents Everyman of India. Through this Trilogy, Mulk Raj Anand exposes and ridicules the hypocrisy of urbanites, politicians, intellectuals, and imperialists alike while telling a fictional story of the establishment of Bhartiya Kisan Sabha.
Characters And Summary of The Village:
The village is set in the autumn of 1913.
Lal Singh or Lalu is the central character. Like Bakha (Untouchable) or Munnu (Coolie), Lalu is an adolescent kid of age 16 or 17. Unlike Bakha and Munnu, he is not uneducated and downtrodden. He belongs to a middle-class peasantry family trapped in the clutches of the landlord, the moneylender, and the priest, who are the living representatives of a fading, old order. Nihal Singh is his father who, like Gangu (Two Leaves and a Bud) is facing the burden of debt, yet he is stable. Lalu’s elder brother is about to marry while his eldest brother is struggling to pay the loan back to the moneylender. Lalu is a revolutionary kid who dares to challenge the norms and hence, faces troubles at each step. He sees the discrimination between castes and religion but doesn’t approve of it. He freely plays with kids of other castes. One day, when he decides to take some sweets from a Muslim man's shop, he is reprimanded by the priest of the village and he gets a haircut as a punishment. At his elder brother’s engagement, Lalu is falsely accused of molesting a girl and again he is punished as his face is blackened by the villagers and he is made to parade on a donkey. Lalu realizes that he can take no more and decides to run away and escape from the scene to avoid this disgrace. After running away from his family, Lalu faces the same difficulties as faced by Munnu, but unlike Munnu or Gangu, he decides to join the British Army instead of becoming an indentured laborer or coolie. Bakha had no education and was placed lowest in the caste hierarchy, there was no way he could revolt. Munnu was too young and too weak to act against the oppressive system that crushed him. Gangu was too old and fatalistic to rebel. Unlike Bakha, Munnu, or Gangu who raise our pity but fail to win the reader’s praise, Lalu is brave enough to win his battles. He learns that the British government is willing to offer free farmland to soldiers ready to go to Europe and fight for England against the Germans in World War I. He thinks that on returning, he will get his own farmland and will be able to help his family return their debt, and thus, decides to go to fight for the Allied forces. At the village, his family has succumbed to the burden of debt. Most of his kinsmen have lost their small landholdings to the landlord and the moneylender. His eldest brother was charged with murdering the landlord’s son and was hanged. Nihal Singh, who couldn’t bear the loss died of heart failure. The only surviving member of Lalu’s family is his middle brother who was to have married when Lalu left home. He couldn’t bear the ruin and turned ascetic and left the village. Lalu is unaware of all this as he prepares to go to Europe.
Characters and Summary of Across The Black Waters
Across the Black Waters is the only Indian English novel set in the period of World War 1. It is the autumn of 1914 as Lalu reaches Marseilles with his regiment. Lalu and his comrades are from the Himalayas who never came out of India ever before. However, they find a similarity in France. They observe the poor french people living in slums and french women washing their husband’s clothes on the river banks. Like Indian wives, the french women say goodbye to their sons and husbands before they go to war and this offers Lalu a sense of familiarity. Unlike the British rulers, the French people are not discriminating against Hindus and Laly observes that the French people cheer Indian soldiers with shouts of ‘Vivleshindou!’ Indian soldiers are welcomed in French bars and coffee shops with no discrimination and this lets Lalu understand the British apartheid in India. Unlike British memsahibs in India, French women are friendly, open, and respectful. Lalu feels like home. The Indian soldiers wonder ‘where is the war?’
Lalu makes friends with a French soldier Andre and his sister Marie. He finds the Allies are not united and the British armies are discriminated between the angrez sahibs and the Indian sepoys. The sepoys themselves are not unified, there are many disrupted members among them. Soon Lalu learns that the European war is much deadlier than any war the Indian soldiers ever faced. Indian soldiers are sent to war trenches to face the German soldiers. Indian soldiers are mostly bigger than the British soldiers and the trenches were tailor-made for British soldiers. Indian soldiers find the trenches uncomfortably small – just one of how they do not quite fit in. Still, they accept their orders and their fate in this alien war, and ‘smothered any fears they had in a collective effort to prove true to the salt of the Sarkar’. While Indian soldiers face heavy bullet fire from their opponents, they hardly have any meaningful weapons. Two elderly soldiers Uncle Kirpa and Daddy Danoo explain the war laws to Indian soldiers which Lalu understands as ‘the Indian law of chivalry’. In crucial respects,, British and Germans mostly follow the principle of ‘live and let live’. The British officer Owen Sahib is a kind and paternalistic man whom everybody likes. Major Peacock can speak Hindustani but he is discriminatory against Indian soldiers and is less liked. Lalu sees the death of many of his friends on the battlefield and also through suicide. The hardship turns the young Lalu into a mature man. However, he still remains a son of an Indian farmer, and a farmer himself. At the end of the novel, Lalu is captured by the German soldiers and faces extreme torture as the captive soldier.
Characters and Summary of The Sword and The Sickle
The Sword and The Sickle is the last part of the trilogy. Initially, Anand chose the title ‘All Men’s Are Brothers’ for the third part but he changed it to The Sword and The Sickle at the suggestion of George Orwell. The title 'The Sword and Sickle' is taken from a poem by William Blake and represents the struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor.
As the war ends, Lalu is freed by the German army and he returns to India in 1918. He is hopeful of getting the gift of farmland and pension as a reward from the British government but he is ridiculed and dismissed without them. Anand published The Sword and The Sickle in 1942. The broken promise to Lalu, therefore, becomes a warning of what might happen after the end of the Second World War, and the plot of land not given to Lalu becomes a symbol of the land of India. The cruelty of the British government forces many peasants to penury. As a farmer, Lalu understands the plight of farmers and decides to join the Indian Freedom Struggle. Like many others, he is influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s efforts but finds his concept of non-violence unworkable. Lalu meets many leaders but realizes that none of them actually understands the helplessness and issues of poor farmers and can hardly help them. Lalu completely repudiates Gandhi’s view of non-violence and ridicules Gandhi’s idea of bringing Swaraj by wearing Khadi and fasting. He believes that the destiny of Indian peasants is tied to the working force of the world. (All Men are Brothers). Lalu claims, “When the Videshi state goes, there will be a Swadeshi state – a mere change of names and labels. I believe they will use the same police, which now beats them with staves, and the same regulations by which they are put in goals, to suppress those whom they don’t like.”
Lalu opts for another path. He commits himself passionately to the task of organizing the peasants by joining the insurrectionist group led by Count Rampal Singh. This pursuit lands him in prison, but the vision of the revolution still tempts his soul. The organization symbolizes the beginning of Bhartiya Kisan Sabha a revolution in itself. Lalu commits himself completely to the reformation of peasants and attempts for bringing rural reforms from within the community.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the History of Indian English Literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and regards.
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