Mulk Raj Anand
| Mulk Raj Anand | |
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| Born |
12 December 1905 Peshawar, British India (now Pakistan) |
| Died | 28 September 2004 (aged 98) Pune, India |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Period | 20th century |
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Mulk Raj Anand (12 December 1905 – 28 September 2004) was an Indian writer in English, notable for his depiction of the lives of the poorer castes in traditional Indian society. One of the pioneers of Indo-Anglian fiction, he, together with R. K. Narayan, Ahmad Ali and Raja Rao, was one of the first India-based writers in English to gain an international readership. Anand is admired for his novels and short stories, which have acquired the status of being classic works of modern Indian English literature, noted for their perceptive insight into the lives of the oppressed and their analyses of impoverishment, exploitation and misfortune. He is also notable for being among the first writers to incorporate Punjabi and Hindustani idioms into English and was a recipient of the civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan.
Born in Peshawar, Anand studied at Khalsa College, Amritsar, graduating with honours in 1924, before moving to England, where he attended University College London as an undergraduate and later Cambridge University, earning a PhD in Philosophy in 1929. During this time he forged friendships with members of the Bloomsbury Group. He spent some time in Geneva, lecturing at the League of Nations' School of Intellectual Cooperation.
Anand's literary career was launched by family tragedy, instigated by the rigidity of the caste system. His first prose essay was a response to the suicide of an aunt, who had been excommunicated by her family for sharing a meal with a Muslim woman. His first main novel, Untouchable, published in 1935, was a chilling expose of the day-to-day life of a member of India's untouchable caste. It is the story of a single day in the life of Bakha, a toilet-cleaner, who accidentally bumps into a member of a higher caste.
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