Discriminative Caste Violence in Premchand’s Oeuvre and Anand’s ‘Untouchable

Abstract

The present analyses compare and contrast the discriminative caste violence in Premchand’s Literary World and Anand’s ‘Untouchable’. The Dalits Characters in the works of Hindi writer, Premchand and English writer, Anand’s ‘Untouchable’ dwell on untouchables and their pitiable conditions. Many celebrated Hindi writers, including Premchand, have been discussed as writers who mirror the marginalized figures. Mahatma Gandhi rightly said, “Untouchability is the hate fullest expression of caste.” The paper deals with Premchand and Mulkraj Anand’s writings on the basis of humanism in the early decades of 19th Century. In Premchand’s writings, Gandhian notions of the ‘Hridya Privartan’ was a dominant feature. It is striking that untouchable voices are not presented as agents of change in this literature; rather their poor conditions and helplessness treat as an insurmountable obstacle; is a characteristic feature of the Hindi literature. Further, I have taken Mulkraj Anand’s writings as an example to make clear the difference between objectives of the literature.