Mulk Raj Anand: Bombadil Publishing pays him tribute on his fifth Death Anniversary

Mulk Raj Anand was an internationally acclaimed Indian writer in English whose notable portrayal of poorer caste in conventional Indian society not only expressed his soul’s depths of despair but also summoned international readers. He was the first ‘Indian writer’ who intellectually incorporated Hindi and Punjabi idioms in English and persistently maintained a distinctive creativity of Indo-Anglian fiction. He was the most prestigious writer rightly called the Charles Dickens of India for his pioneering spirit.

He was born in Peshawar on 12 December, 1905. After completing his graduation from Khalsa College, he went to England and finished his PhD from Cambridge University.

He spent half of his life in India and rest half in London where sporadically lectured at Educational Association in London between 1932 and 1945. In World War II he also worked as a scriptwriter for BBC London where he became friend of George Orwell. E. M. Forster, with whom he got acquainted with while working on T. S. Eliot's magazine, was admirer of Mulk Raj Anand.

His biographical details confirmed that he suffered from devastating family tragedy that made him an eminent explorer in his literary career. His bitter experience made him an accomplished writer. His first prose was an expression of profound disenchantment to the suicide of his aunt who was ruthlessly segregated from family for sharing her food with a Muslim. In his first published novel ‘Untouchable’ in 1935, he realistically depicted day to day life of a toilet cleaner through which he has highlighted the rigidity of casteism in India and evoked the superior sense of awareness. His second novel was ‘Coolie’ where he compassionately described the plight of a wrecked teenaged boy, the victim of higher caste, was trapped in slavery as a child labor and dies of tuberculosis.

He prodigiously penned down wide range of subjects including seven part autobiography ‘Private life of an Indian Prince’ which started with ‘Seven Summers’ and won Sahitya Akademi Award for ‘Morning Face’, one of seven parts. The Village (1939), Across the Black Waters (1940), The Sword and the Sickle (1942) some of masterpieces among all major contributions.