Negotiating the Fringes: Interpreting and Interrogating the Class and Caste Conflict in Mulk Raj Anand’s Coolie

Abstract

When we talk of any author, we have to position him/her in the intersection of race, class, caste, gender and historical context; and thus Mulk Raj Anand’s novel Coolie (1936) is meaningfully contextualized in my paper. I will delineate in my paper, how unlike Charles Dickens, Anand focuses on the class rather than the individual and hence names his novel Coolie rather than ‘Munoo’. Here, my paper will illustrate how Anand predicates destiny on a class as the class system in India has become a new sort of caste system and the individual identity rooted in the detrimental class system causes much harm to the social unity. It has apartheided or segregated people into rich and poor; haves and have-nots. I will explain through my paper that the term “Dalit” does not necessarily confine itself to a particular lower caste but tends to encompass all the oppressed and downtrodden souls in the society. Nevertheless, in this process, the vastness of the social canvas, India’s multi- layered social hierarchies, with possibilities of the exploitation and subjugation of the underdogs in every stratum, comes through.