To put on their clothes made one a sahib too: Mimicry and the Carnivale

To put on their clothes made one a sahib too Mimicry and the Carnivalesque in Mulk Raj Anands secureThe character of Bakha, in Anands Untouchable, is drawn from the lowest caste in Indian society, that of sweeper, or cleaner of human ordure. Despite his unpromising station in life, the central figure in the novel operates at a variety of levels in order to critique the status quo of caste in India. Well certain of his position at the nadir of Indian society, Bakha is able-via his untouchability-to interrogate issues well above his station in life, such as caste and its inequities, economics and the role of the colonizer. callable to the very characteristics of the characters position, Anand is able to examine issues such as societys revulsion at untouchablility some local, innate societal sympathy for Bakhas plight, and the fact that in the 1930s Gandhi used his Harijans-untouchables-as a symbol for change in Indian society. This essay examines the modes by which Anand deploys mim icry and the carnivalesque to critique Indian society in the 1930s. The indite has constructed a mimic-man, fundamentally carnivalesque in the Bakhtinian sense, who is simultaneously parodic and subversive. Indeed, the linguistic similarity Bakha/Bakhtin is in itself superficial yet tempting. For Bakhtin, Carnivalesque literature uses elements of parody, mimicry, bodily humour and grotesque display to hit the ends of carnival, that is, to jostle from below the univocal, elevated language of high art and decorous society. During the course of his sidereal day, Bakha causes widespread unease, not merely at his physical presence. Although he is aware of the six thousand years of racial and class superiority(16) that bears down on him, as he... ...remarkable breadth of issues, and it is only to be hoped that one day this text will be regarded as a useful tool in a past campaign, rather than as part of a go along and unfinished project.Useful linksDalit Liberation Education Trust ht tp//www.pcsadvt.com/dletThe Imperial Archive. http//www.qub.ac.uk/english/imperial/imperial.htmIndia Survey, Biography http//www.indiasurvey.com/biodata/mulkrajanand.htmLiterature in English of the Indian Subcontinent in the Postcolonial Web http//landow.stg.brown.edu/post/india/anand/anandov.html BibliographyAnand, Mulk Raj Untouchable London Penguin Books, 1940 Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth, and Tiffin, Helen. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. London Routledge, 1998.Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth, and Tiffin, Helen. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London Routledge, 1995.