Untouchable

by

Mulk Raj Anand

Untouchable: Pages 43–73 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
As he keeps walking through the town, Bakha spots an old bull; the bull is belching, and both his dung and his breath have a foul stench. Bakha thinks back to the many hungry cows he has seen, browsing stalls at the bazaar and snacking on whatever food they can get. But higher-caste Hindus always treat these bulls with respect, a religious custom that Bakha does not quite understand. Moreover, if bulls are so sacred, Bakha wonders, then why are they never well-fed?
In addition to all the other things he is excluded from, Bakha is not allowed to read religious texts or participate in religious ceremonies—even though these are the very texts that are supposed to justify the caste system. Bakha’s anger at the touched man perhaps allows him to see these contradictions in a new light, just as he now questions why higher-caste Hindus can treat their cows with a form of respect they do not deign to show to some other humans.
Themes
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Bakha tries to keep sweeping, ignoring his environment, but every so often the stench of decaying vegetables or the heat of the day makes this task feel impossible. Bakha’s only relief comes when he turns off onto a quiet street and sees a shop with lots of European instruments. The thought of the British military band comforts Bakha, and he is able to get some distance from the events of the morning.
Whereas Bakha gains strength from nature in its purest form, the spoiling vegetables and city streets just remind Bakha how tripped up he is by the invented rules and customs of his society.
Themes
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Bakha sees a jewelry stand, but—because he knows that the English hate jewelry—he does not admire any of the wares there. Bakha’s eyes linger on a picture of a barely dressed Englishwoman until the shopkeeper makes him leave. Though Bakha continues to announce his presence, people are too distracted by the various things for sale: wedding bangles and fancy pieces of cloth.
Once again, Bakha’s admiration for the English runs so deep that it is literally rewiring his brain, forcing him to disdain things he might have once found beautiful (like elaborate Indian jewelry). It is also worth noting that this admiration extends to his sexual preferences and desires, as Bakha seems to be especially attracted to Englishwomen.
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Quotes
Finally, Bakha arrives at the temple. As always, he finds himself amazed by the intricate carvings of the gods with so many heads and arms. Bakha wonders what the various engravings on the temple’s outer walls mean; he has been taught to revere these figures, but he has never learned their significance, and because he cannot read, he cannot experience the Hindu scriptures for himself. A crowd of worshippers streams into the temple, and Bakha is careful to keep his distance. 
Though Bakha and Sohini are expected to sweep and maintain the temple, they are not allowed to go inside it—another example of high-caste hypocrisy.
Themes
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Bakha begins to hear prayers to Rama and Kali and Krishna and Hanuman. Suddenly, consumed by curiosity, he decides to sneak into the temple so he can understand what is going on. In a rush, he climbs the steps, hiding out in a corner near the entrance. Now Bakha can see the service: he takes in the half-naked priest at the front of the room, and then the chorus of worshippers, raising their voices to sing “Sri Ram Chandar ki Jai (Long live the Great God Ram).”
Even as the novel critiques the caste system, which claims to be rooted in Hindu scripture, Bakha’s eagerness to rush into the temple reflects the compelling force of the Hindu religion. Rama (or Ram), considered the ideal man in Hindu doctrine, is the figure that Bakha finds most compelling (both here and elsewhere in the story, where Bakha tries to draw a comparison between Rama and Christ).
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Suddenly, Bakha is disturbed to hear the Pundit Kali Nath cry out “polluted, polluted, polluted.” Bakha does not know what the cause of the cry is, though in his anxiety, he accidentally shows himself (“I have been seen,” he thinks, “undone”). Worse still, Bakha now realizes that the “polluting” figure in question is Sohini. He runs out of the temple, while the worshippers fret that they have been polluted by the sweeper. But the Pundit is even more panicked, asserting, “I have been defiled by contact.”
This crucial passage illuminates two ideas. First, the Pundit—who readers know is concerned mostly with his own dietary habits and bowel movements—cruelly affirms the logic that high-caste Hindus are clean while outcastes are “polluting” and “defiling” in their very personhood. And second, Bakha’s pained words—“I have been seen, undone”—demonstrate how profoundly he has internalized the shame society ties to him, feeling that even to be noticed is to be destroyed.
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The crowd continues to wail, noting that “a temple can be polluted according to the Holy Books by a low-caste man coming within sixty-nine yards”; Bakha has been inside the doors. No one else notices Sohini, who quietly reunites with her older brother. Through tears, Sohini explains that the Pundit tried to touch her inappropriately. It was only when she refused his advances that the Pundit cried “polluted.”
Earlier, the Pundit’s own bodily focus led him to lust after Sohini. Now, in this clear abuse of power, the Pundit has tried to defile her—but because caste protects him, he can turn the situation on its head, falsely claiming that it is he who has been “defiled.”
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Quotes
Bakha is livid, threatening to kill the hypocritical Brahmin. Bakha wants to know exactly what the priest did to Sohini, and she explains that he teased her and tried to touch her breasts. Before Bakha can do anything rash, Sohini calls him away from the temple. Bakha takes one last look at the imposing carvings, feeling a sense of real fear at the sight of these larger-than-life gods. 
The carvings of the gods might symbolize the way Bakha looks at higher-caste figures—they are fearsome and inexplicable, governing his life even as he does not understand their motivations.
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As Bakha and Sohini walk away, Bakha reflects on his sister’s beauty; he envies any man who might one day become her husband. Bakha tries to remind himself that Sohini is his sister, but he knows that his attraction remains. To distract himself, he turns his thoughts back to the Pundit. For the first time, he feels desperate to retaliate. This intense emotion makes him recall his long-ago peasant ancestors, still lower class but much freer than Bakha’s family is now.
Again, Bakha’s incestuous feelings for his sister return, an uneasy thread of the plot that scholarly criticism rarely mentions. Bakha’s reflections on his ancestors here show just how much caste prejudice is inherited: just as Lakha tries to pass his own feelings of inferiority to his children, when Bakha examines things from a distance, he can see how the caste system has hardened and grown more harmful over many generations.
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On the one hand, Bakha feels like “a tiger at bay”; on the other hand, he knows that any revolt would be fruitless. Not knowing what else to do, Bakha puts his arm around Sohini and encourages her to go home. She assents, and Bakha continues along his journey, sweeping the street as he goes.
Bakha could never hope to rise up against the stone carvings on the temple walls, and similarly, the systems of high-caste power are so entrenched that he knows he cannot effectively challenge them. Bakha’s kindness to Sohini here marks a moment of coming-of-age, as he takes responsibility for his sister despite the fact that he himself is hurting.
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Quotes
Though his hunger is dampened by his frustration, Bakha decides to go ask for food on a quiet side street. As he walks, Bakha finds himself overcome with anger at the various dogs and cows, with their dirt and their excrement. At first, the sound of some blacksmiths hammering copper provides a welcoming distraction, but gradually, the sound makes Bakha feel even more overwhelmed. Eventually, Bakha finds a house, and he calls up asking for “bread for the sweeper.” 
Even though Bakha’s anger should be directed at the Pundit and other people in similar high-caste positions, he has internalized the biases of his society so much that he is almost scared to feel his true anger. It is important to note that just as outcastes have to beg for water, they also have to depend on high-caste charity for food, both basic natural resources that the upper castes hoard in this hierarchy.
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Bakha continues going house to house asking for bread, but no one seems to hear him. Finally, hungry and exhausted, Bakha sinks onto some steps and falls into a kind of half-sleep. He has a series of strange dreams: he imagines traveling through a city, and then standing on a railway platform as freight trains filled with timber pass him. The dream gets darker, and he starts to imagine that he can hear someone getting murdered.
Bakha’s dream is intentionally ambiguous, but the contrast between modern freight trains and felled timber suggests that Bakha is, even subconsciously, sensing that rapid modernization is on the horizon. Though technology will provide a source of hope to Bakha and other sweepers, there is also something violent and frightening (at least in the dream) about this impending loss of natural life. 
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Now, Bakha’s dream takes him through a small village, where carts get stuck in the mud and cows wander everywhere. A little girl stands outside a sweet shop, and a silversmith places a burning ember in her hand. Bakha then pictures himself in a variety of places he has never been before: in a school room, at a beautiful palace, and at a burning-ground for human bodies. At that moment, Bakha is woken up by a cry: there is a holy man near him asking for bread. Though Bakha knows that the holy man will be served first, he hopes this holy man will get enough attention that he, too, will soon get some food.
Bakha’s aspirations are so strong that they find their way into his dreams; in sleep, as in his waking life, he imagines the education and fine things society denies him as an outcaste. These dreams signal Bakha’s childlike sense of excitement and optimism, but they also (on a symbolic level) point to the pain inherent in such hopefulness: just as the ember burns in the little girl’s hand, Bakha’s ability to dream also makes him vulnerable to disappointment.
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One of the local women goes to give the holy man some bread, but she is stopped short in her tracks when she notices that Bakha is on her steps. The local woman starts screaming at Bakha, telling him he has defiled her home. She then gives the holy man a great deal of food—rice and vegetables and curry—and begs him to help her tend her sick child. The holy man promises to come back with some healing herbs. Before Bakha can scurry away, the local woman tells him that she hopes he will die.
Again, the higher-caste hypocrisy is clear—in the name of avoiding the “pollution” she associates with Bakha, the local woman pollutes herself morally, wishing death on Bakha merely for taking a nap.
Themes
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At that moment, the local woman’s son insists that he needs to go to the bathroom. The woman instructs him to go on the street as they will not have time to clean the indoor privy that day—and “the sweeper will clear it away.” As the little boy relieves himself, the local woman throws bread for Bakha onto the ground. Bakha cannot bring himself to the clean the drain, so he walks away, prompting the local woman to reflect that the outcastes are “getting more and more uppish.”
Though much of the abuse Bakha has to suffer is verbal, it is clear in this moment that higher-caste people view his job—cleaning up others’ excrement—as punishment. In the eyes of the local woman, therefore, Bakha’s sweeper status makes him party to a vicious circular logic: Bakha defiles her house because he deals with waste, but he must then clean up waste because he has defiled her house.
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Bakha cannot stop feeling rage at the events of this morning, now made worse by the local woman’s insults. Though his stomach grumbles, Bakha is anxious about what Lakha will say if he only returns home with two small chapatis (breads). And Bakha worries that if his father is angry about the bread, he will push to know what happened between Sohini and the priest, which he knows Sohini would rather keep private. Bakha resents that his father “always takes sides with the others. Never with his own family.”
With each new humiliation and unfair outburst, Bakha is more able to direct his anger toward the high-caste people who perpetuate this cruel hierarchy. But the same is not true for Lakha, who is so deeply entrenched in caste logic that he always sides with “the others” (high-caste Hindus and higher-ranking outcastes) over his own children.
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When Bakha returns to his street, he sees that many of the outcastes are outside; since none of them have lights in their homes, they try to take in the sun while they can. Bakha heads indoors, noting how messy the kitchen has been ever since his mother died. But Sohini has too much to do outside of the house to worry about housework, and water is so scarce anyway. Sadly, Bakha feels that the concepts of sanitation and cleanliness have lost meaning to his family.
The contrast between the rejuvenating natural world and the dispiriting world of society is especially distinct here. Bakha and the other outcastes find hope and happiness in the sun, but anywhere inside—even within the comfort of their own homes—the stigma and quotidian challenges of being an outcaste have destroyed all sense of warmth or comfort.
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Though Lakha looks peaceful, perhaps because he has had a restful day at home, he still chastises Bakha about the lack of food. Lakha hopes that Rakha will return home with better treats; as he waits, he lets his mind wander to the sweets and pickles and fried breads he used to have at wedding celebrations. Lakha loved wedding food so much that he would encourage weddings anytime he could. And as the head sweeper, Lakha was in charge of the distribution of snacks, meaning his wife’s cabinets were never empty.
Much like Bakha seeks solace in donuts and games of hockey, Lakha seems to use delicious treats and fun activities to distract from their unbearable circumstances. But while Lakha lets these distractions overwhelm his desire for justice and change, Bakha balances momentary relief with a clearer sense of bigger picture unfairness.
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When Bakha protests that he doesn’t know the townspeople well enough to beg from them, Lakha points out that Bakha will have to work for these people for the rest of his life. Bakha is terrified by this idea. Instead, he dreams of working in the barracks—the glimpse of the Tommies’ world has filled him both with a sense of childlike wonder and a hatred for his own cramped quarters. English dress, to Bakha, represents a “new world” of his own making, allowing him to be a “pioneer in his own way.”
There are two critical things to take away from Bakha’s obsession with the Tommies here. First, his childlike sense of joy at the Tommies’ customs also leads Bakha to have a more mature, critical view of his daily reality. And second, the mention of “pioneering” in this “new world” links Bakha’s love of the British more directly to their colonial power. When Bakha is made to feel weak, is it any wonder that colonial dress and rhetoric is a comforting mental escape?
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Quotes
Lakha can tell that something is upsetting his son. Against his better judgment, Bakha tells his father about the touched man. But rather than offering sympathy, Lakha scolds his son, asking if he announced his approach. “Why weren’t you more careful?” he asks. Bakha insists that the Untouchables get abused whether they shout warnings or not, but Lakha disagrees, insisting that the higher-caste Hindus “are our masters.” Moreover, Lakha knows that the police would offer no protection if Bakha were ever to spar with higher-caste folks.
Just as Bakha predicted, Lakha sides with the high-caste people over his own family, chiding Bakha for failing to isolate himself sufficiently. Interestingly, however, Lakha’s kneejerk instinct to blame Bakha is not just because he has internalized others’ prejudice. Instead, Lakha knows that outcastes are not protected legally—and that a failure to defer to upper-caste people could put his children in real danger. Even as Lakha seems cruel and unsympathetic, then, the novel also demonstrates his profound, protective paternal instinct.
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Quotes
To calm his son, Lakha tells a story from his own youth. When Bakha was a baby, he had fallen deathly ill. Lakha was desperate to get medicine, but he was forbidden from going into the shop, and none of the higher-caste Hindus who went in would help him. After an hour of waiting, Lakha ran back home empty-handed, fearing that his baby Bakha was dying. 
Lakha’s humiliation as he waits for this medicine echoes Bakha’s experiences from the morning, the first time the father and son have ever run parallel to each other instead of seeming at odds.   
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When Lakha saw just how dire Bakha’s condition was, he rushed back to the shop and went straight inside, not caring that it violated all the rules. The higher-caste Hindus shouted at Lakha to leave because he was polluting everything, and the Hakim Sahib (doctor) initially refused to help Lakha. But Lakha pleaded with him, vowing that if the Hakim Sahib was compassionate enough now to help with Bakha, he could exact any punishment he wanted later. At that moment, Bakha’s uncle rushed in, announcing that the baby was dying.
Strikingly, Lakha’s story shows that as a younger man, he, too, shared some of Bakha’s willingness to disregard the rules (though in Lakha’s case, it was only when his son’s mortality was on the line). The Hakim Sahib’s reaction, caring more about his shop being contaminated than about Lakha’s dying baby, once more suggests that the real “pollution” lies in the souls of the higher castes.
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Lakha returned home, hopeless—but a few minutes later, the Hakim Sahib showed up at the family’s door with medicine in tow, and Bakha was saved. Though Bakha points out that he might have died, Lakha uses this story as evidence that many of the higher-caste Hindus are kind. Bakha notices that his father “had never throughout this narrative renounced his deep-rooted sense of inferiority and the docile acceptance of the laws of fate.”
In this exchange, one of the most important in the entire narrative, Bakha and his father split in their fundamental conclusions about caste. While Lakha uses this story to claim renewed faith in and patience with the caste system, accepting it as “fate,” Bakha sees this anecdote as proof of high-caste brutality—after all, the Hakim Sahib was temporarily willing to let a newborn die to preserve his own sense of cleanliness. This split will reverberate and grow through the rest of the story.
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Quotes
Having finished his story, Lakha demands food. Bakha feels a sense of resentment that his father puts his own needs first, especially since Lakha has done nothing all day. Fortunately, before Lakha can eat all of the chapatis Bakha has collected, Rakha comes home. Bakha studies his little brother, with his strange face shape and his “not-there” eyes. The only sign of Rakha’s intelligence, Bakha decides, lies in his impish ears. Unlike Bakha, Rakha is “a true child of the outcaste colony”; he embraces the dark and the bugs and the trash heaps.
Given how difficult life in the outcaste colony is, each individual needs to find their own way to survive. In Rakha’s case, that is by listening but not looking, tuning out of all the sensory input (the insects and sewage and slime) that makes each day so hard to bear.
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Rakha drops the food on the ground and immediately begins eating, horrifying Bakha with his refusal to even wash his hands. Bakha tastes a damp morsel, but then he pictures the Tommies washing their hands over the food that his family now devours. Suddenly too disgusted to continue eating, Bakha stands. To explain his sudden change of heart to Lakha, Bakha declares that he is going to Ram Charan’s sister’s wedding.
This is the kind of food Bakha eats every day, as the outcastes do not have consistent access to any nutrition besides what higher-caste Hindus throw their way. So Bakha’s rejection of the food in this moment signals just how much his mindset has changed—between the touched man, the local woman, and the story about the Hakim Sahib, Bakha is looking with new outrage at the routines he has done every day of his life.  
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