Untouchable Book

Soul crushing. We in the West know nothing about degradation. The strife and misery of this narrative! And yet the writing is captivating, the modulation of emotion through action and image masterful. A novel of people whose very essence, they've been told for thousands of years, is defilement. I must read more on caste and how it came to be. It's incomprehensible to the Western mind.

Bakha, a strong young man, a sweeper of latrines, has spent time at the British barracks, where he was treated as if he possessed no taint. This has broadened his thinking, shown him the imbecility of the millennia-old system he lived under, and made him feel things could be different than they are. Bakha and his kind are, among other indecencies, deprived of education, fed like swine, denied participation in community, and consigned to wretched quarters. As the story progresses, and Bakha is assailed from all quarters with declarations of "pollution, pollution!" That this handsome and industrious young man should on this day, perhaps for the first time, truly feel the proportions of the terrible trap that is his life, makes for a terrible moment.He was part of a consciousness which he could share and yet not understand. He had been lifted from the gutter, through the barriers of space, to partake of life which was his, and yet not his. He was in the midst of a humanity which included him in its folds and yet debarred him from entering into a sentient, living, quivering contact with it. (p. 137)

The Mahatma shows up with a message tailor made for Bakha. It's a subtle bit of didacticism in which one is reminded of certain harangues of Dostoyevsky. Fortunately it's brief. Untouchability was prohibited by law some 65 years ago. But it is said that Indian elections still reflect a caste consciousness. How could they not, after millennia under such a system? The book, scatological in the extreme, is deeply moving, mainly due to the rage it evokes in the reader. It is also utterly without parallel in my reading experience. That is, I've never read anything else that even touches on the subject in the headlong manner this does.

PS Guess who helped Anand with his novel? His initials are M.G.

PPS If you're going to read this you must also read B.R. Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste, fascinating.