MULK RAJ ANAND’S 

COOLIE: A
STORY OF THE SUFFERERS  IN
INDIAN SOCIETY

Abstract

Reading novels in Indian English writing written by writers such as Mulk Raj
Anand is a sort of eye opening part of life. In this work tried to point out some
of the interesting things such as the problems of caste which has divided the
whole Indian nation into several communities and religions. Coolie is one of
the most interesting novels in 1930s which describes the story of Munoo as a
victim of an exploitative system. In this work, apart from comprehending and
understanding his suffering and exploitation take place in his psychological,
emotional and spiritual growth; a dialogue that continues between h is
existential problem and his questioning of basic tenets of humanism that he is
constantly denied of, it also tell why the guy has to undergo such problems.
Finally, he is forced to accept his existential condition as determined by his
fate, his karma and accepts his class identity, for many others suffer like him.

In this work also studies how the novel revolves around the migration of
a young boy Munoo from his home in the hills of Kangra to the towns, the city
finally, embracing the end of his life in Simla. Anand uses humanism to bring
Munoo to life and follows his sexual awareness, his adolescence, his innocence
and his simplistic view of life. Munoo’s innocent life is crushed under the
cruelty of the world. The experiences he gather in life’s journey are pitiful, a
saga of misery that finally bring his life to an end. Anand invokes pathos of the
readers as well as exposes the exploitative system that victimizes Munoo.

Munoo is born poor and for the rest of his life is unable to get away from his
poverty that leaves him broken. The class system ensures that assimilation to a
higher class is not possible. The bourgeoisie expand their class through
institutions and ideology. But the reality of the working class in Coolie is that it
itself is without demarcations. Thus the Coolies can move in and out of this
class. There is no ideological barrier that demarcates/ brackets the working
class. Anand himself refers to the striking mill workers as Coolies; the word
means unskilled workers.

Introduction

In the year 1925, Anand was awarded the Silver Wedding Fund Scholarship of
300 pounds a year (ironically for his father’s service in the British army) for his
research on the thought of Locke, Hume, Berkley and Russell at the University
College, London under the supervision of the Kantian scholar and realist G
Dawns Hicks. The coal miners’ strike in Great Britain in 1926 upset the balance
of his student life. The repressive measures adopted by the Government to
break the General Strike that followed the miner’s strike revealed that British
government was organized and run in the interest of a small minority. The
violent suppression of the majority in Britain was indicative of the kind of
suppression the colonial administration indulged in the colonies. To Anand
who observed the violence from a close quarter, international Socialism
seemed to be the only solution to the problems of the world. Anand observed
that the West with all its wealth and its allegiances to democracy was not free
from a discreet despotic mind set. Soon after the strike Anand bought a copy
of The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels and this had a great influence
on him. He writes in, Apology for Heroism, that, “a whole new world was
opened to me. All the threads of my past reading, which had got tied up in
knots, seemed suddenly to straightened out, an d 1 began to see not only the
history of India but the whole history of human society in some sort of inter-
connection” (1946:67-8).
Taking up the cause of Suppressed

Anand took up the cause of the oppressed early on in his career that to a large
extent influenced his creative pursuit. But many in India have considered his
work as propaganda. Even the Marxist-oriented All India Progressive Writers
Association declared him to be a decadent in 1949 because he found evil and
cunning both in the poor as well as in the rich. Although ideologically
influenced by the left Anand was concerned about the humanistic values’. He
believed in man’s latent goodness, which must triumph over evil. According to
Anand, Socialism alone can provide the right climate for man’s total
development. Thus Marxism is the foundation of Anand’s humanism and for
him an individual’s development is at the centre of Marxist thought. In Anan
d’s work there is strong evidence of a close relationship between Marxism and
Humanism. Anand wrote extensively on art and maintained that art did reflect
life; but could not be taken as life itself. The fact that Anand himself did not
belong to the marginalized sections of society provided him the necessary
understanding that there was a distance between art and l ife. Anand’s
political ideologies therefore have a definite place in the study of his novels.
They arise from his concept of literature that reveals life in all its
contradictions. To him, a work of art is first a social event and the duty of a
novelist is to create but not to determine. His obligation to his fellow m en lies
in changing the world, making it a better place for each one of us.

Voicing the exploited

Anand’s Coolie represents the voice of the suppressed and exploited. The
Coolie can be seen what Marx and Engels term as: ” the lumpen proletariat,
that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, m ay,
here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its
conditions for life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool…”
(1992: 14). The Coolies as a class belong nowhere as Anand points out even the
lower caste rejects and casts away the Coolies. When Munoo arrives in
Bombay and goes for a refreshing drink, for which he pays, the moment he
introduces himself as a Coolie the proprietor tells him to sit on the floor and
not on the chairs; he is treated like a leper. “‘Oh! Look, Mummy! Our coolies
are there cried little Circe. Her mother shushed her and asked her to behave.
The sights of the creatures were challenges to the complacency of the ladies
and gentlemen who had come for tea”(298). Munoo’s experiences as a
servant, a factory worker and a mill worker are his class identity. As a servant,
he is of the lower class, as a factory and a mil l worker he is of the working
class; in each he has a productive role whether as a servant or a worker. But as
a Coolie his identity is reduced to nothing. In the class system the two
extremes of the wealth y imperialist bourgeoisie and the Coolie serve as
objects of hope and fear. While each class emulates and aspires to attain the
status of next superior class it also harbors a fear of being de-classed. The
anxiety in class relations is a product of ideology rather than economics as
seen in Anand’s introduction of Prabha’s past as a Coolie who has risen to the
ranks of a Seth. There is an ideological undercurrent that moves in the entire
class system. The imperialist bourgeoisie’s fear of the ‘native’ being equal to
him both economically and socially infuses in him a sense of insecurity for
which he engages in abuse and exploitation in the name of racial superiority.

Introducing the marginalized into writing

He introduces the economically and socially marginalized sections of society

into his novels, making them the focus of his narrative. Anand however has a
clear understanding of his own position within society that he belongs to the
upper class hence there is an economic and social distance between him and
those that he sympathizes with. He is also aware that as a bourgeoisie he
would be writing about the proletariat from a bourgeoisie point of view or with
the influence of bourgeoisie ideology. Thus he declares in Apology for Heroism
that he could not, of course, sense the suffering of the poor directly because I
had always been comparatively better off. No, mine was a secondary
humiliation, the humiliation of seeing other people suffer. I do not know to
what extent envy of the rich on my part was disguising itself as a hunger for
social justice. Perhaps there was an element of this. Also the inadequacies of
our life in India may have contributed something to m y pre occupation. But I
do not apologize for this because it is not easy in the face of such
wretchedness and misery as I had seen in India to believe that material
happiness and well- being had no connection with real happiness and the
desire for beauty. So I sought to recreate m y life through my memories of
India in which I grew up, with a view to rediscovering the vanities, the
vapidities, the conceits and the perplexities with which I had grown up,
indifferent to the lives of the people around me. I felt guilty, for needless
suffering was no matter for complacent pride or gratitude (1946:76-77).

The novel Coolie (1936) presents the life of an orphan Munoo who is despised
by society, rejected by his relatives and oppressed by h is masters. He tries to
avail chances of progress but his ill fate produces obstacles in his way.
Conceived on an epic scale, the novel follows the tragic odyssey of Munoo as
he finds himself in relation to different strata of society in different locations-
the village, the towns, the big city, the hill station- each is not free from the
ideology of exploitation and suppression. In Conversation s in Bloomsbury,
Anand writes that, ” …our epics have everything Love and War and death and
jealousy and utensils and dice and things out of the toilet” (1993:92). He
introduces different ideologies such as Capitalism, Imperialism, Industrialism
and Communalism to show their influence on the dispossessed and socially
oppressed. Munoo experiences all the negative aspects of the world. His
journey from innocence to experience is mediated through ideologies of
suppression and empowerment.

At the beginning of the novel, we find that Munoo, a boy of fourteen years
age, is stud young in class V in a rural school in the village of Bilaspur situated
on the Kangra Hills on the banks of the river Beas. In the company of his
friends he grazes his cows all day. He finds time to sit under the shade of a
large Bunyan tree to enjoy the fruits of the season. His life in the village comes
to an end when his uncle Daya Ram decides to take him to Sham Nagar, a town
ten miles away from their village. His uncle, Daya Ram and aunt, Gujri believe
that he is quite grown up and therefore should earn his own living. Munoo’s
father had died of shock and disappointment when he could not pay the debt
to the landlord. His mother died working hard to support Munoo. Munoo ‘s life
in the village was hard and he could not forget the miserable deaths of his
parents. In spite of these sad memories and the ill-treatment of his aunt
Munoo is happy and contented.

Driven by the dire necessity of an independent livelihood, he follows his uncle

to work as a domestic servant in the house of Babu Nathoo Ram, a sub-
accountant in the imperial Bank of Sham Nagar. But Munoo is badly mistreated
by the Babu and his wife and receives no sym pathy from his uncle. Munoo is
held responsible for the loss of the letter of recommendation that his master
sought from the sahib Mr. W.P England. After degrading the master’s house,
unintentionally, by relieving himself in front it and accidentally hurting their
daughter while playing he cannot bear the abuse and beating and runs away
and boards a train with no definite destination to go to. In the train he meets a
man named Prabha Dayal, who is an orphan and was once a Coolie. But now
Prabha is a Seth, the owner of a Pickle Factory at Daulatpur and is in
partnership with Ganpat Seth. Prabha takes Munoo with him to Daulatpur and
provides him with employment in the Pickle Factory. Prabha feels some affinity
with Munoo because they are both orphans and he himself was a hills man
from Kangra. Anand introduces in Coolie a complex and exploitative world.

Cruelty and Hypocrisy in Indian Feudal life

Munoo’s life in the village is not romanticized by Anand; he exposes the

“cruelty and hypocrisy of Indian feudal life…” (1946: 53). Munoo is full of life,
high spirits and has a zest for life. He is the leader of the village boys and an
expert tree climber. But his life in the village is not a joyful one; his mind is
haunted by the death of his parents. Anand gives a realistic portrayal of
Munoo’ s life in the village which is not free from exploitation. The novel
speaks about the denial of basic necessities of life to a simple and landless
peasant boy. It seems that Munoo is aware of his deprivation:

He had heard of how the landlord had seized his father’s five acres of land
because the interest on the mortgage

covering the unpaid rent had not been forthcoming when the rains had been
scanty and the harvest bad. And he

knew how his father had died a slow death of bitterness and disappointment
and left his mother a penniless

beggar, to support a young brother-in- law and a child in her arms… the sight
of her as she had laid dead on the

ground with a horrible and yet sad, set expression on her face had sunk deep
into him ( I I ).

With the statement “I am Munoo, Babu Nathoo Ram’s servant,” (46), Munoo
has realized his position in the world and his self identity is also based on this
role assigned to him b y society. He accepts it without questioning the
exhausting work, the abuse or the cruel treatment. To him there are only two
kinds of people in the world, ” …the rich and the poor.” (69), and Munoo, the
hill-boy, has realized from what kind of people he comes from and to which
kind of people he belongs to. The caste system is no longer relevant; it is the
class system based on economic status that has put its stranglehold on society
and Munoo displays a keen understanding by being able to grasp this turn in
the history of society. He remarks, “I am a Kshatriya and I am poor, and Varma,
a Brahmin, is a servant boy, a menial, because he is poor. No, caste does not
matter. The babus are like the sahib logs, and all the servants Iook alike…” (69).

The fiasco of the tea party set up by Babu Nathoo Ram for Mr. W.P England
speaks volumes on Anand’s view of Imperialism and its affect on the minds and
outlook of the ‘natives’. The unquestioning sense of inferiority of Munoo is
matched by his master’s sense of inferiority with the sahibs. Nathoo Ram is on
the look at recommendation from a sahib which will facilitate his promotion.
He knows that Mr. England has not been long enough in India to turn down an
invitation for tea from a native. After receiving some advice on how to pick u p
a conversation with a sahib, that is, talking about the weather, Nathoo Ram is
able to extract an acceptance for the tea party from Mr. England; who realizes,
a bit too late, the importance of the warning of the Club members about being
too familiar with the natives. At the tea party, Mr. England is clearly
uncomfortable in the sweltering heat, seated on a throne like chair with the
clay image of a Hindu God staring at him and the over powering sweet smell of
the gulabjamans making him sick. Dr. Prem Chand seeks advice on courses of
study’ in England, a topic which the confused sahib has no idea about since he
himself studied only typewriting and shorthand. But in keeping with the image
of the sahib he pretends to be more than he is; as advised by his fellow Club
members. Munoo, who has all along been in a state of excitement and
curiosity at the presence of the sahib, is asked to fetch the tea. He trips, and
the precious china smashes onto the floor destroying any chance of Nathoo
Ram’s letter of recommendation for promotion to the post of accountant.

This episode of the tea party reveals the bitterness of Anand towards the
British imperialist, and this can be seen in his portrayal of the character of Mr.
W. P. England, a colonial gentleman who is really a hollow individual d riven
solely by the directives of the Empire. Any traces of individualism are lost in
Mr. England’s weakness; he sacrifices his principles to the tenets of
Imperialism. Thus we have the laws of the ‘Club’ being played out in Mr.
England ‘s mind- do not get familiar with the natives, always pose to be more
than you are- ” …his com patriots at the Club had always exhorted him to show
himself off as the son of King George himself if need be” (53). There is the
‘sahib’ Mr. England while the man Mr. England is lost in Imperialism.
British Rule and its Influence in India

The episode also illustrates Anand’s conviction that the British Empire not only
has exploited India’s natural resources, it also degraded and debased the
character of the Indians who were serving it. It created a group of native
flatterers who looked up to the English sahibs, cowering before them and
becoming easy prey for exploitation in the hands of their masters. And the
Indians such as Nathoo Ram, Daya Ram lost their sense of humanity, decency,
and self-worth. They are dehumanized in the service of the Raj and lose all
feeling of affinity with their fellow men leave alone their countrymen. Their
status in society, their superiority over others is defined by the sahibs who
visited their homes. Nathoo Ram’ s reaction is evidence enough of the way the
natives look up to the gore sahibs, after the disaster of the tea party he goes to
drop Mr. England and returns with ” …tear- filled eyes” (59). On the other hand
we have Dr. Prem Chand who is an independent medical practitioner and is not
subservient to the English. And we see that he alone conducts himself with
dignity and self respect. Another result of the British rule apart from its
exploitation and suppression of the natives and the creation of sycophants is
the creation of the class system in Indian society through the industrial
revolution. The British brought to India an industrial-capitalist ideology
because it was obvious that they were themselves solely concerned with
profit. The plight of Munoo and others of his kind is the direct result of British
rule. Munoo’s position in life raises the question of freedom in a Capitalist
society.

Munoo’s experiences in Daulatpur and Bombay respectively, make up the bulk

of the novel. Munoo has been picked up by Seth Prabha Dyal, who owns a
pickle factory in partnership with Seth Ganpat. Prabha was once a Coolie and
has understood Munoo’s plight. In the preceding chapters the relationship of
masters and servants is explored between Nathoo Ram and Munoo and
Mr.England and Nathoo Ram. But at the pickle factory in Daulatpur the
relationship between Seth Prabha, Munoo and the factory em ployees is
different from the above mentioned relationships. As observed the master-
servant relationship is one of submission, abuse and inhumanness. But Anand
goes on to show that in the relationship among equals, there are none more
equal than the poor. With nothing to hope for their common cause is all that
they possess and it binds them together. The relationship of Prabha (who is at
heart a Coolie and a hills man), Munoo and the other factory employees is one
of empathetic humaneness. But at the other end of the scale we have Ganpat,
the frustrated son of a well- to- do broker, who reminds us of the way Nathoo
Ram treated Munoo.

The police who are merciless, corrupt, sadistic are a symbol of oppression than
British sense of justice and serve more as ready tools of their masters, the
Capitalist moneylenders. Prabha is broken mentally, spiritually and
economically after he is cheated by Ganpat. He leaves for the hills with his wife
and says, “It is as it should be. Man comes to this world naked and goes out of
it naked and he doesn’t carry his goods away with him on his chest” (150).

In Prabha’s simple homilies there is an indescribable power. This is because

Anand brings to our notice a complex world borne out with the familiar and
obvious truths that we have either forgotten or dismissed as cliches. It would
be a mistake to assume that Anand only attacks the bourgeois ideology while
sympathizing with the poor; he in fact attempts to expose the degradation of
humanity as a whole. It would be an over simplification to assume that the
poor are always virtuous and that the rich always abusive and oppressive.
What Munoo suffers at the hands of his masters is no less than what he suffers
at the hands of his fellow workers. This is the result of the oppressive ideology
of capitalism that has made them cruel and callous in their struggle to survive.
Anand is quick to show that the prejudices and abusive nature of the elders
have a strong infl uence even on the children. In spite of their innocence they
imitate their elders and in their state of thoughtlessness they could be cruel.
Nathoo Ram’s daughter Sheila pushes Munoo away when he prances on all
fours like a monkey to entertain her. She tells him: “You are a servant, you
must not play with us” (46). Sheila’s words echo her parent’s prejudice. Munoo
and Tulsi have to fight with the other Coolies to get a place to sleep in the
Market courtyard and in the morning they fight one another in a mad rush to
carry heavy sacks for the merchants. The evil that one sees in the poor is the
direct result of the ideology of the capitalist exploitation and the indifference
of the British Government towards the lives of millions of its subjects,
especially those who belong to the lower class. There is a difference between
Prabha’s creditors fighting among themselves to recover what they can and
the Coolies vying with each other to earn a few annas so that they might live
another day.

Anand realistically portrays the life in the pickle factory. In Morning Face
(1968) he recalls a pickle factory next to his house in Amritsar and the nausea
he felt from the smell of the drain and the sour vinegary. His experience of the
factory comes alive in his description of the one where Munoo works:

Thus they worked from day to day in the dark underworld, full of the intense
heat of blazing furnaces

and the dense malodorous smells of brewing essences, spices and treacle, of
dust and ashes and mud, which

became kneaded into sticky layer on the earth of the passage with the
overflow of water from the barrels of

soaking fruit, and plastered the bare toes of the labourers…Only the sweat
trickled down their

bodies and irritated them into an awareness that they were engaged in a
strenuous physical occupation (110).
The life of the factory is contrasted with the life of the Coolies outside. In India
the Coolie serves as a beast of burden akin to the oxen, the asses and the
horses. A Coolie is a product of the capitalist system; he through his sweat and
blood makes the capitalist juggernaut move while being abandoned without
any care or concern. The capitalist’s increased greed increases his exploitation
and dehumanization. He is treated like a dumb animal without the voice of
resistance. To draw a kinship between man and beast, Anand puts them
together:

The square courtyard w a s crowded with rude wooden carts, which pointed
their shafts to the sky like so many

crucifixes, cram med with snake- horned bullocks and stray rhinoceros- like
bulls and skinny calves bespattered

with their own dung pressed against these were the bodies of the coolies,
coloured like the earth… (37).

The courtyard belongs first to the animals and then to the Coolies; their earth
coloured frames are “pressed” (37) against the dung-plastered hides of the
animals; among the beasts of burden, society has placed, through necessity
and indifference, man at the bottom. Man has crept into the world of the
animals and carved a place for himself. The reference to the “crucifixes” (37)
could be interpreted as the crucifixion of man on the ideology of Capitalism.
The entire novel centralizes Munoo’s role as a Coolie and brings into focus the
class divisions in the society. In the traditional Indian society that follows the
caste system, an untouchable though at times kicked and abused for offending
the caste law still has his place in society as none other can do the work
assigned to hi m or the members of his caste. But a Coolie though apparently
able to move freely beyond the caste system and choose his work is in fact
working under a system that is more exploitative than the caste system. The
Coolie has nowhere to go, he is underpaid and over worked, is cheated by his
employers and lives in constant dread of losing his job. Munoo, by birth,
belongs to the second highest order in the caste system but it is his place in the
class system that is in question in the novel. If an untouchable suffers under a
social system, a coolie suffers under the imperial-capitalist system that has
been instrumental in creating the Coolie class. With the help of the elephant-
driver at the circus Munoo is able to get a free train ride from Daulatpur to
Bombay. When Munoo gets down in Bombay, the elephant- driver warns him:
“The bigger the city is the more cruel it is to the sons of Adam” (177). But
Munoo has conjured up an image of Bombay as a city where work is easy to
find and one must see it before one dies. We find that the life o f the poor in
Bombay remains the same, the change is mostly in scale; the larger the city the
more ruthless the exploitation of the poor and the great or the human misery.
The most agonizing picture of the life of the poor in Bombay is portrayed when
Hari along with his family and Munoo are on their way to the m ill. They reach
a clearing that has surprisingly not been occupied by the multitudes of Coolies,
beggars and lepers in the city. A half- naked woman explains to them that her
husband had died in that spot the previous night. “He has attained the
release,” said Hari,” We will rest in his place” (190). These simple words of
Hari, like Prabha’s words, speak of a lost wisdom that provides sustenance to
the poor, the peasants and the oppressed in their suffering and misery. To
them, Death is a welcome release from the suffering of the world; it is their
own lives that they find unbearable and fear it. For them there is no middle
path; there is no m iddle class there is only the rich and the poor.

Contrasting the Rich and the Poor

Anand contrasts the rich merchants in starched muslims against the dark
Coolies in rags, the impressive bungalows of the English residents looks down
on the congested slums of the Coolies. The garish opulence exists alongside
rampant filth, deprivation and poverty. As soon as Munoo emerges from the
station, he is overpowered by the confused medley of colours, shapes and
sounds of Bombay’s strange, hybrid and complex character. There are
Europeans in immaculate suits, Parsis in frock suits and white trousers,
Mohammedans in long tunics, Hindus in muslim shirts and dhotis; there are
Arabs, Persians and Chinese the road swarming with trams, cars and
motorcycles. And ever present are the lepers, the beggars, and the Coolies in
the dim damp alleys and slum s, filled with the groans of the sick, the starving
and the dying. The complexity and diversity of the city gradually disappears
subsuming whatever the social back ground, ethnic, racial and religious
identity one might have and ultimately classifying one either rich or poor. The
pickle factory of Daulatpur is now replaced by the Sir George White Cotton
Mills where the working conditions are even more grueling and the foreman
Jimmie Thomas is more abusive and tyrannical than Ganpat. The world of the
poor is one of comradeship surrounded by foul smell, abuse, suffering, torture,
exploitation, dust, heat and sweat. The British management offers no security
of tenure. Jimmie Thomas rents out dilapidated huts at exorbitant rates. The
Mill mechanic, a money- lender and the Sikh merchant exploit the Coolies. The
ill- paid, ill-housed, under-nourished, exploited, cheat and bullied Mill worker
is beaten body and mind as we find in the case of Hari. Munoo is saved from
such a fate by his youthful vitality. In the Mill we have the ‘Red Flag Union’, a
workers union led by the Communist leader Sauda who, ironically, exhorts the
poverty stricken workers to go on a strike when all they can think about is
where their next meal will come from. The preparation for the proposed strike
leads to a bloody Hindu- Muslim communal riot; instigated by the employers to
divert the attention of the workers. In the riot some of the workers lose their
jobs, their livelihoods and even their lives.

In the last chapter Munoo finds himself in Shimla. Many critics have criticized
the over emphasis on Mrs. Mainwaring, who is a minor character in the novel;
adding that the accident is not in harmony with the flow of the narrative
because all of a sudden Munoo emerges from the bloody communal riot in the
mill into the caring arms of a memsahib. This can be taken as an act of destiny,
contradicting Anand’s disbelief in God, providence and fate. But Anand is able
to take Munoo away from the harsh life in the city and brings him back to the
hills to regain his identity where his life finally ends under the strain of pulling
his memsahib’s rickshaw. It is the correct finale to the concerto: the boy who
has come from the hills sees the world and goes back to the hills to die thereby
ensuring a narrative circularity in the novel. Some critics have pointed out Mrs.
Mainwaring character being overemphasized.
The problem is that she is not authentically portrayed but it is observed that
Anand goes out of his way to chastise her thereby the entire Anglo-Indian
community. The novel does not substantiate the “bitch” (288), which Anand
makes her out to be. Little or no information is provided about the background
of some of the more important characters in the novel. Munoo’s background
revolves around him being an orphan bullied by his aunt; his childhood in the
hills abruptly ends in the beginning of the novel itself when he is taken to Sham
Nagar. Prabha is a coolie from the hills and Hari a villager working in the
Bombay Textile Mill. Whereas we are given a detailed description of Mrs.
Mainwaring’s childhood, her struggle as an Anglo- Indian and her sordid history
with men. But through her Anand gives a subtle comment on the conflicts of
the Anglo- Indian community who belong neither here nor there, not being
able to identify with the native nor being acceptable by the English. Mrs.
Mainwaring lacks a sense of belonging and throws herself to everyman who
comes her way because of this lack; she seeks a sense of belonging if not to a
community then at least to someone.

The Memories Of Village

The sight of the mountains and valleys of Shimla revive in Munoo the
memories of his village, and this section contains one of Anand’s best Nature
descriptions. He is a painter of Nature in all its moods and has a remarkable
flair for evoking the smells and colours of the Nature. The steep hills
overgrown with rich green foliage, the streams and the waterfalls, the clouds
rolling swiftly across the sky, the crisp cool air, all stand in sharp contrast to the
heat, the dirt and humidity of Bombay. Munoo responds mentally and
emotionally to the beauty of the world around him and observes the world of
the rich upper classes of society and wishes he too could belong to this class.
His mistress is kind to him and her affection for him fires his adolescent passion
till he is unable to bear his feelings and crumples at her feet in an orgy of tears
and kisses. Sexual urges- half expressed and half understood- had tormented
Munoo from the very beginning, and like much of his life these feelings were
never truly comprehended or realized, as in an adolescent growing up without
any guidance. Anand prevents Munoo’s feelings from being diverted entirely to
the physicality of his sexual awareness rather he describes the effects of his
sexual awareness on the emotional aspects of his character. Thus Munoo when
unable to understand why he finds himself looking at Sheila’s body outlined in
her wet garments feels ashamed. Later the warmth of Parbati’s body as he
nestles against her arouses confused feelings in him. The same confused
feeling prevails when he returns to them ill after a night out with Ratan at the
local brothel. Hari’s wife, who understands the boy’s feelings, takes him in her
arms and whispers, “We belong to suffering! We belong to suffering” (247).

The pace of the narrative throughout the novel is modulated to suit the
changing scenes such as the transition from the pastoral to the semi-urban and
to the big city. Munoo’s journey from Daulatpur to Bombay is another instance
where the narration is attuned to the varying speed of the train, vividly
bringing to life the cities and the vegetation that Munoo rushes past. Anand is
perhaps among the first Indian novelists to render the Punjabi and the
Hindustani idioms and metaphors consciously into English. He finds that
certain expressions in the local dialect could not be expressed in any other way
except in a literal translation into English. No doubt Indian idioms and
metaphors give rise to fresh imagery and reveal the unique quality of the
narrative even at the cost of violating the norms of English usage.

Conclusion

Coolie is ideologically loaded for it draws its strength from Anand’s social
commitment. British imperialism transformed the traditional economy of India
into an industrial economy. Furthermore it considered India as a vast market
for its own industrial goods. Thus the Imperialist system is identified with an
oppressive capitalist system in which the bourgeois rule the roost. Indian
aristocracy and the feudal class are bought over to side with the Empire and
the old feudal caste system is replaced by the class system based on capital
and industrial productivity. Marx and Engels write that, “The bourgeoisie,
wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal r elations. It
has torn asunder the motley feudal ties …and has left remaining g no other
nexus between man and man than naked self- interest, than callous cash
payment” ( I 992: 05). Colonialism forced India into a new economic and social
structure with the intention of maximizing profit unmindful of the
repercussions it would have on the traditional socio-economic structure of the
colony. Marx and Angels add that, “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without
constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the
relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society” (1992:
06).

In spite of his ideological inclination, Anand is realistic that the old caste
system cannot disappear overnight even if it has been simply over- whelmed
by the rapid introduction of industrialization. The parasitic residues of the old
system has mutated and morphed themselves into the class system. In
Munoo’s consciousness the notion of caste is still there but even a young mind
like his has been able to comprehend the powerful class system of rich and
poor that overshadows the caste system. But as the scene shifts from the small
town of Sham Nagar filled with the lower middle class such as assistant-
accountants to the urban towns of Daulatpur to the city of Bombay and finally,
to the hill station of Shimla, the ideology of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the
elements of the old caste system become more and more subtle, rigid and at
the same time more degenerate. Within the middle and the lower classes,
there are sub-classes based on income and within these sub- classes there are
caste and religion division. The m ill workers in Bombay Textile Mill belong to
the working class but even among them there are Hindus and Muslims. In Sim
la Mrs. Mainwaring faces the prejudice against the Anglo- Indian community
from both the English and the Indians to the extent that even the Coolies’
advise Munoo to leave her service since she is not a ‘pukka’ memsahib. Mohan
comments that the English have a, “caste system more rigid than ours. Any
Angrezi woman whose husband earns twelve thousand rupees a month will
not leave cards at the house of a woman whose husband earns five hundred t
he rich don’t really want to mix with each other” (314).

The process of industrialization was not conducted in a manner conducive to

the Indian economic and social life. It was done in a manner benefiting only the
British Empire. Thus the changes that took place in the Indian society did not
completely wipe out the old feudal system although the class system replaced
the caste system yet there remained traces and residues of caste sentiments if
not caste structure. And these sentiments clung parasitically to the ideology of
the class system of the British imperialists disseminated through their
educational and religious institutions, the ideology of the ‘Other’ attributing in
priority and savagery to the ‘native’. This mechanism of theorizations was
employed by the middle class to the lower classes of Indian society. The lower
classes, in particular, the Coolies fell prey to this new and even crueler social
stratification that carried both the caste and class sentiments.

After the Revolt of 1857 the British oppression was so severe that some
peasants and traditional craftsmen abandoned their profession or were
disposed by the colonialists, ultimately took to robbery, became dacoits and
bandits, preferring these to starvation and poverty. The Indigo Revolt of i 859-
60 is one of the most militant and violent peasant movements that rendered
many landless and homeless. Munoo’s migration from the hills to the city is
based on economic necessity. In his village there is one rich man and many
poor villagers. He observes that many poor villagers come to the city but he is
not sure if there are more rich people in the city or in the village. The
Imperialists have made the peasants impoverished making them dependent on
the city. By making the cities as the seat of economic power the colonial-
industrial regime managed to attract cheap labour from the villages thereby
destroying the whole agrarian economy and making the colonies dependent
on the Empire.

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