It's not a fast read even though the book is short...

Fantastic, powerful, thoughts-provoking. I highly recommend this one.

An interesting, clearly described, memorable, sad story of the day in the life of a young Indian sweeper in India in the 1930s. Bakha is a sweeper who collects human excrement. He belongs to the ‘untouchable’ lowest Hindu caste. He must continually call out ‘sweeper coming through’ when walking the streets so that people of higher Hindu castes can avoid touching him. At that time untouchables were not able to directly draw water from a well, having to wait for a person of higher caste to draw the water on the untouchables behalf. A number of memorable incidents occur to Bakha on this day, providing him with hope for a better future.

Here are a couple of examples of the author’s writing style:
‘Character Singh was feeling kind, though he did not relax the grin which symbolised six thousand years of racial and class superiority.’
‘Oh, Maharaj! Maharaj! Won’t you draw us some water, please? We beg you. We have been waiting here a long time, we will be grateful,’ shouted the chorus of voices as they pressed towards him, some standing up, bending and joining their palms in beggary, others twisting their lips in various attitudes of servile appeal and abject humility as they remained seated.’

a powerful book but i felt the appeals to emotion were somewhat muted until the end

the reality is always harsh to believe

This book tells about the life of a sweeper in an Indian city. More specifically, one day in the life of 18 year old Bakha. A sweeper is one of the untouchables and is the lowest of the low in Hindu society. Bakha's day starts off poorly and goes down hill from there. He accidentally touches someone and that gets him into trouble. I could cite all the examples of abuse heaped on him and his family, but there would be no point. It is a short book and anyone interested would be better off reading it for themselves as the story unfolds. So, with such a depressing topic why did I like it so much? Because there is hope , actually three possibilities for hope. And Bakha understands that as he returns home at the end of the day. I really enjoyed this "one day in the life" format.

The 'preface' of this book by E.M.Forster is a stunner! having read through this 4 pages long preface, I got this weird idea that Forster is up for making our life easy! First he proposes what a good novelist must do like not being "indescribably clean", "(not) going straight into the heart of its subject and purified it", and then he makes a distinctions between oriental and western novelists/readers, and goes on enumerating what Mulk Raj Anand's book lacks in a tongue-in-cheek manner! and finally Forster gives away the whole story! If you are planning to read this book, don't worry just read this 'preface' by E.M. Forster and you will know everything about this book!the whole preface is fat with ironies as if Forster cutting Anand some slack. As for the rest of the book, the style is really irritating! too much authorial intrusions, shallow characters, weak plot, funny weird slangs and swearings, mechanical plot development, and propagandas. I dunno why even should we consider this a classics in the first place! The handling of small incidents/encounters and other characters are so egregious that even if you skip 10-20 pages you haven't missed anything at all- there is Bhakha and the irritating authorial voice like Sauron of Mordor, growing stronger and stronger. The only person who treats Bhakha as an untouchable is this author Mulk Raj Anand by not allowing Bhakha his own voice and feelings. Forster quite deftly and brilliantly begins the preface by using the phrase "Burn when done".

[This book is part of my prescribed reading.]
I didn’t expect this book to be as readable as it was. I thought it’d be full of fancy vocabulary, but on the contrary, it was written in the most simple language. It was perfect for the normal person to read, in other words. Not like some books practically begging to be read only by the elite.
It follows Bakha, a latrine cleaner, coming from a family of sweepers, through an entire day. He faces humiliation, the ‘sin’ of being ‘polluted’, and being shunned away by the upper caste Hindu’s. His day is worse than other days, it’s too many bad things one after the other. He begins to question the caste system, and why there should even be a difference in how you treat people. For the first time, he begins to see that something might be wrong with how he’s been living his life.
This is an eye opener, no matter how much you know about the Indian caste system. It just portrayed the reality of how lower caste people were treated back in the day. It’s reduced a little bit, but nowhere near is it fully gone. It was raw and heartbreaking but the main character Bakha is a breath of fresh air with his attitude.

This book is a rare glimpse into the Hindu society of India before 1950's. A graphic tale of a social evil that will forever prick the collective conscience of our country. The story of an eventful day in the life of Bakha; an untouchable, someone living at the fringes of the Hindu society.

Bakha is a young man with zest for life, yet struggling as a latrine cleaner. A profession that places him among the lower most rung of Hindu hierarchy. On this eventful day everything that could go wrong goes wrong for Bakha. Despite a tough morning at the latrines, he gets slapped for touching a high caste Hindu. He receives no food for his work. He is blamed for things he is not responsible. Just as he wonders about his life’s condition he encounters three different personalities and their remedies for untouchability. A Christian missionary that cannot convince him about who Christ is, Mahatma Gandhi who says all Indians are equal, and a modernist poet who feels all that is needed to solve untouchability is a mere flush-system !!! Just as dusk falls he returns home with a hope that a change of times is ahead.

So graphic is Anand's story telling that the book felt like a bad-dream from start till the end. A must read for all Indians for there are lessons in the book that are relevant even today!!!!

Untouchability was a serious concern during pre independence. Mulk Raj Anad has portrayed the hitches of casteism through Bakha’s eyes. The idea was good but somehow I felt the overall story writing is bit monotonous. Even though the intent is good and character formation justify the crisis neatly but the story is not self driven and it’s required lots of effort from reader side to go through and complete the story. I also feel Gandhi’s touch at the later part of the story can be handled in a better way. On the whole I am not much impressed on overall story telling.

Ahhh Gandhi was such a politician - he was like untouchability is bad and you people are harijan , I accept you but on my terms. You can't dictate people's lifestyle. It's such a 21st century influencer take.
The passiveness, this high regard he had for himself - like untouchability is bad and it should be banned but not forced because upper caste Hindus are just gonna forgone their power and start treating untouchables better because they love me. Like can anyone be more full of themselves

You can't call yourself an orthodox hindu and then be secular at the same time. You can't be two things at the same time. Either you believe in the caste system or you don't. You can't nitpick on things. But I guess that's what hindu men have been doing for ages, following what's easy and forgoing what's not.

"They think we are dirt because we clean their dirt”. — Bakha (the protagonist)

Bakha is a proud and attractive young man but being an Untouchable, he is considered as an outcaste who stays at the outcastes’ colony. The outcastes' colony was a group of mud walled houses that clustered together in two rows through which a brook ran with all sort of dirt and filth from the public latrines and animal dungs.

Bakha was a sweeper and latrine cleaner from Pre-Independent India. Bakha’s morning starts with the abuses of his father. Then again he is being ill treated at the latrines. His touch was considered as impure. He was not supposed to enter the temple. Once when his sister Sohini got sexually harassed by a priest, some thoughts evoked in his mind about why are they treated in such a way, why he was supposed to clean dirt everyday, is he really impure ? Then three solutions come in front of him — 1) To convert into Christianity 2) To follow Mahatma Gandhi’s thinking 3) Wait for flush system to arrive in India.

Mulk Raj Anand’s ‘Untouchable’ shows the clear face of our society. This book really made me emotional. I can’t even imagine the way Bakha have suffered and stayed in such a filthy environment. His life was full of abuses. Whenever he used to walk through the lanes he was made compulsory to shout “ Posh, posh, sweeper coming !”. So that people could understand that an outcaste is coming. He couldn’t even protest when his sister got harassed. Such was his life ! Such injustices still happen in our society and this picture showed the true picture of this evil practice. The language was lucid and the writing style was also good but it was a bit slow. I highly recommend this book to readers, non-readers to at least read it once in a lifetime. I would rate it 5⭐/5⭐