Oppression In Anand's Coolie

Oppression, Destitute children, class system and poverty were the social problems first etched in the book that Anand wrote called ‘Coolie; in 1936. It is a strong dramatic narrative of the life of not one individual class or caste in Indian society but the general oppression that Indians faced at the hands of each other at a time when they were being ruled by foreigners and were doubly oppressed. The story revolves around Munoo an orphaned village boy from the Kangra hills. His Uncle brings him to work in his boss’s house as a domestic help and he is oppressed, overworked and insulted by the wife He hardly gets time to eat or to sleep let alone play. The only little happiness and smile that comes to his little face is when he interacts with

Munoo was at an age where he was still a child and the exploitation of that boy does not end when he enters a train compartment, it is the beginning of a long lonely road of independence which is cut short by tuberculosis and Munoo dies much before his time. Anand appears to be indignant about the treatment meted out to Munoo and the way he was oppressed even when he finds work in a dark and dingy factory. While one partner who is also from the hills is kind to Munoo the other is oppressive, hateful and also vicious. Life takes many twists and turns for Munoo and many imaginative ways to earn a living but eventually he succumbs the tot eh inevitable which is premature death due to the lack of food, treatment and the inability to buy medicine or go back to his

His appeal is to the higher Indian classes not to oppress other humans being because of poverty or because they are of a lower class, but to provide them with the respect and the human dignity that is the birth right of every human being. One can see the anger with which Anand has written Coolie but yet he has been able to balance the realism with the actual truth without adding any extra contract to the real life situations of the collies in India. However Charles Dickens was incapable of controlling his anger in his novels but Mulk Raj Anand did a better job of controlling his anger about the oppression and the social injustice that he saw around him and managed to portray a balanced view of reality in his novels. (Agarwal,