Mulk was a dedicated Marxist who at the same time venerated Mahatma Gandhi.
I had the good fortune to have several very intimate (and famous) literary friends. Mulk Raj Anand was one of them. He was a prolific writer. Two of his novels, Untouchable and Coolie, both published in London, made his name in the English-speaking world. Both were translated in dozens of languages.
Mulk was born in 1905 in Peshawar (now in Pakistan). He died in 2004 in Kandola in Maharashtra, aged 99. He had no hesitation in proclaiming that without the help of E.M. Forster, Untouchable would never have found a publisher.
Mulk Raj Anand considered the major achievement of modern Indian literature to be “Synthesis of Western and Indian values resulting in renascent efforts towards the making of ‘modern’ sensibility and consciousness.”
Mulk was a dedicated Marxist who at the same time venerated Mahatma Gandhi.
I have dozens of letters from him. Here is one:
25, Cuffe Parade,
Bombay-400005
February 10, 1978.
My dear friend,
I have just come back from a MARG research tour of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and am full of the euphoria of the beauties and splendours and glories I have seen in the ancient monuments.
By chance, however, I happened to see a film called Kissa Kursi Ka in Bangalore. You may know that this is a much talked of new version of the old film which Sanjay & Co destroyed. It is an extravaganza in black and white rather simplified with some good satire in it. I thought it is a typical vulgar Hindi film. But on the next morning, I read the newspapers and found that what Mrs. G is doing on the platform of South India at the moment, surrounded by all the hoodlums, and Aya-Rams and Gaya-Rams, is more crude even than the film portrays. Somehow, anything goes. The Janata Government is not less distinguished in its horse trading. And the whole atmosphere seems utterly immoral. All the values for which the great Jawaharlal Nehru stood, have gone by the board. It is not democracy but mobocracy.
I recalled to my mind all the time what Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay said to me a few months ago, when I asked her about her health: “I wish Mulk Raj I had died two years ago.”
Our dear Natwar, I can imagine how difficult it must have been for you to see downfall of someone who served so loyally as a Secretary. You remember what hopes we had. And I vividly recall her strictures about me when she felt that I was backing unscrupulous Krishan Khanna. How she could lose her sense of values I don’t know.
My own interpretation has been that the minor Hamlet Sanjay Gandhi began imagined to have a hold on her thought, a kind of blackmail based on the betrayals of him by Gertrude Gandhi. Seems far-fetched, but I will tell you in detail what I feel when we meet.
I hope you will come via Bombay and stay with me for a day on your way north, because I am going to the Coomaraswamy seminar in Mysore University in early March. Then to the coastal area in Andhra for a model village I am trying to get sponsored for the Kalamkari workers. I may come to Delhi for Holi to contact the architects etc. and see you in the north if you are unable to break your journey in Bombay.
I think like all of us, you will have to forget the humiliations which have accrued to us because we did back the emergency even though half-heartedly. Do you remember coming to see me on your way to Office in London at Bill Archer’s house, and how unhappy you were about the article written by the English Member of Parliament called Abbey, about the experiences he had at the hands of the secret police at Ashoka Hotel. You were so sad that when later, Marilyn Stafford came to photograph me, I could not melt my face into a smile and the photos all appeared later as image of a morbidly unhappy person.
In the agony of our minds, however, I would like you to have one consolation which I know is already there. Your love of literature. And the second wonderful thing which will keep us going is the confirmation some of us have from Morgan Forster of the belief in friendship. And I have found ultimately, the third thing in our background which appeases all guilt, is the ability to create a whole day, every day, for ourselves through our work.
I know that these may seem like platitudes to you, but just at this time, these ideas seem to have acquired depth. So far as I am concerned.
This brings you and the family my very warm regards and please do not go away without seeing me.
Yours Sincerely
(Mulk Raj Anand)
His Excellency,
Shri Natwar Singh
High Commissioner of India,
LUSAKA