Mulk Raj Anand’s narrative realism: a stylistic and thematic analysis of his representation of Indian society

Abstract

Mulk Raj Anand, a pivotal figure in the development of Indian writing in English, constructed a socially motivated literary framework defined by his concept of the "concave mirror". This model posited that art not only reflects life but actively refracts it with an ideological perspective, establishing Anand’s narrative realism as fundamentally didactic. This paper executes a stylistic and thematic analysis of his foundational trilogy—Untouchable, Coolie, and Two Leaves and a Bud—to examine how this purposeful realism engaged with the layered oppressions of colonial India. Stylistically, Anand employed Free Indirect Discourse (FID) to access interiority and deployed an "Indianized English" to capture vernacular reality and resistance.² Thematically, his work exposed the systemic cruelty of caste, as seen in the cyclical suffering of Bakha, and the dehumanizing effects of colonial capitalism and feudalism, evident in the exploitation of Munoo and Gangu. This analysis reveals a critical tension: while Anand successfully forced the English-educated elite to confront subaltern trauma, his narrative methodology, particularly the occasional use of rhetorical intrusion, is critiqued for structurally overriding the protagonist's emancipatory agency and thereby perpetuating certain "Brahmanical regimes of representation" in his handling of untouchability. The study concludes that Anand’s enduring legacy rests on the successful establishment of literary form as a political tool, even as the specific limitations of that form remain a key site of postcolonial critical scrutiny.