Mithyl Banymandhub
In his comments about Mulk Raj Anand’s trilogy- “The Village” (1939), “Across the Black Waters” (1940), “The Sword and the Sickle” (1942)- Jack Lindsay remarks, inter alia, he has rediscovered the Indian epical tale in terms of the contemporary struggle. All the while a continual fusion is going on between the methods of Chatterjee, Tagore, Premchand and the methods which Anand has learned from his study of the European novel and the result is one long experiment in adapting the Indian folk elements to Western eyes and the European elements to Indian eyes. In stabilising and extending the Indian novel, Anand is also adding to the tradition of the European novel.
These comments which are quoted by S.C. Harrex in his study of the English language novel of India (1935-1970) provide a useful basis for a critical examination of the trilogy, particularly “as the epic conception underlying the composite epic structure of “The Village”, “Across the Black Waters” and “The Sword and the Sickle” is of “primary interest to the reader and is indispensable to an understanding of how Anand’s preoccupations are expressed through the narrative structure”.
The Man of Destiny
The epic dimension of the trilogy is initially apparent in the scales of time, place and action which the author has chosen as a framework for the story. From the epic standpoint, it is of the birth of a nation variety; heroically, it illustrates through the main character, Lal Singh, that the man of destiny in the emergence of an Independent India is the intelligent common man.
“The Village”, set in the pre- 1914 decade, traces Lal Singh’s growth to adolescence in rural Punjab. Using the village of Nandpur, Anand delves into history. He shows the impact of industrialisation on the old order, the decline of the peasantry as a self-sufficient class because of economic anarchy, the persistence of features of the old way of life like poverty, superstition and ignorance which have passed from immemorality into decadence and obsolescence. On the narrative level, Lal Singh turns into a rebel. His conflict with communal authoritarianism is reflected in his renunciation of the Sikh religion. The fact that he has his hair cut symbolizes “the germinal tensions of the age”. This conflict reaches a climax when Lalu is falsely accused of theft by the landlord after he has been caught playing with Maya, the landlord’s daughter.
“Across the Black Waters”, set in France is a World War 1 novel with a difference. The War is seen from the point of view of Indian sepoys, primarily Lal Singh who fought in the trenches. Lalu’s experiences are depicted against the epic background of a “dying, agonized World” and an international milieu of French, British, Indian and even German relationship. Both are “tinged with an unusual intimacy through the vagaries of war”. The action continually exemplifies the theme of human tragedy and man’s complementary capacity for “a heroic promethean fortitude and moral courage”. Lalu’s survival in the end is an undying assertion of man’s dignity and integrity while providing “a meaning to suffering”.
The Gandhian Movement and Independence
“The Sword and the Sickle” draws its title from the following stanza in Blake’s Merlin’s Prophecy:
The sword sung on the barren heath,
The sickle in the fruitful field.
The sword he sung a song of death
But could not make the sickle yield…
It is the most diversely eventful of the three novels. It contains the most diverse events ranging from national, local and personal issues to happenings. In the course of the action Lal Singh seems to travel across Northern India. The background of the novel is post-war India when the Gandhian movement and the independence issue were coming to occupy the central place in the dynamic of contemporary Indian history. Lal Singh becomes increasingly confident and refers frequently to his war experiences to demonstrate that an understanding of the historical interconnections between Europe and India must make Indians more revolutionary conscious.
The Need of a New Social Order
Lalu’s return to India is a journey into post-war India. He witnesses a land of poverty, violence, class conflict, corruption, police brutality and Government tyranny. He feels within the changes around him a vague kind of dialectical necessity and he sees the need for a new social order while being unsure of both the objective and the means of achieving it. Ultimately, the objective turns out to be Revolution through Marxist means. It has to be humanist and non-violent. Lalu is filled with compassion for the common man. He identifies himself with the invigorating upsurge among the peasants of a rebelliousness which is gradually replacing former taciturnity and fatalism.
Lalu is quickly caught up in the whirlwind of events. He accepts a job to organise the peasantry of the large state of Oudh into Kishan Sabhas. He also elopes with Maya who is now a widow. His efforts to unite the peasantry result in clashes with the authorities. On the positive sides are Lalu’s meetings with Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru’s tour of the district. Finally, Lalu is imprisoned together with many peasants.
The trilogy ends not with a sense of historical meaninglessness and despair but with self-understanding coupled with hope. Lalu’s jail meditations reveal the epic bewilderment of modern man’s contemplation of contemporary events. They lead him to “a new ideal of thought and beauty” and give him an exalted sense of mission whereby he will help to banish “all the lies of religion and to break the narrow walls which separate man from man”. Lalu learns to contemplate his past with detachment and to foresee the direction of India’s epic struggle. It is at this point and with the symbolic hope for the future conveyed in the news that Maya has given birth to a son that the trilogy ends.
It is made clear in “The Sword and the Sickle” that the basic epic premise underlying the trilogy is the universality of man and his experiences, particularly suffering. The trilogy is an attempt to write what Mulk Raj Anand described as India’s ‘epic ……… of suffering’ and ‘epic of misery’.
Aspiration for Human Freedom
Anand adopts the Gandhian attitude to suggest that the truly epic quality in suffering is the aspiration for human freedom that results from purification. At this stage of Lalu’s development, his aspiration is epic not in its relation to real life but as a delusion that some socio-political apparatus will perfect the millennium: the state refuses to wither away.
“The Sword and the Sickle” becomes Lalu’s search for identity and after many experiences he finds it through the People, Revolution, Reason and Love. Quite early in the novel, Anand specifically defines the “new fate” which is the historical process according to the Marxist View of history. Anand’s new concept has a variety of archetypal manifestations and mythic values. Its classic incarnation is the Russian revolution, while in India it is the potential “new force… rushing toward light. Marx, Lenin, Gandhi and Nehru are its epic avatars. In “The Sword and the Sickle” Anand attempts to show the way of Marxist liberation to peasants who believed “in the other world”.
Mulk Raj Anand’s concept of poetic realism absorbs the Indian folk tradition, the Indian epic and metaphoric traditions, at the same time it absorbs “continental Realism and Naturalism, Russian suprarealism and the literary leftism of the Thirties”.
He also draws upon the folk tradition in his abundant use of personification (particularly of the machine, meteorological phenomena and macrocosmic powers), epic or mythic frame of reference. He maintains some allegiance to the folk narrative style and occasionally deliberately folk intonations and rhythms. Some characteristics of the folk imagination are dramatic use of connectives, rhetorical crescendo, the measurement of time in terms of historic event, similes drawn from nature and romantic awe.
Doom at the Hands of the Furies
The familial theme in “The Village” of the prodigal son’s defection, his rebelliousness and guilty sense of obligation and responsibility, and his family’s doom at the hands of the Furies of their fate is a folk preoccupation.
Apart from the “humanistic Philosophy”, realism in the trilogy is identifiable in Anand’s presentation of description, dialogue, characterization, social observation and attitude. In “The Sword and the Sickle” in which Nehru and Gandhi are involved with the main characters, he makes more of this technique of characterizing national figures than previously. Such a technique is designed to remove the barriers between reality and fiction. It also strengthens the sociological theme.
From the point of view of style, the trilogy is not an epic, though such a conclusion is more properly reached after due consideration of the theory underlying ‘poetic realism’. On the other hand, it has a motive, structure and mythic code of frame which are epic at least in Anand’s sense of the term, as well as epic according to certain Indian criteria of experience. For these reasons S. Menon Marath is perhaps justified in his appreciation of the trilogy as the ‘finest and most balanced’ of Anand’s works.
Bibliography
1. Harrex, S.C. The Fire and The Offering. Calcutta, India: Writers Workshop, 1983.
2. Mukherjee, Meenakshi. The Twice Born Fiction. New Delhi 110027, India: Arnold Heineman Publishers, 1974.
3. Walsh, William. Indian Literature in English. Singapore: Longman Singapore publishers (Pte) Ltd.