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Literary Shelf 
Double Colonization for the Marginalized Children
A Literary Delineation
by Dr. Nandini Sahu

The object of this paper is to focus on the structurally defined roles of the marginalized children in India since time immemorial by making a literary analysis of the two most famous novels by Mulk Raj Anand and gradually redefining some social issues in modern India.

Change is the spice of life, the grass-root of civilization. But are we really changing? According to UNICEF & ILO around the world today, some 250 million boys and girls between the ages of five and fourteen are exploited in perilous labor conditions, according to the International Labor Organization. Most of these children live in the developing world, but even in industrialized countries such as the United States, hundreds of thousands of underage boys and girls are at work in sweatshops, farm field, brothels and on the street. It is estimated that about 5.5 crore (55 million) children in India between the ages of 5 and 14 are laborers. India has the ill fame of having the largest number of child laborers in the world. It is really unfortunate that one in every four working children in the world is an Indian. The UNO has prescribed several rights for children out of which how many are really practiced is the matter of concern and dialogue here.

Children’s rights are:

• Right to be loved;
• Right to nutritious food and good health;
• Right to education;
• Right to entertainment coupled with proper physical growth;
• Right to get his/her nationality in his/her name;
• Right to get other's attention in distress;
• Right to relief in cases of natural calamities;
• Right to nurture and develop their inherent skills and abilities so as to be a useful member of the society;
• Right to nurture humanitarian values and goodwill with others; and
• Right to guard against forces dividing the country on caste, religion and other grounds.

In this paper I would be discussing how does literature contribute towards the process of social development of the marginalized? How are the structurally defined roles of the marginalized sections of the society redefined by the writers like Mulk Raj Anand who are rather social reformers setting their pen towards a social movement and the empowerment of the marginalized. Due to limited scope, only two important novels by Anand – Untouchable and Coolie – and a few compositions by a modern Indian short story writer for children, Ramendra Kumar, would be discussed in the paper.

Writing in the realistic mode, Mulk Raj Anand tries to use English in a native way. The intention of the writer is to bestow sympathy with the poor, untouchable and the marginalized. By doing so Anand suffers resistance to both the forces: the forces of the conventional society which colonized the poor and the untouchables from a religio-social-superstious attitude. And the forces of the political colonizers who never had any sympathy for the marginalized from among the colonized. Anand evidences and illustrates the forces of double colonization and draws his humane and sympathetic attitude towards the marginalized. By doing so, Anand was not only trying to represent India from a much more realistic perspective, but was trying to highlight a new concept of identity which was emerging because of the dehumanizing condition generated by colonization. Anand tries to illustrate a national identity bedecked with sympathy, he also attempts at championing the causes of the marginalized in a larger perspective so that a universal construct of the marginalized could be established and followed. It is for his adherence to an indigenous value system that Anand could champion the causes of the marginalized in his fiction and attempted to save these marginalized ones from the uncanny forces of double colonization. This is how, by representing the nation he was trying to go beyond the nation.

There was a socio-political background to the making of this great writer. From his peasant mother he derived his rationality, his sense of the ache at the heart of Indian civilization, and his understanding and compassion for the waifs, the disinherited, the lowly, the lost, Daridra-Narayana, the one visible godhead omnipresent in the Indian subcontinent.

Somerset Maugham has written in his Notebook about the marginalized in India: “it wasn’t the Taj Mahal, the ghats of Benaras, the temple at Madurai or the mountains of Travancore that had moved me; it was the peasant, terribly emaciated, with nothing to cover his nakedness but a rag round the middle …. That was the sight that had given me the most poignant emotion in India.”¹

The nineteen thirties were the seed-time of modern independent India – the Gandhian salt-satyagraha movements of 1930 and 1932, the three Round Table Conferences, the passing of the Government of India Act of 1935, the preamble of Provincial Autonomy in 1937, the Gandhian movements of Harijan uplift and Basic Education, the organization of Marxist parties of diverse hues (the Congress Socialists, the Royalists, the Communists), the involvement in the War in 1939, the rupture in the Congress leading to the removal of Subhas Chandra Bose and his eventual escape to Germany and Japan – it was a jam-packed decade.

Although normally resident in England, Anand was tempted to respond to the impact of those events in Indian society and literature. With him, as with Bankim Chandra, the political actions took the form of writing novels. He wrote about the people, for the people, and as the one in charge of the common people, the marginalized Indian. His early novels reveal an endeavor and a sense of direction much as a deluge or a flood that shows viciousness of thrust, a pour of strength, a motivating rush towards the goal.

His first five novels appeared in the following sequence – Untouchable (1935), Coolie (1936), Two Leaves and a Bud (1937), The Village (1939) and Across the Black Waters (1940).There are several other novels and collections of short stories: The Sword and the Sickle, The Barber’s Trade Union, The Big Heart, The Tractor and the Corn Goddess, Seven Summers, Private Life of an Indian Prince, and Morning Face. Anand's concentration in social themes continued in The Coolie and Two Leaves and a Bud, which relate the tribulations of working-class life in India.

Critics assert that in his early work Anand employed a markedly polemical style when attributing India's social problems to the caste structure, British rule, and capitalism. His approach and thematic focus shifted to more psychosomatic and humanistic interpretations in such later works as The Private Life of an Indian Prince (1953) which explores the emotional and mental corrosion of a young royal who neglects his duties in pursuit of an affair with a peasant woman—and in the autobiographical novels comprising his "Seven Ages of Man" series, in which he relates the events of his life through the character Krishan Chander.

The first volume in the series, Seven Summers (1951), spans the first seven years of the author's life and explores the relationship of actuality and imagination inimitable to childhood. In Morning Face (1968), Anand recounts the meagerness of his early education and the cruel behavior he and other students endured at the hands of their schoolmasters, memories that led the author in later years to fight for educational transformation in India. Confession of a Lover (1984) explores the sting of a vanished love during the author's college years. The Bubble (1984), which covers his way of life as a student and juvenile writer in London, includes much dialogue of his connection with the Bloomsbury Group writers.

In the setting of the late twenties and the early thirties, the Indian air was filled with the dust of politics and infected with the smolder of man’s callousness to man, but it was not completely pessimistic. In his special Preface to the second Indian edition of Two Leaves and a Bud (1951), Anand has given a hint of this early combustion and hinder behind his first novels. In writing of the pariahs and the bottom dogs rather than of the elite and the sophisticated, he had gambled into a territory that had been largely ignored till then by other Indian writers.

For all their nationalistic involvements, Bankim Chandra’s novels were rather romances indistinctly clichéd of Scott, with a historical or mystical angle. Tagore was chiefly interested in the upper and middle classes, and Sarat Chandra in the lower middle classes; Munshi Premchand chose his themes from the peasantry and humble folk of Uttar Pradesh.

None of them cared to produce realistic or naturalistic fiction about the real India. It was Anand’s aim to show to the world that there was more in the Orient than could be anecdotal from Omar Khayyam, Li Po, Tagore or Kipling. He described a waif like Munoo in Coolie, and an untouchable like Bakha, an impassioned laborer like Gangu, and set them right at the centre of the design of malice and exploitation that held India in its sadistic grip. Although born in one of the higher castes, his father, Lall Chand Anand, served in the Indian Army rising to be a Subedar; and Mulk Raj as a child had mixed freely with the children of the sweepers attached to his father’s contingent, and such associations wounding transversely caste divisions had continued during his adolescence.

These early playmates and friends became, with the necessary imaginative altitude and amendment, the champions of his first novels. About his artistic personae he writes, “All these heroes, as the other men and women who had emerged in my novels and short stories, were dear to me, because they were the reflections of the real people I had known during my childhood and youth. And I was only repaying the debt of gratitude I owed them for much of the inspiration they had given me to mature into manhood, when I began to interpret their lives in my writing. They were not mere phantoms…. They were flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood, and obsessed me in the way in which certain human beings obsess an artist’s soul. And I was doing no more than what a writer does when he seeks to interpret the truth from the realities of his life.”²

Anand preferred the familiar to the fancied, avoiding the highways of romance and sophistication and surveying the by lanes of the outcastes and the peasants, the sepoys and the working people. It was not a laborious exercise of self-conscious proletarianism so he wrote in a brisk unselfconscious way about what he had seen at first hand in the years of his childhood, boyhood and youth. It is not necessarily Anand, the novelist, was in restraints to the political evading, and was just the campaigner of the subjugated and the hard-up. Anand was a student of poetry, of the Arts and Philosophy before he turned to political accomplishment through creative fiction. In fact, he had first seen his heroes as pieces of irresolute humanity and loved them before he thought of putting them into his books.

Of all his novels, Untouchable is the most condensed and creatively rewarding. The three ‘unities’ are admirably preserved — unity of time, place and action – as in a classical play, as Untouchable covers the events of a single day in the life of the ‘low-caste’ boy, Bakha, in the town of Bulashah. The 18-year old boy is one of the sons of Lakha, the Jemadar or the sweeper of the town and cantonment. Bakha is a child of the twentieth century, and the collision of new influences causes commotions within him. From a Tommy he has secured a pair of old breeches, and from a sepoy a pair of old boots; he would like to look like the white foreigner and so be in the ‘fasshun’. But as the day dawns, his work of latrine-cleaning also begins and his dreams shackle because he is a worker, but what is praiseworthy about him is his efficiency at work: “Each muscle of his body, hard as rock when it came to play, seemed to shine forth like glass… ‘What a dexterous workman’ the onlooker would have said. And though his job was dirty he remained comparatively clean”. (Untouchable, p.39 )

Anand describes Bakha’s morning round of duties with a conscientious idiosyncrasy, bringing out both the competence with which the boy does this essential service and the coldness with which the beneficiaries receive it ,as if it were a subject of no elucidation. Three rows of latrines to clean single-handed, and several times too, to bring cleanliness in the place of filth and feasible diseases of the ‘babus’ – such is Bakha’s daily sweat which he turns into a skillful art.

Bakha’s cup of aggravation and desolation is full. Anand offers three solutions to Bakha’s agony of self-abasement and distress. There is Colonel Hutchinson, the Salvationist, who asks Bakha to turn into a Christian and to end his caste, by which he would not be vulnerable to the caste Hindus anymore. Next, Bakha sees Mahatma Gandhi, who addresses a public meeting which Bakha attends. Gandhiji says: “I regard untouchability as the greatest blot on Hinduism” (Untouchable, p.42). If he is to be born again, he would prefer to be born an outcaste rather than as a member of one of the so-called higher castes, thinks Bakha. Because the ‘untouchable’ is really the harijan, the ‘man of God’. It was Satanic to think that anybody was ‘polluted’ or could ‘pollute’ another. This is vastly heartening, and also bewildering for Bakha. But he comes across, before the evening wears out, a third person also, who is equally inspiring – this time with the poet Iqbal Nath Sarshar. He simply says that, when the scavengers amend their profession, they will end their caste and a modern sanitary system – the flush – will bring about this rebellion. “Then the sweepers can be free”, the poet concludes, “from the stigma of untouchability and assume the dignity of status that is their right as useful members of a casteless and classless society” (Untouchable, p.62).

Bakha is duly overwhelmed, he feels more buoyant and hopeful in the outlook than at any time since the day dawned, and proceeds to his house to tell his father about the Mahatma and about the machine that will “clear dung without anyone having to handle it” (Untouchable, p.63).

Defending this epilogue in his Foreword to the book, E. M. Forster rightly says: “it is the necessary climax, and it has mounted up with triple effect. Bakha returns to his father and his wretched bed, thinking now of the Mahatma, now of the Machine. His Indian day is over and the next days will be like it, but on the surface of the earth if not in the depths of the sky, a change is at hand”. (Foreword, Untouchable)

Bakha is simply the archetypal ‘untouchable’, for he is also himself an inimitable personage and he can be called an exceptional ‘untouchable’. The many things that come about him in the novel could have happened to anybody—in fact they still happen in post-Independent India in some other form. As a novelist addressing himself to the task of exposing social evils, Anand has been as successful as Dickens himself. In his Preface to the book, E. M. Forster wrote: “… the book seems to me indescribably clean… it has gone straight to the heart of its subject and purified it”. (Foreword, Untouchable)

If Untouchable is the microcosm, Coolie is more like the macrocosm of Indian society. In this, deliberation gives place to dissemination and understanding. Coolie is about a cross-section of India, the observable India, that fabrication of the hideous and the holy, the inhuman and the humane, the grimy and the attractive. The general effect is panoramic, fine and sin being thrown jointly and in actual life. There is no time for the reader to slit, to reflect to judge, for the reader is constantly shifted, a new situation comes at every turn.

Munoo is the ‘subjugated’ all the time, one way or the other, by one person or another; and his fate is typical of the fate of millions whose only distinguishing badge is uncomplaining sufferance. Like ‘untouchable’, ‘coolie’ too has been a term of derogation in India. India’s surplus population has for over a century overflowed in various directions, and there are Indian ‘coolies’ in Africa, Burma, Ceylon, Malaya, and many other countries. While the coolie’s services are welcome, he is himself hardly tolerated. Inside India too, there are those who have no property, no education, no rewarding vocation, and these drift into the commonplace trade of the ‘coolie’.

Anand was determined that he would pick up the ‘coolie’ – as in Bakha he humanized the ‘untouchable’ – and give him feelings, a mind, a heart, a soul, and elevate his poise as a wavering piece of flesh and blood, worthy of some tribute in solemn literature. Usually the coolie is just taken for granted, as if he were but a shadow, a cheap but quite useful machine, an uncomplaining object for abuses and indignities. But Anand would rather ask: “Hath not a Coolie eyes? Hath not a Coolie hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same eons, cooled and warmed by the same winter and summer as anybody else is”? (Coolie, 43) The coolie too is the “paragon of animals”! (Coolie, 44)

As a writer of fiction, Anand’s notable marks are vitality and a keen sense of actuality. He is a genuine Dickens for describing the inequities and idiosyncrasies in the current human condition with honesty as well as accuracy. The titles of his early novels – Untouchable, Coolie, Village – seem to emphasize the universal as against the particular; as if Bakha is every ‘untouchable’, Munoo is all ‘coolies’. Being an accurate artist, Anand makes the individual – Bakha or Munoo – affirm his distinctiveness, without quite ceasing to be the common. There is an implied point of view; but the novels are more than the case, for it is humanity that finally triumphs. In an interview, he says, “I am … doing some village social welfare work in order to integrate my love for the poor with actual work for them…. I never realized as intensely as I do now, the reasons why both Tolstoy and many years about pains of these people, I now feel that, for their sake, it may not all have been in vain. The Old Woman and the Cow and The Road will confirm the poetic truth that the alleviation of pain and its expiation are the only values given to our intelligentsia in the present time.”³

Anand’s Coolie caries no specific disapproval of individuals, the condemnation is against society as a whole – a culture that breeds such discrimination and malice. In Untouchable the evil is secluded as caste, in Coolie the evil is more widespread, and appears as gluttony, self-centeredness and callousness in their hundred singular forms. Yet the root of the affair is poverty; as Munoo realizes, “all servants look alike. There must be only two kinds of people in the world: the rich and the poor”. (Coolie, 21) And poverty is restrained all over India, and like a point infects all our society and renders it unsocial and ruthless. An urchin, Munoo finds his life with his uncle and aunt loveless enough: but when he is sent to Babu Nathoo Ram’s house at Sham Nagar and Bibiji, his heart sinks: “And, in his heart, there was a lonely song, a melancholy wail, asking, not pointedly, but in a vague, uncertain rhythm, what life in this woman’s house would prove”. (Coolie, 22)

It actually proves to be a sort of madhouse, and people are pitiless because they cannot be happy. Only the Chota Babu is kind, for his own disposition is to be happy and give happiness. A crisis soon comes, and Munoo escapes from this penitentiary, and seeks transitory shelter in a train. He is discovered lying under the bunk by a passenger, Prabha, who takes Munoo. He experiences the flutter of excitement with “the fear of the unknown in his bowels and the stirring of hope for a better life in the new world he was entering”. (Coolie, 30) In this cavernous world of the Cat Killers’ Lane, tensions increase fast, there are abuses, and life endlessly enacts its trifling dramas of sadism and cruelty. Unfortunately for Munoo, his benefactor becomes bankrupt as a result of sharp practice by his partner, and has to leave Daulatpur for good. Munoo now becomes a coolie in the grain market and a porter at the station. He has seen domestic service, service in a pickle factory, service as a coolie and porter, and even disciple-hood for an hour under a lecherous ‘Yogi’. By accident he makes the association of an elephant-trainer in a circus, and with his help reaches Bombay. He is, however, duly warned: “The bigger a city is, the more cruel it is to the sons of Adam. Your have to pay even for the breath that you breathe. But you are a brave lad.” (Coolie, 44) Life on the pavements or in the slums, service in the Sir George White Cotton Mills, conflict with human sharks and hyenas, the friendship of Hari and Lakshami, the companionship of Ratan, the plunge into the Red Lights district, involvement in the ‘labour trouble’ and the Hindu-Muslim disturbances, Munoo experiences them all, and as he runs up Malabar Hill to escape the hectic police action, he is knocked down by a car. Its owner, Mrs. Mainwaring, decides to take Munoo with her to Simla. She is a woman of vast pretensions and no morals, and makes Munoo her rickshaw-puller and page; and worn out by work, he hastens to his grave.

Coolie is the tragedy of Munoo who moves from place to place in search of livelihood, driven by need, till he finally falls into the clutches of decease. Poverty which gives birth to abuse is the root cause of Munoo’s catastrophe. Before he begins his disgraceful odyssey, Munoo is a receptive and sharp rural teenager, full of high spirits and enthusiasm for life. He was a whiz kid at climbing trees. He would hop on to the trunk like a monkey, climb the bigger branches on odd hours. But poverty and hunger compelled Munoo to be apprenticed to life even at the age of fourteen. An innocent country boy, Munoo is far from being go-getting, being ambitious in life. His expectations are extremely modest. His only desire is to live, “I want to know, I want to work” (Coolie,23).

From these intolerable conditions, a strike erupts and turns into a Hindu-Muslim riot. As the ill-housed, undernourished and bullied laborers like Hari are broken, both in body and mind, Munoo gives himself to a piece of self-introspection, “Am I really ominous?... My father died when I was born and then my mother, and I brought misfortune to Prabha, and, it seems, I have brought misfortune to Hari now. If I am ominous, why don’t I die?” (Coolie, 49)

One is likely to be moved to tears by hearing this most tragic expression of Munoo. Furthermore, Munoo is the horrified witness of communal murder and senseless killings. As a rickshaw-puller, Munoo gradually grows weaker and dies at the age of sixteen. Thus, Anand dramatizes in Coolie the evils of poverty, exploitation and brutality that squeeze a bud of youth before it can bloom.

Munoo’s tragedy seems to be Anand’s proclamation for transformation. Humanism could be the only response to his dilemma in the present political set-up. The novel highlights the need for re-establishment of kindness to the world lost in industrialism, capitalism and socialism. Munoo’s death is a catharsis. Mother India receives Munoo to her bosom with the words: “We belong to suffering! We belong to suffering! My love!” (Coolie,85)

Reviewing Coolie on its first appearance, the Spectator said: “Munoo is a universal kind of figure”⁴. He is a sturdy hill-boy, with a taste for the joy of life which is denied to him again and again. His full-bodied health, his eagerness for life, his fundamentally innocent nature, his penchant to react to benevolence, his fear that good and evil should be so inextricably mixed up, all make him a true descendant to Bakha, who are both heirs to the sizzling disillusionment that is the only birthright for millions born as the marginalized children in India.

Although Anand’s Coolie has received a fine deal of critical consideration from both reviewers and literary critics, it is yet to be explored in full as a social tragedy. Like Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, Anand’s Munoo is a catastrophic personality who inspires pity but no horror. Anand not only raises the hill boy to the rank of a hero, but also endows him with self-esteem. He does not romanticize the proletariat but renders the societal forces of catastrophe – capitalism, industrialism and communalism – as they are seen operating in the existing society. Anand’s proficiency to suggest places, persons, moods, scenes, and situations is as mysterious as it is serious, and few novels of modern India can outshine its beauty and power of narration. Anand sees life sometimes as jest, sometimes as a tragedy, and sometimes the two modes fuse, and at his best his work challenges resemblance with that of the great masters for the art of the short story. Munoo’s destiny symbolizes the tragic state of affairs of the disadvantaged and the under-privileged who in themselves are not responsible for their unmitigated agony, but who are rather the victims of cold-blooded exploitation. The very identify of the novel is distinguishing. It is not “The Coolie” or “A Coolie” but Coolie encircling all coolies—all those marginalized ones – and their providence.

What makes Coolie a potent social tragedy is the unique handling of the cruel, merciless societal forces of scarcity and mistreatment which are responsible for the tragic end. The premature death of the central character becomes all the more tragic because he is an innocent child. The narrative is restricted to an episode little more than a year, in order to stress the physical tragedy of the premature death. Anand invests Munoo with sociological significance by making him represent various phases of people's existence in definite settings in the course of the narrative, thereby organizing the action in a structurally meaningful way. If only the social and industrial system had been humane, democratic, life-enhancing and unrestricted, all might have turned out differently. Munoo had aspiration and talents. He could feel love, arouse love and loyalty in others and he could become the lover of two women. But it is his poverty that put restraints on him, imprisoned him in the unavoidable prison of the coolie’s life, and finally killed him. Nevertheless, “beneath this pervasive pessimism, there is an essential under-current of optimism in that the protagonist’s death poignantly establishes the rotten state of society and the consciousness of the need for its drastic reform. Munoo is not able to redeem himself because he is made to think that people like him are born to suffer. He expresses himself, ‘We belong to suffering! We belong to suffering!’ Anand universalizes the individual tragedy of Munoo following the anthropological dictum that the ‘proper study of mankind is man,’ Anand presents Munoo as a victim of ridiculous systems and the inhuman cruelties of society.”⁵

Even if the critics have started looking askance at Anand because of his un-innovative style of writing (Rushdiets have started disliking the trio of Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and R. K. Narayan), yet his faith in tradition, in agrarian culture of India and the Gandhian values cannot be ignored. It is but for his adherence to an indigenous value system that Anand could champion the causes of the marginalized in his friction and attempted to save these marginalized ones from the uncanny forces of double colonization. The problem of class and poverty, decadence, backwardness, ignorance and erroneous beliefs admits no easy solution. After so many years of Anand’s novel  written in 1935, and 60 years after Independence, the problem with rounded boundaries and also with some relieving features still defies an unyielding and utter elucidation in India. For his realistic portrayals of the social and economic problems suffered by Indians because of the caste system and British colonial rule, Anand is considered by many critics to be one of India's best writers. The value of his novels, according to Margaret Berry, "is the witness they offer of India's agonizing attempt to break out of massive stagnation and create a society in which men and women are free and equal."⁶

Coming to the present scenario, to an India after sixty years of Independence, many writers have followed the path of Mulk Raj Anand and fought for the marginalized children. Due to the lack of space and time it may not be possible to discuss all of them here.

One of the authors who has made a significant contribution to children’s literature is a modern short story writer, Ramendra Kumar. Ramendra is an award-winning writer with 16 books, published by well known publishers such as National Book Trust, Children’s Books Trust, Navneet, Rupa and Vikas, to his credit. Through his moral stories in his books as well as blogs, Ramendra candidly writes, “Every 14th November we celebrate Children's Day with great fanfare all over the country. Leaders, politicians, bureaucrats, industrialists and other celebrities visit slums, orphanages, jails. They distribute sweets, clothes, toys, give profound speeches, deliver sermons on the duties and responsibilities of the citizens of tomorrow. And then they go back to their cocoons of affluence and luxury leaving the children to rot…. I don't know whether you are aware that December 10, every year, is celebrated as Human Rights Day. Human rights has always been a very emotional issue exploited by politicians, media persons, women's activists, youth leaders, social workers and anyone else you can think of. But in all this noise and din the rights of children seem to have been completely forgotten.” (bolokids.com)

Ramendra firmly believes that today’s generation has had an over dose of adventures, mysteries and fantasies. Escaping into adventure and fantasy is okay but many times kids want stories about characters they can relate to and empathize with. They want to know about ordinary children like them facing extraordinary situations. And it is such stories which are a blend of ideas, entertainment and values that remain for a long time. Pure entertainment is like chewing gum – as long as the flavor remains it is tasty, but after that it begins to diminish. To draw a parallel, for a child the endearing appeal of ‘ET’ would be far more enduring than the straight-in-the-face, up front entertainment of the ‘Rush Hour’ saga. The stories he writes are set in the here and now, not in the once upon a time. They are not concerned with the past perfect but the present (tense or otherwise). They are not specific to any particular culture, value system, religion or belief. They are firmly rooted in Indian values and ethos to which the kids can easily relate.

In many of his stories he has focused on marginalized children. These children are not in the mainstream either because of economic deprivation or because they are not ‘normal’ as defined by our society. When writing about these children he has made efforts not to indulge in sympathy or pity but treat his protagonists with empathy. He has never viewed them as ‘children of a lesser God’ but as kids to whom fate has sometimes given a raw deal. The weapons they use to fight adversity are not magic spells but their inherent qualities of commitment and courage, resilience and intelligence. They go about fighting adversity not with words but with will power, not with potions but with pragmatism.

In his story The Spirit of Christmas (The Will to Win), Tony’s father is kidnapped by terrorists and they issue a statement that he has been killed. From a happy middle class living, Tony and his mother’s world comes crashing down to a hand to mouth existence. It is Christmas eve and Tony buys a cake and a shawl for his mother from his savings. As he is coming home he meets a woman and her kids who are begging. He hands over the cake. Later he sees an old man shivering in the park and gives him the shawl. When he reaches home empty handed and sees the celebrations all around he feels terribly down and rushes to the church. The Father explains to him that he has celebrated Christmas in its truest sense. Next morning there is a knock and when he opens the door he finds his papa standing outside. Here the author has tried to project that even in the worst of circumstances the protagonists does not relinquish his intrinsic values of sharing and caring.

In his short story The Gift: (The Will to Win), a ten year old orphan, Munna is ‘adopted’ by a black puppy whom he names Kaaliya. Both are very fond of each other. One day a majestic car stops in front of Munna who is busy shining shoes for a living. The driver comes up to Munna and wants to buy the puppy for his master. The driver offers Munna Rs. 500 but he refuses. Just then the door of the car opens and a crippled child stumbles out wailing for the puppy. Her father tries to convince her and helps her back in the car. Munna hands over Kaaliya to the driver but refuses to take the money. When asked why by the master he replies, “My Kaaliya is not for sale. My puppy is a gift for your child. Her need is greater than mine.” (page: 25). The story, told in a very sensitive manner, showcases an orphan’s fine tuned sense of empathy. His concern for the crippled child makes him gift his most valued ‘possession’ to her.

‘How the Losers Won’ (The Mad Scientist and Other Stories) is a story about a group of urchins who study in a ‘school’ without a building. They enter a short play competition and put up a spirited performance. However, they are disqualified since they are not from a formal school or club. But the chief guest is impressed by their character and gumption and decides to provide a building and other facilities for their school. Here the writer evocatively brings out the inherent resilience of the kids which helps them beat the odds and come up trumps.

‘The Professor and the Pickpocket’ (The Mad Scientist and Other Stories) is a touching tale of a ten year old orphan Kalpana and a pickpocket Chandru. Fate and some manipulation by Chandru brings them together. Kalpana a gutsy girl takes it upon herself to reform Chandru and succeeds.
In The Festival of Lights (Check and Mate and Other Stories), Chandan hates the festival of lights because he lost his parents and sister on this day. He wants to shut off the fun and festivity and immerse himself in gloom and despondency. He meets a seventy year old blind man (Baba) who lives alone in a temple. Chandan is surprised to learn that Baba is going round with sweets in his pockets, sweets he has purchased from his savings. He is enjoying every moment of Diwali by distributing sweets, listening to the sound of firecrackers, the shouting and screaming of kids and internalizing the spirit of Diwali. Chandan is completely mesmerized by Baba’s infectious spirit and unbridled enthusiasm. In this story the protagonist, though a fighter, often surrenders to gloom. Baba becomes his inspiration and idol and helps realize the true spirit of Diwali.

In Check and Mate (Check and Mate and Other Stories) Vikas is a cripple having lost one of his legs in an accident. He can therefore not fulfill his father Suresh’s dream of making him a champion athlete. Suresh who himself was a terrific athlete is frustrated and Vikas feels for his father very much. He takes to chess without telling his father and works very hard. He is crowned the chess champion much to the delight of his father. Here a disabled child doesn’t descend into self pity. Rather his fights it out and taking the ‘road less traveled’ achieves his goal. Better Than the Best is the story of Krishna a twelve year old village urchin. A former athletics coach, Gautam sees talent in him and takes him to the city to groom him. Krishna is subjected to a strict regimen. He rebels and runs away. However when Gautam reaches out to him with reason and compassion he comes back. Krishna works like he has never before and runs the race of his life – not for himself but for Gautam who seemed to have stopped living for Krishna. The young athlete breaks the national record and Gautam is thrilled. Here the protagonist, a marginalized child, displays courage, will power and proves he is better than the best.

In 1986, the government of India heard the bereaved cry of millions of homeless, hungry and condemned children of India, and the Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act was enacted. The Act prohibits children from engaging in activities considered perilous to their health and well-being. It regulates the working conditions of children employed in non-hazardous occupations. Plus, a National Policy on Child Labor was announced in 1987. The policy envisaged the National Child Labor Project (NCLP), a project-based action committee initiated to work in areas of high application of child labor. Twenty years later the bangles that women treasure, the gemstone glasses that add charm to a dining table, the finely woven carpets, the fire crackers that light the night sky on Deepawali, are still made by tiny hands of Bakhas and Munoos. The Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act failed to smear out even a speck of the social crime witnessed in every part of the country’s streets, homes, factories and shops. Indeed, according to the 2001 census, India has 12.6 million child workers. Activists estimate the figure is more than 60 million, and they could be true. “It was the parliament elected by a more popular suffrage in 1868 that passed, as we know, the first great education act. This act introduced compulsory schooling. The principle was established once and for all that parents were not to be allowed to do as they willed with their children, if they willed either to set them to work or to let them run wild without elementary education. Freedom of contract in respect of all dealings with the labour of children was so far limited.”⁷

Meanwhile, the Union Ministry of Labor and Employment passed a notification on October 11, 2006, following a High Court order. The notification states that service of children under 14 years as domestic workers or servants in dhabas, restaurants, hotels, motels, tea-shops, resorts, spas or other recreational centers is punishable with imprisonment for a term not less than three months, a fine of Rs 10,000 which may extend to Rs.20,000, or both.

Did anything change after that?

Not really.

Seema, 13 years, from West Bengal or Orissa, has been working as a domestic help in Delhi for the last two years. She has never seen her father, as he left her mother before she was born. She was brought here by her aunty, mausi, as she is popularly known. Mausi gets children, especially girls, from that part of the country, with the promise of two meals a day and clothes. These children are either abandoned by their families or sent to Delhi to earn some extra money. Seema says most of the women in her village are often sick because of constant childbirths, early marriage, non-stop hard work and hazardous working conditions, for which she chose to come herehe frying pan to the fire. Mausi is a one-woman domestic placement agency. She brings the children from the villages, gets them a job as a domestic help, in a dhaba, a garage. In return, she gets a commission. The employers are happy as they have got easy slave without the hassles of residency agencies, found all over Delhi, or legal particulars. It is an established truth that children who start working at a younger age attain a lower level of education, which has an understandable impact on the child’s future wellbeing and capability to engender income. Would parents desire to send their children to work if they did not face severe economic restraint? Would parents send their children to work if they really had the prospect to choose?

There is yet another child’s story to tell. Budhia, a boy from Orissa, has completed an continuous 65-km marathon from the Jagannath temple in Puri to the CRPF campus in Bhubaneswar to establish a milestone in his early career. Though he was narrowly failed to complete the run of 70 -km in the obligatory time of seven hours, he still managed to make it into the Limca Book of Records. Budhia Singh had become a known figure since he participated in the Delhi Marathon in October last year. Though by that time, he had already gained the publicity in the local and national media, the Delhi Marathon helped him gaining an international fame. Among the thousands of people, armature runners, and professional marathon runners from various countries, Budhia was at the top of media publicity. Be it local media, national or international, Budhia was everywhere. Obviously, it is because of his age. He was only 3 years and 9 months at that time. According to his mentor and coach Biranchi Narayan Das, the Making-of-Budhia story is quite fascinating and out of ordinary. He says, once he saw this 3-year-kid with a mid-aged scrap collector and got suspicious. When he enquired about the child, the man told that he had bought him for 800 rupees. Owing to severe poverty, Budhia’s mother had sold him to that scrap collector for a paltry 800 rupees. But the destiny was with him. The incredible talent of the child also attracted some international documentary filmmaker to shoot documentaries on the wonder-kid. A French television channel has already shot a 12-minute documentary a few months before. As the publicity went rocking in the national and international media, there expected some twists also. There were and are some controversies that followed the publicity of the great boy, that Budhia has been tortured by his mentor Biranchi Narayan Das, as accused by Budhia’s mother, which is a matter of concern.

Perhaps the most important injury to be gleaning from the scholastic work in this area is that child labor tends to be an occurrence related to poverty and difficult social conditions rather than the obstinate predilection of the parents. In that sense, any policy oriented towards eliminating the problem must take that fact into report if it is to be successful.

For example, improving the labor conditions of parents or compensating the families who send their children to school may be more effective ways to deal with the problem from a public policy perspective than absolute bans. “This is strongly related to the labor market conditions of the parents. Parents who work in low-quality, poorly paid jobs, tend to be more vulnerable to poverty and thus send their children to work.”⁸

Poverty of parents is the prime cause of driving the children to join the labor force, although it is not the only cause. The lack of improved vision on the part of parents, their ignorance and lack of education are some other reasons which let loose children to enter the labor market. “The concomitant effect is that the child who is considered as a valuable asset of the nation is fore-doomed to failure and his future is stolen. Needless to add, the high incidence of working children is correlated with poverty and under-employment of parents and elder siblings.”⁹

There is a tradition of the “household farm” in which child labor is seen as a basic component of everyday life. International Labor Standards (ILS) involve restrictions on child labor that have been internationally agreed-upon. The objective of ILS in general is to achieve a minimum standard of living across countries. A child cannot be developed in nothingness. It needs the hold up of the family and the society as a whole. Undoubtedly, parents are the principal caretakers of the child. The development of the child thoroughly depends on the development of the parents. It is this theme which needs to be focused. This can be achieved if families of the child workers are strengthened by inducting the parents into some earnings generating activities which foresee economic empowerment. “It seems, for example, that permanent shocks, like divorce, have a clear impact on children’s school attendance, whereas during temporary shocks, like unemployment, parents tend to protect the school time of their children whenever possible.”¹⁰

Because many of the most exploited and endangered working children go unnoticed, their situation must be brought vehemently to the awareness of the government and the public, in an effort to activate an electorate to guard them. Innovative approach and positive interference by the government to bring about desired change in attitude and perception of the parents and working children will help in achieving the programmed goals. “The general aim is to help develop stable and secure families and communities. A strong emphasis should be laid on education for children and on improvements in skills and job creation for parents and adults.”¹¹

The guidelines should also deal with socio-economic and cultural problems of their families so as not to depend on child labor as a survival strategy. The formulation of child labor policy must emphasize on bottom-up approach in the sense that it should take into assurance the child worker who is at the bottom and is directly affected by the employer’s oppression. The Government should take non-governmental organizations and independent experts into confidence while formulating such policy to combat child labor through awareness generation among parents and communities. It is a long process and hence any expenditure without proper planning cannot play a miracle of resourcefulness in eliminating child labor overnight. In India, the analysis of the government’s child labor policy clearly reflects that children and their families are not made partners in the process of development. They have been denied participation in it because they are docile. They are voiceless because they are not voters; they are unassertive because they have no political influence. Their parents are inactive because their poverty evades them from taking any action.

There is no gain saying the fact that child labor is the outcome of our socio-economic culture and no such problem can be solved by legislation alone. But there is a silver lining in every dark cloud, which has been depicted in literature by great thinkers like Mulk Raj Anand in pre-Independence India and by modern Indian writers as well. These writers, great thinkers, convince the society through their pen that despite the strong undercurrent of discontentment, a last ray of hope lies in the empowerment of the marginalized. If grass root structure is properly conked out and the child worker and his family are taken into confidence by decision making bodies, the official top-down approach can be reversed. Today the food for thought is – Munna, Chotu, Choti, Bahadur Bakhas and Munoos – post ban on child labor, will they vanish from our lives? Surely, the civil society in India is also a collaborator in this structured crime against the huge humanity of Indian childhood trapped in slavery. Will it change its ways after the ban on child labor? And post ban, will the government and the courts in the land be able to give the hardworking little ones their lighthearted childhood back? Let us look around. The answer is out there, as harsh as truth and genuineness, blowing in the breeze.

(This paper was presented at the International Conference on Social Development,
Social Movements and the Marginalized: Perspectives and Concerns held at New Delhi
on February 16-19, 2008)

Works Cited

Primary Sources

1. Mulkraj Anand, Untouchable, Penguin Classics, London, 1935.
2. Mulkraj Anand, Coolie, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1936.
3. www.bolokids.com
4. Ramendra Kumar, The Spirit of Christmas: (From the book : The Will to Win, Dahlia Publishers, Kerala, 2001)
5. Ramendra Kumar, The Gift: (From the Book : The Will to Win, Dahlia Publishers, Kerala, 2001)
6. Ramendra Kumar, ‘How the Losers Won’ (From the book : The Mad Scientist and Other Stories, Rupa & Co., 2004)
7. Ramendra Kumar, ‘The Professor and the Pickpocket’ (From the book: The Mad Scientist and Other Stories, Rupa & Co., 2004)
8. Ramendra Kumar, The Festival of Lights (From the book : Check and Mate and other stories, Rupa & Co., 2004)
9. Ramendra Kumar, Better than the best, National Book Trust, 2007,

Secondary Sources

1. Suresh Ranjan Bald, ‘Politics of a Revolutionary Elite: A Study of Mulk Raj Anand's Novels’;Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 8, No. 4. (1974), pp. 473-489.
2. RK Dhawan , The Novels of Mulk Raj Anand, Stosius Inc/Advent Books Division ,1992, p.67.
3. KK Sharma, Indo-English Literature: A Collection of Critical Essays, Vimal Prakashan, 1977, p. 73 .
4. Ibi, p.76.
5. KD Verma ,The Indian Imagination: Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English, - 2000 ( quoted from books.google.com), P.33.
6. Ibid, P.34.
7. Thomas H. Green, “Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract”, in Works of Thomas Hill Green 1836-1882, ed. R.L. Nettleship (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1900.
8. M. Rozensweig and R. Evenson, “Fertility, Schooling, and the Economic Contribution of Children in Rural India,” Econometrica, 45 (1997) pp. 1065-1079, and Parsons, and C. Goldin, “Parental Altruism and Self-Interest: Child Labor among Nineteenth-Century American Families,” Economic Inquiry, vol. 27 (1989) pp. 637-659. The recent wave of empirical work using micro-data for developing countries started with C. Grootaert and H. Patrinos, The Policy Analysis of Child Labour :The World Bank: 1998.
9. Christiaan, Grootaert and Kanbur Ravi, Child Labour: Economic Perspective; International Labour Review, Vol.134 (2), 1995, p.201.
10. S. Parker and E.Skoufias, “Job Loss, Change in marital Status, and the Allocation of Time Within Families,” unpublished mimeo, Mexico: CIDE, 2000.
11. Porio, Emma; Moselina, L. and Anthony Swift in Urban Children in Distress. Cristina Szanton Blank with contributors; UNICEF, International Child Development Centre, Gordon & Brach, Switzerland, 1994.