The word ‘Dalit’ has acquired a special meaning in the Indian society. They were the untouchables in the social set up, leading a life of penury and were worst exploited and oppressed by the upper caste. The word ‘Dalit’ has its existence from the Marathi word ‘Dal’ which means ‘burst, split, scattered, dispersed, broken, torn asunder, destroyed and crushed’. Dalit literature struggles for total revolution and it is declaration of human rights. Writers like Mulk Raj Anand, Om Prakash Valmiki, Baby Kamble, Aravind Adiga, Arundhati Roy et al. presented the subaltern psyche in their writings. Mulk Raj Anand is one of the outstanding Indo-English novelists of our time. His novels describe the lowest among the lowly. Published in 1935, Untouchable is his first novel. The novel describes the events of a single day in the life of the hero Bakha, a 18 year young scavenger who goes through the daily work of cleaning dirt in Bulandshahar. He is a loveable, honest, noble and efficient boy but he has to suffer all kinds of insults and humiliation only because he is a subaltern. The present paper intends to study M.R.Anand’s Untouchable in the light of Dalit vision.
Research Scholar, Dept. of English Magadh University, Bodh-Gaya
