Obituary: Mulk Raj Anand
Mulk Raj Anand, who has died of pneumonia aged 98, was one of the most prominent Indian novelists writing in English. His literary achievement comprised not only novels, but also short stories and critical essays on literature and art. He was known for his realistic and sympathetic portrait of the Indian poor. With Raja Rao and RK Narayan, he was frequently referred to as a "founding father" of the Indo-English novel.
Anand's prolific writing career spanned more than 75 years, during which he was widely identified with the quest for a just, equitable, and forward-looking India. He wrote extensively in areas as diverse as art and sculpture, politics, Indian literature and the history of ideas.
Anand was a staunch Marxist and Gandhian. His literary career was launched by a family tragedy, instigated by the rigid caste system that continues to be the scourge of Indian society even today. He wrote a moving essay in response to the suicide of an aunt who had been excommunicated by his family for sharing a meal with a Muslim.
Anand gained an international following early in his career. His novels Untouchable (1935) and Coolie (1936) set a generation of educated Indians pondering about their country's social evils perpetuated in the name of caste and religion.
Untouchable was a chilling exposé of the day-to-day life of a member of India's lowest - and most abhorred - caste. The story of a single day in the life of Bakha, a toilet-cleaner, who accidentally meets a member of a higher caste, it was critically acclaimed worldwide, and won Anand the reputation of being India's Charles Dickens. The introduction was written by Anand's friend EM Forster, whom he met while working on TS Eliot's literary magazine, Criterion. In his introduction, Forster wrote: "Avoiding rhetoric and circumlocution, [this book] has gone straight to the heart of its subject and purified it."
Coolie was a touching account of a 15-year-old who dies of tuberculosis while trapped in servitude as a child labourer. The following year, Anand produced Two Leaves And A Bud (1937), in which he described an exploited peasant, who is killed while trying to protect his daughter from being raped by a British colonial official. His other important novels included The Village (1939), Across The Black Waters (1940), The Sword And The Sickle (1942) and Private Life Of An Indian Prince (1953).
For Anand, the written word was a medium through which he voiced his social protest. As a critic and novelist, he wrote extensively on political instability, class and caste exploitation, capitalistic corruption and abject poverty in India and other parts of the world.
He revealed that apart from the colonialism of Britain, there existed a different kind of colonialism within Indian society.
Though he imbibed James Joyce's idea of stream of consciousness, Anand "felt that the novel should not press the inner monologue beyond a certain point, so that humaneness may remain a variable factor in the situation".
Social awareness was always the central theme of an Anand novel. He believed that a writer had a duty towards the society in which he lived, to be an activist striving to uplift the poor.
The son of a coppersmith and a soldier, Mulk Raj Anand was born in Peshawar, in present-day Pakistan. He attended Khalsa College, Amritsar, and the University of Punjab, graduating with honours in 1924. After studying at Cambridge, he received his PhD in philosophy from London University in 1929. He lectured at the League of Nations School of Intellectual Cooperation in Geneva and, between 1932 and 1945, with the Workers' Educational Association in London.
In the 1930s and 1940s, he divided his time between London's literary world and Gandhi's India, joining the struggle for independence. He also fought for the Republicans in the Spanish civil war. During the second world war, he worked as a broadcaster and scriptwriter in the film division of the BBC in London. After the war, he returned to a lifelong writing career in India.
Most of Anand's subsequent books, including the novel Private Life Of An Indian Prince (1953), were auto-biographical in nature. His seven-volume autobiography, Seven Ages Of Man, was among his outstanding works. It contained - like much of his later writing, which saw the focus more on personal dilemmas, sought and the human psyche - elements of the spiritual journey in which he sought to attain a higher sense of self-awareness.
In 1946, Anand founded the arts magazine Marg (the word means "pathway" in Sanskrit), which still appears and has set high standards in art criticism. He also became a director of Kutub Publishers. In the 1960s, he was Tagore professor of literature and fine art at the University of Punjab and visiting pro-fessor at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Simla (1967-68). From 1965 to 1970, he was fine arts chairman at Lalit Kala Akademi (the Indian National Academy of Arts).
He was also a founding member of the Progressive Writers' Association, a national organisation that wielded considerable influence during India's struggle for independence.
He is survived by his second wife, Shirin Vajifdar, and his daughter, Sushila, from his first marriage, to Kathleen Van Gelder, which ended in divorce.
Mulk Raj Anand, novelist, essayist and art critic, born December 12 1905; died September 28 2004
This article was amended on 24 October 2012 to include mention of Anand's first wife.