Mulk Raj Anand- The Raj and The Writer (An Old and Rare Book)

Mulk Raj Anand is one of the major voices of modern India. His work anticipates some of the seminal developments in Postcolonial theory and practice and as such has important implications for Postcolonial studies.

This book locates Anand's fictional work in the context of colonial and postcolonial politics and studies the dialectic relationship that exists between the texts and contexts in which these texts are produced. The author looks at Anand's novels as part of the discursive formations of postcolonial discourse. An objective assessment of Anand's contribution to postcolonial theory and discourse is attempted here. The author convincingly argues: "Anand presents the saga of India's struggle for independence not via the conventional bourgeois discourse, but from an alternative perspective foregrounding worker's struggle over and against the reformism and gradualism of Anglophile leaders."

The methodology used here provides viable critical models for the study of other Indian writers in English as well. This book would be of interest to all students and scholars of Postcolonial Literatures.

C. Vijayasree is Professor of English at Osmania University. She teaches courses in Victorian Literature, Postcolonial Literatures, and Women's Writing. She has co-edited an anthology of critical essays, Robert Browning 2000 (1996), and published a number of articles in national and international journals. She has completed a major research project on Postcolonial Theory and her findings are being processed for publication. Her other interests include Translation and Culture Studies.

Mulk Raj Anand (born 1905) has been a prolific writer of fiction, and is considered to be one of the 'Big Three' (the other two being R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao). He started writing fiction in the 1930s-remember, his first novel Untouchable appeared in 1935 under the contagious influence of Mahatma Gandhi-when our country was still passing through a critical phase of freedom struggle. The repressive measures unleashed by the mighty British merely proved counter-productive, and the nationalist forces intensified their struggle and declared the 'complete freedom' as their sole objective. As an intense freedom-lover and a crusader against political and social injustice. Anand could not be a mute spectator of the on-goings around him. He contributed sufficiently, through his fictional writings, to arouse the nationalist feelings among the masses and to wage a relentless fight for their 'liberty, equality and fraternity." This led to the dawn of the better future for us in which we can live by holding our head high, to use a Tagorean expression. Today, India is a sovereign democratic republic' overthrowing a foreign rule and enjoying a dignified status in the comity of nations.

**Contents and Sample Pages**