[Sharma is an Indian-born Canadian critic. In the following essay, he examines Anand's portrayal of British characters in his novels.]

The British presence in the novels of Anand is persistent, pronounced, and pervasive. It is there from the first novel, Untouchable (1935), to the most recent one, Confessions of a Lover (1977). The British are in the novels not simply as background, a part of the social tapestry, but rather as figures in the forefront, sometimes occupying the centre of the social stage and dominating the action, as in Two Leaves and a Bud, at other times impinging directly on the moral consciousness of the leading characters.

The circumstances of Anand's birth and upbringing made it inevitable that the British presence should be a compelling element in his consciousness. The years of his growth and maturity were those of India's struggle for freedom from British rule. Anand's home province the Punjab, was one of the active centres of this struggle; the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre in 1919, in which the British officer Colonel Dyer shot down 378 unarmed Indian men, women and children, seriously injuring one thousand others, took place in his hometown, Amritsar. In the disturbances that followed the massacre Anand himself had the distinction of being arrested and beaten by the police, receiving severe stripes on his back in addition to much abuse.

For a writer whose own life history constitutes the main source material of his work, it was natural that Anand should write about the British. But the British presence is there for other reasons too. Anand, besides being a social critic, is also a writer with a satiric vision, taking special delight in pointing out the discrepancy between appearance and reality. He has a particular fondness for mischief, and nothing gives him greater delight than to unmask the pretensions of the righteous and respectable, to show that Pandit Kali Nath, the venerable custodian of orthodox Hinduism, is little better than a lecherous old man, that the arrogant and blustering sahibs on the tea plantations are cowards, scared by the phantoms of their own brains. So insistent is this urge that he does not spare even his own father. Babu Ram Chand, the character based on Anand's father in Morning Face, is a respectable man of the world, "the Shadow Colonel of the Regiment," but he has no compunction in exploiting his widowed sister-in-law Devaki.

It seems unavoidable, then, that Anand should derive a peculiar satisfaction in exploding the myths which had been so sedulously fostered by the British in order to justify their subjugation of India. The most powerful of these was that the British had brought order in place of anarchy, justice in place of injustice. British liberals even believed that they had taught Indians the meaning of human dignity.

Anand demonstrates, in Two Leaves, that the order established by the British was based on terror and the ruthless suppression of the weak by the strong. In this work, the British, who never tire of preaching the sacredness of the law of contract, have no hesitation in reducing the plantation workers to the position of serfs. It is possible that these planters are an extreme case, not typical of the British rulers in India. Although such men may not be perceived by members of their own race as altogether virtuous, there can be no doubt that the entire official machinery stood solidly behind them. Their politics appear to have the full approval of the government, as is indicated by the Viceroy's acceptance of an invitation for a shoot. The dispatch of army units and airforce planes by the authorities, in response to a false alarm by the planters, shows how the higher officers of the government itself share the planters' state of mind.

This is the state of funk, of the nervous fear from which all tyrants suffer. The planters, in spite of their luxurious style of living and the conviction of their own superiority to all Indians, are frightened men who wear steel plates under their waistcoats and carry revolvers in their pockets. Indeed, the plantation is in many ways a microcosm of the whole country under imperial rule. Anand's tragedy is the tragedy of empire: how the free British set forth to enslave others and how, once this enslavement is begun, they become more and more the victims of their own fear and delusions, prisoners of the past who see in every request for redress of grievances an incipient mutiny such as had occurred in 1857. The main objective of the empire, according to Anand, was economic exploitation; it was for economic gain that it became essential for the British to maintain the myth of the white man's superiority, what the planters refer to as their "prestige." Reggie Hunt's bearer, Afzal, is allowed to play polo because of the shortage of players, and because he is a good horseman. However, he cannot be allowed to score a goal; that would make him, in his prowess, the equal of white men and thus explode the myth of their superiority.

One assumes, then, as far as Anand is concerned, that the myth of British superiority is directly related to the myth that sees the British presence so essentially concerned with the imposition of order. In their anxiety to sustain a condition of both superiority and order, the whites become comical and ridiculous, all their heroics being little better than histrionics. Anand portrays them as not so much wicked as stupid, not so much knaves as fools. Some—Reggie Hunt, for example—are even worse. He has been criticized as a melodramatic villain, a maniac obsessed with sex. The problem that he represents, however, did exist. It was a matter of common knowledge that the British planters in India, like their counterparts in the American South, indulged in sexual exploitation of female labourers. Like Anand, Raja Rao in his description of the Skeffington coffee estate in Kanthapura draws attention to this abuse. Anand's point is that a system which permits its members both to exploit and degrade others without fear of consequent punishment must be rotten to the core. It ruined the lives not only of poor Indians like Gangu, but also of noble and sensitive Englishmen like de la Havre and Barbara Macara. Anand's recognition that persons like these did exist among the Englishmen in India suggests his objectivity and freedom from racial bias. Two Leaves itself is dedicated to an English friend, Montagu Slater.

But the British presence in the fiction of Anand is not just a part of the social reality, representing colonial domination and exploitation, racial arrogance and bigotry, and generating social and political tensions. He also draws attention to the fact that it has become an important element in the moral consciousness of the middle-class Indian, perhaps every Indian, symbolizing to him a new style of life, one more intelligent, alert, better organized, and therefore superior. Awareness of this lifestyle has created a deep cleft in the Indian psyche, a sharp fissure, as a result of its being pulled in different directions. The Indian shares with other colonials an awed admiration for the ruling race's way of life, and a swelling contempt for his own. However, as a member of an ancient race, he has grown up in a deeply rooted culture, and forces at work in the world around him are reminders of its essential sanity and wisdom, once rid of the corruptions which had crept into it.

Bakha, in Untouchable, is the first Anand character to show an awareness of this inner conflict born out of the pull of two differing ways of life. He is portrayed as a votary of "fashun" who would rather shiver in his thin and worn-out blanket than wrap himself in a heavy Indianstyle quilt. He starts with the simple notion that putting on clothes like those of the white sahibs would make him, too, a sahib. The clothes, however, have a symbolic significance: the Western shirt and shorts, hat, boots, and blanket, being neatly cut, snug and smart, indicate order and discipline; the Indian dhoti, turban, and quilt, being loose and sloppy, denote the sloveliness and flabbiness of the Indian way of life. Bakha finds even the Indian manner of performing ablutions—all the hawking, gargling, and spitting—disgusting, for he knows that the "Tommies" dislike it.

The case for Indian culture and civilization in the novel is put by the poet Iqbal Nath Sarshar. However, this whole episode hangs like an appendage to the main story. It does not form an integral part of its structure, neither does it have much impact on Bakha's consciousness beyond creating a slight tremor in his mind.

The theme of conflict between two cultures is taken up in real earnest and with greater sophistication in the two autobiographical novels, Seven Summers and Morning Face. They are in the tradition of the bildungsroman, depicting the hero's growth and his quest for identity. Krishan's consciousness is torn between the two polarities of the West and the East, represented at the simplest level by the father and mother. The father, not English himself, is a worshipper of the English. He is head clerk of the Thirty-eighth Dogra Regiment, a faithful servant of the Angrezi Sarkar, the British raj in India, and hates the nationalists as troublemakers. As the son of this head clerk, Krishan is brought up in the cantonments at Nowshera and Mian Mir. Here, he sees the sahibs living in their beautiful bungalows with lush green lawns, neatly trimmed hedges, and fierce dogs to guard them from any intrusion by the natives. Krishan is struck with awe when he sees these heavenly beings, and has infinite respect for his father because he associates with them.

The climax of this first youthful phase is reached when he gets an idea of the power and glory of the Angrezi Sarkar through the pomp and pageantry of the Delhi Durbar of 1911. Shortly after this, he visits his mother's village, Daska, and is introduced to his grandfather, Nihal Singh. Meeting with this handsome, dignified and proud old man, a veteran of the Sikh wars against the British, suggests to him the viability of another way of life, based on a different set of values. He realizes on his return from the village that the armed camp of the cantonment is really a prison, full of meanness and sordidness, in which "the hardened sepoys were all struggling to guard their skins against a court-martial, and were hourly seeking to ingratiate themselves with inflexible, inscrutable, superior white Sahibs" [Seven Summers].

There are other introductions, too, leading to fresh discoveries: to his uncle Sardar Singh, whose superb musical rendering of "the anguished refrains of the poet Waris Shah" instil in his little soul, "finally and forever," love for his own Punjabi speech; to the Dutt brothers in Amritsar, who tell him of the heroes of the freedom movement, trying to inspire him with pride in the Hindu tradition.

However, Krishan's longing to become a sahib is too insistent. The high point of this infatuation is reached when the shocking spectacle of the bania boy, Mohkam Chand, being kicked by Marsden Sahib, Inspector of Schools, fails to arouse resentment in him. Instead, the Englishman's exhortation that he and his classmates should be like English schoolboys works as an "echoaugury." Krishan tries to suppress the weakness of indulging in the realms of poetry and vague speculation, and tries to cultivate the ideal of speaking English like an Englishman, of playing cricket and of wearing clothes like an Etonian, "which I imagined was the perfect type of little Englishmen, destined to rule Indians and kick 'natu' fellows like Mohkam Chand, because they would not conform to the rules and regulations laid down" [Morning Face].

Krishan does later overcome this infatuation with things English, and he experiences the romance of awakening to the apperception of being an Indian. Perhaps the flogging he received in the wake of the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre hastened his liberation, acting like a baptism of fire following a new birth. But the struggle itself is significant. Krishan has been described by Anand as a modern Krishna, an incarnation of the Yadu hero, the great warrior who fought against tyranny and injustice, the transcendant poet-prophet who unravelled to man new realms of poetry and imagination, showing him the way to intellectual, moral, and spiritual fulfilment. Krishan's quest for identity is thus not unique, but typical. The only way for an Indian of the Iron Age (Kaliyug) to find himself is not through blind imitation of the Englishman's lifestyle, "imitation Sahibhood," discarding the entire Indian tradition as moribund and defunct. The struggle for him does not have to be between tradition and modernity, as critics like M.K. Naik [in his Mulk Raj Anand, 1973] would have us believe. No, the real choice must be between a living tradition and a dead tradition, between what is life affirming and life denying. Anand's vision sees the English as catalytic agents who, by encouraging Indians to fashion themselves in the British image, in fact oblige them to go out in search of their lost souls. Indeed, the British presence in the fiction of Anand is itself a basic principle of structure, an indispensable instrument for embodying his philosophical and moral concerns.