Anand, Mulk Raj (1905-2004), was an Indian novelist, critic, and art historian who wrote in English. His realistic novels, such as The Coolie (1936) and the trilogy of The Village (1939), Across the Black Waters (1942), and The Sword and the Sickle (1942), examine the problems of poverty in India. They sympathetically portray lower-caste (class) life in the Punjab during India’s transition from an ancient orthodox society to a modern democracy. Anand’s fiction reflects his hatred of injustice, his skepticism toward religion, and his compassion for the unfortunate.
Anand planned a seven-volume series of autobiographical novels he called “The Seven Ages of Man.” He completed Seven Summers (1951), Morning Face (1968), Confessions of a Lover (1976), The Bubble (1984), and the first part of Little Plays of Mahatma Gandhi (1990). He also wrote the historical novel Private Life of an Indian Prince (1953, revised 1970).
A prolific cultural commentator, Anand wrote a number of nonfiction works on South Asian culture. They include The Hindu View of Art (1933), The Indian Theatre (1950), Is There Contemporary Indian Civilization? (1963), and Seven Little-Known Birds of the Inner Eye (1978).
Anand was born on Dec. 12, 1905, in Peshawar, Pakistan. He published his first novel, Untouchable (1935), in the United Kingdom. He was Tagore professor of literature and fine art at the University of Punjab from 1963 to 1966 and fine art chairman at the National Academy of Art in Delhi from 1965 to 1970. Anand died on Sept. 28, 2004.
