Coolie: As a Social Tragedy

 Munoo, the main character of the novel Coolie is a victim of the exploitation of the poor by the rich in the early twentieth-century India. The novel concentrates on social evils. The tragic denial of human life to Munoo is the result of poverty, starvation, hunger and degradation. Anand's writing displays the violation of human rights of the oppressed and suppressed group of people during the pre-independent India.

Poor men are exploited by the capitalists. People are poor only because there is capitalism in the world. Munoo inherits from his father only poverty. He had heard of how the landlord of his village had seized his father's five acres of land because the interest on the mortgage covering the unpaid rent had not been forthcoming when the rains had been scanty and the harvests bad. And he knew how his father had died a slow death bitterness and disappointment and left his mother a penniless beggar to support a child in arms.

Poverty is Munoo's greatest curse. It is the root cause of his tragedy and also of several others like him. Poverty compels Munoo to be a domestic servant at the age of fourteen and to be exploited even by his uncle. The sub-accountant's wife, Bibi Uttam Kaur, underfeeds, nags and humiliates him at Sham Nagar mainly because he is a poor orphan boy. He is often abused or beaten. "There must be only two kinds of people in the world, rich and the poor," he concludes. His misery at Daulatur and his disease and drudgery at Simla are due to poverty.

The exploitation is presented on a much larger scale in the Bombay phase of Munoo's life. Here big industry and its owners are the forces of exploitation. Munoo takes up services in Sir George White's Cotton Mill and is exposed to the full force of industrial and colonial exploitation.

The final act of Munoo's tragedy commences when Mrs. Mainwaring, whose car knocks him down, takes him to Simla. As she wants a servant, his own wishes in the matter, of course, are of no consequence. She makes him her boy-servant, her rickshaw-puller and there are hints that he is exploited sexually also.

Capitalism, Colonialism and Industrialism are not the only forces which exploit Munoo and his like. Communalism too lends a hand. A worker's strike is easily broken by casual rumours of communal disturbances which divert the wrath of the labourers from the mill to the religious factions among themselves. The fires of communal hatred are further fanned by politicians, who have their own axe to grind. In the whole process, the exploited labourer loses his job, his livelihood and sometimes even his life.

The narration of Coolie is vigorous and sensitive. But Anand is quite choosy in matters of episodes. He has narrated only those episodes which show Munoo's economic exploitation and poverty. The whole life of Munoo is pathetic. The last scene of the novel is deeply pathetic. It is Munoo's death which relieves him from social cruelty, exploitation and poverty. The young man dies of tuberculosis and thereby ends his struggle for existence.

Coolie is a novel written with a purpose. It is a powerful indictment of modern capitalistic society and its tragic exploitation of the poor. The hero of the novel wants to live but the society does not allow him to live. He dies of exploitation. Humanism is the answer to the problem.

This novel is a tragic epic in prose. It is a social tragedy of the common man. Munoo is a tragic hero in this epic. His death is a symbol of the tragedy of millions of workers and coolies not in India but all over the world. It is not an individual tragedy but universal in its scope. In Sham Nagar and Daulatpur, Munoo maintains his identity and individuality but there are clear signs that it is gradually decreasing. In Bombay, he becomes a part of the toiling, struggling and starving masses. In this way, Anand universalized the individual tragedy of Munoo.

There are social forces which are responsible for the tragic end of Munoo. Actually, this novel is a study of the tragic effect of cruel inhuman social forces on an individual. These forces regularly contribute to Munoo’s tragedy. Moreover, he is conscious of the fact that these forces have been working against him since his childhood. Extreme poverty forces him to leave his native village at the age of fourteen. He never succeeds to return his village and at the age of sixteen, he dies in Simla. These social forces are beyond the control of Munoo. He has no choice before him. His destiny from the beginning is controlled by the social forces which victimize him. Munoo is an undeserved sufferer. He has done nothing to tolerate these tortures. His only fault is that he is an orphan and poor. He has no power to struggle with the evils of an exploiting economic social system. He silently surrenders and is cruelly crushed.  It is to the credit of Anand that raises the poor small boy not only to the status of the hero of this great tragedy but also imparts him grandeur and dignity of epical heights.