Alienated coolie-boy/alien language: Reading the subaltern adolescent in Mulk Raj Anand'sCoolie

Abstract

The primary focus of this essay is on the representation of child labour in Mulk Raj Anand's Coolie (1936). I argue that the young-ness of Munoo, the coolie-boy is significant for understanding Anand's social critique of the colonial-capitalist machinery and its reliance upon the sub-waged labour of children and adolescents. It is limiting to read the novel as merely a social critique, however, as it also opens up crucial debates on what it means for an Indian writer writing in English to represent a young ostracised citizen-subject who can hear English and mimic its sounds without having access to an English education. Anand's use of an adolescent is thus significant as an early attempt at foregrounding regional disenfranchisement in English. Through the tropes of listening, seeing, and smelling, and Anand's selective translations and transliterations, I show why Munoo's adolescence matters: it provides a social commentary as well as enabling Anand to highlight the conundrum of representing Munoo's semi-literate, nonEnglish subjectivity into the English language.