Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable and the Philosophy of Aesthetic Realism

Abstract

This universal ethical question needs to be discussed honestly and deeply by everyone, regardless of culture, for social justice and personal kindness to prevail: “What does a person deserve by being alive?” Asked by Eli Siegel, founder of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, this question provides us with an indispensable means for opposing the contempt that is the fundamental cause of injustice. Contempt Mr. Siegel defi ned as “the disposition in every person to think we will be for ourselves by making less of the outside world.” And its pervasive effects cannot be underestimated. Every person has a fi ght between the desire for contempt and the desire to respect people and the world. Contempt is very ordinary, it is present in everyday life. For instance when one person doesn't listen to another; or when we see someone in the street and think, “I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing shoes like that.” But when it predominates on a national scale, the results of making less are disastrous. In the caste system of India, contempt is institutionalized, as this article explains. It is related to caste-like institutions world-wide, including racism in my own country, the United States; and to the global horrors of economic injustice. The novel Untouchable, by Mulk Raj Anand, illustrates, from beginning to end, the hurtful manifestation of contempt in the caste system. The time period of the novel is the 1930s, but its truth continues today; and Anand shows in a young man named Bakha the pain of the Untouchable: unjustly despised and unjustly impoverished. The author of this article learned through his study of Aesthetic Realism that making himself “superior” by disparaging other people, including women and people of other ethnicities, made him despise himself and hurt every relationship he wanted to have. And this is representative of what contempt does to persons having it, everywhere. He changed, as he studied in Aesthetic Realism classes what a person deserves from me and how to have good will, the one opposition to contempt. He learned good will is not fl imsy or weak, it has a scientifi c basis and defi nition: it is “the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful.” People need, and want, good will in place of endemic contempt in Europe, Asia, America. There is a powerful, international desire in people today for a just world. Aesthetic Realism is the education that meets that desire and can make for a world that is fair to all people. That is why it is urgently necessary for persons to study its principles.