Untouchable: Pages 43–73 Summary & Analysis

As he keeps walking through the town, Bakha spots an old bull; the bull is belching, and both his dung and his breath have a foul stench. Bakha thinks back to the many hungry cows he has seen, browsing stalls at the bazaar and snacking on whatever food they can get. But higher-caste Hindus always treat these bulls with respect, a religious custom that Bakha does not quite understand. Moreover, if bulls are so sacred, Bakha wonders, then why are they never well-fed?

Bakha tries to keep sweeping, ignoring his environment, but every so often the stench of decaying vegetables or the heat of the day makes this task feel impossible. Bakha’s only relief comes when he turns off onto a quiet street and sees a shop with lots of European instruments. The thought of the British military band comforts Bakha, and he is able to get some distance from the events of the morning.

Bakha sees a jewelry stand, but—because he knows that the English hate jewelry—he does not admire any of the wares there. Bakha’s eyes linger on a picture of a barely dressed Englishwoman until the shopkeeper makes him leave. Though Bakha continues to announce his presence, people are too distracted by the various things for sale: wedding bangles and fancy pieces of cloth.

Finally, Bakha arrives at the temple. As always, he finds himself amazed by the intricate carvings of the gods with so many heads and arms. Bakha wonders what the various engravings on the temple’s outer walls mean; he has been taught to revere these figures, but he has never learned their significance, and because he cannot read, he cannot experience the Hindu scriptures for himself. A crowd of worshippers streams into the temple, and Bakha is careful to keep his distance. 

Bakha begins to hear prayers to Rama and Kali and Krishna and Hanuman. Suddenly, consumed by curiosity, he decides to sneak into the temple so he can understand what is going on. In a rush, he climbs the steps, hiding out in a corner near the entrance. Now Bakha can see the service: he takes in the half-naked priest at the front of the room, and then the chorus of worshippers, raising their voices to sing “Sri Ram Chandar ki Jai (Long live the Great God Ram).”

Suddenly, Bakha is disturbed to hear the Pundit Kali Nath cry out “polluted, polluted, polluted.” Bakha does not know what the cause of the cry is, though in his anxiety, he accidentally shows himself (“I have been seen,” he thinks, “undone”). Worse still, Bakha now realizes that the “polluting” figure in question is Sohini. He runs out of the temple, while the worshippers fret that they have been polluted by the sweeper. But the Pundit is even more panicked, asserting, “I have been defiled by contact.”

The crowd continues to wail, noting that “a temple can be polluted according to the Holy Books by a low-caste man coming within sixty-nine yards”; Bakha has been inside the doors. No one else notices Sohini, who quietly reunites with her older brother. Through tears, Sohini explains that the Pundit tried to touch her inappropriately. It was only when she refused his advances that the Pundit cried “polluted.”

Bakha is livid, threatening to kill the hypocritical Brahmin. Bakha wants to know exactly what the priest did to Sohini, and she explains that he teased her and tried to touch her breasts. Before Bakha can do anything rash, Sohini calls him away from the temple. Bakha takes one last look at the imposing carvings, feeling a sense of real fear at the sight of these larger-than-life gods. 

As Bakha and Sohini walk away, Bakha reflects on his sister’s beauty; he envies any man who might one day become her husband. Bakha tries to remind himself that Sohini is his sister, but he knows that his attraction remains. To distract himself, he turns his thoughts back to the Pundit. For the first time, he feels desperate to retaliate. This intense emotion makes him recall his long-ago peasant ancestors, still lower class but much freer than Bakha’s family is now.

On the one hand, Bakha feels like “a tiger at bay”; on the other hand, he knows that any revolt would be fruitless. Not knowing what else to do, Bakha puts his arm around Sohini and encourages her to go home. She assents, and Bakha continues along his journey, sweeping the street as he goes.

Though his hunger is dampened by his frustration, Bakha decides to go ask for food on a quiet side street. As he walks, Bakha finds himself overcome with anger at the various dogs and cows, with their dirt and their excrement. At first, the sound of some blacksmiths hammering copper provides a welcoming distraction, but gradually, the sound makes Bakha feel even more overwhelmed. Eventually, Bakha finds a house, and he calls up asking for “bread for the sweeper.” 

Bakha continues going house to house asking for bread, but no one seems to hear him. Finally, hungry and exhausted, Bakha sinks onto some steps and falls into a kind of half-sleep. He has a series of strange dreams: he imagines traveling through a city, and then standing on a railway platform as freight trains filled with timber pass him. The dream gets darker, and he starts to imagine that he can hear someone getting murdered.

Now, Bakha’s dream takes him through a small village, where carts get stuck in the mud and cows wander everywhere. A little girl stands outside a sweet shop, and a silversmith places a burning ember in her hand. Bakha then pictures himself in a variety of places he has never been before: in a school room, at a beautiful palace, and at a burning-ground for human bodies. At that moment, Bakha is woken up by a cry: there is a holy man near him asking for bread. Though Bakha knows that the holy man will be served first, he hopes this holy man will get enough attention that he, too, will soon get some food.

One of the local women goes to give the holy man some bread, but she is stopped short in her tracks when she notices that Bakha is on her steps. The local woman starts screaming at Bakha, telling him he has defiled her home. She then gives the holy man a great deal of food—rice and vegetables and curry—and begs him to help her tend her sick child. The holy man promises to come back with some healing herbs. Before Bakha can scurry away, the local woman tells him that she hopes he will die.

At that moment, the local woman’s son insists that he needs to go to the bathroom. The woman instructs him to go on the street as they will not have time to clean the indoor privy that day—and “the sweeper will clear it away.” As the little boy relieves himself, the local woman throws bread for Bakha onto the ground. Bakha cannot bring himself to the clean the drain, so he walks away, prompting the local woman to reflect that the outcastes are “getting more and more uppish.”

Bakha cannot stop feeling rage at the events of this morning, now made worse by the local woman’s insults. Though his stomach grumbles, Bakha is anxious about what Lakha will say if he only returns home with two small chapatis (breads). And Bakha worries that if his father is angry about the bread, he will push to know what happened between Sohini and the priest, which he knows Sohini would rather keep private. Bakha resents that his father “always takes sides with the others. Never with his own family.”

When Bakha returns to his street, he sees that many of the outcastes are outside; since none of them have lights in their homes, they try to take in the sun while they can. Bakha heads indoors, noting how messy the kitchen has been ever since his mother died. But Sohini has too much to do outside of the house to worry about housework, and water is so scarce anyway. Sadly, Bakha feels that the concepts of sanitation and cleanliness have lost meaning to his family.

Though Lakha looks peaceful, perhaps because he has had a restful day at home, he still chastises Bakha about the lack of food. Lakha hopes that Rakha will return home with better treats; as he waits, he lets his mind wander to the sweets and pickles and fried breads he used to have at wedding celebrations. Lakha loved wedding food so much that he would encourage weddings anytime he could. And as the head sweeper, Lakha was in charge of the distribution of snacks, meaning his wife’s cabinets were never empty.

When Bakha protests that he doesn’t know the townspeople well enough to beg from them, Lakha points out that Bakha will have to work for these people for the rest of his life. Bakha is terrified by this idea. Instead, he dreams of working in the barracks—the glimpse of the Tommies’ world has filled him both with a sense of childlike wonder and a hatred for his own cramped quarters. English dress, to Bakha, represents a “new world” of his own making, allowing him to be a “pioneer in his own way.”

Lakha can tell that something is upsetting his son. Against his better judgment, Bakha tells his father about the touched man. But rather than offering sympathy, Lakha scolds his son, asking if he announced his approach. “Why weren’t you more careful?” he asks. Bakha insists that the Untouchables get abused whether they shout warnings or not, but Lakha disagrees, insisting that the higher-caste Hindus “are our masters.” Moreover, Lakha knows that the police would offer no protection if Bakha were ever to spar with higher-caste folks.

To calm his son, Lakha tells a story from his own youth. When Bakha was a baby, he had fallen deathly ill. Lakha was desperate to get medicine, but he was forbidden from going into the shop, and none of the higher-caste Hindus who went in would help him. After an hour of waiting, Lakha ran back home empty-handed, fearing that his baby Bakha was dying. 

When Lakha saw just how dire Bakha’s condition was, he rushed back to the shop and went straight inside, not caring that it violated all the rules. The higher-caste Hindus shouted at Lakha to leave because he was polluting everything, and the Hakim Sahib (doctor) initially refused to help Lakha. But Lakha pleaded with him, vowing that if the Hakim Sahib was compassionate enough now to help with Bakha, he could exact any punishment he wanted later. At that moment, Bakha’s uncle rushed in, announcing that the baby was dying.

Lakha returned home, hopeless—but a few minutes later, the Hakim Sahib showed up at the family’s door with medicine in tow, and Bakha was saved. Though Bakha points out that he might have died, Lakha uses this story as evidence that many of the higher-caste Hindus are kind. Bakha notices that his father “had never throughout this narrative renounced his deep-rooted sense of inferiority and the docile acceptance of the laws of fate.”

Having finished his story, Lakha demands food. Bakha feels a sense of resentment that his father puts his own needs first, especially since Lakha has done nothing all day. Fortunately, before Lakha can eat all of the chapatis Bakha has collected, Rakha comes home. Bakha studies his little brother, with his strange face shape and his “not-there” eyes. The only sign of Rakha’s intelligence, Bakha decides, lies in his impish ears. Unlike Bakha, Rakha is “a true child of the outcaste colony”; he embraces the dark and the bugs and the trash heaps.

Rakha drops the food on the ground and immediately begins eating, horrifying Bakha with his refusal to even wash his hands. Bakha tastes a damp morsel, but then he pictures the Tommies washing their hands over the food that his family now devours. Suddenly too disgusted to continue eating, Bakha stands. To explain his sudden change of heart to Lakha, Bakha declares that he is going to Ram Charan’s sister’s wedding.