The temple stood challengingly before him. .. now he was afraid. The temple seemed to advance towards him like a monster, and to envelop him. He hesitated for a while. Then his will strengthened. With a sudden onslaught he had captured five steps of the fifteen that led to the door of the temple... his hands joined unconsciously, and his head hung in the worship of the unknown god. But a cry disturbed him, ‘Polluted, polluted, polluted.’ A shout rang through the air. He was completely unnerved. His eyes were covered with darkness. He couldn’t see anything. His tongue and throat were parched. He wanted to utter a cry, a cry of fear, but his voice failed him. He opened his mouth wide to speak. It was no use. Beads of sweat covered his forehead. He tried to raise himself from the awkward attitude of prostration, but
his limbs had no strength left in them.

“Polluted, polluted, polluted!” shouted the Brahmin below. The crowd above him took the cue and shouted after him, waving their hands, some in fear, others in anger, but all in a terrible orgy of excitement. One of the crowd struck out an individual note.

‘Get off the steps, you scavenger! Off with you! You have defiled our whole service! You have defiled our temple! Now you will have to pay for the purificatory ceremony. Get down, get away, you dog!’

‘You people have only been polluted from a distance’ Bakha heard the little priest shriek. ‘I have been defiled by contact.’

‘The distance, the distance!’ the worshippers from the top of the steps were shouting. ‘A temple can be polluted according to the Holy Books by a low- caste man coming within sixty-nine yards of it, and here he was actually on the steps, at the door. We are ruined.’

Extracts from the late Mulk Raj Anand (1905 - 2004)’s 1935 novel Untouchable. One of India’s celebrated novelists and a Humanist, Anand wrote this novel about one single day in the life of Bakha, a toilet cleaner who unintentionally bumps into an upper caste person.