Published Paper Details:

Beginning of the Modernity in India can be traced back to the date when the Indians, irrespective of sex, age and caste, gathered together alongside the railway route to watch the first railway running between Bombay to Thane. This is the time, approach or curiosity which compelled the Indians to forget their caste, age and gender for a while consciously to watch the train. Many writers have attacked the social evils prevalent as customs in Indian society in their writing but they were the social reformers. Mulk Raj Anand was basically a writer who from his childhood, was witnessing the practices and the conflict between the powerful and powerless. The short story, The Barber's Trade Union focuses on the revolt of a barber boy against the socially affluent people of his village who decline their shaving and hair cutting by his hands. The chief aim of the paper is to study the short story in the light of modernity. The revolt of the protagonist; writer's support to him in all his plans, lead to establishment of the barbers' union. In the end of the story, the protagonist forms a trade union so that the villagers come to the barbers for shaving and cutting their hair. Earlier the landlord, Panditji, and the jagirdar would ask Chandu to dance to their tune, now Chandu changed the situation in such a way that the prominent people in the village started to visit him or the other barbers for shaving or for cutting their hair.