In attacking Indian institutions, Anand employs, in his novels, direct and indirect means. Direct assault occurs in the author's own commentaries and, in narrative or dramatic framework, as discussion and debate between characters or monologue and soliloquy of single characters. Indirect attacks appear in plots, settings, situations, episodes, above all in characterizations, as these are affected by Indian institutions.

Major social institutions which Anand portrays as wholly or partially damaging to individual human persons are caste, religion, aspects of sex and marriage, and system of education. (p. 44)

Anand's novels present caste as only one element 'in the complex texture of social and economic particularism and inequality in Indian society.' The author nevertheless sees this system as crucial, 'tying together all the other elements into a rigid structure.' At every level of society the characters more or less precisely understand their caste positions and, except for the...