The description of a hockey match in Mulk Raj Anand’s novel “Untouchable” is interesting. We come to know about it when Bakha meets his friends, Chota and Ram charan, and his way to town. The two sons of the Burrababu of the cantonment also joint them and we learn that the match will be played the same afternoon. The two teams that they are to play are the 31st Punjabi and boys of the 38 Dogras. The boys of 38 Dogras are most the son of untouchables who have to depend on the generally of the Burrababu’s son for the loan of a stick every evening for practice. They are so poor that they cannot have their own hockey stick. When the match begins Bakha scores a goal after that there is a long fight with stone that ends when a player’s younger brother gets hurt. Bakha picks up the young boy and rushes him home, only to have the boy’s mother accuse him of killing her son.
The hockey match episode completes the Indian scene in the novel thus fulfill the novelist’s socialistic aims.
This episode shows how the people of the higher classes and castes in India abuse and harass the people of the lower class. The episode also provides a comic interlude. Otherwise it is grim and painful story.