Mulk Raj Anand, the father of the Indian novel in English, died yesterday from pneumonia aged 99.

Born in what is now the Pakistani city of Peshawar, Anand was educated in Cambridge and London. His close friends included George Orwell and Henry Miller.

EM Forster wrote the introduction to Anand's widely acclaimed 1935 novel, Untouchable, which examined India's lowest castes, and, like his seminal work, Coolie, a dark tale of a teenage child labourer who dies of TB, criticised India's social hierarchy and Britain's colonisation of the country.

A left-wing idealist in his youth, Anand fought in the Spanish civil war. He wrote prolifically on the life of Marx, Indian art and Aesop's fables. He is survived by his wife and daughter.