The schoolboys
The schoolboys are a collective character in the short story “The Mark of Vishnu” by Khushwant Singh. They attend the local high school, so they must be teenagers.
They are proud of the knowledge they acquire at school and look down on Gunga Ram for being uneducated. They constantly make fun of him and “belittle him with their new-fangled ideas” (p. 2, ll. 14-15). They are rude to him and humiliate him all the time. This shows they feel superior to Gunga Ram because they receive an education and Gunga Ram did not. They are also prejudiced, as they believe Gunga Ram does not deserve respect since he is only a servant: “It was the lot of a servant to be constantly squashed” (p. 2, ll. 13-14). This shows that, although they are educated, they sti...