I’m quite okay with what gets termed as ‘India Bashing’ (or, if for that matter, bashing of any other country) as often it is just a veil used by powerful to suppress criticism pointed at them but my one condition is that author should actually feel concerned for the people. That she/he is frustrated and seems to be frowning at the circumstances too is fine by me.What is not fine is when it is done by a author who seems to scorning at the people, feeling disgusted at them as if he belongs to some higher race.Now V. S Naipaul calls India a ‘difficult’ country. He has clear problems with Indian part of his Identity and he probably feels insulted by it. The tone he takes is not that of ‘We’ Indians but instead ‘they’ Indians’. Yet, he must write about it – because let us face it; a book about India is big bucks. The ‘India’ shown in this book must have suited to then western temperament, when US didn’t approve of India-Russia relations. I bet he actually came to India with a title already in his mind and saw only what suited his prejudice.He must began his book with Vijaynagar - (I)an ancient city-empire (II) which Indians have 'forgotten'. He will later contradict himself on both these counts (I) by condemning a politician for trying to look at country through its ancient past. (II) by blaming country of being struck in its past.Not only that, he must scorn at the country – draw a really dark picture of the country, should tell you that India somehow ‘deserved’ to be colonized, has failed as an independent country and that its ways are too old for society to progress. Poverty Let us began by admitting a lot of things he says about poverty of the country are true; although it is true they give only a partial image. For example, not all houses of country (even those of poor) are like those Slum dwellers of Mumbai as Naipaul would have you think. It is having you look at a man's armpit and then have you believe that this is what whole man look like. (Okay! I need to work with my metaphors.)He also forgets to mention that country was one of the richest country in eighteenth century – and that british rule drained it dry. It takes his genius to look at country’s poverty and not feels frustrated at the powerful who caused it. Not only he managed to do so without talking about british rule but also without talking about corruption prevalent in Indian government services. He would often distort the situation rather than making it clear; throw in random phrases the like ‘Hindu way of life’ and window dress the facts to make his case.For example, not all parts of India were poor – he just conveniently missed the regions of Panjab and Harayana which had shown miraculous growth in food production during years of green revolution and while he is quick to say co-operatives won’t work in India; he forgot to mention the incredible success of Amul co-operative which by the time he was writing actually turned into a country wide initiative ‘Operation Flood’.And let me tell you more, this ‘poor’ country with ‘no resources’ gave refuge to over ten million Bangladeshis during Bangladesh Liberation War just a few years before Naipaul wrote the book. Another fact missed by Naipaul. We sure don’t like to preach but it is not because we are bad at doing so. This time I’m going to preach a little. Compare Indian attitude back than to present European attitude towards a few lakhs of migrants –where governments decide how many people they are willing to take in (how easy it is to be indifferent to lives once we start talking in numbers!) and where those people will settle down. Again what he says of untouchibility is particularly moving and probably true but let me tell you, it is not like we were not doing something. He will tell you that constitution had just been suspended but won’t tell you the constitution he just talked about was framed by an untouchable. Also that untouchability was banned under same constitution – something British didn’t do in their reign extending two centuries. Hindu way of lifeHe puts all the blame on what he calls ‘Hindu way of life’ which in itself is the result of his own oriental bias. He is himself culprit of several fallacies he sees in others. There is just no Hindu way of life. You can’t expect one/eighth of the population of the world to be same in any way at all. His generalization come out of a character from R.K. Narayana – and no, not the famous opportunist ‘Raju’ from The Guide or ‘Swami’, the protagonist in Narayan’s children stories –those figures won’t suit the image he is trying to create He must choose an example of intellect, Mr. Sampath, accuse him of giving up on world he lives in and then generalize it for all Hindus. I mean all intellects are like that; look at Naipaul’s own life, is he not himself dependent on society for providing him with a lavish life style while all he does is just scorn at different cultures? Yet since Sampanth reads Sanskrit books while Naipaul reads western classics; it makes all the difference in the world. And even if he wants to call it the ‘Hindu way of life’; only a few people actually lived that kind of life. Indifference to PoliticsNor Hindus or Indians were particularly indifferent to who is rulling upon them. He actually generalizes this notion from what he read of RK Narayan’s uncle. It is funny, isn’t it? Yes, Emergency was the darkest spot in history of Indian democracy but even USA had its civil war. You can’t judge the book of my life from the chapter you walk in ( a quote from Goodreads)And Indians love talking about their Politics. Politics is one of six most talked about subjects (the other five being – marriage, opposite sex, cricket, religion, bollywood; information source: yours only) India has one of the highest voter turn-up; much, much higher than most first world countries despite the fact that socio-economic costs of voting for an individual are higher in India than in west. Indians and Hindus are not the sameActually this inter-changeable usage of words ‘Indians’ and ‘Hindus’ itself is wrong, criminally wrong. India has world’s third largest Musilm population; largest Sikh population and communities of several other religions. It is offensive to call a secular country or its people ‘Hindu’ – if Naipaul had actually looked at some of ‘Hindu’ philosophy he loves so talking so much about, he could have been surprised at diversity of thought in it.No, he even goes to anarchy of calling all Muslim ruler as foreigners; even when most of whom never left India all their lives. He can’t call himself ‘Indian’ when his ancestors have been out of India for a hundred years, yet he wants to raise an eye brow when some Muslim tells him that his family is Indian for five centuries. Dark AgesAll the last thousand years of the country are ‘dark’ ages according to him. Dark ages which have produced among architecture – Taj Mahal, Lal Quila, Bhakra Dam; among saints and philosophers – Madhvacharya, Kabir, Nanak, Gobind, Vivekananda; among artists – Surdas (he could make it rain through his music); Premchand, Tagore etc. This list could go on and on but I just don’t see the point.I'm not saying there were dark ages, there were - like other parts of world; but they sure never lasted beyond a couple of centuries. The Western IdeasNow one last question - do you ever saw an Indian saying ‘Zero’ is an Indian invention; Westerners don’t know how to use it or they must inhibit use of what is a foreign idea to them? No? Then why do everybody keep saying democracy won’t work in East; that Judiciary is a western concept and so on? Not only that, but you must give Nobel Prize to people for saying that. BTW, Democracy had actually failed in Germany and Italy just a few decades back. It had also failed in country of its origion, France, just a few years after it was first established. GandhismAt one point Naipaul will have you believe a politician's statement that India had once again turn into Importer of foodgrains (which is not true) at face value just because he is gandhian. Later he is questioning gandhian politics itself after Gandhi's death. You can't have an apple and eat it too. He is scarcastic when told that Gandhi presented himself in dhoti to English president to show the world India's poverty. Naipaul's thoughts - 'as if they didn't know it already'. And what is Naipaul himself doing if I may ask? Is he not selling India's poverty? It is not like Naipaul is here to offer some solutions. No he won’t even pretend to. According to him, India can’t be helped. I mean we don't need to import Naipaul for this, we have enough of those pessimistic useless uncles of our own, to tell us that.Last time I checked, India was world’s second fastest growing economy. Take that Naipaul!
This collection of V.S. Naipaul's essays on India was finished in 1976, almost thirty years ago. Much has happened in India since then. For one thing, the economy has expanded rapidly, and India will soon supplant Japan as the world's third largest economy. Naipaul has continued to write about India, and this reviewer must now to on to read his more recent offerings. Still, as a scathing critique of India at a particular moment in time, when the Gandhian political tradition still continued to define and stifle India, this book is a masterpiece. Naipaul sees India as locked in infantile self-absorption, unable to find an ideology suited to the challenges of the modern world. Gandhi may have provided the energy for India finally to escape British colonialism, but his romantic attachment to simplicity and a highly romanticized view of the Indian countryside froze Indian politics and intellectual life for decades. Naipaul argues that Hinduism, to which Gandhi always reverts, provides a vision that turns everything into a kind of cosmic theater where any type of revolutionary seriousness becomes next to impossible. One memorable quotation in Naipaul's book is from a young woman who returns to India from abroad. When asked what she saw at the moment of arrival, "she said mystically, blankly, and with truth, 'I see people having their being'" (p.26). What hope is there for such a vision, Naipaul argues on page after powerful page, except "magic, the past, the death of the intellect, spirituality annulling the civilization out of which it issues, India swallowing its own tail" (p. 153).
Do You like book India: A Wounded Civilization (2003)?
Naipul explains India, sort of. A horribly critical book, quite racist (in the sense of making broad, derogatory generalizations about an entire people, using small amounts of evidence or even just hearsay), bordering on the vitriol of a KKK pamphlet. And yet, a lot of what Naipaul points out seems correct. He's an extremely sharp observer and doesn't have to make a big production out of how absurd some Indian policies are; he makes their absurdity come across by just describing them. So he does make his point, and yet he does it so smugly, so self-assured, without reservation, that the criticism comes too hard. The section where, for example, Naipaul is comparing individual Indians' thought to children's thought, on the basis of what some Uncle Tom of an Indian psychiatrist has reported to him, is repugnant. But when Naipaul tells about an Indian attempt to "modernize" the bullock-cart or peasants' tools, he makes it clear why he called that chapter "A Defect of Vision." He must have had a bad time in India.
—Ensiform
In a concise but powerful essay, Naipul outlines the decay he sees in 1970s Indian society. His identification of a pervasive, introspective, backwards-looking mentality within this society, and its role in contributing to societal decay, is a little ambitious. I have trouble believing any "Indian mentality", however broadly defined, can apply to a population of more than one billion people and still have any descriptive power. Interestingly, Naipul wrote this essay during a rather dark time in modern Indian history. An Emergency was declared, the constitution was suspended; undoubtedly, the future seemed bleak. Certainly poverty is still rampant, and caste and religious discrimination still exist, but I wonder if Naipul would modify his thesis considering the steps forward India has made in terms of economic liberalization and (slightly) more transparent politics over the last 20 years.
—Rajiv Devanagondi
Among the three books Naipaul has written on India (Area Of Darkness, A Wounded Civilisation and third, A Million Mutinies Now), this one has to be the most scathing of them all. While the other two are travelogues in nature, A Wounded Civilisation is more of a critique - an analysis. Since the book is so academic in nature, it's really difficult to absorb everything he says in one reading - this most certainly needs to be revisited to analyse clearly the various points the author raises.As expected, it's the cynical, fierce side of Naipaul you get to see, exposing India for all that ails it. Predictably, he doesn’t give the country an inch.The book was written post the Emergency (1975) and Naipaul makes a persuasive argument about how the country's political collapse is really the least of its concerns. He makes a case for how the Hindi way of life (with its customs, beliefs, myths, mysticism and orthodoxy) prevents the country from ever shedding the burden of its past and idea of the 'self'. This, he believes, has crippled Indians and their intellectual capacities, leading to them seeing everything from the prism of their own limited mental scape. The spirit of science and enquiry cannot exist amidst such primitivism, he says.Interesting, Naipaul uses his favourite writer R K Narayan's works to delve into the deep-rooted psychological and attitudinal problems that India itself suffers from.He's critical about some aspects about Gandhism and how its result was the deification of poverty itself. Naipaul is especially critical of avid Gandhian Vinoba Bhave, who he says, created a useless archaic model of Gandhi's legacy.All in all, this book is a rather intriguing one on many fronts, and lends itself to a second read.www.sandyi.blogspot.com
—Sandhya
