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NOBEL LAUREATE NAIPAUL AND INDIAtc "NOBEL LAUREATE NAIPAUL AND INDIA"

The Swedish Academy鈥檚 citation for the Nobel Prize to V.S.Naipaul in December, 2001 said that he was given the award 鈥渇or having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories鈥�.聽 While scrutinizing the several suppressed Third World histories, Naipaul has been rediscovering his own ancestral Indian civilization. Certainly India has a special place in his mind.聽 In his acceptance speech, Naipaul said: 鈥淚 was an intuitive writer.聽 That was so, and that remains so now, when I am nearly at the end鈥�I had to do the books I did because there were no books about those subjects.聽 I had to clear up my world, elucidate it, for myself鈥�. Naipaul鈥檚 quest over the decades has been for his own self.聽 What is unique about the travel books dealing with his peregrinations across the continents has been his scrutiny of men and matters with an eagle-like sharp vision.聽 The traveller鈥檚 curiosity to explore new cultures is coupled with the novelist鈥檚 idealizing instinct.

Naipaul鈥檚 continuing travels to the enigma that is India have been his attempts at an 鈥渁rrival鈥� in the course of his search for an ancestral culture that has given him inner strength, an 鈥渁rrival鈥� different from the one in England.聽

In his Foreword to India: A Wounded Civilization, Naipaul says: 鈥淚ndia is for me a difficult country.聽 It isn鈥檛 my home and cannot be my home; and yet I cannot reject it or be indifferent to it; I cannot travel only for the sights.聽 I am at once too close and too far鈥�. Nevertheless, he is not caught in 鈥渁 love-hate relationship with Hinduism,鈥� as John Thieme puts it.聽 In fact, he is engaged in coming to terms with the idea or reality that is Hindu India.聽 Having heard of the ancient civilization of the country of his forefathers, Naipaul visited India for the first time in 1962.聽 And the visit led to the writing of the controversial book An Area of Darkness.聽 At Port of Spain in Trinidad he had been watching the Hindu rituals in his family with ironic detachment. On his first visit to the country from where his family customs and traditions originated, he was appalled by the squalor and poverty as well as hypocrisy, political corruption, and official apathy around.聽 Basic to Naipaul鈥檚 sense of shock had been his concern for the plight for common man. Despite decades of independence, the detestable aspects of public life in the country questioned by Naipaul still persist.聽 The real Naipaul, however, emerges only on a holistic assessment of the man and his writings, particularly in the light of his statements on An Area of Darkness during his recent visits to India and a re-reading of the book.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Naipaul said: 鈥淚 was surrounded by areas of darkness鈥�.聽 These areas of darkness might be in the Third World countries he had been trying to explore or in his own psyche. Leon Gottfield refers to the 鈥減ersonal complexity鈥� of An Area of Darkness, 鈥渢he darkness in India echoing the darkness within himself.鈥� The real 鈥渄arkness鈥� is in his own self which he has been trying to penetrate in his attempts to see the light coming down the ages.

Whatever the Westernized Naipaul鈥檚 attitude to Africa and other Third-World countries generally, his reaction to the land of his ancestors has been different.聽 He has been trying to see the light coming from ancient times through the haze. India has been a deep-seated emotional problem for him and he is still trying to fully comprehend the mystery.

In Roots, Alex Haley, a Black American, goes to Africa in search of the origin of his ancestor taken to America as a slave.聽 Although a free American citizen now, Haley feels different from the white Americans.聽 While Naipaul鈥檚 Hindu Brahmin forefathers went to Trinidad from Uttar Pradesh in India as indentured labourers, Haley鈥檚 African Negro forebears had been forcibly brought by the Whites to America as slaves. Naipaul鈥檚 people preserved their Hindu Brahmin customs and traditions.聽 Naipaul had been deeply attached to his family.聽 His ironic detachment notwithstanding, he has been on a quest for his true self聽 rooted in the ancestral culture in India from where the Hindu rituals and traditions practised by his elders at home in Port of Spain originated.聽 It has indeed been a rediscovery of the cultural moorings that have made India a stable nation despite all the upheavals over the centuries.聽 In fact, in An Area of Darkness, Naipaul regrets what he and his family in Trinidad have missed, living in an 鈥渁lienness鈥� into which they got absorbed.

Naipaul felt that even by the time of his first visit to India, the 鈥減hilosophy of despair, leading to passivity, detachment, acceptance,鈥� had also been his on account of his ancestry.聽 It is not what John Thieme calls 鈥渢he vehement anti-Hinduism of An Area of Darkness and India: A Wounded Civilization鈥� but a recognition on Naipaul鈥檚 part of the preeminence of the ancient Hindu civilization. He expressed the deep pain experienced by him on actually observing the way such a civilization was vandalized.

Philip Gourevitch refers to the concluding chapter in Naipaul鈥檚 The Enigma of Arrival concerning death and human mystery and the author鈥檚 recounting of the brief discourse by a distant-in-law on ancestral history at the time of his sister鈥檚 funeral. Naipaul reminisces:聽 鈥淢en need history; it helps them to have an idea of who they are.聽 But history, like sanctity, can reside in the heart; it is enough that there is something there.鈥澛� In the course of his cultural explorations across the continents, with history in his heart, Naipaul looks to his ancestral land as an answer to the spiritual problems of contemporary life.

In his fiction, as in his non-fiction, it is not 鈥渞epudiation鈥� of Hindu ground but a quest for his Hindu self that Naipaul is engaged in, as evident from his recent statements.聽 For Ralph Singh, his Hindu self is inescapable.聽 As he says:
I no longer yearn for ideal landscape and no longer wish to know the god of the city.聽 This does not strike me as less.聽 I feel, instead, I have lived through attachment and freed myself from one cycle of events.聽 It gives me joy to find that in so doing I have also fulfilled the fourfold division of life prescribed by our Aryan ancestors.聽 I have been student, householder and man of affairs, recluse.

Unlike ending up with conflict as his characters like Ralph Singh, Ganesh or Biswas, Naipaul has been striving to achieve a resolution of the tension by means of his repeated visits to India and rethinking about the country.

As Bruce Bawer says, 鈥淎t the center of Naipaul oeuvre lies a profound irony.聽 It was Western colonialism that provided him with his first experiences of indignity and exploitation and planted in him a lifelong feeling of dislocation and an ire that continues to burn in his soul鈥�.聽 Naipaul has been striving to overcome the feeling of dislocation.聽 As Malcolm Jones says: 鈥淗e depicts colonialism and its aftermath.聽 But he also sneers at the formerly colonized鈥�.聽 However, as his reaction during the recent meeting at Neemrana Fort makes it evident, Naipaul has recognized the adverse effects of colonialism on the Third World cultures.聽 Instead of postcolonial perspective, he has the historical as a source of inner strength, since he is engrossed with issues of ancestral origins.聽 As he says in A Way in the World.聽 鈥淲e cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves鈥�.

Outside the formal sessions of the Neemrana meet, other Indian writers were said to have been apprehensive of facing Naipaul: 鈥淗e does not suffer 鈥︹�� gladly and it鈥檚 hard to tell who or what will irritate him鈥�. While Kushwant Singh was seen frequently in this company, other writers 鈥渒ept a wary distance from the irascible Nobel Laureate, speaking only when he summoned them for a conversation鈥�.聽 This is due to Naipaul鈥檚 famously forbidding, admonitory presence, what Saul Bellow called his 鈥渆agle-on-the-orage聽 鈥�.ook鈥� on his first meeting in London with Naipaul in the winter of 1982.聽 In his writings as well as his personal interaction with people, Naipaul is known as irascible and unpredictable.聽 He has immense moral courage and intellectual honesty with unswerving literary integrity and a high degree of sophistication.

In his travel books, there is a unique blend of fact and fiction and the real people he encountered would sometimes look like fictional characters, just as a fictional characters in his novels would come alive as real people.

The 鈥減eople鈥� that Naipaul encountered provided the themes for his writings which were more than the pedestrain reporting of a journalist. As he says, 鈥淧eople are responding to the same political or religious and cultural pressures.聽 The writer has only to listen very carefully and with a clear heart to what people say to him, and the next question, and the next鈥�. In Naipaul鈥檚 view, history is woven around people, it is a kind聽 or order, despite occasional disorder.聽 As Stephen Schiff says, 鈥淔or him, the knowledge of history is a humanizing influence鈥攈umanizing in the sense of make humans鈥�.聽 Whether dealing with Africa and the Third World countries or the Caribbean, Naipaul鈥檚 travel writings are imbued with such concern for the humane. He tells Stephen Schiff:

Some people write on simple things.聽 The thing is, I am not a simple man.聽 I have an interesting mind, a very analytical mind. And what I say tends to be interesting. Also very true. That鈥檚 all that I can do about it.聽 I can鈥檛 lie.聽 I can鈥檛 serve a cause. I鈥檋ave never served a cause.聽 A cause always corrupts.
This is indeed Naipaul鈥檚 credo as a travel writer, forthright and without advocating any cause. Being intellectually honest and without narrow sentimentality, he eminently succeeds in analysing聽 men and matters with detachment.

While Khushwant Singh hailed the award of the Nobel Prize to Naipaul, Gita Hariharan questioned it: Naipaul looks with disdain at the Islamic culture from Iran to Indonesia. As he says in Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples, 鈥淐onverted peoples have to strip themselves of their past; of converted peoples nothing is required but the purest faith (if such a thing can be arrived at), Islam, submission.聽 It is the most uncompromising kind of imperialism鈥�.聽 Naipaul鈥檚 assertion is a result of his conviction that genuine cultural stability comes from a respect for the past.

According to Malcolm Jones, Naipaul 鈥渞eaffirmed his opinions regarding Islam at a reading in October 2001 in London, condemning what he called Islam鈥檚 鈥楥alamitous effect鈥� 鈥� Elaborating, Naipaul is reported to have said: 鈥淭o be converted, you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say, 鈥楳y ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn鈥檛 matter鈥�.鈥澛� Naipaul鈥檚 views result from an unswerving faith in his own ancestral culture.聽
Naipaul鈥檚 widening comprehension of the richness and complexity of the Indian civilization is evident.聽 The 鈥渕illion mutinies鈥� that he recognizes in the country have been resurgence of the Indian civilization that flourished even before the Western countries were civilized.聽 As in An Area of Darkness, in India: A Wounded Civilization too he expresses agony at the chaos around.聽 As he says,With Independence and growth, chaos and a loss of faith, India was awakening to its distress and the cruelties that had always lain below its apparent stability, its capacity simply for going on. Not every one was content simply to have his being.聽 The old equilibrium had gone, and at the moment all was chaos.聽 But, out of this chaos, out of the crumbling of the old Hindu system, and the spirit of rejection, India was learning new ways of seeing and feeling.

Naipaul sees the wounds inflicted on the Indian civilization and the process of its recuperation.聽 As he says, he grew up in Trinidad with two ideas of India: the private and personal, the India or the anxiety about where the migrant Indians had come from was like a neurosis.聽 And the second idea of India was one of the independence movement, the India of the great civilization and the great classical past.聽 This second idea, Naipaul says, was an aspect of their identify, the community identity they had developed in the multi-recial Trinidad (7-8).

In The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P. Huntington argues that the 鈥渞ivalry of the superpowers is replaced by the clash of civilization鈥�.聽 While identifying six or seven civilizations, Huntington perceives a clash between the two proselytizing religions of Christianity and Islam.聽 These proselytizing religions have taken undue advantage of the tolerance of the more ancient civilization of Hinduism in India.聽 In the present 鈥渃lash of civilization鈥� on the subcontinent, India is poised to regain much of the cultural richness which is the real source of intellectual and spiritual strength for the country now emerging as a global power.

It is the shock-absorbing nature of Hinduism with its Karma doctrine and the familial bonds which Naipaul recognizes as central to the culture of his ancestors.聽 He continues to be deeply attached to his family in Port of Spain, looking to the distant ancestry.聽 In An Area of Darkness as well as some of his subsequent publications and statements in India, Naipaul acknowledges the basic strength of the Indian mind which is also his own.聽 And this indeed has been his cultural rediscovery in the course of his Indian odyssey.