Abstract
This essay is a focused study of V.S. Naipaul’s relationship to his colonial past and more specifically to the country of origin—India. It takes up some of his works for a close scrutiny in order to trace the shifts in his relationship. It is also concerned with the persisting self-image invested with a sense of inferiority which he projects in the negative relationship with the country of his origin. Incidentally, the larger questions of race relations and political power also work as an underlying structure and problematise the psychological impact of the constraints of colonialism. Why is the Naipaulian hero portrayed as a failure, as a passive negative being, why are the colonials mimic men? In travelogues and fiction alike, the negative inferiority burdened figure comes to life. In India: A Million Mutinies Now, does he see hope for the colonial in the local rebellions, uprisings and the dominance of anarchy as an evidence of energy? Is it finally a freedom from the shadow of colonialism? Or is it a failure to understand the local politics? One also needs to look for Naipaul’s ways of belonging and whether this awakened hero surfaces in other writings or does he gain fade into a negative image? Naipaul’ s search for belonging is itself a long winding journey, often initiated through a feeling of alienation and a predetermined desire to protect this alien self, in the hope that a new way of belonging will emerge. This paper attempts to unravel Naipaul’s relationship with his ancestral inheritance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
George Lamming, Pleasures of Exile (London: Michael Joseph), 1960.
- 2.
Refer, The Times of India, 18 July 1993. Also <http://postcolonialweb.org/Caribbean.naipaul/meena.html>.
- 3.
He has made several public pronouncements and given interviews to the press endorsing it. See Outlook (15 November 1999). Also see Mushirul Hasan’s ‘A Million Mutilations’, The Indian Express (27 November 1999). His outburst against Shashi Deshpande and Nayantara Sahgal at the Neemrana Conference in 2002, ‘Shared Histories: Issues of Colonialism and Relationship with the Past’ was also covered by the press. Sandhya Shukla, in her work India Abroad: Diasporic Cultures of Postwar America and England (Hyderabad: Orient, 2005), has commented on this and compared Naipaul with Jhumpa Lahiri. While Lahiri claims the past, Naipaul wishes to step out of it. Shukla observes that in Naipaul’s case ‘the Anglophilia … defies all the above’, that is, the past which needs to be seen through a complex range of perspectives. The concept of ‘Indianness’ is neither fixed, nor static. The various terms, ‘Bharatvarsha’ and ‘Hindustan’, also have had a wide range of shifts in their usage and the geographical land mass they evoke. Subaltern histories are myriad, but imperial histories are linear and selective, a single lens narration.
- 4.
The Mimic Men (1967, London: Picador) 2002; India: A Million Mutinies Now (London: Minerva Paperbacks, 1991).
- 5.
See Lamming, 178: ‘Can he change over from master – not to slave – but rather to an ordinary citizen who serves a community by his gifts of experience and skill … . Prospero must be transformed, rejuvenated and ultimately restored to his original conditions of a man among men.’
- 6.
Letters Between a Father and Son (London: Little Brown 1999).
- 7.
An Area of Darkness (1964, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1970).
- 8.
This extract has been used as an epigraph for the Picador Edition of The Mimic Men, 2002.
- 9.
Refer Frank Birbalsingh From Pillar to Post: The Indo-Caribbean Diaspora (Toronto: Tsar, 1997). Birbalsingh through several review articles and interviews have traced a history of East Indians which emphasises their struggles and aspirations. Comparing Bissoondath’s Digging Up the Mountains and Naipaul’s essay ‘Power to the Caribbean People’, he comments on the elements of sympathy in Bissoondath’s approach which are absent in Naipaul’s dismissal of the Caribbean futility (61–62). A question which a serious scholar may well ask is why has the multiculturalism of West Indies not been productive?
- 10.
The Middle Passage (1962, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967).
- 11.
Finding the Centre (1984, Harmandsworth: Penguin, 1985).
- 12.
Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).
- 13.
In this connection, it might be worthwhile to look again at The Mimic Men where one of the characters talks about the place of birth: ‘But where you are born is a funny thing. My great-grandfather and even my grandfather, they always talked about going back for good. They went. But they came back. You know, you are born in a place and you grow up there. You get to know the trees and plants: You will never know any other trees and plants like that … where you born, man, you born. And this island is a paradise, you will discover’ (185, emphasis added). I also draw the reader’s attention to the writing of Indian Muslims which discuss this repeatedly, even those who like Intizar Hussain migrated to Pakistan.
- 14.
In an article ‘Mass Movement or Elite Conspiracy? The Puzzle of Hindu Nationalism’, Amrita Basu discusses this and observes: ‘both approaches focus excessive attention on the principal actors … and neglect the political context. Hindu nationalism has, through RSS and VPH, made inroads into the social networking while the BJP acquires a political role. Political ambitions are behind the agenda.’ Basu’s analyses of the Mandal Commission implementation is that while the BJP could not openly take an anti-caste position, it also could not afford to alienate the upper caste, thus while it formally supported the recommendation at the national level, ‘it undermined them locally, its most effective response to Mandal was Hindu nationalism’ (Basu 55–58) in Making India Hindu. Ed. David Ludden (New Delhi: OUP, 2005).
- 15.
Any study of the extreme poverty of the tribals and peasants would reveal the root cause of such a movement. Again, the middle class youth was in search of a cause. How and when a movement loses balance is often rooted in other political moves.
- 16.
For more details refer Peter van der Veer’s paper ‘Writing Violence.’ Riots are often created artificially through the spread of rumours and management of antisocial elements and by creating a climate of distrust and fear. In Making India Hindu, 2005.
- 17.
Refer Bimal Prasad’s ‘Introduction’ and Swami Vivekananda’s speeches in the selection edited by Prasad, specially ‘Addresses at the Parliament of Religions’ (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt Ltd., 1994).
- 18.
Refer Veer Savarkar’s Presidential Addresses at Karnavati, Nagpur and Calcutta (1937–1939) which reflect a marked shift from his 1907 book The First War of Independence, wherein he acknowledged Muslim contribution. In his Presidential speeches, he shifted the stress from pitrbhumi to punymabhumi, i.e. from fatherland to holy land.
- 19.
Kandaswamy in her article refers to this interview given by Naipaul in August 2001, in The Literary Review. This is evident right from A House for Mr Biswas (1961) to Half A Life (2001). The last is specifically located in India and is concerned with caste and genes, purity and pollution.
- 20.
Sahgal in novel after novel, especially Rich Like Us (1985) and Lesser Breeds (2002), asks the question about the Indian share in the history of colonialism, and several other ‘postcolonial’ intellectuals are constantly subjecting the past to a critical analysis.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jain, J. (2017). Out of the Colonial Cocoon?. In: The Diaspora Writes Home. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4846-3_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4846-3_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-4845-6
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-4846-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)