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THE ECONOMIC WEEKLY

S NAIPAUL'S grandfather left hishome in Uttar Pradesh for Trini

dad as an indentured labourer. Thegrandson was born and brought up inTrinidad, as part of a Hindu family,went to school, learnt his letters wellenough to become, in time, a man ofletters and winner of the HawthorndenPrize, the, Somerest Maugham Aw ard ,the Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize andthe Phoneix ,Trust Award. Some timein 1963 he returned to the land of hisancestors to see how it looked like at

close quarters and how the natives werefaring. He found the natives defecatingeverywhere, constitutionally incapableof doing a hard day's work, pereniallyengaged' in li tiga tion and, when n otbowing low to their superiors, engagedin kicking the underdog. Like DomMoraes, another native son who wasso unhappy with India that he tookBritish citizenship and nationality,friend Naipaul was so shocked by thethings he saw that he rolled up hissleeves and concentrated on the typewriter. The result is "An Area ofDarkness", aptly sub-titled "An Experience of India".

Where is the Darkness?

It is hard to find out whether theafore-mentioned area of darkness is inIndia or in Naipaul's mind, The subtitle is more revealing. It says "An Experience", mercifully reminding thereader that many other experiences areavailable and that he should not runaway with the feeling that the authorhad experienced the experience of allexperiences. For which re-assurance, wewil l have to be grateful.

" A n Area of Darkness" can be compared to two other books of the samegenre: Katherine Mayo's "Mother India" and Beverley Nichol's "Verdict onIndia". Miss Mayo was an Americanpublicist whose book became a bestseller. It was described by MahatmaGandhi as a "Gutter Inspector's Report" and it was, of course, just that.But while Indians revelled in this description, they conveniently forgot thattheir land was full of gutters that stankto the high heavens and needed cleansing. Whatever might have been Miss

Mayo's original intentions in wri tingher book, she revealed to Indians whatmany of them were not willing to see.

The experience was painful but had asalutary effect. Wh ile many sensitiveIndians wri thed under Miss Mayo'spowerful microscope, some had theboldness to sit up and go to work onthe filth around them. Even if MissMayo did not mean to, she did India alot of good.

Miss Mayo wrote her book in thetwenties when India was waging herstruggle for independence; two decadeslater, when the independence strugglewas at its height, the British foundanother publicist, in the person of Beverley Nichols, to attack India. Nicholswas a self-proclaimed propagandist andhe had been commissioned to write abook that could be distributed in thewestern world in order to prove thatIndians were not ready for freedom.Nichols, of course, had even less knowledge about India and Indian culturethan Miss Mayo; among his many greatdiscoveries was that Indians had noword for "Thank You". It shocked hiscultured heart. It incidentally revealedhow little he knew of the Indian mind,

but then, how cou ld the westerner judge?

Katherine Mayo had her detractors.Naturally. Kanhaiyalal Gauba wrote hismonumental "Uncle Sham", anothergutter inspector's report that was intended to repay the lady in the samecoin. Beverley Nichols too was answered capably by "Judge or Judas?". Both"Uncle Sham" and "Judge or Judas?"were written more in anger than insorrow. Neither "Moth er Ind ia" nor"Verdict on India" were in any sensetrue sociological studies; they were not

written by dispassionate persons withan eye for reform. Nor were they written against a background of scholasticism. Miss Mayo was an American andBeverley Nichols was a British hackwriter.

Profitable Shock"An Area of Darkness", however, is

written by a gentleman of Indian ancestry, and published more than fifteenyears after Indian freedom had beenattai ned. It therefore meri ts a closestudy.

There are three ways of looking at a

book of this kind. One is to say: "Ah,well, another of those books again!" andrefuse to read it. One distinguished In-

November 28, 1964

dian told this reviewer that she wasdamned if she spent money on suchtripe. Another is to say: "But are western countries any better?" and then recount all the terrible things that thewesterners do or don't, making jibes, inthe bargain, at toilet paper, the burrasahib's pidgin Hindi and kissing in theparks. And, of course, a host of otherthings that are disgusting in themselves.But the third way is to look objectively at Naipaul's findings and make mental notes on how to face constructive

criticism.

It is necessary, at this point, to remember that Naipaul is not a professional sociologist or a dedicated reformer. He is simply what he is: a writer,with an Indian background, probablyin search of something of which he himself is not aware. He comes to Indiaand is shocked by the bureaucracy, thepaper work, the poverty, the corruption,the substitution of symbols for straightaction, the crudeness and unsophistica-tion of many things around him, theincongruity of all life. The shock is all

the more painful because Naipaul is anIndian and his reaction is, therefore, onpredictable lines. His first act is to repudiate that part of him which is Indian and the repudiation is violent,vulgar and sustained. And, one mightadd, entirely understandable and for-giveable. How many Indians have notfelt like Mr Naipaul, from MahatmaGandhi and Nehru at one end of thescale to lesser Indians who have neverknown what the western world is like?

No Stake in India

Mahatma Gandhi did not write a

book, neither di d he pro fit financiallyby his shock; he saw the Indian problem for wha t _it was and set aboutcorrecting it the best way he could. Hestayed in India and shared its miseries.He too saw Indians defecating everywhere, even as Naipaul did, but theMahatma's reaction was first to tell thedefecator why he was anti-social andthen to see what improvements couldbe made not only in the society inwhich the defecator functioned, but inthe mind of the man himself.

The Mahatma's life was one long

essay in gutter-inspection, which gavehim a right to be critical of his countrymen. The Mahatma did not laugh at

1881

Book Review

More Darkness

An Area of Darkness by V S Naipa ul; An dre Deutsch ; pages 28 1, 25s.

V



THE ECONOMIC WEEKLY November 28, 1964

the natives while Naipaul's harsh, shrilllaughter, mixed, no doubt, with pain,sounds on every page of his book.Week after week, the Mahatma wroteabout sewers, sewage, waste disposal,defecation, cleanliness and what haveyou so that the Harijan took on thelook of a text book on civics. Andwhat the Mahatma preached, he practised.

Neh ru, too, spoke out vehementlyabout the evils he saw everywherearound him. A teacher in his own way,he sought to fight them; but the battlewas in the minds of men and fourhundred million minds make a largeand unmanageable battle groun d. SoNehru sought to meet the problem bytrying to drag India from the eighteenthto the twen tieth century throu gh a

quickened process of industrialisation.

Naipaul is neither a Gandhi nor aNehru and apparently he has no stakein India except as a contributor to the

Illustrated Weekly of India. It is comforting to write about the funny signboards in India, the pidgin English, the

jingoism of the Sikh , the Andys and theBuntys, proprietor M S Butt, fat MrsMahindra and a lot of other charactersand Naipaul writes well, he has such agenuine flair for drawing characters andeven a great sense of humour such asthe benighted Indian does not possess.

Facile Generalisations

But fools rush in where angels, it issaid, fear to tread. Naipaul in his superi or it y must generalise about Indi anliterature from the work of R K Nara-yan. "He seems forever headed for that

aimlessncss of Indian fiction" says Naipaul. Mark the words: Naipaul does notsay that Narayan's fiction is aimless.He must generalise and call all Indianfiction aimless. I can see the look ofsurprise on the faces of many Indianwriters in Hindi and Marathi or Kan-

nada when they hear their work condemned as "aimless". And what, it maybe asked, is Naipaul's aim in writing"An Area of Darkness" except that ofexercising India from his past?

Most educated Indians would readilyagree with the general thesis that thereis a great deal in India that needs tobe debunked. Aubrey Menon did hisbit with his "Story of Rama", an irreverent book saved only by its artisticmerit. Arthur Koestler continued theprocess with "The Lotus and the Ro

bot', a savage piece of mockery at yogaas some of the Indian charlatans practice it. Both the books, if I am not mis

taken, are banned in India and "AnArea of Darkness" will probably meeta similar fate and Naipaul will then sayhow right he was all along in maintaining that Indians have no sense of humour. And what would he have gainedby it—and what would have the Indians, whose improvement, presumably,he has in mind?

What comes out of "An Area ofDarkness" is not a sense of purpose, apassion for change, or a zest for reconstruction, but one continuous snigger. Nehru used to lose his temperwhen anyone tried to touch his feet orsaid he wanted "darshan". There wassomething cleansing in his wrath.Nehru made his poin t. Naipa ul hastried to do so too, but somewhere alongthe line his failure to understand India

reduces his effort to a farce. To criticiseIndia, one must be an Indian. Naipauldoes not know it, but in himself, he isanother Andy or Bunty, his special target of ridicule.

Embodiment of the Condemned

The trouble, of course, is that Indialends itself so easily to generalisationsand Naipaul is not the first one to fallvictim to the temptation to pontificate.Take this gem from Naipaul: "The onlywriter who, while working from withinthe society, is yet able to impose on it

a vision which is an acceptable type ofcomment, is R Prawer Jhabvala"."And", adds Naipaul with all the excitement of a man who has discovered agreat truth, "she is European". He forgot to put an exclamatory mark at theend of the sentence. Indians who taketheir fiction straight from Indian novelists writing in Indian languages andworking "from within the society"would no doubt like to restore the exclamatory mark in its right place.

In many ways Naipaul reveals himself as the very embodiment of the

Indian character that he so delights tocondemn. Writing a book becomes asubstitute for dire ct action. Naipaulcannot change Indian society and hedoes not even try. If he tried, as manyEuropean missionaries have done, hecould at least have shown his separare-ness from Indian culture. Gandhi triedto change Indian society and in manyways and to a lesser degree, perhaps,thousands of Indians participated in hiseffort. There was conscious effort ontheir part, not just words. Perhaps neither Gandhi nor many of his followers

fully succeeded in what they set out toachieve. But that does not detract a bitfrom the essence of their life which

was based not on symbols, but on action. Naipaul's failure to understand awhole era in Indian history is the tragedy of his book. It is a dark tragedy.

Naipaul's book, however, should not

be dismissed as just another gutter inspector's report. It. should awaken Indians to the gutters in their minds androuse them to action. What Naipaul hasto say about the paper work, the redtape and the bureaucracy is all true andit is entirely beside the point to rebuthis condemnation by saying that similarbureaucracy exists in many countries.It is not so much the red tape that isso offensive, as the thinking and theattitude that makes it possible. Can'tthat ever be changed?

Distaste: the Keynote

In a sense, "An Area of Darkness" isa personal lament of an Indian for theglory that is no more. It is an essay inself-torture. Naipaul is hurting himselfas much as he is hurting his Indianreaders. He sees a poor sick man at theruins of Vijayanagar standing in therain, coughing. "I had converted fearand distaste into anger and contempt;it plagued me like a wound" says Naipaul of that scene. This is the keynoteof his book. Whatever he sees in Indiahe looks at with distaste. This in turn

is transmuted into "anger and contempt". This anger and contempt plagues the pages until the reader who inhis turn gets sick to his stomach asks:"Cannot this man write one positivethought? Can't he see one single ray ofhope in the surrounding gloom?". Naipaul's answer is "N o" . His literarymasochism is to be read to be believed.

Perhaps, some day, Naipaul wi l l return to the land of his ancestors to discover it again not in anger and contempt, but in joy and pride. India cannot be discovered by arrogant men orthe sahibs. You can do almost anything with the Past except quarrel withit. The contemporary Indian is heir tohis past and he can do nothing tocha-nge it . A l l that he can do is to seekto change the future. This, many Indians are trying hard to do, imperfectlyperhaps, but nevertheless sincerely.They would be delighted to enlist Naipaul in their ranks. Their task is byno means easy. Even whi le struggl ingto bu il d a new Ind ia, they have toreckon with the burden of their Indianupbringing. Naipaul can help them, but

not from London.

— An Indian

1883

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