98

CHAPTER III

V. S. NAIPAUL, DISCONTENT AND DISSILUSIONMENT: THE

INDIAN ENCOUNTER

India is for me a difficult country. It isnt 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. I am once too close and too far. (India: A
Wounded Civilization: 8)
-V. S. Naipaul-

V. S. Naipauls vision of India after Independence and after the Emergency

period of Mrs. Indira Gandhi appears focused in his India: A Wounded Civilization
and India: A Million Mutinies Now. Naipaul can be seen as discontent throughout
his narration about Indian life. His disillusionment is represented throughout his
travel narratives.

Naipauls vision as a traveller/writer has greater significance in the present

context of this study to understand how the writer/traveller documented the culture
of the people/places that he had encountered. The ideas conveyed through his
narrative bring in the glimpse of cultural decay that had occurred to the
civilization and also hints at the social and political conditions prevailing in the
country. Hence his travel narratives India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A
Million Mutinies Now are having greater significance in understanding the
encounter of culture by the writer/traveller who holds an Indo-Trinidadian identity.
Bruce King, critic on Naipaul, comments in Modern Novelists: V. S. Naipaul, on
the writers vision of India: His criticisms of India are those of a nationalist who
feels humiliated by the passivity, factionalism and traditionalism which allowed
foreign conquests of India and which contributed to the decay of the great Indian
civilization of the past.1 Naipaul could be seen as keen in his observation on the
cultural decay of India. Naipauls travel narratives on India make the readers
analyse the cultural and political changes that occurred to the country after it
attained Independence. Chandra Chatterjee, a critic on Naipaul, remarks about the
writers vision of India, in V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism, thus:
 99

Naipauls visit to India will be another way of re-writing the nation for himself.
Through his journeys to various corners of the country he will have to see exactly
where and how his world view strikes a relationship with his experience in India.2
From this comment, it could be seen that the history of India is rewritten by
Naipaul based on the experiences that suit his world view of India. The people of
India would not even know about such a different re creation of the countrys
present.

India is a different place for Naipaul. This is the reason why he is able to
mentally/physically distance himself with the people and look at them subjectively.
Naipauls point of view could be seen further commented by Mel Gussow thus:

In several cases, including that of his new book, Mr. Naipaul's work
has been categorized as travel writing, a label that he accepts as "a
portmanteau word." But in no sense is it a book for travellers: it is a
book by a traveller. "One is not looking at the sights," he explained.
"One is exploring the people. I love landscape, but a place is its
people."3

Naipauls India series of travel narratives do not prove to be an informative

document for a reader who does not know about India, as his attitude towards the
country is mainly highlighted through his narratives. He himself is aware of his
stand as a traveller and a writer in India. He finds India a strange land. The
writers Indian identity makes the narrative more interesting. He himself remarks
in India: A Million Mutinies Now:

It was the India by which, in all the difficulties of our

circumstances, we felt supported. It was an aspect of our identity,
the community identity we had developed, which, in multi-racial
Trinidad, had become more like a racial identity. This was the
identity I took to India on my first visit in 1962. And when I got
there I found it had no meaning in India.4
 100

Naipaul does wish to hold on to the racial identity that he had preserved in
Trinidad, but it did not have any importance in the Indian context as he felt that
Indians did not consider themselves as a single race as they felt the country was
divided into smaller kingdoms. The negative identity assigned by the writer to
India throughout his travel narratives leads to the conclusion that his expected
readers are not Indians, but Westerners. He comments in India: A Wounded
Civilization thus: So India even absorbs the new into its old self, using new tools
in old ways, purging itself of unnecessary mind, maintaining its equilibrium. The
poverty of the land is reflected in the poverty of the mind: it would be calamitous if
it were otherwise.5 This comment that Naipaul made brands Indians as
intellectually poor. This brings in a negative identity for the people even though
critics like Bruce King agrees with Naipauls observation and remarks in Modern
Novelists: V. S. Naipaul thus: The world has always consisted of change: it is
necessary for people and cultures to adapt. This must, however be done creatively,
making use of local resources, and with planning and hard work rather than by
mimicry of the formal colonial powers.6 From this comment it could be inferred
that cultural development does not occur through unconscious mimicry of the
other, but it is a conscious and gradual process of self development.

Culture is one of the major themes that Naipaul focused through his
Indian narratives. He comments in India: A Wounded Civilization: No civilization
was so little equipped to cope with the outside world: no country was so easily
raided and plundered, and learned so little from its disasters.7 Naipauls vision of
India is neither that of a native Indian nor that of a Trinidadian visiting a new/
foreign place. He is a part of India and also was separate from the country. Hence
his vision of India is peculiar.

Cultural changes occurred in India, but always was a source of imitation of

the West as Naipaul narrates in India: A Wounded Civilization:

India continues imitative and insecure, as a glance at the

advertisements and illustrations of any Indian magazine will show.
India, without its own living traditions, has lost the ability to
incorporate and adapt: what it borrows it seeks to swallow whole.
For all its appearance of cultural continuity, for all the liveliness of
 101

its arts of dance, music and cinema, India is incomplete: a whole

creative side has died.8

Complete aping of the culture of other nations is seen as a drawback for

India, according to Naipaul. India remains incomplete due to the borrowal of
foreign culture and the unawareness of the countrys own potentials. This hints at
the notion that blind influences of the predominant cultures should be avoided as
far as Indians are concerned. Manjit Inder Singh, comments on Naipauls inability
to see qualities that Indian culture gained by mixing with foreign ideas. He
explains in V. S. Naipaul:

While the revolutionary-political jingoism of race, tribe, culture and

region gathers momentum every passing years, the slippage of
fixed, older form of identity presided over by cosmopolitan forces
and professional opportunities have increased the entry of one race,
nationality and culture into another beyond imagination. No one is
purely one person or one thing. The dubious result of the imperialist
consolidation of mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale
reflect a dissolved amorphous life in unlikely landscapes and
settings.9

This idea brought by Manjit Inder Singh shows that India need not be
blamed for borrowing foreign culture. This comment is in contrast with Naipauls
idea of having a homogeneous Indian identity derived from its past. He can be
observed as quite unsure of the idea of a monolithic culture as seen from a later
interview that was published in V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism:

Nobody really lives in a single culture. Even Africa has been

subjected to many, many influences. To talk about a pure African
culture makes little sense. Take Indian cooking: it has ingredients
from so many cultures. Indeed how can you say I am an Indian?
India means the world, in a way. People live in several worlds at the
same time. But many do not want to admit this. They stick to
foolish notions. For example I came across someone in New York
 102

who said: I drink coco cola because I am an American. But you

dont drink coffee because you are an Arab, or tea because you are a
Chinese or Chocolate because you are a Mexican. I should be able
to say: I drink coco cola because I like coco cola.10

As evidenced from this comment, cultural homogeneity is not required

while taking into account individual likes and dislikes. This comment also
emphasizes that culture need not stand as a homogeneous/monolithic idea. It has
extended horizons and is flexible as far as human ideas can undergo change.
Manjit Inder Singh, comments in V. S. Naipaul, on the need for redefining cultural
homogeneity: The very concepts of homogeneous national cultures, the accepted
or contiguous transmissions of historical traditions, or organic ethnic
communities, are in a profound process of redefinition. The earlier, over riding
idea of pure, national identity can only be achieved through the negation of the
complex inter weavings of history.11 This comment highlights that national
culture cannot be made fit within a frame work according to the individuals ideas.
The need for Indian culture to exist as homogeneous without seeking contribution
from external sources does not pave the way to any development of the
civilization. The new identity created for Indians by Naipaul, mimicking or
imbibing western values, need not be reworked. He is against the idea of using
Western yardsticks for studying Indian civilization as observed from India: A
Wounded Civilization:

European methods of historical inquiry, arising out of one kind of

civilization, with its own developing ideas of the human condition
cannot be applied to Indian civilization: the European approach
elucidates little, has the effect of an unsuccessful attempt to equate
India with Europe, and make nonsense of the stops and starts of
Indian civilization, the brief flowerings, the long periods of sterility,
men forever claimed by the instinctive life, continuity turning to
barbarism.12

Even though Naipaul claims that European ideologies should not be used as
yardsticks for assessing India, he consciously or unconsciously does so. Bruce
 103

King comments about Naipauls views of India that were mixed up with his
Western ideologies. He explains in Modern Novelists: V. S. Naipaul thus: V. S.
Naipaul is a rationalist, secular, a strong believer in Western individualism and
skepticism, although emotionally attracted towards Indian fatalism, passivity and
philosophical notions of the world as illusion. Both world views are together,
competing in his writings.13 This comment highlights that Naipauls passivity to
India and attraction towards the West are due to the competing world views that he
had. He is able to give a comparative portrayal of the culture of the two
civilizations. The vision of India by foreigners is presented by Naipaul, in India: A
Wounded Civilization, through the words of middle-class lady in Delhi. She said:
We are like a zoo. Perhaps we should charge.14 The gaze of the foreigners on
the Indians is peculiar due to the difference in culture. The rebuke against
foreigners by an Indian makes the traveller/writer comment in India: A Wounded
Civilization thus: I was a visitor. She intended a rebuke, possibly an insult, but it
was easy to let it pass. India was like a zoo because India was poor and cruel and
had lost its way.15 The reason for the gaze of the foreigners is explained by
presenting the land and the people as poor, cruel, and lost its way. Indian
civilization has become a show piece in the eyes of the foreigners. The zoo
imagery used by the writer in his narrative makes the Indian condition worse and
pathetic as that of animals.

Cultural chaos was the major backdrop that Naipaul used, to portray the
decay of Indian civilization. It could be considered as a carefully constructed
platform on which he could lay his narrative firmly. India is presented by the writer
as a strange land without cultural homogeneity to fit to the backdrop of his
narration. Naipaul comments about the feeling that he had about India in India: A
Wounded Civilization:

India, which I visited for the first time in 1962, turned out to be a
strange land. A hundred years had been enough to wash me clean of
my Indian religious attitudes, and without these attitudes the distress
of India was-and is-almost insupportable. It has taken me much time
to come to terms with the strangeness of India, to define what
separates me from the country: and to understand how far the
Indian attitudes of someone like myself, a member of a small and
 104

remote community in the new world, have diverged from the

attitudes of people to whom India is still whole.16

The strangeness that the writer felt with India was mainly due to his
Trinidadian identity. Naipauls travel narratives could be seen as presenting the
writer as distanced from his homeland. His Indian travel narratives are hence an
outcome of a purely objective vision of India by the writer without much enquiry
into the past of the country. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, in V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of
Recent Criticism, talks about Naipauls vision of India:

In texts such as India: A Wounded Civilization, he sees Indian

culture as having become one that endlessly repeats its own truisms:
even the glorious Vijayanagara was a facile imitation of something
that had gone before. Nothing new was possible, because the old
was not properly understood. The first thing that strikes most
writers on India: its multicultural mlange, its free appropriations,
its simultaneous motion in many different directions is of little
interest to Naipaul.17

Pratap Bhanu Mehta focuses on the purely objective vision that Naipaul
had in his travel narrative. Naipaul does not see any significance in the past glory
of India. Naipauls unawareness of the real glory of India could be seen in India: A
Wounded Civilization from the comment: There are University students in
Bangalore, two hundred miles away, who havent even heard of it. It isnt only
because it was so completely wiped out, but also because it contributed so little: it
was itself a reassertion of the past.18 The ravaged monuments are presented by
the writer as a reassertion of the past that contributed so little to the progress of
Indian civilization. These comments were made by Naipaul due to the total neglect
of the cultural history of India. Even though he campaigns through his travel
narrative against the unawareness of the past glory of India by the indigenous
people, he himself appears to neglect the past grandeur that India had. This
negligence does construct a new identity for India. Indian identity itself can be
seen as questioned by Naipaul in his narrative India: A Million Mutinies Now:
 105

The idea of an Indian community-in effect, a continental idea of our

Indian identity-made sense only when the community was very
small, a minority, and isolated. In the torrent of India, with its
hundreds of millions, where the threat was of chaos and the void,
that continental idea was no comfort at all. People needed to hold on
to smaller ideas of who and what they were: they found stability in
the smaller groupings of region, clan, caste, family.19

The Indian identity as seen from this comment was not that of knowing
each other, but the peoples identity according to Naipaul, was that of being a
social group divided based on caste, region and family. This is one of the major
reasons for Indias cultural decay. Even though he tries to see India from the view
point of an Indian, he could not place himself in the position of being an Indian.
Manjit Inder Singhs comments, in V. S. Naipaul, on the vision of India in
Naipauls narrative: This cyclic pattern of un belonging to the Carribbean, India
or the West has been voiced as the undoing of Naipaul as a writer by many fellow
West Indian writers who see Naipauls inability to nourish a positive response as a
sign of his inner falsity and deliberated evasion of sordid reality.20 This comment
throws light on the psyche of the writer while narrating India. His Trinidadian life
style made him disagree with the Indian communal identity.

The Indian concept of family, caste and clan are indigestible to the writer as
he was unaccustomed to all these. Naipaul had been assessing Indias progress
during various time periods when the country underwent social and political
changes. His travels were the attempts to understand more about his ancestry and
about the culture to which he belongs. This observation could be asserted from the
comments of Peter Hulme, in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing:
Subsequently, in no fewer than three travel books, of increasing complexity,
Naipaul has written about India, a country he returns to at least in part for complex
reasons of personal heritage.21 Personal reasons also provided inspiration for
Naipauls travel to India. India, according to him, remained as a symbol of a
shattered culture to the external world, even though the country had gained new
freedom. This comment shows the subjective position that Naipaul had taken in
narrating about India. The speciality of these travel narratives is that he is able to
 106

shift his position as an Indian and Trinidadian while voicing out his opinion about
the country.

Naipaul was able to make a detailed analysis of the culture and tradition of
Indian society through his travels. The knowledge that he gained of such an inquiry
could be seen as entirely contradictory from the glory of which India could boast
off. He remarks in the interview published in V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of
Recent Criticism: The essence of literature, inquiry and philosophy is a constant
examination of oneself and ones world and ones own culture. One hopes to leave
the world with different ideas than those given to one when one enters the
world.22 This comment emphasizes that India had an entirely different picture
when Naipaul was about to leave the country. This picture of India was different
from the already existing notions that he had when he entered the country. Kate
Teltscher, comments, in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, about
Naipauls response to India:

In twentieth-century texts, particularly those published after

independence in 1947, India offers a site for the interrogation of the
writers own identity. This is obviously the case with the
Trinidadian-born, British resident V. S. Naipaul who, over three
books and nearly thirty years, chronicled his response to
Independent India.23

The individual identity of Naipaul as a traveller visiting India itself is an

area of interrogation as he is psychologically detached from India due to the
Trinidadian cultural baggage that he carried and is physically attached with India
but affected by a culture shock. Still there remains a question about whether
Naipaul is the right person to talk about India? This question arises due to his dual
Indo-Trinidadian identity. Dileep Padgoankar, comments on the genuineness of
Naipauls narration, even though he has a dual cultural identity, by citing the
examples from Culture and Imperialism, as evident in V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology
of Recent Criticism: In Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said enlarges upon the
idea that the identity of a nation depends on new and different kinds of visions,
nations are defined also by their natives who live in exile, the political figure
between domains, between homes, and between languages.24 This comment
 107

emphasizes that Naipaul has the right to narrate about India as he has clearer
understanding about the two cultural domains to which he belongs. Attitude of
the writer, while documenting his experiences, hence has an important role in the
vision of India. It stresses the idea that ones personal opinions of a particular
place/people that he/she visits need not be the view point of the indigenous people
in the country. Hence, attitude of the traveller/writer about the people and place,
has an important role in the analysis of the travel narratives.

Manjit Inder Singh, comments in V. S. Naipaul, on the strangeness that

Naipaul felt in India, as follows: Naipaul goes on to elaborate his sides as a man-
sympathetic to the ways of his family and community, yet internally unwilling to
participate in its rituals, skeptical and distrustful of other communal groupings.25
This comment shows that Naipaul does distance himself from India knowingly or
unknowingly and does not mingle with the people and take part in their religious
activities even though his tone of narrative is sympathetic towards the people. The
reason for this distancing was the feeling of alienation that the writer had.

The strangeness, that the writer felt, in India, had its impact on his travel
narratives. This has made the writer portray India as a strange land. Manjit Inder
Singh criticises in V. S. Naipaul, on the strangeness that is reflected in Naipauls
narratives: The claustrophobia, the exhaustion of the exile-traveller dangling
amidst alien surroundings marks another turning-point in Naipauls fiction.26 This
comment shows the unsatisfaction that Naipaul felt in India. The unsatisfaction
that the writer felt in India was self inflicted by him due to the strangeness that he
felt with the people and the places. This type of presentation of Indian culture is
critiqued by Manjit Inder Singh when he comments on the style employed by the
writer/traveller in his narrative. He remarks in V. S. Naipaul: Naipaul has been
trying to locate the colonial/imperial enclosures, and discuss the questions of
transplanted culture and forced inspirations, of stunted growth and distorted
histories, and present the great divide in the world one is trapped in works.27
Naipauls narrative is giving clear picture of the conditions of India as seen from
the comments of Manjit Inder Singh. Inspite of the dislocation or exhaustion that
Naipaul felt in India, he was able to give a distinct picture of the Indian culture.
 108

A note worthy point at this juncture is that for all the disillusionment that
Naipaul had presented in his travel narratives, India stands as a platform that the
writer had already set. This is a narrative strategy employed by the writer to
present social and cultural decay of India through his travel narratives. The visions
of Naipaul can be seen as purely Westernized and unsentimental towards the
people whom he is presenting. This observation can be substantiated with the
comment of Kate Teltscher, travel critic, in The Cambridge Companion to Travel
Writing: The turn towards oral history in A Million Mutinies Now is
uncharacteristic both of Naipauls oeuvre and, more generally, of contemporary
travel writing. With the writers subjectivity centre stage, India usually serves as a
backdrop - be it charming, exotic, infuriating, or comic-to the narrators travels.28
From this comment, it could be inferred that India served as the best backdrop to
present all the disillusionment that the writer could have. Through the protagonist
Jagan, in R. K. Narayans The Vendor of Sweets, Naipaul makes the character
voice out the opinion that he had about India as an Indian who experienced the
country. Jagan, the character speaks in India: A Wounded Civilization: Why do
you blame the country for everything? It has been good enough for four hundred
millions, remembering the heritage of Ramayana and Bhagavad Gita and all the
trials and sufferings he had undergone to win Independence.29 This comment by
Jagan, the third person in the narrative, Naipaul is emphasising that India should
not be blamed for everything that happened in the present. The use of the narrative
voice of Jagan does fictionalize the travel narratives. Naipauls narrative ends with
an optimistic note for the development of India. He explains in India: A Wounded
Civilization: The past can now be possessed only by inquiry and scholarship, by
intellectual rather than spiritual discipline. Past has to be seen to be dead: or the
past will kill.30 From this comment it could be seen that Naipauls vision of India
is more consolidated and focussed on the countrys future, predicting the changes
that may occur in the civilization in due course, leaving a positive note for the
people. But at the same place he is commenting against spiritual discipline and
highlights on the need for intellectual scholarship. This is a negative remark on
Indian ideologies. Mel Gussow, remarked: The tone of his book signifies a certain
mellowing on his part, but it is clear that he is still a man of the most passionate
convictions."31 This comment shows that Naipaul had written the Indian travel
narratives by keeping a clear intention/motive of what need to be highlighted
 109

through his narrative. His travel narratives are especially meant for appealing to the
Western readers.

Critics like Bruce King were also able to find hidden motives in Naipauls
narrative. He remarks in Modern Novelists: V. S. Naipaul thus: Eventually he
found an additional source of income in travelling to and reporting on the social
and cultural problems of other parts of the world, especially the newly independent
nations.32 From this comment Bruce King aims to say that the motive of
Naipauls narrative could not only be seen as a mode to revive the past history of
India but also has a hidden, personal intention. It also had brought him fame and
became a source of income. But these aspects are of less significance considering
the real value that the narratives have for the readers in the academic circles as they
talk about the culture of a foreign place/people. The personal gains that Naipaul
achieved through his travels is mentioned in Modern Novelists: V. S. Naipaul, by
Bruce King thus: Such travel corresponded with Naipauls own need to find new
subject matter beyond his memories of Trinidad and provided him with a more
interesting life than the solitary existence of a novelist: it contributed to his
awareness of the wider world.33 Thus, travel narratives do provide personal gains
for the narrator and readers. It provides a general awareness about a foreign
land/people. The culture of the people could also be studied through such accounts.

Naipauls Trinidadian identity had a major role in his documentation of

India. He does not wish to identify himself with India as seen from the distant
picture that he presents in his narrative. The cultural baggage of the Trinidadian
identity, that Naipaul carried along with him during his travels made him distance
himself from India. Hence there is always a clash in the writers documentation,
between the two cultural identities to which the writer belongs. India is hence
described as a difficult country by the writer. Chandra Chatterjee, talks about the
writers feeling of closeness and his ability to distance himself from India, in V. S.
Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism thus:

Naipauls method is that of travel and discovery, and his

preliminary strategy is to be aware of non-attachment. Attachment
to India is triggered off on the one hand by scraps of Indianness that
 110

formed part of his racial memory and on the other by encounters

and observations that lead him to understand the place India will
hold in his creative imagination.34

The physical and mental distancing that Naipaul had kept in his mind
during his narration of India was to make his views on India unbiased. The
psychological unfamiliarity that the writer felt with India cannot be fully discarded
in this context. Bruce King, comments, in Modern Novelists: V. S. Naipaul, on the
unfamiliarity that Naipaul felt when he visited India: Although he claims that
writing does not come easily to him, except during a few very brief periods he has
had no other employment. For his first twenty years in England he never felt at
home and is still aware of himself as an outsider.35 This comment shows that there
existed a clash between the two cultural identities that the writer had. This has led
him to live a discontent life in India as well as in Trinidad. This is the reason why
Naipaul could be seen as disillusioned. Manjit Inder Singh, comments about the
dislocation that Naipaul felt during his journey in V. S. Naipaul. He comments:

This migration, global movement of many sorts situates the

individual very often inevitably, torn between on the one hand the
country of his origin and on the other, the country of residence, the
metropolis-London, Paris, New York - former colonial citadels,
looked at with illusory promises of justice, betterment, racial
tolerance, and so forth. This kind of inner conflict and tension,
though it overlaps so much of the diasporic culture or expatriate
literature, also accounts for striking new identities, canceling out old
ones.36

The overlap of the Indo-Trinidadian identity has made changes in Naipauls

vision/perception of India. The Indian travel narratives were written amidst the
culture chaos that the writer felt in India, even though the Indians were living a
peaceful life after the Independence. Manjit Inder Singh, comments on the writers
vision of India, in V. S. Naipaul thus: The striking distinction is that Naipaul
speaks from a place that is not his (according to him), a platform that could hardly
be called nationalistic or emotionally tied up to a dream of any final adjustment.37
 111

Another note worthy aspect of the study of the encounter of Indian culture
by Naipaul is that he assessed India in relation with Trinidad. This inturn created a
culture shock in the writer. This is the major reason for his discontent in India as
evident in India: A Wounded Civilization. He remarks: But the question of
comparison did not arise. The world outside India was to be judged by its own
standards-India was not to be judged. India was only to be experienced in the
Indian way.38 Thus, India is represented by Naipaul based on his individual
experiences in the country.

Naipauls India series of travel narratives could be seen as shifting its focus
from the descriptions of the Indian religion, beliefs etc., to the mannerisms of the
people and showing that culture promotes subjugation of humanity in the form of
customs and traditions that the people follow. This is explained in the description
of the Rajasthani woman. Indian women were presented by the writer as slowly
retrieving into their house hold chores as part of their culture. The voices of the
women were muted according to the writer when he had visited Rajasthan. He
comments in India: A Wounded Civilization: The women had withdrawn-so many
of them, below their red or orange Rajasthani veil, only girls, children, but already
with children of their own.39 Naipauls attention does focus only in a smaller
canvas to the women who voluntarily have chosen to live for the welfare of their
family. He does not point at the women who came out of their houses for fighting
for Indias Independence. This shows that he is selective in his description of the
people to show only the subjugation and decay that the people suffered from. It
should also be noted that Naipauls travel narratives on India as such do not give
sufficient space for women representations.

According to Naipaul, humanity has undergone a lot of change in the

present. He comments about this retreat from the past that had happened to Indian
civilization, in India: A Wounded Civilization:

A retreat from civilization and creativity, from rebirth and growth,

to magic and incantation, a retrogression to an almost African night,
the enduring primitivism of a place like the Congo, where, even
 112

after the slave-trading Arabs and the Belgians. . . . It is the death of

a civilization, the final corruption of Hinduism.40

As observed from this comment, Indian civilization is slowly moving back

to its yoke stage. This stage creates ignorance and indifference in the attitude of the
indigenous people towards the need for cultural progress. Political, economic and
racial crisis is documented in the narrative as the reason for Indias
underdevelopment. Contact between individuals is less with the intervention of
religious belief and caste system. This has led each community to become self
dependent and to move away from the other. The chaos that India suffered from
is seen from the narrative as further contributed by many factors including social
and political issues. This stresses on the observation that culture has deeper
relations with the individual and collective identity that the citizens of a particular
civilization share. This is laid emphasis on by Naipaul in India: A Wounded
Civilization, when he talks about the social conditions of India:

In 1974, India had appeared to stall, with civil disobedience

campaigns, strikes, and student disturbances. The political issues
were real, but they obscured the bigger crisis. The corruption of
which the opposition spoke and indiscipline of which the rulers
spoke were both aspects of a moral chaos, and this could be traced
back to the beginning, to Independence.41

As evidently seen through the observation mentioned above, it could be

inferred that India disintegrated socially and politically. In the travel narrative
India: A Wounded Civilization, Naipaul can be seen as mixing and messing up the
individual behaviour and mannerisms of the citizens of India with the overall
identity that Indians share. Naipaul mentions the identity that a journalist in India
experienced, in India: A Wounded Civilization thus:

Indian was a word that was now without a meaning. He himself no

longer knew what he was: he no longer knew the Hindu god . . . .
He was like a tourist: he saw only an architectural monument. He
 113

had lost the key to a whole world of belief and feelings, and was cut
off from his past. 42

Through the representation of the attitude of a small section of people,

Naipaul is misrepresenting the Indian civilization as a whole. This is purely a
Western attitude that the writer had. Billie Melman, remarks in The Cambridge
Companion to Travel Writing thus: Real orientals are denied humanity, history
and the authority to speak about and represent themselves, an authority which
Orientalist travel writing reserves for occidentals.43 Denied humanity could be
seen from the documentation of Naipaul about Indians. Indians do not represent
themselves in Naipauls narratives, but are re presented according to the writers
intentions. Naipaul speaks about the Indian identity, in India: A Wounded
Civilization, thus: Identity was related to a set of beliefs and rituals, knowledge of
the gods, a code, an entire civilization. The loss of the past meant the loss
therefore, to a nationalist-minded man, of a motive for action.44 The knowledge of
the country, of the traveller/writer, changes the identity of the citizen. This shows
that identity is related with culture as the individual has an individual and
collective identity of which he/she is a part. What Indians lacked in the present
context of the narrative is the sense of collective identity of being part of the
Indian civilization. Most of the Indians are presented by the writer/traveller as
unaware of the historical past of India. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, disagrees to this point
in V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism and remarks:

In India: A Wounded Civilization, Naipauls chief concern was the

lack of proper historical awareness. He insistently attributes this
intellectual depletion to centuries of conquest. . .for Naipaul
conquests chief achievement is to distort historical consciousness.
European colonialism had at least this redeeming feature: it began
to impart an inchoate sense of Indians to Indias own inadequacies,
but it produced no intellectual movement that could allow India to
transcend those adequacies.45

This comment shows that, Naipaul as a traveller/writer does not help India
to get rid of its inadequacy. Other imageries that he employed in his narrative to
 114

show the decay of India were the ancient monuments whose true value, according
to him, was not known to Indians. He comments in India: A Wounded Civilization:
Just as the fantasy of past splendor is accommodated within an acceptance of
present squalor. That once glorious avenue-not a national monument still permitted
to live is a slum.46 Excavating and preserving the destroyed monuments in India is
seen as mere fantasy by Naipaul. He does not go deeper into the analysis of the
past grandeur that India had which was conquered and destroyed by the Europeans.
He is brooding on the graveyard of the country without contemplating on the once
living glory. This makes the readers think whether Naipaul is sensitive towards
India? Is the writer digging the grave yard of his own cultural ancestry through his
travel narratives? Is he going for a self congratulation of Trinidadian background
showing the moral decay of India? Is he constructing a new India which is
unknown to the Indians who live in the country? These are the questions to which I
tried to find answer through the analysis of Naipauls travel narratives.

India does stand as a mark of the disillusionment that Naipaul felt with the
country during his travels. Manjit Inder Singh, in V. S. Naipaul, comments on the
representation of the destroyed monuments in Naipauls travel narratives:

The ruin, the dereliction and the ravaged monuments of relatively

unaccounted and unregistered historical happenings become for
Naipaul a way to pattern and connect the human burdens of memory
and cultural fractures. It further explores ironically the futility of the
whole journey in history, its dramatic encounters between the
colonizer and the colonized resulting in tragic endings, born out of
inherent flaws of non-communication.47

Naipauls observation of the cultural fracture that occurred to India is

represented through the images of the destroyed monuments of Vijayanagara
empire. They are presented by him as a burden for human memory. The reason for
the cause of long years of destruction that India suffered from does not gain
importance in Naipauls travel enquiry. This is a deliberate omission by him in his
travel narrative. He could be seen brooding more on the decay of Indian
civilization in his narration. He remarks in India: A Wounded Civilization: life
 115

goes on, the past continues. After conquest and destruction, the past simply
reasserts itself.48 The casualness with which Naipaul describes the cultural history
of India does not do justice to the real condition of the civilization.

After the presentation of the physical depletion that India suffered from the
Europeans, Naipaul is focussing on the intellectual depletion of Indians. This was
presented by him as a major reason for the decay of the civilization. He mentions
in India: A Wounded Civilization: the crisis of India is not only political or
economic. The larger crisis is of a wounded old civilization that has at last become
aware of its inadequacies and is without the intellectual mean to move ahead.49
This is another mode of branding the Indians as intellectually poor and
constructing a new negative identity for Indians. This comment provides a negative
identity for Indians in the minds of the readers who have not been to India even
once.

Naipaul is providing a negative representation about the Indian politics

through his travel narratives in the backdrop of the mutinies that India suffered. He
feels that the Gandhian principles were completely misunderstood by the people.
He comments in India: A Wounded Civilization thus:

Gandhian nonviolence has degenerated into something very like the

opposite of what Gandhi intended. . .it is nondoing, noninterference,
social indifference. It merges with the ideal of self-realization, truth
to ones own identity. . .the acceptance of Karma, the Hindu killer,
the Hindu calm, which tells us that we pay in this life for what we
have done in past lives, so that everything we see is just and
balanced, and the distress we see is to be relished as religious
theatre, a reminder of our duty to ourselves, our future lives.50

Fragmented notions that Naipaul had about Indias colonial past and the
misinterpretation of the mutinies that Indians had suffered were the major
drawback in his narratives. He is presenting an entirely different picture of non
violence in the present Indian context as nondoing, noninterference and social
indifference. Karma or the moral obligation of the people is also misrepresented
 116

in the narrative as the Hindu Killer. The real value of ahimsa is casually forgotten
by the writer while viewing it in the context of cultural decay.

Gandhian ideologies are presented by Naipaul as misleading the Indians to

noninterference or indifference to social development. Here, cultural decay is
deliberately imposed on Indians by Naipaul. Karma, according to the
documentations in India: A Wounded Civilization is:

In fact a form of self-cherishing in the midst of a general distress. It

is parasitic. It depends on the continuing activity of others, the trains
running, the presses printing, the rupees arriving from somewhere.
It needs the world, but it surrenders the organization of the world to
others. It is a religious response to worldly defeat.51

Indian culture is misinterpreted through the description of the Indian belief

in Karma which is presented by Naipaul in a new version as parasitic and as a
response of Indias defeat to the external world. India is provided a new negative
identity through the re presentation of Indian ideologies. The failure of Gandhian
ideas to provide an identity for the Indians is seen as a major factor that has
affected Indian culture as he narrates, in India: A Wounded Civilization:

If he had projected on to India another code of survival, he might

have left Independent India with an ideology, and perhaps even with
what in India would have been truly revolutionary, the continental
racial sense, the sense of belonging to a people specifically of India,
which would have answered all his political aims, and more: not
only weakening untouchability and submerging caste, but also
awakening the individual, enabling men to stand alone within a
broader identity, establishing a new idea of human excellence.52

What India lacked was the broader identity and the racial sense
according to Naipaul. What the Indians lost was a sense of togetherness. He
comments in India: A Wounded Civilization thus:
 117

The racial sense is alien to Indians. Race is something they detect

about others, but among themselves they know only the sub caste or
caste, the clan, the language group. Beyond that they cannot go:
they do not see themselves as belonging to an Indian race: the
words have no meaning. Historically, this absence of cohesiveness
has been the calamity of India.53

As it has been amply evidenced from this comment, it could be seen that
Indian culture lacked collective consciousness or the feeling of belonging to one
race. Indians are so obsessed with their caste and religious system that the feeling
of being a single race was slowly wiped away from their culture. A common
shared set of ideology is what the country lacked. Naipaul is trying through his
narrative to make the people aware of their lacking in India. While considering his
intention in a positive sense, the readers expected for reading his narratives are
Indians so that India could progress in future. He narrates considering that his
readers are Indians. The reformation that the writer aims in the society could be
seen in V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism, when he remarks:

You had two battles: one to clense the country of foreign rule and
the other to clense oneself. One looked outward: the other inward. I
see no reason why the two cannot be combined. If this is not done
then ten years later people will say: Why did not you tell us? Look
at the mess we are in now? 54

The overall view that Naipaul presented through his travel narrative about
India, in India: A Wounded Civilization, was as follows:

All that remained was what the visitor could see: small, poor fields,
ragged men, huts, monsoon mud. But in that very abjectness lay
security where the world had shrunk, and ideas of human possibility
had become extinct, the world could be seen as complete. Men had
retreated to their last, impregnable defenses: their knowledge of
who they were, their caste, their karma, their unshakable place in
the scheme of things, and this knowledge was like their knowledge
 118

of the seasons. Ritual marked the passage of each day, ritual marked
every stage of a mans life. Life itself had been turned to ritual: and
everything beyond this complete and sanctified world-where
fulfillment came so easily to a man or to a woman- was vain and
phantasmal.55

This remark of Naipaul presents the clear picture of the decay and retreat of
Indian civilization. This had created a negative identity on the civilization and had
created much envy by his admirers. Purabi Panwars comment on the hostility and
criticism that Naipaul had to face after publishing his Indian travel narratives in V.
S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism thus:

Before, during and after his many journeys Naipaul has made both
overt and covert observations on nations, cultures, communities and
races, which have forced world-wide attention. His book of course
testify to his powers as a shrewd delineator of people, situations and
settings, and reflect his unusual talent for the telling detail and the
penetrating observation based on it. But they also carry these
notations of experiences and encounters, inextricably mixed up with
his innate predilections and prejudices. Naipaul has, as a result,
roused not only much controversy and provocation but bitter
hostility and resentment too. All along his writing career till date, he
has drawn a formidable envy of admirers and detractors, of those
who hugely eulogize him and those who treat him as a contraband
item.56

Naipaul does not look into the prosperity that India had before it was
conquered and subjugated. Nation building becomes a difficult task in this context
of cultural decay according to him. He is employing the opinions of the second
person narrator to describe India. The cultural decay that India suffered from is
better explained in India: A Wounded Civilization, through the second person
narrative of the Indian prince who narrates:
 119

Took away everything. Honor, titles, all looted. Im not a patriot,

but not inhuman, as you say. . .you people must leave us alone. You
mustnt come and tell us were subhuman. Were civilized. Are they
happy where you come from? Are they happy in England? 57

Colonization could be seen to a larger extent as one of the reasons for the
cultural decay that affected India. The opinions of the citizens of India are
highlighted by Naipaul contradicting what he himself is depicting about the
countrys cultural and intellectual decay. Bruce King, comments in Modern
Novelists: V. S. Naipaul thus:

He can be seen as having projected much of his personal experience

on his analysis of the contemporary world: yet while unique his
experience is representative of the major social, psychological,
political and cultural changes of our time. His views often have the
effect of paradox and surprise forcing a re-examination of received
opinions.58

Bruce Kings comment shows that Naipauls opinions and observations on

India has to be re examined by the readers before setting an identity on India and
its people. This is because he is unable to position himself within the Indian and
Trinidadian identity. Naipaul comments about the social decay of India in India: A
Wounded Civilization thus:

Now of Gandhianism there remained only the emblems and the

energy: and the energy had turned malignant. India needed a new
code, but it had none. There were no longer any rules: and India-so
often invaded, conquered, plundered, with a quarter of its
population always in the serfdom of untouchability, people without
a country, only with master-was discovering again that it was cruel
and horribly violent.59

India can be seen as presented by the writer as cruel and horribly

violent. This provides a negative identity to the country during the period of
 120

political turmoil. Naipaul substantiates this identity construction through the

second person narrator, an opposition leader named Jai Prakash Narayan, who
comments in India: A Wounded Civilization:

It is now the existence of disputes and quarrels that so much

endangers the integrity of the nation as the manner in which we
conduct them. We often behave like animals, be it a village feud, a
students organization, a labour dispute, a religious procession, a
boundary disagreement, or a major political question, we are more
likely than not to become aggressive, wild, and violent. We kill and
burn and loot and sometimes commit even worse crimes.60

The political crisis of India need not necessarily make the people animal
as seen from the second person narrative voice. Naipauls opinions on India are
reasserted through this comment. Caste system had its worst impact in the country
as documented by Naipaul. This has contributed to the decay of the civilization. He
explains in India: A Wounded Civilization:

Backward class, backward class, the old Brahmin, suddenly my

guide, explained piously, converting the girls into distant object of
awe. The antique violence remained: rural untouchability as
serfdom, maintained by terror and sometimes by deliberate
starvation. None of this was new: but suddenly in India it was
news.61

Naipaul does not stand by to interrogate or interpret. He merely presents.

And what is presented could lead us to suspect the quality of travel narratives.
They are genuine, no doubt, but are documents of doubt and prejudice. Cultural
decay presented in the form of blind religious fanaticism is seen as overpowering
the travel narrative on India. According to Naipaul, social unrest wiped out the
remnants of old culture. Even though Indians try for a retreat to its old cultural
system, it is not possible according to him. He remarks in India: A Wounded
Civilization: Men cannot easily unlearn new modes of feeling. Retreat is no
longer possible. Even the ashrams and the holy men (with their executive jets, their
 121

international followings, and their public-relations men) are no longer what they
were.62 This comment highlight that the Indian culture is under slow
transformation by apeing the West. Naipaul feels in India: A Wounded Civilization,
that the changes that had happened to Indian culture purports parody: and
sometimes unconscious mimicry.63 The use of the term unconscious mimicry
stresses on the modern culture of Indians by apeing the West. The disintegration of
the Hindu culture is represented by Naipaul through his travel narratives. The most
awful form of beggary was seen in Bombay as he was able to experience it closely
and comment on it in India: A Wounded Civilization:

The beggars themselves, forgetting their Hindu function, also pester

tourists: and the tourists misinterpret the whole business, seeing in
the beggary of the few the beggary of all. Beggars have become a
nuisance and a disgrace. By becoming numerous they have lost their
place in the Hindu system and have no claim on anyone.64

Naipaul as a traveller hates the beggary that he saw in India as the beggars
pester tourists. Through his narrative, he documents the beggary of an individual
as the beggary of all the people. By branding beggars as a nuisance and
disgrace, he provides a new identity for the people. Dileep Padgoankar,
comments in V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism, about the
misrepresentation of India by Naipaul:

The very titles of his first two books on India-An Area of Darkness
and A Wounded Civilization- made it clear that he regarded this
country as yet another, indeed extravagant, example of decay and
decomposition, inertia, violence, fear and generally of intellectual
puerility and relentless, moral turpitude. His was a stark vision: one
which lacked the flimsiest hope of progress or redemption.65

The stark vision of Naipaul could be seen in the identity that he creates
for the whole Indian civilization by showing the deeds of a single individual.
Indian land and byways could be seen as portrayed dirty with human excreta and
the Indian attitudes were also described as dirty with the hatred for the fellow
 122

beings of low caste. The human habit of defecating in the public places is
highlighted by the writer like that of Lawrence in Sea and Sardinia (cf. 99-100).
This shows that Naipaul was much conscious of an individuals public and private
space. The notion of public and private space in Naipauls narrative might be
due to the Western influence that he had. He remarks in India: A Wounded
Civilization:
Through these sections we walked without speaking, picking our
way between squirts and butts and twists of human excrement. It
was unclean to clean, it was unclean even to notice. It was the
business of the sweepers to remove excrement, and until the
sweepers came, people were content to live in the midst of their
own excrement.66

The awareness of public and private space made the writer be conscious
about Indian premises as that of D. H. Lawrence in Twilight in Italy and Sea and
Sardinia. The total neglect of the people towards the cleanliness of their premises
remains un neglected by Naipaul as seen from this comment. The disgust that he
felt, even to look, at the streets is seen through the words It was unclean to clean,
it was unclean even to notice. The extent to which Naipaul was toned by the
European life style can be seen from the remark we walked without speaking.
This comment shows the impact of his Trinidadian culture in his behaviour. Even
though changes have happened in the living condition of India, Naipaul does not
appear to have focussed on it, as Purabi Panwar, comments in V. S. Naipaul: An
Anthology of Recent Criticism:

Naipauls characteristic tendency is to pick out selective details, and

wrap them up with over-generalization and over-statements. In
India, for instance, people do defecate in public, beside railway-
tracks, on beaches and river banks, on fields and streets. But
Naipaul implies as if the whole of India defecates publicly. He
distorts things when he attributes it to the claustrophobia of
Indians in general, an absolutely untrue and unfounded gloss.67
 123

As it appears from this remark, Naipaul does lack authenticity in

documenting about the general behaviour of the Indians. Fakrul Alam, critic on
Naipaul, in V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism, strongly opposes such
generalized statements of Naipaul. He explains:

Books such as India: A Wounded Civilization (1977), Among the

Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981): and Beyond Belief (2001) all
show flashes of brilliance and reveal a master of narrative and
shrewd delineator of people and setting, but these are gifts of the
writer of fiction. In his travel writing and exposes of India and Islam
Naipaul constantly over states, over generalizes and quite often
misrepresents and even distorts what he comes across.68

This comment highlights the idea that, Naipaul might have misrepresented
the behavior patterns of the Indians in order to give his travel narrative a fictional
touch. This is the point where the objective of writing serious travel narrative often
fails in Naipaul. He had to be conscious of the fact that an individuals own set of
behaviour need not be the same behaviour pattern of the whole civilization. It
should be seen as purely individual and personal. The defecation of one individual
in a public place need not reflect the habit of the whole civilization as Naipaul has
depicted. This absence of civic sense69 as mentioned in India: A Million Mutinies
Now, is not necessarily the common quality of the Indians. The defecation in
public space can be seen as a routine activity that people do without seeing
anything serious in it.

Intentional or unintentional unawareness of the past could be seen as a

reason behind the cultural decay and loss of collective identity of the civilization.
This is the source of the wound that India suffered in Naipauls narrative India: A
Wounded Civilization. He narrates: India remains so little known to Indians.
People just dont have the information. History and social inquiry, and the habits of
analysis that go with these disciplines, are too far outside the Indian tradition.70
Indians lack the social and political inquiry into the countrys cultural past. This
could be seen as the reason for the countrys diminutive growth.
 124

Colonization has given a platform for India and its citizens to contemplate
on the countrys position in the world. Hence the notion of a new cultural
consciousness arose in the country after the political chaos. This could not be
completely neglected even though Naipauls narrative contradicts this notion. The
shaping of Indian culture according to Naipauls travel narrative was thus: Caste
and clan are more than brotherhoods; they define the individual completely. The
individual is never on his own: he is always fundamentally a member of his group,
with a complex apparatus of rules, rituals, taboos.71

Indian culture does not provide individual identity to the people. People are
divided into groups sharing a collective identity through rituals and rules of the
civilization. The behaviour of every individual was according to their groups will.
Indian culture was formulated by the roles that each individual performed. Naipaul
comments in India: A Wounded Civilization:

Every detail of behaviour is regulated-the bowels to be cleared

before breakfast and never after, for instance, the left hand and not
the right to be used for intimate sexual contact, and so on.
Relationships are codified. And religion and religious practices-
magic and animistic ways of thinking-lock everything into place.72

These rules and regulations formed the frame work of the Indian culture as
seen in Naipauls travel narratives. Naipaul stresses this blind religious belief of
the Indians in India: A Million Mutinies Now thus: Religion, faith: there seemed
to be no end to it, no end to its demands. It was like part of the nerves of the over-
populated, over-protected valley.73 This comment emphasises that rules and
regulations codify the society and the culture of India. There is no existence for the
individual outside this framework. Indian culture could be seen as a series of caste
codes based on which every Indian was obliged to work. Naipaul narrates in India:
A Wounded Civilization:

Caste pollutions, more permanently wounding, and a greater cause

for hysteria, than any beating up. Black is a colour horrible to the
Indo-Aryan: the moustache is an important caste emblem, and
 125

untouchables can be killed for wearing their moustaches curling up

rather than drooping down: shoes are made of leather and tread the
polluted earth.74

Caste codes are seen from this comment as providing the framework for
Indian culture. The feeling of idealization or purposelessness of the Indian life is
emphasized by Naipaul through his narratives. This feeling makes the writer
suggest a remedial measure. It was to commit suicide. He suggests in India: A
Wounded Civilization: I would confess that I have come to feel that a large
majority of the persons I know should do so, because I cannot see any point in their
remaining alive.75 This remark of Naipaul in his travel narrative is a kind of de
motivation for all the Indians who are striving hard to make a life under
challenging circumstances as that of Independence and Emergency. Naipauls
pessimistic comment does not mean to say that he does not see a future for the
Indians. The only way out of this cultural chaos is the awareness that could be
generated to the people. India has its own distinct culture, art, rulers and legislature
from the past. But this past has to be awakened in the mind of the present
generation, only then India could step forward to its development. Cultural chaos
could only be nullified through cultural awareness. Naipaul brings in this vision
for progress of the civilization through his India: A Wounded Civilization:

Through all this-empires, achievement, chaos, conquest, plunder,

the steady loss of Indian territory to the world of Islam-India is said
to have kept her soul, to have preserved the democratic ways of her
village republics, her peoples government. Democracy hasnt
come to India from an alien source: India has had it all along. To
rediscover democracy, India has only to rediscover herself.76

Indian heritage and culture could hence be seen as lost with the passage of
time, during the long years of war and conquest that have to be rediscovered. The
reason for the social and political crisis that India suffered from is due to the
cultural confusion that Indians are facing in the present. Naipaul remarks in India:
A Wounded Civilization thus: Archaic emotions, nostalgic memories: when
these were awakened by Gandhi, India became free. But the India created in this
 126

way had to stall. Gandhi took India out of one kind of Kal Yug, one kind of Black
age: his success inevitably pushed it back into another.77 The doom of the
civilization could be seen when the traveller/writer branded India as Kal Yug or
Black age. This is a kind of negative identity assigned to Indian civilization.
Naipauls presentation of India in his travel narratives was as a land of diverse
beliefs and customs. Religious beliefs of the people are given emphasis in his
travel narratives. A life without religious beliefs would make the people feel lost
according to the writer. Every object that he saw in India was assigned certain
meanings. They were charged with the blind beliefs of the people. Naipaul
suggests in India: A Wounded Civilization, the example of the religious belief of
Bengal: The truth is frightening, as I learned only recently near the end of the
book. The pumpkin, in Bengal and adjoining areas, is a vegetable substitute for a
living sacrifice: the male hand was therefore necessary.78 Religious beliefs of the
Indians is a theme that the writer is obsessed with throughout his travel narratives.
It is seen by Naipaul as a hindrance for the progress of Indian culture as he was
unable to find any significance for these beliefs. He mentions in India: A Wounded
Civilization thus: the memories of that India, which lived on into my childhood in
Trinidad, are like trapdoors into a bottomless past.79 The imagery that the
writer/narrator employs while referring to the religious beliefs of the Indians as
trapdoors that lead to bottomless past indirectly conveys to the readers the
discontent that Naipaul had with the blind beliefs.

Naipauls opinions on India were based on the way in which he perceived

Indian culture. The whole atmosphere prevailing in the narrative was that of
disillusionment and discontent due to the culture shock that he experienced due
to his conflicting identities. He could be seen as leading the readers to view only
those aspects that he felt had created cultural decay in India. These do not
provide sufficient information about the point of view of the indigenous people of
India. Thus, India is presented with a new cultural identity by Naipaul through his
travel narrative by documenting it as a land of cultural decay that supports his
views, as a traveller/writer, after his travels.

Moving on from the travel narratives of V. S. Naipaul, whose discontent

and disillusionment was mainly due to the dual cultural identities that the
writer/traveller had, the next chapter will analyse the search for the roots of
 127

ancestry. The quest begins with the travel narratives of Bruce Chatwin, to
understand how he encounters a new/foreign culture.
 128

Notes

1
Bruce King. Modern Novelists: V. S. Naipaul. (London: The Macmillan Press,
1993) 10.

2
Purabi Panwar. V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. (Delhi:
Pencraft International, 2003) 96.

3
Mel Gussow, Travel Plus Writing Plus Reflection Equals V. S. Naipaul.
January30,1991.TheNewYorkTimes.http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?re
s=9401E0D71439F934A1575AC0A967948260&sec=travel&spon=&pagewanted=
2.

4
Naipaul, V. S. India: A Million Mutinies Now. (Auckland: Minerva Paperback,
1990) 8.

5
Purabi Panwar. V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. (Delhi:
Pencraft International, 2003) 172.

6
Bruce King. Modern Novelists: V. S. Naipaul. (London: The Macmillan Press,
1993) 9.

7
Naipaul, V. S. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1977) 7.

8
Ibid., 126.

9
Manjit Inder Singh. V. S. Naipaul. (New Delhi: Rawat Publication, 1998) 134.

10
Purabi Panwar. V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. (Delhi:
Pencraft International, 2003) 56.

11
Manjit Inder Singh. V. S. Naipaul. (New Delhi: Rawat Publication, 1998) 129.
 129

12
Naipaul. V. S. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1977) 130.

13
Bruce King. Modern Novelists: V. S. Naipaul. (London: The Macmillan Press,
1993) 5.

14
Ibid., 135.

15
Ibid., 135.

16
Naipaul. V. S. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1977) 9.

17
Purabi Panwar. V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. (Delhi:
Pencraft International, 2003) 45.

18
Naipaul. V. S. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1977) 15.

19
---. India: A Million Mutinies Now. (Auckland: Minerva Paperback, 1990) 8.

20
Manjit Inder Singh. V. S. Naipaul. (New Delhi: Rawat Publication, 1998) 191.

21
Peter Hulme. Travelling to Write. (1940-2000) The Cambridge Companion to
Travel Writing. Ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002) 89.

22
Purabi Panwar. V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. (Delhi:
Pencraft International, 2003) 56.

23
Kate Teltscher. India/Calcutta: City of Palaces and Dreadful Night. The
Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing. Ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 194.
 130

24
Purabi Panwar. V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. (Delhi:
Pencraft International, 2003) 408.

25
Manjit Inder Singh. V. S. Naipaul. (New Delhi: Rawat Publication, 1998) 190.

26
Ibid., 144.

27
Ibid., 21.

28
Kate Teltscher. India/Calcutta: City of Palaces and Dreadful Night. The
Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing. Ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 194.

29
V. S. Naipaul. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1977) 33.

30
Ibid., 174.

31
Mel Gussow, Travel Plus Writing Plus Reflection Equals V. S. Naipaul.
January30,1991.TheNewYorkTimes.http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?re
s=9401E0D71439F934A1575AC0A967948260&sec=travel&spon=&pagewanted=
2

32
Bruce King. Modern Novelists: V. S. Naipaul. (London: The Macmillan Press,
1993) 3.

33
Ibid., 3.

34
Purabi Panwar. V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. (Delhi:
Pencraft International, 2003) 96.

35
Bruce King. Modern Novelists: V. S. Naipaul. (London: The Macmillan Press,
1993) 1.
 131

36
Manjit Inder Singh. V. S. Naipaul. (New Delhi: Rawat Publication, 1998) 51.

37
Ibid., 21.

38
Bruce King. Modern Novelists: V. S. Naipaul. (London: The Macmillan Press,
1993) 35.

39
Naipaul. V. S. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1977) 30.

40
Bruce King. Modern Novelists: V. S. Naipaul. (London: The Macmillan Press,
1993) 43.

41
Ibid., 45.

42
Naipaul. V. S. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1977) 70.

43
Billie Melman. The Middle East/Arabia: The Cradle of Islam The Cambridge
Companion to Travel Writing. Ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002) 107.

44
Naipaul. V. S. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1977) 71.

45
Purabi Panwar. V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. (Delhi:
Pencraft International, 2003) 45.

46
Naipaul. V. S. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1977) 15.

47
Manjit Inder Singh. V. S. Naipaul. (New Delhi Rawat Publication, 1998) 120.
 132

48
Naipaul. V. S. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1977) 15.

49
Ibid., 18.

50
Ibid., 25.

51
Ibid., 25.

52
Ibid., 174.

53
Ibid., 154.

54
Purabi Panwar. V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. (Delhi:
Pencraft International, 2003) 60.

55
Naipaul. V. S. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1977) 32.

56
Purabi Panwar. V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. (Delhi:
Pencraft International, 2003)14.

57
Naipaul. V. S. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1977) 34.

58
Bruce King. Modern Novelists: V. S. Naipaul. (London: The Macmillan Press,
1993) 2.

59
Naipaul. V. S. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1977) 46.

60
Ibid., 46.

61
Ibid., 47.
 133

62
Ibid., 51.

63
Ibid., 52.

64
Ibid., 58.

65
Purabi Panwar. V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. (Delhi:
Pencraft International, 2003) 55.

66
Naipaul. V. S. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1977) 68.

67
Purabi Panwar. V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. (Delhi:
Pencraft International, 2003) 17.

68
Ibid., 192.

69
Naipaul. V. S. India: A Million Mutinies Now. (Auckland: Minerva Paperback,
1990) 65.

70
---. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1977) 93.

71
Ibid., 102.

72
Ibid., 103.

73
---. India: A Million Mutinies Now. (Auckland: Minerva Paperback, 1990) 510.

74
---. India: A Wounded Civilization. (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1977) 115.

75
Ibid., 139.

76
Ibid., 144.
 134

77
Ibid., 152.

78
Ibid., 10.

79
Ibid., 10.