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About Sir V.S. Naipaul
The wanderer who writes of cultures in upheaval. Trinidad-born
author V.S. Naipaul, 69, who was awarded the Nobel Literature Prize
in 2001,writes eloquently about cultures in upheaval, describing at
first hand the loneliness of the refugee. He has often been described
as a man without a country despite having lived in Britain for nearly
half a century. Author of more than two dozen books and already showered
with literary prizes; his life and art have been a series of journeys
as he has sought to find a niche in several worlds. The outspoken author,
who famously said he is without rival, has increasingly courted controversy
in latter years, recently attacking the work and reputations of distinguished
authors.
Naipaul, who gained a knighthood to become Sir Vidia, has
sharply criticised what he saw as backwardness and corruption in his native
West Indies and elsewhere in the developing world from India to Africa.
But in his books An Area of Darkness and India: A Wounded Civilisation
Naipaul showed distaste for what he thought was intolerance, fanaticism
and self-satisfaction there. In 1971, he became the first non-British
author to receive Britain's most valuable literary prize for fiction,
the Booker Award, for his 11th novel In a Free State. V.S. Pritchett,
once called him "the greatest living writer in the English language".
We bring to our readers a very valuable interview of Sir V S Naipaul on
the Ayodhya issue.
Interviews
The basic ethos of the Shri Rama Janmabhoomi movement
is to restore the honour of the Hindu Samaj (society) and Hindu culture.
It is not just an issue of bricks and mortar. The renowned Vidiadhar S
Naipaul has very tellingly expressed this, when he said:
What is happening in India is a new historical awakening ?. Indian
intellectuals, who want to be secure in their liberal beliefs, may not
understand what is going on. But every other Indian knows precisely what
is happening: deep down he knows that a larger response is emerging even
if at times this response appears in his eyes to be threatening.
Given the response received from the masses in India and other places
in the world for the Shri Rama Janmabhoomi movement, Shri Rama is clearly
at the heart of our civilization and a major unifying force. There is
no section, no region, of the Hindu Samaj that does not exhibit a deep
attachment to Shri Rama. This empathy is strongly exhibited not only in
other lands where Hindus have settled, but also where the indigenous people
accepted Hindu culture, as in the entire Southeast Asia.
To understand the true ethos of the entire Rama Janmabhoomi Movement,
it would be pertinent to quote Shri Vidiadhar Naipaul, the great thinker
and litterateur whose literary genius, ruthless objectivity and deep perspective
of history has been acclaimed the world-over.He was interviewed by Dilip
Padgaonkar published in the Times of India, on 18th July, 1993, under
the caption "An area of Awakening", and again by Rahul Singh
published in Times of India on 25th January, 1998 under the caption "Hindus,
Muslims have lived together without understanding each other?s faith",
and by Sadanand Menon published in The Hindu under the caption "The
truth governs writing". The portions of the three interviews relevant
to this point are reproduced below:
"An area of awakening"
Interview by Dilip Padgaonkar
The Times of India,
18 July 1993.
Padgaonkar (P): The collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent
rise of Islamic nations in Central Asia, the Salman Rushdie affair, similar
harassment by fundamentalists of liberal Muslim intellectuals in India:
all these factors taken together persuaded some forces to argue that a
divided Hindu society cannot counteract Islamic fundamentalism.
Naipaul (N): I don?t see it quite in that way. The things
you mentioned are quite superficial. What is happening in India is a new,
historical awakening. Gandhi used religion in a way as to marshal people
for the independence cause People who entered the independence movement
did it because they felt they would earn individual merit.
Today, it seems to me that Indians are becoming alive to their history.
Romila Thapar?s book on Indian history is a Marxist attitude to history,
which in substance says: there is a higher truth behind the invasions,
feudalism and all that. The correct truth is the way the invaders looked
at their actions. They were conquering, they were subjugating. And they
were in a country where people never understood this.
Only now are the people beginning to understand that there has been a
great vandalizing of India. Because of the nature of the conquest and
the nature of Hindu society such understanding had eluded Indians before.What
is happening in India is a mighty creative process. Indian intellectuals,
who want to be secure in their liberal beliefs, may not understand what
is going on, especially if these intellectuals happen to be in the United
States. But every other Indian knows precisely what is happening: deep
down he knows that a larger response is emerging even if at times this
response appears in his eyes to be threatening.
However, we are aware of one of the more cynical forms of liberalism:
it admits that one fundamentalism is all right in the world. This is the
fundamentalism they are really frightened of: Islamic fundamentalism.
Its source is Arab money. It is not intellectually to be taken seriously
etc. I don?t see the Hindu reaction purely in terms of one fundamentalism
pitted against another. The reaction is a much larger response?.
Mohammedan fundamentalism is essentially negative, a protection against
a world it desperately wishes to join. It is a last ditch fight against
the world.
But the sense of history that the Hindus are now developing is a new
thing. Some Indians speak about a synthetic culture: this is what a defeated
people always speak about. The synthesis may be culturally true. But to
stress it could also be a form of response to intense persecution.
(P): How did you react to the Ayodhya
incident?
(N): Not as badly, as the others did, I am afraid. The people
who say that there was no temple there are missing the point. Babar, you
must understand, had contempt for the country (that) he had conquered.
And his building of that mosque was an act of contempt for the country.
In Turkey, they turned the Church of Santa Sophia into a mosque. In Nicosia
churches were converted into mosques too. The Spaniards spent many centuries
re-conquering their land from Muslim invaders. So these things have happened
before and elsewhere.
In Ayodhya the construction of a mosque on a spot regarded as sacred
by the conquered population was meant as an insult. It was meant as an
insult to an ancient idea, the idea of Rama, which was two or three thousand
years old.
(P): The people who climbed on top of these domes and broke them
were not bearded people wearing saffron robes and with ash on their foreheads.
They were young people clad in jeans and tee shirts.
(N): One needs to understand the passion that took them on top
of the domes. The jeans and the tee shirts are superficial. The passion
alone is real. You can?t dismiss it. You have to try to harness it.
Hitherto in India the thinking has come from the top. I spoke earlier
about the state of the country: destitute, trampled upon, crushed. You
then had the Bengali renaissance, the thinkers of the nineteenth century.
But all this came from the top. What is happening now is different. The
movement is now from below.
(P): My colleague, the cartoonist, Mr. R K Laxman, and I recently
traveled thousands of miles in Maharashtra. In many places we found that
noses and breasts had been chopped off from the statues of female deities.
Quite evidently this was a sign of conquest. The Hindutva forces point
to this too to stir up emotions. The problem is how do you prevent these
stirred-up emotions from spilling over and creating fresh tensions?
(N): I understand. But it is not enough to abuse them or to use
that fashionable word from Europe: fascism. There is a big, historical
development going on in India. Wise men should understand it and ensure
that it does not remain in the hands of fanatics. Rather they should use
it for the intellectual transformation of India.
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