NAIPAUL’S INDIA: FACT AND FICTION
A.S.Mohamed Rafee, M.A., PhD.
Associate Prof & Head
PG & Research Dept of English
Mazharul Uloom College, Ambur – 635802
Vellore Dist Tamil Nadu
South India
Mobile: +919994767681
Email: ruminagore@gmail.com
Abstract
A study of V.S. Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness, the first book of his trilogy on India, is
made in this essay to assess and sift the fact from fiction. Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize
in 2001. It was not only in recognition of his glory but his responsibility too. As a writer of nonfiction he becomes important not simply for his style or form but rather for the deliberate choice
and nature of his content. In such writings, the matter becomes more important than the manner.
But as a fiction and travelogue writer, especially about India, he seems not to have cared
for truth and responsibility. His picture of India in his trilogy, especially in the first book, while
true in its descriptive part, is not so in its analytical part. His picture is exaggeratedly gloomy,
negative, prejudiced and far from being true. It is the aim of this article to point out and
differentiate the factual side from the purely fictional one.
Introduction
Patrick French, the authorized biographer of V.S. Naipaul said that Naipaul acquired a
“reputation for causing offence” (Introduction, xi). This comment is true with reference to
Naipaul’s trilogy on India: An Area of Darkness, India, A Wounded Civilization and India: A
Million Mutinies Now. It is more appropriate with reference to the first travelogue. As Naipaul
had his roots in India, his views are sure to affect any Indian either positively or negatively.
In the three travelogues Naipaul critically evaluates India’s history, culture and politics.
These works take the reader on a voyage from an India that was ‘an area of darkness ’that has
2
lost its values and culture to an India which is ‘a wounded civilization,’ where, as Naipaul later
on discovers ‘a million mutinies’ are happening.
An Area of Darkness is a semi-autobiographical travelogue detailing with Naipaul's trip
through India in the early sixties. It was the first of Naipaul's acclaimed Indian trilogy. To him
India was a “featureless area of darkness” (30). He describes his experiences in Mumbai, in
Hotel Liward in Kashmir, with Indian railways, and his pilgrimage to the cave of Amarnath. At
the end, he leaves for Trinidad, home town, with anxiety and frustration. The experiences cover a
period of one year. One has to go deep into it in order to discover if Naipaul’s presentation is
really justified or prejudiced and one-sided.
Cultural Context
Colonial India in the twentieth century forms the cultural context of this travelogue.
Naipaul gives the reader a vivid insight into the various sects and cultural systems dominating
this country. There are copious references to Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists and he paints some
vivid pictures of their various customs. Poverty is a key aspect of this culture and contributes a
good deal to the reason why he chose such a title for the work. Naipaul describes India as ‘the
poorest country in the world’ (41) and as ‘the world’s largest slum’ (173). The Indians defecate
everywhere (70) but fail to face up to this fact. We have grim and rather depressing images of
poverty.
Prelude
The prelude describes how Naipaul comes to Mumbai, the old Bombay, via Greece,
Egypt and Alexandria; how his two liquor bottles are confiscated by the customs authorities and
3
how he struggles to get them back. From the beginning the comment on East tends to be very
negative:
Even in Greece I had felt Europe falling away…And in the streets there was East on had
expected: the children, the dirt, the disease, the undernourishment, the cries of bakshish,
the hawkers, the touts, the glimpses of minarets (4).
As he arrived in Mumbai, the customs officials seized his two bottles of liquor. He was
told that he could get back those bottles if he got a liquor permit. That could have really been
irritating but Naipaul gives an exaggerated and generalized version of his feeling: “To be in
Bombay was to be exhausted” (9).
From a few places one can clearly understand that Naipaul’s thinking itself is completely
westernized. When he describes the preparation and distribution of food by Indians we can
clearly comprehend it:
It still horrifies me that people put out food for animals on plates that they themselves
use…as it horrifies me to see women sipping from the ladles with which they stir their
pots. This was more than difference; this was the uncleanliness we had to guard against
(28).
Naipaul is uncritical and honest in a few places. He is, as he himself says in India: A
Wounded Civilization, at once “too close and too far” to India (Foreword, x). Most of the
Indians are religious and ritualistic. Since Naipaul was a ‘born’ unbeliever (27), he himself
makes that clear in the book that since he was sans belief, “…one whole side of India was closed
to me” (37).
4
But accuracy and prejudice go hand in hand with Naipaul. According to him, Indians
have no individuality at all. He feels that he has lost his face as soon as he landed in Bombay.
“Now in Bombay…I was faceless” (39).
Naipaul’s one-sidedness is best expressed by his clear prejudices against Muslims. He
says that Muslims were “not to be trusted” and they would “always do you down” (25). Naipaul
shows his ignorance or prejudice when describing the Id festival and Id prayers. He says that it
was a day when Muslims “had to eat meat” (133). But the fact is that Muslims eat meat on
almost every important occasion, on Fridays for example. And it is blatantly wrong to conclude
that they eat meat only on the Id day.
His description of Muslim ablution before the ceremonial prayer is also wrong. Naipaul
says that their genitals are ceremoniously washed in public before prayers which is far from the
truth. During ablution before the prayers, a Muslim would wash his face, arms to the elbows,
head and feet to the ankles, each thrice. The genitals are not even touched. But Naipaul’s
reference seems to be intentionally misleading and not simply ignorant. Naipaul seems to be a
mixture of contradictions.
The section on Srinagar politics starts with another prejudice against Muslims. He says
that the Punjabi Muslims are anti-Indian: “the most anti-Indian people in the Valley were Punjabi
Muslim settlers, often in high positions” (137). One feels that perhaps he feels jealous of their
‘high positions’.
The Colonial
It is in this section that a wholly negative picture of India emerges. It deals mainly with
Indian poverty, poor sanitary habits and the caste system. Naipaul states categorically that the
5
whole Indian society is “diseased society” (75). At first, he deals extensively with the Indian
habit of defecating in public places without any sense of shame. The observations and
descriptions are true even today: “If you surprise a group of three women, companionably
defecating, they will giggle: the shame is yours, for exposing yourself to such a scene” (69). But
the most derogatory but undeniable comment comes now:
Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate, mostly, beside the railway tracks. But they
also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks;
they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover (70).
According to Naipaul, Indian came under foreign rule due to lack of sanitation:
“Sanitation was linked to caste, caste to callousness, inefficiency and a hopelessly divided
country, division to weakness, weakness to foreign rule” (75). Nothing could be more absurd
than this. In the course of these observations, Naipaul reveals his high caste mentality also. He
categorically states that reserving government jobs for the untouchables “places responsibility in
the hands of the unqualified” (82).
The climax of absurdity could be seen in his description of his discomfort with India. He
felt the country to be alien in its extremes because the “landscape was harsh and wrong. I could
not relate it to myself: I was looking for a balanced rural landscape of Indian Trinidad” (149).
It is very amusing to find a writer of such fame and name finding fault with the natural
topography and geography of a country! What could be more illogical and insensible than this?
Just because one could not relate oneself to a new country how could the landscape itself be
wrong? Passages like this clearly prove that Naipaul’s picture of India is one-sided and highly
prejudiced.
6
Naipaul is not ready to accept or appreciate Indian beauty. Whereas whenever he finds
dirt and filth, he describes it so picturesquely and takes credit for that. But when he finds
something beautiful in India, he is slow to accept it and hesitates to appreciate it. One such
example was the beauty of the Mogul gardens. To Naipaul the “Mogul gardens remained
beautiful because they were still gardens; they still worked” (152).
While Naipaul talks a lot about Indians’ lack of historical sense, it is ironic that he
himself displays such a lack. He says that the history of north India is nothing but a devastation
and conquest of Hinduism by Muslim invaders. One could easily understand that he makes an
exaggerated statement when he says that all the temples in north India were destroyed by foreign
rulers and mosques were built in those places: “Mosque on temple: ruin on ruin. This is in the
North”(218).
Naipaul always makes it a point to say that if there is anything good in India and among
the Indians, he attributes it to foreign influence. The fact that Indians respect the past is a
contribution of Europe, according to him. Naipaul says that it is still “through European eyes that
India looks at her ruins and her art” (221).
In his Noble acceptance speech he says about life in Trinidad: “We looked inwards…the
world outside existed in a kind of darkness…”. It is the same subjective and withdrawn mentality
that he has displayed with regard to his observations of India in this book. The book is negatively
subjective, prejudiced and pessimistic. “In Trinidad, bright boy though I was, I was surrounded
by areas of darkness”, he says. It is the Trinidadian darkness which seems to have extended to
India also.
7
This view is confirmed by Naipaul himself in his Nobel acceptance speech: “When I
became a writer those areas of darkness around me as a child became my subjects. The land; the
aborigines; the New World; the colony; the history; India”i.
Conclusion
As a deeply pessimistic work, An Area of Darkness conveys the acute sense of
disillusionment which the author experiences on his first visit to his native land. True to his style,
the narration is anecdotal and descriptive. The quest for roots ends in disappointment in this
book. The last chapter or section rightly entitled ‘Flight’ could very well be a metaphoric flight
from reality. There seems to be more fiction than fact in his trilogy, especially in An Area of
Darkness.
References
1. French, Patrick. The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul.
London: Random House, 2008. Print.
2. Naipaul, V.S. An Area of Darkness. London: Picador, 1964. Print.
3. ---. India: A Wounded Civilization. London: Picador, 1979. Print.
i
Available from:http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2001/naipaul-lecture-e.html [Accessed 03
April 2014]