Naipaul visited india frequently, he enjoyed most his visit to Srinagar, because there were no crowds and he received the preferential treatment there which he had missed in Bombay and Delhi. Here "in this mountain locked valley; the English presence made him feel like home in the valley which was insulated from the rest of India. The romantic and descriptive tone in the description of Kashmir surely shows Naipaul’s colonial outlook. He also does not talk about the burning problem of Kashmir that Rushdie does in his novel Shalimar the Clown. His attitude here, as rightly indicated by Ezekiel, is one of indifference. It seems as though the complex past of Kashmir does not interest him and therefore he is simply content to experience the natural beauty of the valley. In the words of Purab Panwar, however, “this was one of the few places where the physical India corresponded to the India of Naipaul’s dreams and provided a resting place to his imagination”.

He basic aim of Naipuals first visit to India was to trace his antecedents in the country. Consequently his visit to his grandfathers village in eastern U.P. was undertaken with the expectation of finding an Indian Identity. He does not, however, mention the name of his grandfathers village but only as”… town in eastern Uttar Pradesh, not even graced by a ruin, celebrated only for its connections with Buddha and its backwardness”. This definitely shows the colonial leaning which he maintained throughout the text of an era of darkness. Later, however, he gave up his search for an Indian identity and became more responsive to the India he had visited in the seventies and the late eighties as India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now, amply show us.

In his second book on India- India: A Wounded Civilization (1977) he observes that the true crisis of India is not only political or economic, but he crisis of “… a wounded old civilization that has at last become aware of its inadequacies and is without the intellectual means to move ahead”. In his first book, he called “the featureless area of darkness”, and so continues his probe into Indian reality in the second one. Both the books can be placed in the tradition of honest and impartial albeit harsh and bitter criticism of Indian life. According to Jagdish V. Dave. “it is difficult to dispute Naipaul when he tells us that we Indians are unable to face reality clear-sightedly…”. Dr. Dave agrees to the view of Naipaul that the dread of reality drives Indians to “retreat into fantasy and fatalism.” In the second book, however, we find the lack of anxiety in Naipaul that had made him hysteric in the first book. This may be read as a decisive shift from the earlier colonial stance. In a relaxed mood, therefore, he analyzes his impressions of India. Commenting on the landscape of Bombay, now Naipaul compares it with London, but remarks that “…the city was not built to accommodate…” the poor labour. At the same time he is repugnant towards the beggars of Bombay and does not feel compassion for them the way Rohinton Mistry did in his narrative in A Fine Balance. Perhaps this may be attributed to Naipaul’s western upbringing and values that largely colour his personality. Naipaul abhors the abject poverty of India and instead of feeling pity, he feels extremely angry and contemptible.

Article Posted By : ceorahulgonsalves  On July 11, 2012lView All Articles

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