Author: Editorial
Publication: The Hindustan Times
Date: October 13, 2001
There was a time when British newspapers
kept an item ready for use at short notice, stating that Graham Greene
had again been denied the Nobel Prize. That stage may not have been reached
in VS Naipaul's case, for he is still very much in the thick of his literary
career, being named even in connection with the Booker Prize.
So, there wasn't too much of a surprise
when he was included by the Swedish Academy for this year's honours list.
To all his admirers and critics, it was only a question of time before
the widely acclaimed finest writer of English prose among the present practitioners
of the craft received the most coveted of all literary honours. If there
was nevertheless a gasp of sorts when the name was announced, it had nothing
to do with his writing skills or the belief that he didn't deserve the
prize - a criticism that has been voiced about some of the recent recipients.
Instead, the feeling of disbelief
had to do with something entirely non-literary - Naipaul's perception of
Islam. It will not suffice to say that his views are controversial for,
actually, they are bizarre. So far as Naipaul is concerned, Islam is the
worst thing that has happened to mankind, for it destroys a country's and
an individual's past. Meticulous as he is, Naipaul has gone to great lengths
to buttress this viewpoint through innumerable interviews in his two justifiably
famous books on the subject - Among the Believers and Beyond Belief. But
notwithstanding the painstaking effort, the suspicion remains that the
conclusion had preceded the research. Perhaps this suspicion would have
remained no more than that if Naipaul had not tried to fit this preconceived
thesis into Indian history as well. The result has been the articulation
of prejudice and ignorance on a scale which one hardly expects from a famous
writer, some of whose earlier works of fiction, like A House for Mr Biswas,
are acknowledged classics.
It is the transition from a writer
with a remarkable ability to portray life in the West Indies - with rollicking
humour as in The Suffrage of Elvira - to travelogues and excursions in
social science which seems to have led him into a blind alley. His views
gradually changed from being dismissive about India in An Area of Darkness
to a realisation of its complexity in A Wounded Civilisation and then to
admiration in A Million Mutinies Now. In the process, however, they also
hardened into a bias against Islam, making him so myopic that he couldn't
understand why R K Narayan never bothered about the 'clash of civilisations'
which is central to Naipaul's current world-view. Yet, if Naipaul had pondered
over this omission in Narayan's writings, some light might have filtered
into his area of darkness, making him realise what India is really all
about. At the moment, however, since he is on a civilisational trip, the
honour bestowed on him can appear to be strangely appropriate.
