THE Nobel prize for literature was awarded on Oct 11, this year, to Vidiadhar S. Naipaul — a highly-controversial figure mainly because of his questionable contribution to literature and his open bias against Islam and the Muslim world.
As for the literary merits of his works, a very pertinent comment was made by The Hindustan Times in its Oct 16 editorial: “Not very many people read Naipaul these days. None of his books sell enough to stay on the bestseller lists. Arundhati Roy’s sales for The God of Small Things probably top the sales of all of Naipaul’s books put together. And some others, including Vikram Seth, outsell him routinely. Nor does the fiction have much critical impact.... Not one of the novels he has written in the last 20 years is at all memorable”.
Naipaul’s denigration of Islam and Muslim cultures in different parts of the world has grown in intensity, over the past couple of decades, with each passing day. He describes Islam as the worst disaster to befall India. It has had, he claims, “a calamitous effect on converted people. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history.... This abolition of the self demanded by Muslims was much worse than the similar colonial abolition of identity.”
He caused an outcry early in October, this year, by comparing Islam’s effects on the world to those of colonialism. He has observed in his book Beyond Belief: “There probably has been no imperialism like that of Islam and the Arabs.”
His condemnation of Islam and Muslim societies became increasingly vociferous in the aftermath of the Sept 11 catastrophe. The announcement — a month later on Oct 11 of the Nobel prize — raises the issue: What has he got the award for? Is it for literature, as it is made out to be, or is it for his journalism?
As pointed out by The Hindustan Times of Oct 16: “Those who praise him — and those who attack him — tend to focus on his journalism; his India books and his two hatchet jobs on the Islamic world.”
Mr Engdhal, chief of the Nobel Academy who announced the award, has conceded that Naipaul might be seen as a political winner and added, “I don’t think we will have violent protests from the Islamic countries.”
As pointed out by the Indian author, Sagarika Ghosh: “Naipaul’s vociferous critique of Islamic societies might have strengthened his claim to the prestigious million-dollar award” (The Telegraph, Calcutta of Oct 11).
“Had the judges lost their wits, along with their taste, in pursuit of political correctness?” asks the Time magazine of Oct 22.
An author of over two dozen books comprising novels, short stories, essays, journalistic writings about his foreign travels, V.S. Naipaul, 69, has been provoking, for the past few decades, debates over his views on India, Pakistan, Islam, Hinduism and post-colonial Third World.
His caustic, often highly-derogatory remarks about several prominent writers, have not only raised eyebrows but drawn attention to his own debatable literary calibre.
Born and brought up in Trinidad in a Brahmin family of indentured labourers from Eastern U.P. in Northern India, Naipaul earned in 1950, at the age 18, a scholarship to attend Oxford and has remained since then in England.
After graduation, he adopted writing as a means of livelihood. The early years were spent in such penury that he once attempted suicide but could not succeed as the small amount of money he could afford to put into the gas meter ran out before it could hurt him seriously.
Knighted in 1989, he has visited India many times, but never found his ancestral land suitable intellectually or otherwise to make it his home.
The Indians, too, had not been keen to have him there. His two books on India: An Area of Darkness and India: A Wounded Civilization drew offensive images of the poverty and filth of that country.
The Nobel committee had for over two decades serious reservations about even considering him for an award.
He mellowed down his views and wrote a complimentary book India: A Million Mutinies Now that softened Indian opposition. No wonder many in India rushed with an indecent haste to embrace him as an Indian. He neither holds Indian nationality nor has made India his homeland. But, over the years, he has gradually developed a weakness for his ancestral religion and society.
On being informed of the award, he commented: “This is an unexpected accolade. This is a great tribute to England, my home, and to India, home of my ancestors and to the dedication of my agent.” A major role, evidently, played by his agent.
Strong opposition to Naipaul has remained from the Muslim countries, owing to his vicious views on them and on their religion, particularly in his books Among the Believers and Beyond Belief.
I met him casually during his visit to Pakistan to collect material for his first book. It was one of my official responsibilities to provide professional facilities to visiting foreign media men. Two of my colleagues who actually attended to him actually received undue space in his book, almost an entire chapter being allotted to one of them. The impression that he was a racy travel writer with little interest in spending time on an in-depth study of issues he intended to touch upon, was reinforced by the contents of the book.
While time has softened his approach to India, it has made him more abrasive towards Pakistan, the state he calls a “criminal enterprise.” As for his friendly gesture towards India, novelist Sagarika Ghosh, has mentioned in The Telegraph, Calcutta of Oct 11: “Naipaul has also been an unlikely friend to Hindutva. When the Babri Masjid was demolished, he described the actions of the mob as a process of reversing history.”
About his first two books denigrating Indian society, he continues to blame the Indians themselves for their inability to appreciate those books. They were not intellectual enough to read the books, he remarked.
“Forty years ago”, he told an audience in London a day after the award, “people in India were living in ritual. This is one of the things I have helped India with,” meaning that he had helped educate the people of India! He was informed that it wasn’t the people of India who had changed but he himself, to be able to appreciate the reality of things in India.
His narcissism and conceit knows no limits. In an interview with Literary Review in August this year, he attacked E.M. Forster and the economist, John Maynard Keynes, whose prescriptions are still followed by Capitalist economies, as homosexual exploiters of the powerless.
He described E.M. Forster’ famous novel A Passage to India as rubbish, called Charles Dickens a self-parodist and James Joyce as unreadable.
About the book on him Sir Vidia’s Shadow, written by his long-time close friend and American writer, Paul Theroux, he remarked with his typical conceit, “I haven’t looked at it.” It is no surprise then that their friendship ended in a bitter break-up. Theroux has portrayed Naipaul as a cruel, misogynist and bigoted person who has elevated “crankishness as proof of his artistic temperament.”
The names of the other contenders for the award would be disclosed by the academy after 50 years. So, history will take a long time to give its verdict. Meanwhile, Naipaul will have a million dollars of the prize money to enjoy the fruits of his literary or political attainments.
