Journal articles on the topic 'Naipaul ; India'

This paper examines the non-fiction of the novelist, V.S. Naipaul, in particular, his writings on India. The paper argues that Naipaul’s repeated exploration of India, over three decades (1964-1990) can be read as his attempts at exploration of the Self. In his An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilisation, India: A Million Mutinies Now and in his Collection of Journalistic Essays, Naipaul examines the land of his ancestors, its people, its culture, polity, literature. But the most fascinating part of this journey pertains to his exploration of his own inner self. The paper juxtaposes his critique of India to probe an interesting analysis of the entity of a country, through a geographical, cultural and inner exploration of the writer.

Bashing V.S. Naipaul’s travel books on India, the Caribbean, the Islamic World and Africa has produced a massive body of writing since the 1980s. Focusing on his perceived racism and Islamophobia, this literature seeks to thoroughly discredit Naipaul as a reliable chronicler of the lives of the victims of Western imperialism. Condemned, indeed, as an apologist for Western imperialism, Naipaul’s admitted brilliance as a writer of fiction has been dulled by these accusations. There is much truth in these critiques, but they are based on arguments that range from the accurate to the problematic to the quite simply wrong. Too many attacks on Naipaul’s work come from writers who have a limited knowledge of the body of his work or who misconstrue the knowledge they do have. Stepping back from the assault on Naipaul reveals important reasons to re-examine and rethink the meanings of his work and the lives it chronicles.

V. S. Naipaul was writer of Indian origin writer settled in Great Britain and Rabindranath Tagore was Bengali writer born and brought up in India. Both were Nobel Laureates in Literature. Based on their overall behavior and treatment with the colonized people, Tagore a patriot to the core, saw and judged the foreign colonisers from his Indian patriotic point of view. He realised how and why they sucked India for their own benefit to the utter neglect of Indians. But Naipaul’s ancestors migrated perhaps under compulsion to the Caribbean islands where Naipaul was born (Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobagos). He settled in England and stayed put there for the major part of his life. Compared to his background Britain was new found paradise for him. Ambitious, he studied English and was imbued in their culture. He wrote as if Britain was more than his birth land. He was awarded Nobel Prize as a British, a European. From his perspective he was not only indebted but deeply moved to love that country and continent. His name and fame spread from there. India had nothing to do about it except his Indian origin background taking the clue from his ancestors. He had some tilt towards India nothing of it remained when India was compared to Britan or Europe. He was obliged to see the world through their spectacles. His ideas and favour for Britain and Europe was generated by his position and interest in life. Judged Neutrally it was a biased view.

This text’s title makes a reference both to Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul’s eponymous work and to the meaning contained in the English phrase “in a free state”, the latter being directly implicated in one of the difficult questions regarding this artists: where does Naipaul belong (1932 - 2018) – is he an English, an Indian or a Trinidadian author, or is he one to whom such categorizations do not apply because in the course of his life he came to embody the very idea of the artist’s being “in a free state”. However appealing it might be to assume the latter idea, his works as well as the many debates surrounding them actually question this freedom. Because the Trinidad born future Nobel laureate (the name of the city is evocative of the Holy Trinity), had at least three homes, even though his attitude to his “homelands” was a controversial one and even though he articulated his own identity controversially and not in one go. In his Nobel lecture Naipaul suggested that the credit for the Nobel Prize should go to England where his home was, and to India, where the home of his predecessors was, but he did not emphasize the significance of Trinidad where he had been born and had grown up.

This study explores the pain and multifaceted loss in Naipaul’s novels: India: a Wounded Civilization and An Area of Darkness. In the first part of this research, pain and loss of the aborigines have been exposed. It challenges the nationalist discourse of the India’s progress. The second part, mapping culture through the novel is divided into two sections. The first section- "India: A Wounded Civilization" deals with the condition of India in the post independent period. It claims that India has been wounded for many centuries of British Raj. The second section follows "An Area of Darkness." Naipaul assumes that India is still in darkness. People are living in illiteracy, ignorance and poverty. In addition to caste system practiced in different communities has shadowed the pure and mounted image of India. The last section is the conclusion of the research. It sums up the whole claims and textual analysis of the research.

‘Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft arm-chair, your will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me and after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exagger-tragendy is not a fiction all is true’. Honor’s de Balzac, le p’ere Goriot Rohinton Mistry is an important figure in contemporary common wealth s literature and he occupies a significant position among the writers of Indian diaspora. Mistry like Rushdie and many other Indian English writer is an “émigré” who left India in 1970’s to live in Canada. He is the best-known indo-Canadian novelist, his novels namely such a long journey, a fine balance and family matter have been best sellers and received international a wards. Mistry belongs to the burgeoning crop of Indian novelist writing in English to place him rightly among the great Indian English writers in the words of the santwana haldar.“A glowing star in the galaxy that contains luminaries such as vs. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Shashi Tharoor, Vikram Seth and Bharati Mukherjee to mention a few Rohinton Mistry has drawn the attention of the world as an absorbing writer of human experience.” (Santwana, 2006:7)

The term ‘displacement’ has a strong connection with diaspora literature that studies the experiences of pain and pleasure of the people in the diaspora. People in the diaspora do not have comfortable life. Since they are away from their homeland, it is not easy for them to get integrated into the new main stream society. Because of several variations such as language, culture, custom, religion, belief etc., they are to face difficulties in the host-land. They come across the feeling of displacement through alienation, homelessness, identity crisis etc. that are interconnected in the diaspora. Being a generation of indentured labor immigrant family, V. S. Naipaul himself has gone through such paining experiences that are indirectly expressed through the life experiences of the characters in his writing. While reading about Naipaul’s life story and of Mr. Biswas in the novel A House for Mr. Biswas, it can be understood that they sound similar strongly. In the novel, Naipaul shows how Mr. Biswas more importantly along with other people as the generation of indentured labour immigrant parents in Trinidad suffer from homelessness, displacement, alienation etc. This paper mainly focuses on the experiences of displacement along with homelessness, alienation etc. faced by Mr. Biswas and other characters as they are from Indian diasporic community.Crossing the Border: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 5(2) 2017: 25-30

V.S.Naipaul expertly exhibited a great craftsmanship in literary pieces like fiction, travel and journalistic writing. His fictional world reveals a critical look on the world and also utilizes its traditions, customs and cultures. Naipaul’s writing express the ambivalence of the exile, a feature of his own experience as an Indian in the West Indies, a West Indies in England, and a nomadic intellectual in a post colonial world. Naipaul adhered to the form of the traditional narrative, and by doing away with the technical devices of the stream of consciousness; he exhibits his power of writing by making his readers share the inevitable irony and paradox of modern life form by its quintessential self-division and inner conflict. The protagonist of Naipaul’s fiction may be different persons but there may be sensed a thread of continuity in their fate and there “limbotic” status. He has described the theme of a quest for identity, a sense of displacement, alienation, exile of an individual in the backdrop of colonial and postcolonial period. The act of displacement, his trying efforts to organize his experience, and his gazing back to know about his roots and his continuing search for the desirable self can be clearly stated in his novel Half A Life (2001). In the novel Half A Life, Willie Chandran is a migrant from one place to another and then to another. And he keeps on doing that through both Half A Life, and its sequel Magic Seeds (2004).

The literature of the Indian diaspora constitutes an important part of the burgeoning field of anglophone postcolonial literature. Some of the better-known authors in this archive include V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Bharati Mukherjee, Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anita Desai, M.G. Vassanji, Shyam Selvadurai, and Kiran Desai. The growing international visibility of these authors has gone hand in hand with the popularity of postcolonial criticism and theory in academe. Vijay Mishra’s scholarly work on Bollywood cinema, Indian devotional poetry, Indian diasporic literature, and postcolonial theory and criticism has contributed greatly to our understanding of this important area of writing.

Abstract This article considers how time, space, and history are mobilized across a contemporary range of debates in postcolonial studies, world literature theory, and memory studies. The time-maps surveyed all revolve around Eurochronology and its contestations, and range from novels by Joseph Conrad and V.S. Naipaul, to a video installation and essay by the South African artist William Kentridge, to the critical study of the Indian Ocean world. Traversing literature, art, critical theory, and personal story, the essay provides an imaginative and imagistic guide to new ways of thinking time. It concludes with a speculation on the promise of a “soft” rather than “mean” time, the latter evoking imperial standardization and the former describing a terrain in which affect and history are set in rippling motion.

Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, by Edwidge Danticat (reviewed by Colin Dayan) Gordon K. Lewis on Race, Class and Ideology in the Caribbean, edited by Anthony P. Maingot (reviewed by Bridget Brereton) Freedom and Constraint in Caribbean Migration and Diaspora, edited by Elizabeth Thomas-Hope (reviewed by Mary Chamberlain) Black Europe and the African Diaspora, edited by Darlene Clark Hine, Trica Danielle Keaton & Stephen Small (reviewed by Gert Oostindie) Caribbean Middlebrow: Leisure Culture and the Middle Class, by Belinda E dmondson (reviewed by Karla Slocum) Global Change and Caribbean Vulnerability: Environment, Economy and Society at Risk, edited by Duncan McGregor, David Dodman & David Barker (reviewed by Bonham C. Richardson) Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic, by Ashli White (reviewed by Matt Clavin) Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934-1957, by Matthew J. Smith (reviewed by Robert Fatton Jr.) Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos, by Louis A. Pérez Jr. (reviewed by Camillia Cowling) Seeds of Insurrection: Domination and Resistance on Western Cuban Plantations, 1808-1848, by Manuel Barcia (reviewed by Matt D. Childs) Epidemic Invasions: Yellow Fever and the Limits of Cuban Independence, 1878-1930, by Mariola Espinosa (reviewed by Cruz Maria Nazario) The Cuban Connection: Drug Trafficking, Smuggling, and Gambling in Cuba from the 1920s to the Revolution, by Eduardo Sáenz Rovner (reviewed by IvelawLloyd Griffith) Before Fidel: The Cuba I Remember, by Francisco José Moreno, and The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro’s Schoolmates from Revolution to Exile, by Patrick Symmes (reviewed by Pedro Pérez Sarduy) Lam, by Jacques Leenhardt & Jean-Louis Paudrat (reviewed by Sally Price) Healing Dramas: Divination and Magic in Modern Puerto Rico, by Raquel Romberg (reviewed by Grant Jewell Rich) Puerto Rican Citizen: History and Political Identity in Twentieth-Century New York City, by Lorrin Thomas (reviewed by Jorge Duany) Livestock, Sugar and Slavery: Contested Terrain in Colonial Jamaica, by Verene A. Shepherd (reviewed by Justin Roberts) Daddy Sharpe: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Samuel Sharpe, a West Indian Slave Written by Himself, 1832, by Fred W. Kennedy (reviewed by Gad Heuman) Becoming Rasta: Origins of Rastafari Identity in Jamaica, by Charles Price (reviewed by Jahlani A. Niaah) Reggaeton, edited by Raquel Z. Rivera, Wayne Marshall & Deborah Pacini Hernandez (reviewed by Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier) Carriacou String Band Serenade: Performing Identity in the Eastern Caribbean, by Rebecca S. Miller (reviewed by Nanette de Jong) Caribbean Visionary: A.R.F. Webber and the Making of the Guyanese Nation, by Selwyn R. Cudjoe (reviewed by Clem Seecharan) Guyana Diaries: Women’s Lives Across Difference, by Kimberely D. Nettles (reviewed by D. Alissa Trotz) Writers of the Caribbean Diaspora: Shifting Homelands, Travelling Identities, edited by Jasbir Jain & Supriya Agarwal (reviewed by Joy Mahabir) Queen of the Virgins: Pageantry and Black Womanhood in the Caribbean, by M. Cynthia Oliver (reviewed by Tami Navarro) Notions of Identity, Diaspora, and Gender in Caribbean Women’s Writing, by Brinda Mehta (reviewed by Marie-Hélène Laforest) Authority and Authorship in V.S. Naipaul, by Imraan Coovadia (reviewed by A shley Tellis) Typo/Topo/Poéthique sur Frankétienne, by Jean Jonassaint (reviewed by Martin Munro) Creoles in Education: An Appraisal of Current Programs and Projects, edited by Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens (reviewed by Jeff Siegel) Material Culture in Anglo-America: Regional Identity and Urbanity in the Tidewater, Lowcountry, and Caribbean, edited by David S. Shields (reviewed by Susan Kern) Tibes: People, Power, and Ritual at the Center of the Cosmos, edited by L. Antonio Curet & Lisa M. Stringer (reviewed by Frederick H. Smith)

-Leslie G. Desmangles, Joan Dayan, Haiti, history, and the Gods. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. xxiii + 339 pp.-Barry Chevannes, James T. Houk, Spirits, blood, and drums: The Orisha religion in Trinidad. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. xvi + 238 pp.-Barry Chevannes, Walter F. Pitts, Jr., Old ship of Zion: The Afro-Baptist ritual in the African Diaspora. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. xvi + 199 pp.-Robert J. Stewart, Lewin L. Williams, Caribbean theology. New York: Peter Lang, 1994. xiii + 231 pp.-Robert J. Stewart, Barry Chevannes, Rastafari and other African-Caribbean worldviews. London: Macmillan, 1995. xxv + 282 pp.-Michael Aceto, Maureen Warner-Lewis, Yoruba songs of Trinidad. London: Karnak House, 1994. 158 pp.''Trinidad Yoruba: From mother tongue to memory. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996. xviii + 279 pp.-Erika Bourguignon, Nicola H. Götz, Obeah - Hexerei in der Karibik - zwischen Macht und Ohnmacht. 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Langhorne PA: Gordon and Breach, 1994. vii + 344 pp., Nina Glick Schiller, Cristina Szanton Blanc (eds)-John Stiles, Richard D.E. Burton ,French and West Indian: Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana today. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia; London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1995. xii + 202 pp., Fred Réno (eds)-Frank F. Taylor, Dennis J. Gayle ,Tourism marketing and management in the Caribbean. New York: Routledge, 1993. xxvi + 270 pp., Jonathan N. Goodrich (eds)-Ivelaw L. Griffith, John La Guerre, Structural adjustment: Public policy and administration in the Caribbean. St. Augustine: School of continuing studies, University of the West Indies, 1994. vii + 258 pp.-Luis Martínez-Fernández, Kelvin A. Santiago-Valles, 'Subject People' and colonial discourses: Economic transformation and social disorder in Puerto Rico, 1898-1947. 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V. S. Naipaul, a Nobel Prize winner, portrays Willie Somerset Chandran, his protagonist in Half a Life, as a man who escapes from his homeland and searches his identity across three continents for half a life. Inversely, in the end of the story, Willie values his Indian passport and his family tie, which leads me to probe into his sharp transformed attitude. Borrowing from Stuart Hall the idea that the process of identification is “not the so-called return to roots but a coming-to-terms-with our ‘routes’”, this study argues that Willie’s change from trying to get rid of his original identity, even by making up a new identity, to accepting his Indian identity, is not simply a process of returning to his Indian root but a compromise with his journey, which is interweaved with his changing attitude to his father. What this study develops from Hall’s opinion is that though one’s identification is shaped by “route”, his or her action may not follow cognition for various reasons.

The Indian diasporic writings de signate the multi-cultural space of immigrants and extend a genre of a divergent Indian cultural discourse which depicts their struggles. The concept of rootlessnes, dislocation, fragmented thoughts and memories of homeland and their longing to go back to their motherland all could be the theme of disporic writings. The diasporic writers or immigrant writers stand in-between two cultural scenarios in the process of moving from one culture to another and the same dual culture drives a wedge between the nation and the self. Even though they are profoundly associated with their hereditary customs, traditions, language and religion, they also focus on alienation, hybridisation, marginalization and local community life from the margins.

What links Bernardin de Saint Pierre’s 1788 novel about Isle de France, Paul et Virginie, with V.S. Naipaul’s 1972 piece, An overcrowded Barracoon? What is common to Joseph Conrad’s 1910 novella, A Smile of Fortune, and tourist brochures of La Grande Baie? What brings together the story of the ruins of Babylon and the Ghats of the Ganges? Actually, these seemingly disjointed narratives make up a vast library of inter-connecting Indian Ocean island stories. In this study I will use the image of ‘Banaras’ as the locus of an inter-textual reading exercise connecting the literary spaces of Mauritian writer and filmmaker Barlen Pyamootoo with other stories like those mentioned above. Pyamootoo’s literary universe reveals to us the dynamic, multilayered and polyphonic nature of Indian Ocean island cultures.