A critique of VS Naipaul: An apologist for colonialism

I was travelling from the beginning of August for about six weeks. During my travel I came across the news of the death of VS Naipaul at the age of 85 (August 17, 1932 - August 11, 2018). He is a well-known travel and fiction writer. As an author he drew both admiration and revulsion in equal measures. His wife Nadira Naipaul said he was a "a giant in all that he achieved and he died surrounded by those he loved having lived a life which was full of wonderful creativity and endeavour''. There was also an outpouring of condolences from other quarters including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi describing Naipaul's death a major loss to the world of literature. It was hinted by many that Naipaul was encouraging the rise of Hindu nationalism and a cause also at the heart of Modi's politics. A large number of Indian politicians, including president of the country, expressed their sadness at his passing away.

Even in Bangladesh leading Bengali newspapers paid tribute to Naipaul and one leading Bengali newspaper even recounted his presence at the 2016 Dhaka Literary Festival which Naipaul opened. The irony is Naipaul would have considered the vast majority of the people inhabiting Bangladesh as "converted people'', the type of people he intensely disliked because, according to his opinion, they have disowned their past and Islam has blighted the landscape. I remember a picture in a newspaper how Naipaul was feted at that festival. His wheelchair was being pushed to the podium by no less than a person than a leading member of the literary establishment of Bangladesh. There were glowing tributes paid to his visit to Dhaka in some English newspapers. Such adulation of Naipaul appears to me quite bizarre in a post-colonial society like Bangladesh.

His long writing career was afflicted by his ignorance of many issues and topics he had delved into. He was more a posturing man than a man of substance on those issues. He never tried or possibly did not have the intellectual honesty and capacity to come to grips with issues he dealt with in his non-fictions. His vision was clouded by his Eurocentric vision of the world. This very vision led him to a very superficial view of history which caused him to appreciate European colonisers and their civilisational contribution to colonised. He was in effect a turncoat who wrote to a preconceived Western mindset. Edward Said famously said about Naipaul: "The most attractive and immoral move, however, has been Naipaul's, who has allowed himself quite consciously to be turned into a witness for the Western prosecution." Another Caribbean Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott complained that Naipaul's prose was tainted by his "repulsion towards Negroes'. Walcott in one of his poems called Naipaul as VS Nightfall. His fellow Trinidadian writer CLR James put it differently and said Naipaul's views simply reflected "what the whites want say, but dare not''.

While newspapers in Europe and North America ran tributes, the reactions in the Caribbean's have been complex. However, the Prime Minister of Trinidad, Keith Rowley expressed sincere condolences to his family and praised his literary talent despite Naipaul's denunciation of the land of his birth. After receiving his Nobel Prize in 2001, he claimed England as his "home'' and India as the country of his ancestors, completely dismissing his Trinidadian roots. He told an interviewer in 1983, "I was born there (Trinidad), I thought it was a great mistake''. Derek Walcott rightly observed that Naipaul turned his back on his Caribbean heritage and "sucking'' up to the British. The Guardian in an editorial called Naipaul "a complicated man and a complicated legacy''. Paul Theroux, American travel writer, described him as "stubborn and uncompromising''. Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born writer, described Naipaul's death as loss of an elder brother while maintaining some distance from Naipaul's views on many issues. Another Indian-born writer Pankaj Mishra observed that Naipaul's works represent "ironic reversal of the Conradian journey into the heart of darkness''.

Sir Vidiiadhar Surayaprasad Naipaul was born in 1932 in Chaguanas, Trinidad in the Caribbean. He abbreviated his name in capitalised letters to VS to make it easily pronounceable by the British. His grandparents migrated to Trinidad in the 1880s as indentured labour from the Northern plains of India to toil on sugar plantations. He lived his whole life living with the consequences of his ancestors that migration to the other side of the world.

After finishing his high school in Trinidad, he went to University College, Oxford on a scholarship to study English where he had a nervous breakdown that lasted 18 months and made a suicide attempt. He arrived in England at time the racist Winston Churchill was running the country. It must have been a frightening experience for an 18-year colonial black boy in being surrounded by a hostile, xenophobic England, an easy prey for the skinheads. From there he got a second class in English. On completion of his degree, he started with the BBC as a presenter for a weekly radio programme called Caribbean Voices in 1954. This was a part-time job where he also wrote short reviews and conducted interviews. The following year he started his writing career with Miguel Street and since then he has written more than 30 books. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.

His literary career has been marked by controversy including the award of the Nobel Prize. He has been labelled a racist, misogynist, homophobe and also staunch Islamophobe and a hardcore right-wing reactionary. Naipaul's account of the Indian, Caribbean, African, Latin American and Islamic worlds completely lacks any understanding let alone any critical scholarship about these regions. He, instead, relied on flimsy and cheapest colonial mythologies about the people who inhibit these regions. His pronouncements such as "nothing was made in Trinidad" and "Africa has no future" are the most grotesque examples of his comments on the Third World one can imagine. His disgust for the world that produced him verges on self-hatred and a kind of psychological trauma. Paul Theroux portrayed his onetime friend and mentor as snobbish, miserly and unforgiving, to the point of brutality.

Naipaul's anti-black sentiments are at open display in his literary works. He argued that the universal civilisation is the Western civilisation. Such a view resonates with Kipling's view that "civilisation is the white man's burden''. Naipaul, himself a product of the third world, denouncing his own people with the vulgar suggestion that these people have some irredeemable character flaws is a symptom of a very deep psychological disorder. Naipaul's self-proclamation "I do not have a political view'' is a hollow proclamation, he is intensely a political writer. As Said points out Naipaul takes a dim view of decolonisation and thinks modern nationalism is a disaster.

His admirers eulogise him as a great story teller - they not only include his implied audience of disenchanted Western Liberals and orientalists but also a section of general readers, literary figures and institutions in Third World countries such as India and Bangladesh. Stories always carry a massage, overt or otherwise. What messages his stories send, it is of racism and bigotry. His proclivity to dig out filth and dirt in societies he dislikes, in particular Africa, made Edward Said as back as in 1977 to describe him as a 'scavenger'. His racism is always laced with a great sense of pessimism about African societies as if these societies are beyond redemption, condemned to purgatory. His use of imagery in his writings on Africa and black people in general around the world is to cause an instant dislike, hatred and aversion in the minds of the readers towards these people.

His hostility to Islam is clearly seen in his writings and public utterances which primarily pander to Western prejudices against Islam. He knows there is a big market for Islam bashing in the West and he can also see the great opportunity to make money out of it. Money has always been at the back of his mind as Theroux pointed out. His writing on Islam demonstrates his personal prejudice and his very limited knowledge of Islam. Naipaul was also intellectually dishonest, as Edward Said pointed, he only interviewed those who would confirm his pre-established thesis about flaws in Islam. Edward Hoagland expressing his views in the New York Times on Among the Believers wrote "a vitriolic tour that evinces an inherent antipathy to the religion of Islam so naked and severe that a book taking a comparable view of Christianity or Judaism would have been hard put to find a publisher in the USA''. Edward Said commenting on the same book said, "He thinks Islam is the worst disaster that ever happened to India, and the book reveals a pathology. It is hard to believe any rational person would attack an entire culture on that scale''. However, many see him more as a misanthrope rather than an Islamophobe citing his marriage to Nadira Alvi from Pakistan. But that's a matter of degree. He always displayed a sense of rage - a rage on anything that is Islamic.

However, in the wake of September 11, 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature that very year. Nobel Committee has always been known for considering extra-literary factors in making their decision but in this instance a political decision was made in the shadow of September 11. Naipaul viewed September 11 as motivated by religious hate and that was the primary factor, not the US foreign policy and completely disregarding local political situation arising out of that foreign policy that might have better explained the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. To him it was not definitely a blowback but an act of Islamic nihilism. Naipaul is just one more add on to the Nobel Committee's list of people with questionable credibility including Bob Dylan in the very recent past.

Muhammad Mahmood is an independent economic and political analyst.

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