THEMATIC STUDY OF V. S.

NAIPAUL’S SELECT NOVELS

A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE
TILAK MAHARASHTRA VIDYAPEETH, PUNE

FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
In Subject
Under the Board of Arts and Fine Arts Studies

BY
ASHA CHANDRAKANT SHIRSATH
Registration No. 15611001273

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF

DR. SUBHASH PANDIT ZANKE
HEAD, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, BSL ARTS, SCIENCE AND
P.O. NAHATA COMMERCE COLLEGE, BHUSAWAL

September 2020
i
 DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the thesis entitled “Thematic Study of V.S.

Naipaul’s Select Novels” completed and written by me has not previously

formed the bases for the award of any degree or other similar title upon me of

this or any other Vidyapeeth or examiners board.

Place: Dharangaon

Date: /11/2019

(Mrs. Asha Chandrakant Shirsath)

Research Student

ii
 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the thesis entitled “Thematic Study of V. S.

Naipaul’s Select Novels” which is being submitted herewith for the award of
the Degree of Vidyavachaspati (Ph.D) in English of Tilak Maharashtra
Vidyapeeth, Pune is the result of original research work completed by Mrs.
Asha Chandrakant Shirsath under my supervision and guidance. To the best
of my knowledge and belief the work incorporated in this thesis has not formed
the basis for the award of any Degree or similar title of this or any other
University or examining body upon her.

Place: Bhusaval Research Guide

Date:

iii
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The present thesis entitled Thematic Study of V. S. Naipaul’s Select Novels is

a humble attempt to discuss the various issue and recurring themes in the major novels

of V. S. Naipaul.

When a particular target is achieved by person, it is made by a lot of efforts

and sometimes these efforts are shared in collection of supported hands. I take an

opportunity to express my gratitude to them who helped me in this target of my

research work leading to the degree, Ph.D.

I am very thankful to my honourable Research Guide Dr. Subhash Pandit

Zanke, Head, Department of English, Bhusawal Arts, Science and P.O.Nahata

Commerce College Bhusawal, Dist-Jalgaon-425201 for his inspiring and valuable

guidance as well as kind help from time to time in order to complete the work in hand.

I owe a special debt of gratitude for his guidance. I am immensely grateful to him for

his valuable suggestions and rich knowledge which helped me in my research

endeavour.

I am also thankful to the Principal and the Librarian of Bhusawal Arts, Science

and P.O. Nahata Commerce College Bhusawal, Dist-Jalgaon for their kind help. Last

but not least my sincere thanks to my parents, my family members - my husband, Mr.

Chandrakant Shirsath, my son and daughter and others for their support and

motivation. I also thank the Librarians of various libraries and those who have given

me kind co-operation while working on this venture.

- Mrs. Asha Chandrakant Shirsath

iv
 CONTENTS

Declaration ii
Certificate iii
Acknowledgements iv

Abstract vi

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

Chapter 2: Making of V. S. Naipaul 51

Chapter 3: Fictional World of V. S. Naipaul 75

Chapter 4: Thematic Patterns in V. S. Naipaul’s Select Novels 139

Chapter 5: Conclusion 196

Appendix: Bibliography 211

v
 Abstract
V. S. Naipaul is one of the most influential diasporic writers from the
contemporary literary world. He is associated with both colonial and post-colonial
realism. His vision is of the twentieth century. His experience is as an expatriate in
England and he is moving constantly in search of roots as an ex-colonial, which made
him a post-colonial writer. He wrote about small-undeveloped societies, where people
are constantly in search of their identity in their lost culture. His writing appealed the
people, who have experienced the impact of social change and immigration.
Born and bred in Trinidad, Naipaul hated the narrow, circumscribed, brutal life
with limited possibilities, small range of professions and religious conflicts where he
lived. The sense of displacement created insecurity within Naipaul and he traveled
many countries including India, the origin of his grandfathers to find out the truth.
Naipaul created his own identity facing to the problem of triple alienation. Starting
from a freelance writer with BBC London, he reached to the position of ten top writers
ranked by The Time and honoured by the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.
The study aims at analyzing recurring themes such as rootlessness, alienation,
exile, fragmentation of the social order, the sense of the void, cultural crisis,
expatriation, and quest for self-understanding, quest for homeland and the fellow
feelings for Indians and others as reflected in the novels of V.S. Naipaul.
The scope of the present research study is limited to V.S. Naipaul‟s following
four novels: A Way in the World, The Enigma of Arrival, Half a Life, Magic Seeds and
the books and research articles available on his writings. The study offers in depth
analysis of the recurring themes in the select novels. The thesis is presented into five
chapters.
The chapter first offers an introduction to the study. It is in the form of a
background study. It takes a bird‟s eye view of Indian Diaspora literature along with
the analysis of the growth and development of Indian Novel in English. After a brief
literature review, the chapter also provides theoretical analysis in the form of a
detailed discussion on various types of themes dealt with in literature.
The chapter two offers a detailed discussion on the making of V. S. Naipaul as
a person and a successful writer of the contemporary times. It provides detailed

vi
information about Naipaul‟s birth, education, career, life and works created by him. It
also offers a general discussion on Naipaul‟s fiction and non-fictions. It analyses how
Naipaul‟s novels explore his multinational canvas of the socio-cultural spectrum and
other human issues; and how he has made himself the theme of his writing due to the
lack of subject matter. Naipaul‟s writings are merged with his personal experience.
The main forces behind his literary talent are the Caribbean Hindu India in which he
was born and brought up. His grandmother house provided the first link with his
Hindu self, and with the idea of his ancestors and second from his father‟s stories. As
he grew, he observed chasm between the two worlds that he inhabited and he
considered himself as rootless, and tried to search for his identity through his writings.
Through his creative writing, Naipaul throws illuminating light on corrosive influence
of colonial rule on the psyche of the colonized. The sense of insecurity springs from
the identity crisis that leads to existential fears which results in psychosis. The chapter
underlines how the influence of colonial rule is also visible on the human relationships
in the writings of V. S. Naipaul.
The third chapter analyses the fictional world of V. S. Naipaul in detail. It
offers discussion of his early Trinidad novels, travel fiction, and his later novels. The
chapter shows how his writings clearly indicate Naipaul as a post-colonial Diaspora
writer known for his multinational vision of writing, and how he has been a product of
„Diaspora‟ a common feature of twentieth century life. The chapter highlights how
Naipaul‟s writing covers the huge canvass where he portrays the fractured identity of
individuals who strive hard for stable identity in the atmosphere of post-colonialism.
The issues he has discussed in his novels are identity crisis, essentials of individual as
well as political freedom, elements of hybridity and its effects and ethnicity and many
more. His novels intellectually document the physical, mental and cultural dislocation
of the people on the account of colonization. Accordingly, his works point the urgent
need to have a collective campaign for human welfare making his characters world
citizen, global fellows by going beyond of each and every wall of discrimination.
Therefore, they are always in search of their identity. They move and move like
Naipaul himself and thus become global. They are confined to a specific country.
They suffer from rootlessness and struggle and strive to survive. They try their best to
find their home in their ideal at every place, but they are frustrated everywhere to find
vii
such place. They cannot feel at home at either at the place of their origin or of their
ancestors. So, they get a view of their place in their imagination, preferably a place
like England. It shows how Naipaul‟s writing project the image of modern world as
fractured state of chaos, instability and uncertainty. He finds everyone as rootless,
lonely and in search of a home. He finds people from the modern world displaced and
suffered a lot. This is all Naipaul‟s perception of the modern world where modern
man suffers from a kind of dilemma of identity and survival. In the course of time
Naipaul‟s characters realize that human life is full of complications; and therefore,
they swing in between the two worlds of illusion and reality being conscious of it. It
analyses how Naipaul‟s works present a world of displaced situation in the life of the
modern man who wanders in search of prospects and happiness. His works give
glimpses into the socio-political and psychological history of the world today. They
offer the multifaceted chaotic world scenario very poignantly. His fiction appears
historical and geographical documentary exploring both inner and the external reality
as well. It also analyses the protagonists of Naipaul‟s fiction that bring out the
complexity of the present day rootless generations striving to establish identity and
order in life. They struggle to transform their chaotic world and for manipulating their
life, and how they feel rootless, alienated, and uncertain. Even their shifting from a
place to another place doesn‟t help find solace. Therefore, they get the feeling of being
marginalized and expatriate. All this results into their feeling helplessness due to
which they work more and more and find no desire, vision and destination. Naipaul‟s
vision is clear and entirely unique in his exploration of the third world reality. His
works offer a journey of analysis, exploration, clarification, confirmation and
confrontation.
The fourth is the core chapter of the study; it offers a detailed discussion of the
recurrent themes in Naipaul‟s writings. It shows how Naipaul‟s themes have the
global touch; and how the themes are related to the problems of colonized people,
their displacement, their homelessness and their sense of decolonization. His novels
focus on an Indian migrated from India to Trinidad in his ancestor‟s period and who
later on travel to European countries. It analyses the themes like alienation, exile,
disintegration of the social order, the sense of rootlessness, diasporic experiences,
migration, colonialism and post-colonialism that are the most important and recurrent
viii
themes of the World literature in the present times. It shows how the thematic patterns
in Naipaul‟s fictional world very clearly underline that his people represent the
modern men truthfully.
The fifth and last chapter offers conclusions drawn from the analysis in the
previous chapters. It concludes with how Naipaul is well known for his continuous
writing about marginal people with suppressed histories dealing with the themes of
shifting identities, roots and homes, expatriation and the changing realities of the
migrants. It shows how the recurring themes in Naipaul are the outcome of the
collusion of culture; and how the themes in the colonial situation produce a special
human psychosis of unbelongingness, resulted either in success, or failed to survive in
the new atmosphere. It also state how the major themes of his novels are related to the
problems of colonized people, their displacement, and their homelessness. It sums up
that the most of his novels have dominant themes of alienation, rootlessness,
displacement, multiculturalism, hybridity, identity crisis, ethnicity, sense of
(un)belongingness, cross-cultural issues, nostalgia for homeland, Diasporic presence,
spirit of exile, colonial and post-colonial life. And at the end of the chapter, it offers
findings, pedagogical implication of the study and also suggests a few topics for
further research in this area of study.
Lastly, the thesis offers an elaborative list of the works referred and used as
references while pursuing the study in hand. The researcher has used latest edition of
MLA style sheet for documenting the entries used.

ix
 Shirsath 1

Chapter 1
Introduction

1.0 Preliminaries
Indians have been migrating to various parts of the world from ages.
The earliest emigration of Indians may be due to the trade and religious
contacts with other civilizations like the Greek and the Mesopotamian. Later
on, there are also instances of the ‘Buddhist monks’ spreading the religion and
religious teachings across the South and South East Asia. The colonial
indentured labour migration population mobility was inherent in the social
order, and is observed in the case of the marginal peasants who shifted their
loyalties from one master to another and traveled from one religion to another.
Language and culture are transformed, when they encountered the others. Most
of the literature on the Indian Diaspora deals with the Indians emigrated during
the colonial period and later. The British rule and its impact on the Indian
peasantry, the famines, and the consequent economic backwardness have
resulted in mass employment. The institution of slavery was banned by the
British in 1803, which created an acute labour shortage in sugar plantations of
the British and European colonies. This situation gave birth to the indenture
form of labour from India and other parts of Asia. Much of the recruitment of
this form of labour was done from Western Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Bengal, and
Orissa. This movement caused dislocation and new culture was partly adopted
by indentures.
Each of the categories of Diasporas belongs to particular case of
migration, usually related with particular group of people. Indian writing in
English is all about its people, their cultures, east-west encounter, and colonial
and postcolonial consciousness of the people living in India and abroad. In the
past, Indian English writers were impressed by the writings of Dickens and
Scott. Earlier writers like Narad C. Chaudhari, R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand
 Shirsath 2

or Raja Rao used English in its classical form. Today, many of the writers like
V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy, Rohinton Mistry,
Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Agha Shahid, Sujata
Bhatt, Melanie Silgardo and others are the Diaspora writers who made a
noteworthy contribution to the diasporic writing.
V. S. Naipaul is one of the most influential diasporic writers from the
contemporary literary world. He is associated with both colonial and post-
colonial realism. His vision is of the twentieth century. His experience is as an
expatriate in England and he is moving constantly in search of roots as an ex-
colonial, which made him a post-colonial writer. He wrote about small-
undeveloped societies, where people are constantly in search of their identity in
their lost culture. His writing appealed the people, who have experienced the
impact of social change and immigration. As a student of Literature certain
questions were rolling in my mind, For instance: What are the reasons of using
recurring themes in most of Naipaul’s novels such as rootlessness, identity
crisis, unbelongingness, and autobiographical touch in his writings? What
made him as consider himself as expatriate writer? Why Naipaul is emotionally
attracted towards Indian fatalism, positivity though, he is strong believer in
Western individualism and skepticism living in London? To find out the
answer to these questions, I read many of his major works.
Born and bred in Trinidad, Naipaul hated the narrow, circumscribed,
brutal life with limited possibilities, small range of professions and religious
conflicts where he lived. The sense of displacement created insecurity within
Naipaul and he traveled many countries including India, the origin of his
grandfathers to find out the truth. Naipaul created his own identity from the
problem of triple alienation starting from a freelance writer with BBC London,
he reached to the position of ten top writers ranked by The Time and honoured
by the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2001. Out of all such problems, how one
can achieve the great position is the example of V.S. Naipaul, which made me
to choose the topic for my research work leading to Ph.D. The present thesis
 Shirsath 3

seeks to provide a detailed study of the various themes as reflected in V.S.

Naipaul’s major novels.
1.1 Research Outline
1.1.1 Research Statement
V.S. Naipaul’s novels explore recurrent themes like quest and
rediscovery of self, cultural ideology, alienation, historical relations, and the
theme of colonialism and its impact on people. To find out reasons why
Naipaul’s novels are forming a fabric of all these recurrent themes in almost all
of his novels is the research statement.
1.1.2 Purpose and significance of the study
The purpose of study is to focus on the recurring themes such as
rootlessness, alienation, exile, fragmentation of the social order, the sense of
the void, cultural crisis, expatriation, and quest for self-understanding, quest for
homeland and the fellow feelings for Indians etc. as reflected in the novels of
V.S. Naipaul.
One of the very important objectives of the study is to study quest and
discovery of self as reflected in Naipaul’s select novels. Many of his novels
deal with the themes of shifting identities and homeless. The question of his
identity comes up because of his immigrant background and the displacement.
It caused, especially in a post-colonial world full of cultural hybridity and
racial pluralism. Naipaul tried to create an identity and construct home in the
world of his books through his writing.
Another important objective of the study is to discuss in detail the theme
of cultural ideology as reflected in Naipaul’s novels. Naipaul intends to identify
himself with the prevalent reality; social, political or personal. He suffers from
certain constraints such as lack of enterprising nationality; despair and anguish,
undefined social and political ethos, imperfect empathy, orchestration of
perceptions, multiple metaphorical implications, paradox of ceremonial
departures, danger of non-existence and compulsion to adopt the same culture.
 Shirsath 4

Naipaul tries to establish and struggles hard in search of an identity for himself
in a fatal, dogmatic society of conservative ideas and ideologies.
The sense of isolation, alienation and loss that was born in sensitive
writers the twentieth century informs the literature of that age. Naipaul’s
feeling of alienation stems from a spiritual crisis, but he felt isolated and
alienated. Naipaul’s isolated life in his Wiltshire Cottage bred in him a kind of
alienation, which is characteristic of a self-imposed exile, Naipaul, was an alien
in the midst of other aliens. He observed how the various migrant groups,
including his own, attempted to maintain their own identity.
The theme of colonialism and its impact on the third world countries is
one of the important issues in Naipaul’s novels. Historical phenomenon of
colonialism affected the lives of the native people. They consider colonized as
inferior and imposed colonial education and cultural colonization on colonized
people. It resulted in loss of identity among the natives. Indian context is
different from Caribbean but England colonized both the countries. In this
peculiar situation, the theme of colonial conflict has inspired many Indo-
English novelists to portray the patriotic zeal and awareness of nationalism.
Naipaul’s position is peculiar as an Indian Diaspora writer. It is because India
being the country of his ancestor whom the colonial deported to Trinidad, V.S
Naipaul’s birthplace and his life as an expatriate in England as Naipaul’s sense
of unbelonging to any of three countries.
The themes like mistrust, rootless mockery and self-deception also are
some other important themes in Naipaul’s novels. The thematic exposition of
Naipaul’s first two phases of novel aims at exposing failures, futility, isolation,
dispossession, rootlessness, and value baselessness of an unanchored
community. V.S. Naipaul illuminated analytical studies on this important issue
in detailed. Most of his works concentrate on defining and ascertaining the
historical time and the racial and social complexities of the people. Naipaul’s
stories dealt with political themes, after he visited India, colonial and post-
colonial societies in the process of decolonization, and he calls it, the half made
 Shirsath 5

societies and explores the cultural confusion of the Third World and the
problem of an outsider, mistrust, rootlessness, mockery, and self-deception.
Naipaul’s visit to Africa and other alien cultures are a political, ordinary at the
low economic level. The themes such as, search for freedom, loss of selfhood,
exile abandonment are the recurrent theme in Naipaul’s writings.
1.1.3 Scope and Limitations of the Study
The scope of the present research study is limited to V.S. Naipaul’s
following four novels: A Way in the World, The Enigma of Arrival, Half a Life,
Magic Seeds and the books and research articles available on his writings. The
study offers in depth analysis of the recurring themes in the select novels.
1.1.4 Research Methodology
On the basis of primary data, that is the facts of living person’s lives
actual information, which will be received by researcher for study from the
actual field of research, and secondary data i.e. the information, which will
attained indirectly gathered form information collected from the individuals
and institutions, through personal diaries, letters, survey, documents, books,
various information, published in newspapers and magazines, Biographies etc.
The researcher wishes to carry present research study by using:
 Descriptive Method – Descriptive method aims at describing accurately
the characteristics of a group, community or people. The researcher
wishes to study the themes in V. S. Naipaul’s select novels in regards to
the given aims and objectives.
 Analytical Method – Analysis of data involves a number of closely
related operations that are performed with the purpose of summarizing
the collected data and organizing them in such a manner that will answer
the research questions. The researcher wishes to summarize the present
research by using analytical method.
1.2 Review of Literature
V.S. Naipaul is a Third World writer, who dealt with the current social
issues and serious problem of the Third World society. His writing attracted
 Shirsath 6

many of the scholars to work on it. The following scholars are the variety of
research contributions on Naipaul and his works:
Sudipta Chakraborty’s Ph.D. thesis entitled, Space and Cultural
Geography: A Study of V.S. Naipaul’s Representation of India in his Travel
Narratives (2011) University of Burdwan, West Bengal; Kafeel Ahmed
Chaudhari’s Migracy and Identity: A Study of V.S. Naipaul’s Non-Fictional
Works (2012) Mizoram University; Gerald Giliness and Lowel Fiel’s Growing
up in the West Indies: A reading of Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas as a
West Indian Building Saroman (1991); Dhinshna P’s Cultural encounters in the
travel narratives of D.H. Lawrence, V.S. Naipaul, Bruce Chatwin and S.K.
Pottekkat (2012) Pondicherry University; Biruduraj Yadav Raju’s The Novels
of V.S. Naipaul: A Study in Nihilism (1995) Somania University Hyderabad.
Prof. Larrissa Rohde’s The Network of International Relation in Naipaul’s Half
a Life and Magic Seeds; and Anne Johnsrud’s thesis entitled as Postcolonial
Arrivals: Place and identity in V.S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival and David
Dabydeen’s Disappearance (2006) University of Oslo.
The following Scholars have contributed criticism on Naipaul in the
form of books: Dolly Zulakha Hassan’s V. S. Naipaul and the West Indies,
Michael Gorra’s After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie, Emmanuel S. Nelson’s
Rewording: The Literature of Indian Diaspora, Greenberg Robert M’s Anger
and the Alchemy of Literary Method in V.S. Naipaul’s Political Fiction: The
Case of the Mimic Men, Yashoda Bhat’s V.S. Naipaul: An Introduction, Rosy
Sinha’s Crisis of Identity in the Novels of V.S. Naipaul, Naval Kishor Singh’s
Writing the Diaspora Essays on Culture and Identity, Sumita Ashri’s V.S.
Naipaul’s Dilemma of Diasporic Existence, Rajalakshmi Sathyananthan’s The
Writer Motif in V.S. Naipaul. The Post-Colonial Maverick, Rajeshwar
Mittapalli and Michael Hensen’s V.S. Naipaul : Fiction and Travel Writing,
Suman Gupta’s Writers and their Works V.S. Naipaul, Patrick French’s The
World Is What It Is the Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul, etc. are the few
collections.
 Shirsath 7

Apart from systematic full-length study as mentioned above, many of

the scholars wrote articles or research papers on Naipaul and his works. But a
systematic full length study on the thematic patterns or recurring themes in
Naipaul’s novels is not attempted by any of the scholars. Therefore, the
researcher has chosen the present topic for research work leading to Ph.D. in
English.
1.3 Indian Novel in English: An Overview
1.3.1 Pre-Independence Era
Indian writing in English is nearly 150 years old. It is the part of the
literature in India. The study and writing of English by Indians is the
renaissance in Indian social history. Lord William Bentinck introduced English
education and the knowledge of English literature and science through the
medium of English language available to the people of India. H.M. Williams
says in this respect,
Use of the English language for administration, inter-communication,
and higher learning resulted in a twin development. English became the
tool of administrative communication, the language of clerks, officials,
and technologists. The test of the value was a practical one and English
proved to be an adaptable language. (162)
The colonial education brought transformation in the literature of Indian
language. In 1840s the regional journalism spread, Digdarsan and Prabhakar
launch in Marathi, Vartaman Tarangini in Telgu, Tattvabodhini Patrika in
Bengali, and Khair Khwahe Hind in Urdu.
The Christian missionaries wanted to spread the gospel of Christianity
but they also work in the field of education. In 17th century, the arrival of
printing press for publication of Bible or Government decrees slowly turns
towards newspapers in 1779, the first English Newspaper, Hickey’s Bengal
Gazette was published in India. Journalism played significant role to popularize
English. The period between 1820-1900 is called the Indian Renaissance. It
 Shirsath 8

was under the influence of English Education. Journalism and pamphleteering

are rise during this period.
During the era of Indian Renaissance, M. K. Naik in his book, A History
of Indian English Literature points out that the prose “was prompted by the
twofold impulse of the re-discovery of the Indian past and the strong awareness
of the problems of the day”. (71) The Indian writers turned towards their
regional works in English. At the beginning of fiction writing during the
colonial period, Indian novelists were influenced by Scott, Benjamin, Disraeli,
Bulwer Lytton, Marie Corelli, Wilkie Collins and G. W. M. Reynolds; they
admired their styles. During 1970s, Indian writers started writing realist prose,
which was influenced by Macaulay. Their major themes were nationalism and
some vernacular cultural conflict. The Travels of Dean Mohamed (1893) by
Sake Dean Mohamed has been recorded as the first book written in English
pioneering spirit of Indian Renaissance. Raja Ram Mohan Roy strove for a
lifetime to make India truly modern, synthesizing the traditional Indian values
with the Western scientific discipline. He expressed his revolutionary ideas
through Samvad Kaumudi (1921), S.C. Mukherjee started Dawn in 1897.
Ranade started Indu Prakashan to which Shri Aurabindo contributed a series of
articles. The Hindu and The Patriot newspapers explored the political views.
The art of oratory in English also progressed. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Tilak,
Gokhale, Vivekananda were eminent orators. Raja Ram Mohan Roy was the
first Indian writer who used English for social criticism and the exposition of
hypocrisy and contemporary social evils.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy is called as the Addison in English prose. His
revolutionary urge for social reform is expressed in a clear and argumentative
style, he regrets the system adhered by the Hindus to promote their political
interest, the distinction of castes, introducing division among them, has entirely
deprived them of political feeling, multitude of religious rites and ceremonies
and the laws of purification have totally disqualified them for from undertaking
any different enterprises. He thinks necessary that some change should take
 Shirsath 9

place in their religion at least for the sake of their political advantage and social
comfort. Raja Ram Mohan Roy was the first high-caste Brahmin to travel to
England. Raja Ram Mohan Roy ranks front in the list of world’s humanitarian
reformers. He condemned inhuman custom of sati, and it was banned due to his
hard efforts in 1829. His political ideas were influenced by European
philosophers Bacon, Hume, Bentham and Montesquieu.
Other great Indian prose writers were Ram Gopal Ghose, Keshab
Chandra Sen, Dadabhai Naoroji, Ranade, R.C. Datt, K.T. Telang etc. During
the first half of 20th century Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Swami
Vivekananda, Nirad C. Chaudhari, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajapat Roy
contributed to Indian English prose. Swami Vivekananda wrote on a wide
variety of subjects as conditions of the poor, predicament of women, poverty,
regeneration of India, nationalism, universal human concern including religion
and spirituality. He is also a pioneer of autobiographical prose. In My Life and
Mission, he depicts his attachment to his master and his inner spiritual
awakening Vivekananda was a forceful and impressive orator. He never
prepared his speeches. Christopher Isherwood in Ramakrishna and His
Disciples remarks about him,
He always almost spoke extempore, fired by the circumstances of
the moment, addressing himself to the condition of a particular
group of listeners, reacting to the intent of certain questions. That
was his nature, and he was supremely indifferent if his words of
today seemed to contradict those of yesterday. A man of
enlightenment, he knew that truth is never contained in
arrangement of sentences. It is within the speaker himself. If what
he is true, then words are important. (326)
Isherwood always spoke with great energy. His famous Chicago
address was like a tongue of flame. Among the grey wastes of cold dissertation,
it fired the soul of the listening crowd. Mahatma Gandhi wrote The Story of My
Experiments with Truth besides hundreds of articles, letters, and journalistic
 Shirsath 10

writing. He was a serious writer with moral outlook. His humanism is the
essence of his philosophy. He glorified the common man and condemned
materialistic and industrial advancement like Rousseau and Wordsworth.
Middleton Murray in The Challenge of Gandhi: Essays and Reflections
observes, “The place of Rousseau’s natural many uncorrupted by civilization is
taken in Gandhi’s mind by the Indian peasant who has the advantage over
Rousseau’s conception of being a reality”. (242) Mahatma Gandhi’s influence
as a writer and thinker was on literature. Under his influence politics,
economics, education, religion, social life, language and literature acquired
Gandhian power of thinking. He influences the languages and literatures, both
directly through his own writings in English and Gujarati and indirectly
through the movements generated through his revolutionary thought. In
keeping with his own conception of literature and art, Mahatma Gandhi
evolved a simple and clear, direct, straightforward and transparent style to
communicate his ideas and ideals to the common man. Secondly, Mahatma
Gandhi and the Gandhian Movement for freedom and social reform provided
numerous themes for literature. The epic struggle of India’s independence,
presided over by Mahatma Gandhi’s many sided personality, covered about
half a century. Statesman, social reformer, thinker, and an activist-writer, M. K.
Gandhi was convinced that the freedom struggle would not be complete and
successful unless a similar struggle was brought against the social evils. Gandhi
and Gandhism influenced the themes, especially character define, in
contemporary fiction. Under the Mahatma’s influence novelists began to write
on Indian village life, social evils, freedom movement etc. in the light of
Gandhian thought. Their characters express some aspect of Gandhian thought.
In some novels, Mahatma Gandhi has been portrayed as character. Murugan
the Tiller and Kandan the Patriot by K. S. Venkatramani are imbued with
Gandhian ideology. Murugan and Kandan uphold Gandhian economic and
politics respectively. In Kanthapura, Raja Rao takes readers back to the excited
days of non-cooperation movement. Indian English prose writing also has been
 Shirsath 11

also a significant development of which Raja Rao Mohan Roy and in later
generation, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is remarkable icons of the Indian English
Prose tradition. Rajendra Prasad rightly writes in his Foreword to A Study of
Nehru: “Jawaharlal is a man of culture in the widest and best sense of the
expression. He is a man with ideas born of study of books and widespread
contact with men, Indian and foreign. His emotional nature and his innate
independence of thought have helped him in developing a style of expression,
which is direct and captivating. He is a gifted writer wielding the pen as an
artist.” (vi-vii)
Jawaharlal Nehru wrote The Glimpses of World History, The Discovery
of Indian, Autobiography) and Letters to Indira Priyadarshani. Even foreign
critics appreciate the literary genius of Nehru. Marjorie Boulton ranks him with
Tagore, Anand and Radhakrishnan. In his book An Anatomy of Prose, he states,
“English people who will not trouble to write their own language well ought to
be ashamed by reading the English of such Indian writers as Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru, his sister Krishna Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore, Mulk Raj Anand, D.F.
Karaka, Pro. Radhakrishnan and number of obscure Indians to be met in British
Universities”. (91)
In 1864, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife was published.
His other novels Kapalkundal, Durgesh Nandini and Krishna Kanta’s Will
were translated into English from Bengali. He always wrote with a missionary
zeal. Anandmath written in 1882 with the song Bande Mataram inspired the
people of India. Rabindranath Tagore was primarily a poet but he wrote novels
like Choker Bali. It was translated into English by Krishna as Binodini. He also
writes Gora, The Wreck and The Home and The World. He translated these
novels from Bengali into English. Nirad C. Chaudhuri points out that the
Tagore of English writing is different from the Tagore of Bengali literature. He
observes,
In his English writing, he is not the Bengali poet in flesh and blood, but
another personality in fancy dress with a mask on his face. For one thing
 Shirsath 12

when he rendered his Bengali poems himself he selected for translation

all that was most general and least concrete in his writings and those in
which the Bengali element was not as dominant as to offer an obstacle to
Western appreciate. He presented his Bengali poems in a kind of
English, which in its self-conscious simplicity of diction and syntax went
very near precocity. (11)
Krishna Kripalani has been described Gora as the epic of India in
transition at the most crucially intellectual period of modern history. It is to
Indian fiction as Tolstoy’s War and Peace of Russian. The novel, Gora has
been viewed as something like Mahabharata of modern India. Rabindranath
Tagore translated his own lyrics into English collection of lyrics from
Gitanjali. Professor Rosenstein, W.B. Yeats, May Sinclair, C.F. Andrews,
Henry Nevinson appreciated his collection and all of them facilitated the
publication of Gitanjali in 1912. In his Introduction to Gitanjali, W. B. Yeasts
states:
I have carried the manuscript of these translations it me for days,
reading it in railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses and in
restaurants and I have often had to close it lest some stranger
should see how much it moved me. These lyrics… display in
their thought a world I have dreamt of all my life long… As the
generations pass, travelers will hum them on the highway and
men rowing upon rivers. Lovers, while they await one another,
shall find, in murmuring them, this love of God a magic gulf
wherein their own bitter passion may bathe and renew its youth.
At every moment, the heart of this poet flows outward to these
without derogation or condescension, for it has known that they
will understand; and it has filled itself with the circumstances of
their lives. (8)
Nirad C. Chaudhuri, the most controversial writer of India is a product
of Indian Renaissance from early boyhood. He had a predilection for Western
 Shirsath 13

thought and literature as he was nurtured in an anglicized atmosphere.

Chaudhuri has emotionally alienated himself from Indian life and intellectually
identified himself with English life. He has many books to his credit, out of
which his books, A Passage to England, The Autobiography of an Unknown
Indian, and The Continent of Circe are more significant. His The
Autobiography of an Unknown Indian is dedicated to the memory of the British
Empire in India, because all that was good and living within us was made,
shaped and quickened by the same British Rule. The autobiographical form is
only a matter of convenience and Chaudhuri calls it, The Autobiography of an
Unknown Indian in order to attract the attention of his Western readers. The
Autobiography of an Unknown Indian is concerned with contemporary history
and the author’s self-revelation, which is the focal point in the art of
autobiography writing, recedes in the background. Commenting on the genesis
of the autobiography, Chaudhuri himself writes in Thy Hand: Great Anarch,
It came in this manner. As I lay awake in the night of 4-5 May 1947, an
idea suddenly flashed into my mind. Why instead of regretting the work
of history you cannot write, I asked myself, do you not write the history
you have passed through and seen enacted before your eyes, and which
you will not call for research? The answer was instantaneous: I will. I
also decided to give it the form of an autobiography. (868)

The trio of Indian English literature, R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand,
and Raja Rao started their writing in Gandhian age; their pre-independence
writings deal with several aspects of life and reality. The inhuman condition of
the untouchables in India, and social reforms are two important themes in Mulk
Raj Anand writings. Anand’s father served in the Indian Army; as a child
Anand had mixed freely with the children of the sweepers attached to his
father’s regiments, and such associations. Cutting across caste divisions had
continued during his boyhood and youth. These early playmates and friends
became the heroes of his early novels. As Anand himself acknowledges in the
Preface to the second Indian edition of Two Leaves and a Bud,
 Shirsath 14

All these heroes, as the other men and women who had
emerged in my novels and short stories, were dear to me, because
they were the reflections of the real people I had known during
my childhood and youth. And I was only repaying the dept. of
gratitude I owed them for much of the inspiration they had given
me to mature into manhood, when I began to interpret their lives
in my writing. They were not mere phantoms… They were flesh
of my flesh and blood of my blood, and obsessed me in the way
in which certain human a writer does when he seeks to interpret
the truth from the realities of his life. (Preface)
In “The Story of My Experiment with ‘a white Lie’”, Mulk Raj
Anand points out,
Untouchable was in its sources a balled born of the freedom I had
tried to win for truth against the age old lies of the Hindus by
which they upheld discrimination. The profound which they
upheld discrimination, the profound thought of the upper orders
in ancient India about caste were often noble. Someone in the
great Mahabharata had cried, “Caste, caste-There is no caste!”
And I wanted to repeat this truth to the “dead souls” from the
compassion of self explanation in the various Hindu hells, in the
hope that I would, myself come clear after I had been through
sewer, as it were. (16)

Anand wrote Untouchable (1935), Coolie (1936), The Sword and The
Sickle (1942), The Big Heart (1945). He also wrote other famous novels like
The Old woman and the Cow (1960), The Road (1961), The Death of a Hero
(1963), Seven Summers (1951), Morning Face (1968). Mulk Raj Anand was
influenced by Indian philosophy and literature. In Untouchable, the evil is
isolated as caste; in Coolie and Two Leaves and a Bud also deal with the evil of
the class system. These novels explore capitalist domination, which cut across
caste, cultural, intellectual and racial distinctions. In Untouchable Bakha a
 Shirsath 15

sweeper boy is the protagonist of the novel. Bakha represented the life of the
sweep class people. The Road also deals with the social theme of progress and
gradual awakening among the untouchables; the novel views the protagonist
Bhikhu’s situation as expenses of the chronic malaise with which Indian
society is stricken. Coolie describes the painful adventures of Munoo, an
orphan Kangra boy a discarded victim of social order, where he suffers at every
juncture of life. Munoo is a universal kind of figure. He plays role of a
domestic slave, factory worker, pickle maker, collie and a rickshaw puller. He
is a sturdy hill-boy, with a taste for joy of life, which is denied to him again and
again he reached out to life, the joy of life which registered in his mind’s eye
the clear pictures of numerous desires. He wanted to live, he wanted to know,
he wanted to work, and he wanted to be strong man like the wrestler. In Two
Leaves and a Bud, Mulk Raj Anand deals with the theme of the exploitation
and caste, colour distinction. Mulk Raj Anand mainly deals with the miseries
and the wretchedness of the opposed. He has a great sympathy for the
untouchables, the peasants, the coolie and other suppressed people of society.
Anand’s denunciation of religion has its origin in his philosophy of life, he in
Why I Write quotes, “To me there is only one vast universe, with man, woman
and other living beings, face to face with the elements, and others, done but
seeking human solidarity. There are not two worlds, heaven above and the
earth below. There is no ‘spiritual’ world separate from the ‘material’ world.
The world it body and the body is soul”. (253) R. K. Narayan felicitated with
Sahitya Akademi Award and Padma Bhushan Award is one of the most famous
Indian Novelists. His stories were grounded in compassionate humanism and
celebrated the humor and energy of ordinary life. He told stories of ordinary
people trying to live their simple lives in a changing world. He began his
writing career with Swami and Friends in 1935. Most of his work including
Swami and Friends is set in fictional town of Malgudi, which captures
everything, Indian while have unique identity of his own. His famous works
include, The Financial Expert, The Guide, The Man Eater of Malgudi, The
 Shirsath 16

Bachelor of Art, The English Teacher, The Vendor of Sweets, The Dark Room,
Malgudi Days, and The Grandmothers Table. R. K. Narayan’s first novel
Swami and Friends (1935) shows happy and painful mood of the writer. It
presents a series of interesting situations around the Swami and his friends. In
the first paragraph of the novel, it is depicted thus,
It was Monday morning; Swaminathan was reluctant to open
his eyes. He considered Monday especially unpleasant in the
calendar. After the delicious freedom of Saturday and Sunday it was
difficult to get into Monday mood of work and discipline. He
shuddered at the very thought of school, that dismal yellow building;
the fire-eyed Vedanayagam, his class teacher and the head master
with his thin stick… (1)

R.K. Narayan’s novel, The Guide established him as a master of

fictional technique through. The novel won for him Sahitya Akademi award in
1960. The Guide offers a narrative of Raju, a restless and ambitious shopkeeper
in Malgudi Railway Station, who turns a tourist guide. Raju’s rise and fall and
enforced sainthood is depicted. Raju is a romantic young man, falls in love
with Rosie the wife of Marco, lover of ancient arts but warmth less husband.
Marco explores caves with their curved doorways and wall paintings and
discovers musical notations on the walls. Marco takes rooms in Mempi Peak
House on the topmost cliff. The Guide is the virtue of characters role in the
moral alignment of feeling in the narrative. R.K. Narayan sees the world as a
balance of good and bad, light and shadows hope and despair. His vision of the
life is neither optimist nor pessimist. It is practical. In this, respect Raja Rao –
The most brilliant writer of Indian English literature. A novelist and a short
story writer has been acclaimed as a novelist of ideas, a philosophical novelist,
a bridge-builder between myth and reality and a social historian of the
Gandhian era. He was influenced by Gandhian philosophy. His works are The
Serpent and the Rope (1960), Kanthapura (1938), The Cat and the
Shakespeare (1965), and Comrade Kirillor (1976). Kanthapura presents the
 Shirsath 17

story of South Indian village during the noncooperation days. It deals with the
theme of Gandhian impact on a village community Kanthapura is narrated by
the village grandmother by a series of happenings Kanthapura depicts the
social, political and religious aspects of Indian folks in an Indian village. The
theme of Kanthapura is the continuity of Indian ‘Tradition’ in rural setting and
the political resurgence of the thirties in rural India. K.R.S. Iyengar says,
“Kanthapura is a veritable grammar of the Gandhian myth – the myth that is
but a poetic translation of the reality”. (396) The plot of Kanthapura has an
epic quality is the protagonist under whose leadership the village awakens to
the call of Gandhiji for nonviolent freedom struggle. The dominant myth of
Kanthapura is that of Rama Sita–Ravana, which illustrates the struggle of these
good with the evil. He also uses other myths like that of Hanuman, Shiva, and
Krishna the savior, who saved the people from the Kaliyanag, The British Rule
myths have been mixed with politics. The release of Gandhi from prison is
pictured as the return of Rama from Lanka. The Cat and Shakespeare deals
with the theme of ultimate reality. Comrade Kirillor shows that Indian in spite
of his political beliefs will always remain Indian at heart. The novel deals with
political philosophy of Marxism and Dialectical Materialism. Raja Rao is the
writer of philosophical strength. He has brought an epic vision, symbolic
richness, lyrical and an essential Indianness style to the Indo-Anglian novel.
Pre-independence writings mainly deal with the themes of the poor Indians
exploited by the British and the inhuman treatment meted out to untouchables
in India, Indian freedom movement and east-west encounter, communal and
colonial problems. Indian English prose during the Gandhian Era achieved
great in political prose, journalism, biography, autobiography, and travelogues.
The great writers of this period brought about a change from the elaborate to
the simple.
1.3.2 Post-Independence Indian Novel in English
The post-Independence Indian novel in English from 1950 to 1960 is
also in continuation with the past in the realistic mode. The changed political
 Shirsath 18

situation after the acquisition of political freedom in 1947 inspired many

writers with more self-confidence. They more partly influenced by political
changes and partly by the existential angst. The dominant concern of the
literature of this period is with character development, and psychological depth
combined with a sense of the alienated individual, dissatisfied with modern
life. At the same time, they came under the spell of modernism and progressive
ideas in all spheres of life the second-generation novelists are Bhabhani
Bhattacharya, B. Rajan, Manhor Malgonkar, Khushwant Sigh, Chaman Nahal,
Arun Joshi, Kamala Markandaya, R.P. Jhabhvala, Nayankara Sahagal and
Anita Desai. Modernism played a very crucial role in shaping the second-
generation novelists. They mainly depict the separation of sensibility,
fragmented vision, and the feeling of anxiety, nausea, and boredom in the
novels of Kamala Markandaya, Ruth Prawer Jhabhvala, and Anita Desai.
Arun Joshi’s fiction is his experimentation with different narrative
techniques. In The foreigner, the narrative freely moves across time and
geographical space. The Apprentice is a monologue; The Last Labyrinth is
dominated by the metaphor of the labyrinth, which won the Sahitya Academy
Award. The City and the River gives up first person narration and the realist
mode to write a fable about the corruption of power. Kamala Markandaya is a
prolific winner, she deals with the variety of theme like tragic waste, despair,
ruined love, and quest for self-realization. Her novel Nectar in a Sieve (1954)
treats the theme of hunger and starvation in Indian villages. In A Silence of
Desire (1961), she deals with the theme of love and class conflicts, in her novel
The Coffer Dams; she deals with the theme of gigantic dam and its impact on
the lives of people. Her novel The Nowhere Man is a portrayal of racial conflict
in England. Cultural conflict is one of her recurrent themes. In Nectar in a
Sieve Nathan and Rukmani represent the East, whereas Dr. Kenny represents
the West. The novel is a sad tale of hunger, starvation, and helplessness. The
novel depicts the suffering of the poor illiterate Indian people and also their
fortitude and courage. Rukmani the narrator heroine points out, “This home my
 Shirsath 19

husband had built for me with his own hands… In it we had laid together, and
our children has been born. This hut with all its memories was to be taken from
us, for it stood on land that belonged to another. And the land itself by in which
we lived. It is a cruel thing, I thought. They do not know what they do to us”.
(Markandaya 137)
Some Inner Fury deals with political passions prevailing over love and
justice. The class between passion and patriotism is presented. Meera falls in
love with Richard Marlowe. She states, “Soon I would go too, when the tail of
the procession went through the door, I would join it, and Richard would stay
behind. This was not a time for decision, for he knew I cannot stay; it was
simply the time for parting.” (Markandaya 283) The line depicts that the
symbol of colonial power and her patriotic feelings for the native land. A
Silence of Desire depicts the East-West encounter in the form of a conflict
between the Indian spiritualism and the western modernism. The conflict
between the husband Dandekar and wife Sarojini represents the conflict
between science and superstition. For Sarojini, Gods and Goddesses are living
presences. Dandekar could not develop the same faith. Sarojini looking at him
directly points out, “The man whom I worship is a God.” She said, “You are
very nearly right in that one thing-just that of thing”. (Markandaya 72)
Bhabhani Bhattacharya an outstanding Indo-Anglian novelist of the present
times, his novels present a true picture of India and its teeming millions surging
with life and substance. All his writings have a social purpose for him. His
outlook is highly constructive and purposeful. He depicts the horrors of
ongoing alien rule. The novel So Many Hungers (1947) has a background of
the Bengal famine of 1943, originated from his profound response to the Indian
situation in 1942-43, during which he felt, the India underwent a sudden
development through a multidimensional experience. It exposes the
ruthlessness and inhumanity of merciless hoarder’s profiteers and marketers.
Music for Mohini deals with the theme of adjustment of traditional values to
the new ideas. In this novel, a young girl of seventeen is married in the
 Shirsath 20

traditional manner with Jaydev, the quiet scholar who lives in his ancestral
village and Mohini, the young city bred wife adapts herself to new environment
are the two forces that put the village on the progress and modernization.
Shadow from Ladakh deals with the Indian struggle with China in 1962. It
received ‘The Sahitya Akademi Award’ of 1967. In it, he presents the problem
whether Gandhian values are relevant in the age of weapons and power hunger.
It is a vindication of Gandhian ideology. Anita Desai has earned unique place
in Indian English fiction by her rich contribution, she has deep psychological
insight into her characters. Her novel reveals feministic concerns very
artistically and effectively. Anita Desai’s first novel Cry, the Peacock is the
exploration of the human psyche in Maya’s self-examination. In her second
novel Voice in the City, there is delineation of world-weary character. Cry, the
Peacock is the story of Maya, the story of her unhappy married life with
Gautama. Maya’s mind is highly disturbed with the death of her pet dog ‘Toto’.
Her husband Gautama does not understand her and speaks to her very little in
the tone of logician. In her own sorrow, Maya utters,
Crows sat in a circle around the corpse and crows will eat anything-
entrails, eyes anything. Flies began to hum amidst the limes, driving
away the gentle bees and the unthinking butterflies. She thought she saw
the evil glint of a blue bottle and grew hysterical. The gardener sent his
wife to take her into house and keep her there. She set there sobbing and
waiting for husband to come home. (Desai 5)
Maya is haunted by the fear of her husband’s death. An Astrologer’s
prophecy was that her husband would die four years after their marriage. One
night, she pushes Gautama from the balcony causing the prophecy to be true.
Where We Go this Summer depicts the theme of alienation and lack of
communication in married life. In Bye-Bye-Blackbird (1971) the theme of
alienation and frustration of the immigrants in an alien country is depicted
racial hatred, homesickness and rootlessness have been explored in this novel.
 Shirsath 21

Manohar Malgonkar is one of those Indo-English novelists, who have

shown a keen awareness of Indian tradition and her familiar history. Malgonkar
was a professional big game hunter and worried as a wild life conservationist.
Malgonkar’s major works are Distant Drum (1960), Combat of Shadows
(1962), The Princess (1963), A Bend in the Ganges (1964), Spy in Amber
(1971), The Devil’s Wind and Shalimar. He also wrote short stories. His novels
pass thematic variety. His novel, Distance Drum is a fictional novel about the
Indian Army and its history. It is the story of ‘Satpura’ officer Kiran Garud and
his friend Abdul Jamal, who were together at the military academy at
Deharadun. Even after the partition of India, their friendship continues, though
Jamal had joined the Pak Army. While posted on the borders of Kashmir they
ones meet under the bushy topped tree in No-Man’s land and chat together for
a while emptying glasses of champagne with the old, prestigious war slogan of
the Satpuras, Abdul said, “Come on Jawans!” “Tigers don’t live forever!”
(Malgaonkar 238) Combat of Shadows is set against the background of tea-
plantation of Assam. It is the complicated love story with melodramatic
situations. The Princes is a book about vanishing world of the small princely
states of India. He depicts the vivid picture of the troubled times of the merger
of the east while princely states into the nation of India after independence. The
hero of the novel is Abhayraj, the last prince of Begwad.
A Bend in the Ganges is a novel dealing with the protests of angry
young men and women during the critical period of national turmoil. James Y.
Dayananda observes it as, “The novels could also be regarded as a
documentary narrative dealing with the violent rather than the non-violent
aspects of India’s struggle for Independence”. (Malgaonkar 134) A Bend in the
Ganges presents the changes that took place in the affairs of men and women
because of the Second World War. The novel begins with terrorist movement
and ends with the communal frenzy that enveloped India in the post-partition
period. Malgonkar’s The Devil’s Wind is a historical fiction it portrays the story
of the Revolt of 1857. E.M. Forster described Malgaonkar’s A Bend in the
 Shirsath 22

Ganges as “the best book of the year” (Quoted in Bande 78). Khushwant Singh
in his, “Art and Literature” calls it as one of the few books that are “sample of
good writing by Indo-Anglian writers of today”. (284) Chaman Nahal’s Aazadi
highlights the psychological consequences of the Partition. The novel presents
a different perspective of the violence of the partition. It exhibits the picture of
the departure of millions of refugees from Pakistan.
Nayantara Sahgal’s novels present the life of the richest sections of
Indian society. Her first novel, A Time to be Happy (1957) expresses the
problem of identity facing the English educated group. The novel, Storm in
Chandigarh (1969) deals with the partition of Punjab along linguistic lines in
1965. Rich Like Us is set during the Emergency. In this novel, she covers a
large picture in terms of time and space. The story moves from the pre-
independent India of the 18th and 19th century is the 20th century of independent
India. The 18th century and 19th century, India was chained by the tyrannical
British rule, and hit by social evils like Sati System, casteism and
untouchability on the other. She presents a consistent point of view and moves
from an ironic to positive constructive vision. Shyam Asnani states, “A rich
native heritage co-mingled with the Nehru’s. Here is indeed a post-
independence sensibility, born of the new challenges the Indians were faced
with after gaining independence”. (109)
Born in Germany of Polish parents, educated in London from the age of
twelve and having married with an Indian architect in 1951, Ruth P. Jhabvala
settled down in Delhi. Although living in India since 1951, she still feels
herself to the alien here. A prolific and versatile writer she has written about
personal relationship, man-woman relationship, and domestic life in her novels
– To Whom She Will (1955), The Nature of Passion (1956), Esmond in India
(1958), The Householder (1968), Get Ready (1962), A Backward Place (1965),
A New Dominion and Heat and Dust, and short stories collected in An
Experience of India, Like Birds, Like Fishes and A Stronger Climate. As an
outsider inside India, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala enjoys a double perspective.
 Shirsath 23

Khushwant Singh was a brilliant novelist storywriter, historian and a famous

journalist. His enduring work has been done in the field of history and
biography. He is famous for his two novels, A Train to Pakistan and I Shall Not
Hear the Nightingale, and the two collections of short stories, The Mark of
Vishnu and A Bride for Sahib and he has translated Ranjit Singh Bedi’s Urdu
novel Ek Chadar Maili Si into English as I Take this Woman. Train to Pakistan
depicts the realistic picture of the cruel horrors enacted on the Indo-Pakistan
Border region during the terrific days of August 1947. Mano Majra, the name
of village is a fixed point in a space, where as the train is the symbol of
moment millions of non-Muslims from Pakistan longed for a passage to India,
a land of hope and peace. Millions of Muslims from India sought the road to
Pakistan, the land of Islamic faith and promise. The train runs between Mano
Majra, a village on the Indian side in the Punjab and Lahore, the capital of
undivided Punjab before partition. The writer writes about the Mano Majra,
“Mano Majra is a tiny place. It has only three brick buildings, one of which is
the home of the moneylender Lala Ratan Lal. The other two are Sikh temple
and the mosque. There are only about seventy families in Mano Majra, and
Lala Ram Lal’s is the only Hindu family. The others are Sikhs or Muslims,
about equal in number.” (Singh 1) His next novel I Shall Not Hear the
Nightingale has basic structure of social and political narrative. It is the story of
two families one Sikh and other Hindu, set against the decaying power of the
British Raj in the Punjab from April 1942 to April 1943.
V.S. Naipaul in his novel An Area of Darkness remarks about this novel
as, “The Princes in the medieval tragedy of a medieval Indian petty prince who
loses power with independence and feels the humiliation of his fall so deeply
that he goes out unarmed after a wounded tiger and is killed”. Naipaul adds,
“The poverty of India is quivering… the narrator sees his father denying basic
rights to the people… This is the Indian withdrawal and denial; this is the part
of confusion of Indian Anglo-Indian”. (AD 66-67)
 Shirsath 24

1.3.2.1 Indian English Novel in the 1980s and 90s

The 1980’s is considered the second coming for the Indian literature in
English. The appearance of Midnight’s Children in 1981 by Salman Rushdie
brought about a renaissance in Indian writing in English, which has outdone
that of 1980’s. Midnight’s Children, Shame (1983), The Satanic Verses (1988)
are Rushdie’s best-known works and are same times regarded as a trilogy.
Midnight’s Children is a fictional history of post-independence India, which
depicts the Saleem Sinai’s life, who born in the midnight hour of independence.
Saleem along with 1001 other children is gifted with magical powers, which
lead in both creative and destructive directions. Born to Hindu parents and
brought up by wealthy Muslims. According to Rushdie the falsification of
history in Midnight’s Children was a symptom of his own status as a migrant
writer, living in London and trying to capture an imaginary homeland through
the imperfections of childhood memory. Theme of migration is used in his two
next novels Shame and The Satanic Verses. The narrator of Shame muses,
“What is the best thing about migrant people? I think it is their hopelessness…
And what’s the worst thing? It’s the emptiness of one’s luggage… We’ve come
unstuck from more than land – We’ve floated upwards from history, from
memory, from time’’ (Rushdie 87). Rushdie’s autobiographical novel, The
Moor’s Last Sing, to some extent shows the problem of Indianness and the
identity of the Indian are highly Muslim origin, who lives in Europe and the
United States specially after Khomeini’s Fatwa and who write about India.
Rushdie’s novels are replete with symbolism, powerful imaginary and a vivid
narrative style. The language is a strange with Hindi words phrases and
conversation expressions smoothly incorporated into English. Rohinton Mistry
belongs to the Parsi community; he is one of the writers of Indian Diaspora.
He left Bombay to Toronto in 1975. Mistry has three books to his name, a short
story collection titled Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987) and the novels, Such a
Long Journey (1991) and A Fine Balance (1995). He mainly focuses on the
changing fortunes of the Parsi Diaspora in India. His novels are concerned with
 Shirsath 25

the experience of the Parsi in community and country as it has been in the post-
independence era. Such a Long Journey is set against the backdrop of the
Bangladesh – Pakistan wars of the 1970s. In this novel, public events have
direct consequences on the life of the ordinary citizen. It is the story of Gustad
Noble a bank employee, who lives in Parsi compound with his wife and three
children. He attempts to take charge of his modest destiny but discovers that
immodest destiny has take charge of him. A Fine Balance is a magnificent
hurting story told in the best tradition of nineteenth century realism.
Upamanya Chatterjee has tried to demonstrate the Indian tang, the
masala mix of a culture that has influences from outside the subcontinent.
Upamanya Chatterjee’s novels are written in a humorous style, his works are
the portraits against the austere world of Indian Administrative system. Most of
his novels focus on the life of a young westernized diplomat, who is posted in a
non-descript town. English August his debut novel’s story was bestselling
novel in 1988. It tells the story of Agastya Sen, a Westernized Indian whose
thoughts are dominated by women literature, and soft drugs. He portrays some
issues that revolve around the urban educated youth and pictures a class of
westernized people. The story was made into a film with the same name in
1994. His second novel The Last Burden (1993) was published which Portrays,
the life of an Indian family at the end of twentieth century. The Memories of the
Welfare State (2000) is the sequel of English August the novels won the
Sahitya Academy Award in 2004. His Weight Loss (2006) is about the strange
life of Bhola, who is a sexual deviant and whose attitude to people around him
depends upon their lust worthiness. Way to Go (2010) is a sequel to The Last
Burden. Shobha De is an Indian columnist and novelist; she is best known for
her depiction of socialites and sex in her works of fiction, for which she has
come to be known as the “Jackie Collins” of India. She started her career as a
model. After making her name as a model, she began a career in journalism in
1970, during the course of time she founded and edited three magazines
Stardust, Society, and Celebrity. In the 1980s, she contributed to the Sunday
 Shirsath 26

magazine section of The Times of India. In her columns, she used to explore the
socialite life in Mumbai life styles of the celebrities. At present, she is a
freelance writer and columnist for several newspapers and magazines. Shobha
De runs four weekly columns in mainstream newspapers, including The Times
of India and Asian Age. She has been the writer of several popular soaps on
television. Shobha De is popular for her unique style of writing. She is known
for her bold and frank style of writing. Feminism, its various aspects and
gender equality of the society are the main themes of her writing. She mainly
deals with the issues of the modern society. She also focuses on the different
facets of the urban Indian society. She wrote Socialite Evenings (1989), Starry
Nights (1991), Sisters (1992) and Second Thoughts (1996). In Starry Nights,
she portrays the love story of two popular celluloid stars. It is the story of high-
class people and it depicts the dark side of the Hindi film industry. The women
characters of her novels are madly in love with the male characters. Jealousy
and manipulation are the prominent themes of Shobha De’s books. She writes
for the masses and expresses her dissatisfaction concerning the behaviour of
today’s present day generation very clearly. She is a feminist writer and
projects the minor status of the women in the societies through her writings;
she spreads the message of revolting back for the rights of the women. Women
writers of earlier generation were not taken very seriously and they were
restricted within patriarchal limits.
Arundhati Roy is one of the notable writers of the young Indian
generations writing in English. Her debuted novel published in 1997, The God
of Small Things won her the Booker Prize for literature. Her novel registered a
tremendous sale all over the world. The book has been translated into more
than forty languages in the world. The Booker committee’s admiration of
Roy’s verbal enthusiasm is evident when they remark, “With extraordinary
linguistic invectiveness Roy funnels the history of South India through the eyes
of seven year old twins. The story is fundamental as well as logical; it is about
 Shirsath 27

love and death, about lies and laws; her narrative crackles with riddles and yet
tells its tale quiet clearly. We are all engrossed by this moving novel”. (Rao 23)
The God of Small Things is autobiographical in nature. In this novel, the
most educated state Kerala with many different castes and classes has been
beautifully represented. Her second book The End of Imagination deals with
the author’s revolt against nuclearization in India and abroad.
1.3.2.2 Present Scenario of Indian English Novel
The novelists of the third generation are especially remarkable for the
selection of their themes and styles. Among the crowd of creativity, their works
maintain the desired class in the protection of themes, portrayal of characters,
and experimentation of style and presentation of the contemporary world.
Indian English novelists of the modern generation explore the world as a void
where the modern man who is intellectual and craves for spiritual, suffers from
disillusionment. People suffer from multiple problems in the age of
transformation and representation. Modern man is bound to live in conflicts
between two cultures, two thoughts, and two ideologies. Many of modern
Indian writers in English deal with the themes like rootlessness,
disillusionment, alienation, boredom etc. Indian essayist and novelist, Pankaj
Mishra has won the 2014 Leipzig Book Award for his work From the Ruins of
Empire (2012) – The Revolt Against the West and Remaking of Asia. He is a
first non-western writer receiving this award. His first book was Butter Chicken
in Ludhiana: Travel in Small Town India a travelogue that describes the
gradual social and cultural changes taking place in rural Indian towns in the
new context of globalization. The novel, The Romantics (2000), is an ironic
take of people longing for fulfillment in cultures other than their own, was
published in eleven, European Languages, and won the Los Angeles Times Art
Seidenbaum award for the first fiction. The novel is set in the holy city of
Benares and the main protagonist is a young Indian Brahmin named Samar,
who stumbles upon a group of Western dropouts. Samar begins an erratic
journey in search of himself. His next books, An End to Suffering and The
 Shirsath 28

Buddha in the World mix memoir, history and philosophy through his travels.
He attempts to expose the origins of the Buddha, and India’s Transition from
colonial outpost is an independent nation. Pankaj Mishra in The Romantics
highlights the problems of merging cultures the East and West. Aravind Adiga
is an Indian-Australian writer and journalist. He studied English literature at
Columbia College, Columbia University in New York. Adiga began his
journalistic career as a financial journalist, interning at the Financial Times
with pieces published in the Financial Time and Money he covered the stock
market and investment interviewing among others, Donald Trump. He was
subsequently, hired by Time, where he remained a South Asia correspondent
for three years. He currently lives in Mumbai. Arvind Adiga in The White
Tigers projects the conflicts of materialism and mortality in dominant manner.
His debut novel The White Tiger won the 2008 Man Booker Prize. Adiga’s
Between the Assassinations, a collection of short stories and Last Man in Tower
(2011) are combined with complex narratives and multiple narrators, which
create a vivid picture of Indian life. Amit Chaudhari is an internationally
recognized Indian English author and academic. He is Professor of
Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia. His novels have won
several major awards and he has received international critical acclaim. Amit
Chaudhari works reflect his background in academia and theory. Chaudhari’s
fiction persistently interrogates the rapid modernization of India and the
complex shift it causing in many people’s relation to their culture and tradition
A Strange and Sublime Address (1991), The Immortals (2008) and A New
World (1998). His novel’s prominent setting is Calcutta where he is born. His
non-fiction Calcutta; Two Years in the City is a portrayal of the city of his
youth in Calcutta. Kiran Desai was born into a family of rich literary pedigree
her mother was the award-winning author Anita Desai. Her first novel
Hullaboloo in the Guava Orchard was released in 1998 and appreciated for its
sensitive portrayal of rural life in India. She has been honoured in 2006 with
The Man Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award in 2007
 Shirsath 29

for her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss. The novel is based on the themes
of post-colonialism and globalization as they relate to a modern India in which
the colonial legacy and the modernizing and homogenizing forces of global
section are linked. It is considered a masterpiece of 21st century Indian
Literature. Chetan Bhagat is an Indian author, columnist screenwriter, and
motivated speaker known for his English novels about young urban middle
class Indians. Bhagat’s novels have been sold over seven million copies. In
2008, The New York Times commended Chetan Bhagat as the biggest selling
English language novelist in India’s history.
Chetan Bhagat is the author of bestselling novels, Five Points Someone
(2004), One Night @ The Call Centre (2005), The 3 Mistakes of My Life
(2008), 2 States (2009), Revolution 2020 (2011), What Young India Wants
(2012) and Half Girlfriend (2014). All the books are best sellers and four are
inspired Bollywood films including 3 Idiots, Kai Po Che, 2 States and Hello.
One Night @ the Call Centre opened up the inner world of India’s teeming
Call Centre, that haven for young people with modest grades in school and no
discernible talent other than being able to answer the phone, in decent enough
English. Where everyone is marking time waiting for a bigger, better life the
girls waiting for a break in modeling or to get married to a big catch NRI, the
boys are nursing their entre pleural dreams. In Revolution 2020, the young
protagonists are in search for success in life, one by starting a private college
and the other by being a crusading reporter for a newspaper. He points out the
younger generation problems in conflicting manner. Raj Kamal Jha is an
internationally acclaimed novelist, journalist, and editor at The Indian Express;
He is also the recipient of the largest advance ever paid to first time Indian
novelist. Raj Kamal Jha’s writing is influenced by the time he spent in the
United States, as well as by the works of twentieth – century American writers
Don DE Lillo and Paul Auster. Jha’s first book The Blue Bed Spread (1999) is
a revealing story of incest, abuse and secrecy in a Calcutta family with a
surprise ending in shock. She will Build Him A City (2015) shows a surreal and
 Shirsath 30

frightening side of Delhi. Fireproof (2007) is set against the backdrop of the
2002 Gujarat Violence, the first attack on Muslims after 9/11. The novel is a
chilling take of a father and his deformed son on a journey across a city, where
the ghost of those killed have decided to seek justice. Raj Kamal Jha’s The
Blue Bedspread and If You Are of Heights (2003) depict the struggle between
selves.
1.4 Theme: Its Definitions, Functions and Significance
The term, ‘theme’ is defined as a main idea or an underlying meaning of
a literary work that may be elated directly or indirectly. Theme is an element of
a story that binds together various other essential elements of a narrative. It is a
truth that exhibits universality and stands true for people of all cultures.
Themes give readers better understanding of the main character’s conflicts,
experiences, discoveries, and emotions as they are derived from them. Through
themes, a writer tries to give his readers insight into how the world works or
how he or she views human life. Dean Koontz defines theme in these words,
“Theme is a statement, or series of related observations, about some aspect of
the human condition interpreted from the unique viewpoint of the author”.
(Quoted by Harvey Chapman https://www.novel-writing-help.com/what-is-
theme.html) According to M. H. Abrams, the terms, ‘theme’ “is more usefully
applied to a general concept or doctrine, whether implicit or asserted, which an
imaginative work is designed to incorporate and make persuasive to the
reader”. (170)
Thus, theme is sometime use interchangeably with motif. In literary
works, mainly major and minor themes appear. A major theme is an idea that a
writer repeats in his work making it the most significant idea in a literary work.
A minor theme, on the other hand, refers to an idea that appears in a work
briefly and gives way to another minor theme. Matrimony is the major theme
of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The whole narrative revolves around the
major theme of matrimony and its minor themes are love, friendship, affection
etc. A writer presents themes in a literary work through several ways. A writer
 Shirsath 31

may express a theme through the feelings of his main character about the
subject he has chosen to write about it. Similarly, themes are presented through
thoughts and conversations of different characters. In the course of a literary
work, the experiences of the main character gives an idea about its theme, the
actions and events taking place in a determining the theme. The Rutledge
Dictionary of Literary Terms defines theme,
Theme traditionally means a recurrent element of subject
matter, but the modern insistence on simultaneous reference to
form and content emphasizes the formal dimension of the term. A
theme is always a subject, but a subject is not always a theme: a
theme is not usually thought of as the occasion of work of art, but
rather a branch of the subject, which is indirectly expressed
through the recurrence of certain events, images or symbols.
(239)
In contemporary literary studies, a theme is the central topic a text treats.
Themes can be divided into two categories a work’s thematic concept is what
readers ‘think the work is about’ and its thematic statement being ‘what the
work says about the subject’. A story may have several themes. Themes often
explore historically common or cross culturally recognizable ideas, such as
ethical questions and are usually implied rather than stated explicitly. Themes
are the ideas that run through narratives, enlivening with deeper meaning to be
found in real life and fiction alike. They create stories that are not dull but
compelling and emotional. Along with presenting a prevailing theme, writers
include several motifs in their literary works as reinforcements. Motifs
contribute in developing the major theme of a literary work and help readers to
comprehend the underlying messages that writers intend to communicate in
them. In a literary work, a motif can be seen as an image, sound, action or other
figures that have a symbolic significance and contributes toward the
development of them motif and theme are liked in a literary work but there is a
difference between them. In a literary piece, a motif is a recurrent images, idea
 Shirsath 32

or symbol that develops or explains a theme while a theme is a central idea or

message. Motif is defined as an object or idea that repeats itself throughout a
literary work.
1.5 Recurring Themes in Indian English Literature
1.5.1 Mythological Theme
In order to bridge the gap between past and present, urban and rural
consciousness mythological themes are used in literature. The Ramayana and
Mahabharata these two great epics are the chief sources upon, which the play-
write have drew themes in Indian literature. Rabindranath Tagore used
mythological theme in Sanyasi or The Ascetic (1883), The King and the Queen
Sacrifice and Chitra. Sadhna is a collection of essays in which Tagore reveals
the ancient spirit of India as manifested in the Upanishads. Chitra is a succinct
Tagorean version of Kalidasa’s Sakuntala. In the course of a perceptive
Introduction to an English version of Sakuntala Tagore wrote:
In truth there are two unions in Sakuntala; and the motif of the
play is the progress from the earlier union of the first Act, with its
earthly unstable beauty and romance, to the higher union in the heavenly
hermitage of eternal bliss described in the last Act… translating the
whole subject from one world to another-to elevate love from the sphere
of physical beauty to the eternal heavens of moral beauty. (Quoted in
Iyengar 136)
Tagore admired the great English playwrights Shakespeare, Ibsen,
Maeterlinck and Indian playwright Kalidasa. Sri Aurobindo the outstanding
figure in Indo-Anglian literature who played the part of politician, the poet and
philosopher Yogi depicted the Greek mythological theme in his Perseus and
Deliverer On 29 March 1914. The main theme of his writing is the spirituality
of India and the divinity of man. Aurobindo is the pioneer of overhead poetry.
Assessing the place of Aurobindo as a critic and thinker, The Times Literary
Supplement reviewer, Ranjee Shahani in his review “A Philosopher of Modern
India Aurobindo the Reconciler - East and West in the Unity of the Spirit” take
 Shirsath 33

him as the most significant of all modern Indian writers – successively poet,
critic, scholar, thinker, nationalist, humanist who combines in his vision the
alacrity of the West with the illumination of the East and is an accomplished
scholar in Sanskrit, Greek, Italian, French, English and Bengali that gives his
judgments balance and poise. Ranjee Shahani rightly points it out that, “As an
Indian scholar and critic he [Aurobindo] is second to none; Sri Aurobindo’s
literary judgments matched Coleridge’s and Heine’s in their piercing and
almost instantaneous insight . . . his The Life Divine is one of the master-works
of our age.” (Quoted in Heehs 389)
Aurobindo’s Savitri, a massive epic is based on the Savitri-Satyavan
legend from Mahabharata. The Hero and Nymp is Sri Aurobindo’s blank verse
translation of Kalidasa’s Vikramorvasie. Sri Aurobindo also translated Vidula
based on Mahabharata the devotional songs of Chandidas and Vidyaapati. Sri
Aurobindo’s long critical essays on Gita Upanishad Ramayana and
Mahabharata were all attempts to make people conscious of their cultural
heritage. Sanskrit playwrights Bhasa, Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti’s impact was
there on the writings of Aurobindo. The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, The
Human Cycle. The Ideal of Human Unity. The essays on Bhagvad Gita are
based on the Vedas and Upanishads. He wrote a varied kind of prose, his style
is flexible and is noticeable for its suitability to the themes. M.K. Naik in his
book, A History of Indian English Literature remarks,
Sri Aurobindo’s style is Protean and shows itself capable of diverse
tones and effects such as irony and sarcasm in The New Lamps For Old
and Vande Matram essays, forensic skill in The Renaissance in India,
elevation in the Life Divine and even playful banter in some of his letters
to his disciples. In sheer amplitude and variety, Sri Aurobindo has no
equal among writers of Indian English prose. (88)
Michael Madhusudan Dutt was the first to use blank verse in 1860 in the
play, Padmavati based on a Greek myth. Michael Madhusudan Dutt used this
theme in Meghnad Badh. His Meghnad Badh Kavya written in blank verse was
 Shirsath 34

based on the Ramayana and was inspired by Milton’s Paradise Lost. Meghand
Badh centre round the heroic figure of Indrajit, Rawan’s son. Michael
Madhusudan Dutt had translated Ramayana, Mahabharat, and Shakuntala into
English Verse. Sri Aurobindo tributes Madhusudan Dutt as no human hands
have such notes ambrosial moved and these accents are not of the imperfect
earth rather the god was forceful in their birth; the god himself was enchanting
flute, the god himself took up the pen and wrote. Toru Dutt borrowed her
themes from Indian mythology and legends. She depicted famous mythological
and puranic chapters like Savitri, Dhruva, Lakshmana, Prahlad etc. Ancient
Ballads by Toru Dutt is soaked in Indian myths and legends it is a translation
of selected stories from Ramayana, The Mahabharata and Vishnu Purana. The
story of Jada Bharata in Vishnu Purana also attracts her. Dutt’s family Album
is a collection of about two hundred poem by other members like Govind
Chunder Dutt, Ganesh Chunder Dutt, Greece and Hur Chunder Dutt the
collection consists of poems of Indian legends, Indian landscape and Indian
history and Christian themes. Ramesh Dutt translated Rigved and rendered into
English verse The Ramayana and The Mahabharata. In presenting these
translations of the classical literature of India Ramesh Dutt is conscious, of his
role in Orientals scholarship. In Epics and Lays of Ancient India, he traces the
tradition of Orientals scholars from Sir William Jones and H.H. Wilson to Max
Muller and Edwin Arnold.
R.K. Narayana’s novel Mr. Sampat was based on the mythological
theme about Kama (Cupid). He blended tradition with modernity and
incorporated ancient stories on Indian religious scriptures in his writings; he
incorporated traditional Hindu mythology and legend in stories of modern
events. He reinterpreted the Bhasmasura myth in The Man Eater of Malgudi. In
Guide, many of the structural devices and thematic concerns of the Hindu epic
and Purana’s are displayed. Mulk Raj Anand used Ramayana myth in realism
in his novel The Old Woman and Cow. Though his writings reveal Vedanta
philosophy as a subject of his novels, Raja Rao brings the national and
 Shirsath 35

religious experience together. In Kanthapura, Raja Rao had adopted the form
of the Hindu Sthlapurana and Harikatha with their mixture of narration,
description, religious discourse, and folklore. Another novel The Serpent and
the Rope is also based on mythological theme, the various characters in it
symbolizes various mythological figures of the Hindus. Kanthapura’s narrative
technique is based on the traditional method of storytelling. It has been written
in Puranic form. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan brought out authoritative English
renderings of the Bhagwat Gita and the principle Upanishads. G.V. Desani
used Panchatantra in All About H. Hatter. It is a synthesis of the Eastern and
Western narrative techniques. Sudhir Ghose used ancient Hindu narratives in
And Gazelles leaping, Cradle of the Clouds, The Vermilion Boat and The
Flame of the Forest Vasudeva Rao’s Nala Damayanti Elizabethan in form
written in blank verse was inspired by the Mahabharata. T.P. Kailasam’s
Karana, The Brahmin Curse, both written in blank verse are inspired by the
Mahabharata. Manohar Malgonkar one of the popular Indo-English novelists
of the modern era wrote Combat of Shadows based on the epigraph from
Bhagavad Gita. A Bend in the in the Ganges is setting on partition but the
source of its title and epigraph was Ramayana. Rajagopalachari as a writer and
thinker was influenced by both Eastern and Western thought. His famous
writings in English on myth are The Story of Mahabharata, The Story of
Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads. Dhan Gopal Mukherji published
his translation of the Bhagwad Gita in 1931 under the title The Song of God.
Vasant A Shahane’s first novel Prajapati the mythical fiction depicts the myth
of the Upanishad being dominant of the ancient India to articulate the socio-
political reality of the contemporary scene. B. Rajan employs myth in The Dark
Dancer only to illuminate certain situations and characters Amitav Ghosh’s
The Hungry Tide is based on local myth of Bangla. Girish Karnad used legend,
history, and myth for the plots of his plays, Yayati interpretation of
Mahabharata in modern context. Hayavadana is a bold and experiment on folk
theme. Its plot was on Katha Sarit Sagara an ancient collection of stories in
 Shirsath 36

Sanskrit but is mainly based on Thomas Mann’s retelling of the story in The
Transposed Heads. In poetry also mythological theme was used in the late
nineteenth and twentieth century. Rabindranath Tagore used it in Bengali
Katha-o-Kahini, Pratibha, Karna-Kunti Sambad, Gandhrin Abedan and
Urvashi. P. Lal used it in The Mahabharata and translation of the Upanishads
in English. His new work The Man of Dharma and the Rasa of Silence draws
its inspiration from the Mahabharata. Prof. Lal used new word ‘trans creation’
in place of translation; he simply doesn’t replace words to words but created a
new text based on the original.
1.5.2 Romanticism
Romantic theme in Indian literature begins with Sanskrit Literature
beginning with Kalidasa’s Ritusambara and Meghaduta. Henry Derozio is
considered the first romantic poet in Indian English literature The Fakeer of
Jungheera is the long narrative poem having a metrical romance between a
Muslim bandit and a Brahmin widow. A Walk by Moonlight and The Golden
Vase poems are influenced by the writers of Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth,
Coleridge and Thomas Moore. Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali, Urvashi, The
Gardener, Stray Birds, Lover’s Gift are based on romantic theme. Tagore’s
poetry deals with the lyric themes of love, mystical yearning for God, love for
nature’s beauty and the Edenic world of children. Wordsworth, Keats, and
Shelley’s impact was there on his poems. Kadi O Kamal and Manasi his two
early Bengali verse volumes depict the message of personal love on a real
physical plane. Sri Aurobindo’s early poems Night by Sea and Goethe are on
full of fervor and romanticism. Toru Dutt’s Our Casuarina Tree and other
poems glow with romanticism. She is linked with romantic poets like Coleridge
and Wordsworth. Her A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields is a translation of
works of French romantic poets. Bianca is an unfinished love story set in
nineteenth century England. Sarojini Naidu the nightingale of Indian English
poetry. The specialty of her poem is lyrics with beauty and charm. Love is the
theme of her poetic works out of 184 poems 66 poems are love lyrics. Some of
 Shirsath 37

her typical love lyrics are Ecstasy Songs of Radha, The Milk Maid, A Persian
love-song, In a time of flowers, Humayun to Zobedia, Devotion. As a love poet,
Sarojini is a romantic idealist like Rabindranath Tagore. Some of her
devotional love poetry is Songs of Radha, The Milkmaid, The Flute Player of
Brindaban and At Dawn, At Dusk and The Quest all these poems are based on
Radha-Krishna theme of love. Her earlier poems A Rajput Love-song, Indian
Love Song, A Song from the North had a certain romantic sensual longing.
Sarojini Naidu is a true Romantic in her art and sensibility. Among the Indo-
Anglian romanticism poets, she is confine to be Elizabethan Romanticism.
Kamala Markandaya Some Inner Fury deals to more with the theme of
romantic affair between Richard Marlowe and Mira and the freedom struggle.
1.5.3 Socio-Cultural themes
Society in India can be traced from Indus Valley Civilization; modern
Indian society borrows much from Indus Valley. Vedic Literature beginning
with epics Mahabharata and Ramayana or four candidates Veda, Yajur Veda,
Sama Veda, Rig Veda and Atharva Veda had exhibit societal concepts of Hindu
society covering India. Social themes are mainly depicted in Sanskrit, Pali and
Prakrit literature. The urge for social reform was an important aspect of the
Indian renaissance of the 19th century; therefore, it was an important theme in
some early Indian-English fiction. The issues on which they wrote were the
position of women, the plight of the peasants and the decay of the old
aristocracy. Raja Ram Mohan Roy the renaissance of modern Indian literature
and the first Indian, who master the English prose, was also a great
humanitarian and social reformer. He started Sambad Kaumudi a weekly paper
in 1821. He expressed his revolutionary ideas against the monstrous custom of
Sati and want remarriage of widows the most suffers in the society. Bankim
Chandra Chaterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife in 1864 is the first Indian English novel,
which depicts the contemporary social scene. Shevatabai M. Nikhambe’s
Ratanbai, A Sketch of a Bombay High Caste Hindu Young’ Wife in 1895, a
novel based on the author’s own experience for female education, depicts the
 Shirsath 38

struggle of nine years married girl to secure education in spite of family

opposition. R.C. Dutt’s The Lake of Palms a Story of Indian Domestic Life
(1902) advocate’s widow-remarriage. Lal Behari Das’s Govinda Samanta or
The History of Bengal Royal (1874) was entitled version Bengal Peasant Life
based on the theme of peasant life. Sardar Jogendra Singh in his Nasrin An
Indian Medley depicts a real study of aristocratic life in North India it also
shows the social scene of some of Nawabs and Taluqadars of independence
era. Mulk Raj Anand mainly dealt with the theme of casteism and human
suffering caused by different factors as political, economic, social, and cultural.
For Mulk Raj Anand novel is a creative weapon for attaining humanism.
Anand writes with a purpose from his personal experience and he experiences
of real people. His pre-Independence fiction, Untouchable (1935) depicts the
theme of caste discrimination it also included the issues like loss of identity and
rootlessness. The Coolie, Two Leaves and Bud and his smaller novel The Road
also deals with the evil of the class system. The Big Heart also depicts the caste
system. Anand’s The Village, The Sword and the Sickle and Across the Black
Waters focus on Indian traditional social values and the new socialist forces.
Mulk Raj Anand’s novels and short stories embody a ‘Social conscience’ and
create social awareness. R.K. Narayan’s Guide the winner of Sahitya Akademi
Award in 1951 and The Bachelor of Art depicts the social values questioned
now and then in the society. The Dark Room is the story of conjugal conflict.
R.K. Narayan presented social reality through his ironic mode of narration. T.
Ramakrishna’s The Dive of Death also shows the social conditions based on
certain superstitions. Balkrishnan’s The Love of Kusuma presents the scene of
Punjab with the accent on social life. Feroz Khan Noon’s Scented Dus, Dewan
Sharar’s The Gong of Shiva, Hari Singh Gour’s His only Love, Ahmed Ali’s
Twilight in Delhi are based on the social life and picture of women in the
society. S. Memon Marath realistically depicts the social life in his novels
Wound of Spring and The Sale of Island. Venu Chitale’s In Transit presents a
tale of three generations of Brahmin joint family of Poona. Rama Mehta’s
 Shirsath 39

Inside the Haveli depicts the Rajasthan Purdah life. Pankaj Mishra’s The Butter
Chicken in Ludhiana, Travels in small Town India describes the social and
cultural changes in India in the new context of globalization. Women novelist
strongly depicted the social scene in their writings. Ruth Prawar Jhabvala’s To
Whom She Will offers engaging comedies of North Indian urban middle class
life. Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar of a Sieve shows the picture of rustic life her
Two Virgins and a Handful of Rice depicts the social positions in society. G.V.
Desani gives a humorous and ironical touch to Delhi Life in All about Mr.
Hatter. Indian Muslim life has been beautifully described in Zenith Futehally’s
Zohra. Perin Bharucha presents an absorbing account of Parsi life in Fire
Worshippers.
1.5.4 Political and Historical Themes
The freedom struggle boost the Indian English novelist, many of Indian
English fictions are based on political and historical conditions prevailed in
society. Raja Ram Mohan Roy was an eminent political thinker of his time. His
political ideas were influenced by European philosophers, Bacon, Hume,
Bentham and Montesquieu. His famous works are Rights of Female, According
to the Hindu Law of Inheritance (1822). Exposition of Practical Operation of
Judicial and Revenue System in India and of the General Character and
Conditions of Its Native Inhabitants (1832) and A Defense of Hindu Theism
(1817) Sri Aurbindo’s political and social prose was journalistic. He expressed
his political and social ideas in a series of articles in Indu Prakash. He wrote
the famous monograph, the Bhawani Mandir with revolutionary thought. It was
A Handbook for Revolutionaries dedicated to service of Bhawani.
Rabindranath Tagore wrote anti violence tracts in The Home and the World and
Four Chapters. His Gora and Binodini are full proliferation of the national
culture in a memorial and crucial period of the history of modern India.
Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali the winner of Nobel Prize begins with the
patriotic lines, “Where the mind is without fear into that heaven of freedom,
my father, let my country awake”. (1) It is an effort to forge national unity to
 Shirsath 40

fight the foreign rule. Madhusudan Dutt’s The Captive Ladie is the historical
poem, a love poem where history is strongly blended with love. Shoshee
Chander Dutt in his collection of A Vision of Sumeru and Poems states the
legendary historical past of India. His poem Sivajee states the spirit of Indian
nationalism through the heroic deeds of Shivaji. Hur Chander Dutt’s Tarra
Baee is also based on historical theme. Ramesh Chander Dutt wrote A History
of Civilization in Ancient India; later he wrote Hindu Civilization and then
India in the Victorian Age. His books A Brief History of Ancient and Modern
Bengal and The Economic History of British India are based on historical facts.
The Slave Girl of Agra depicts the picture of Mughal times during 17th century
Agra. The Lake of Palms shows the picture of ninetieth century Bengali life.
Khushwant Singh’s I shall Not Hear the Nightingale and Train To Pakistan are
based on social and political situations of their times. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
a well-known personality of Indian History who rolled as a state man and
Politician also played an important role in Indian English Writing. He wrote the
historical prose, The Glimpses of World History and the Discovery of India.
Manohar Malgonkar’s A Bend in the Ganges, Distant Drum and The Men Who
killed Gandhi are based on political theme. Malegonkar’s The Devil’s Winds
deals with the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and his The Sea Hawk deals with the life
and battles of Kanhoji Angrey against British and Dutch aggression. K. A.
Venkatramani’s Kandan the Patriot is based on the Gandhiji’s civil
disobedience movement in the early thirties. Bhagwan S. Gidwani has painted
portrait of the Tiger of Mysore in his historical novel The Sword of Tipu Sultan.
Manorama Modak’s Single in the Wheel depicts the last days of the last
Peshwas in the early 19th century. Kamala Markandaya’s The Golden Honey
Comb covers the period of about a century from 1850 to 1947 in Indian
History. Vimala Raina’s Ambapali is based on picture of ancient India of
Buddhist times. Jyoti Jafa’s Nurjahan depicts the life of Nurjahan, a great
figure in Mughal period of Indian history. Bhabani Bhattacharya’s So Many
Hungers, R.K. Narayan’s Waiting for Mahatma and Kamala Markandaya’s
 Shirsath 41

Some Inner Fury are based on historical and political theme of horrors.
Balachandra Rajan’s The Dark Dance and Malgonkar’s Distant Drum and
Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan depict the situation of partition. S.M.
Mitra’s Hindupore, A Peep behind the Indian Unrest depicts the political
theme. Raj Gill’s The Rape and Chaman Nahal’s Azadi also focus mainly on
partition. H.S. Gill’s Ashes and Petal’s records a significant face of partition.
Bhabani Bhattacharya’s Shadow from Ladakh has the background of the
Chinese invasion of 1962. Nayantara Sahgal portraits leading political
personalities in This Time of the Morning, Storm in Chandigarh and A
Situation in New Delhi. Attia Husain’s Sunlight on Broken Column and Anita
Desai’s Clear Light of Day are based on partition theme. Rohit Handa in his
Comrade Sahib dramatizes the Naxalite movement of West Bengal. Girish
Karnad’s Tughlaq is a historical play, which deals with the complex and
paradoxical character of Mohammad-bin-Tughlaq who ruled over India for
twenty-six years. Nirad C. Chaudhari’s The Autobiography of an Unknown
Indian describes the social cultural and political conditions in which an Indian
grew to manhood in the early decades of this country. Thy Hand, Great
Monarch is also an exploratory study of Indian political and social ethos.
1.5.5 East-West Encounter
Growing cultural interaction between the East and West and the
changing scenario after independence have created an atmosphere to the theme
of East-West Confrontation. In 1909, Sarah Kumar Ghose wrote a romantic
novel entitled, The Price of Destiny containing the East-West theme the novel
is about the dilemma faced by an Indian Prince who has to choose between his
love for an English girl and marriage to an Indian princess. Raja Rao’s The
Serpent and the Rope, Kamala Markandaya’s Some Inner Fury, Possession and
The Coffer Dams are based on the East-West theme. G.V. Desani’s All About
H. Hatter, Ruth Jhabvala’s Edmond in India and Heat and Dust depict the
same theme of East and West encounter. Bharati Mukherji’s The Tiger’s
Daughter also deals with the theme of East-West confrontation. Rajan’s The
 Shirsath 42

Dark Dancer and Too Long in the West also deal with same theme. Some
recent post-independence novels focus on a different aspect of the East-West
encounter theme. Victor Anant’s The Revolving Man Timeri Murari’s The
Marriage has the same theme. Reginald and Jamia Massey’s The Immigrants,
Sashi Brata’s She and He Saraj Cowasjee’s Good Bye to Elsa M. V. Rama
Sharma’s The Stream and Look Homeward Romen Basu’s A Gift of Love,
Candles and Roses and Portrait on the Roof show the theme of East-West
encounter. Dilip Hiro’s A Triangular View, K.D. Khosla’s Never the Twain,
Chaman Nahal’s Into Another Dawn, Anita Desai’s Bye, Bye Blackbird and
S.S. Dhami’s Maluka explore the life of an Indian who goes abroad but some
of them adjust the alien culture and some of them fails to accept the alien
culture. Kamala Markandaya’s Possession highlights the incompatibility of the
Eastern spirituality with Western efficiency. While her Silence of Desire is a
clash between rationality and faith, Santha Rama Rao’s Remember the House is
an evaluation of our ancient culture in the light of her Western Experience.
Shashi Brata in his Confessions of an Indian Woman Eater and My God Died
Young has ruthlessly explored the shameless society of the East and the West.
Jatindra Mohan Ganguli’s When East and West Meet and A Bhaskar Rao’s The
Secret also have the same theme of East-West conformation. Shashi
Deshpande’s Nightingale, The Inner Rooms, Lucid Movements, Death of Child,
I Want… A Man and a Woman, The Awaking, all they show the quest for self-
identity.
1.5.6 Alienation and Existentialism
Alienation is a state or experience of being alienated a sense of
alienation from our environment or depersonalization or loss of identity, in
which the self seems unseal, thoughts to be caused by difficulties in relating to
society and the resulting prolonged inhibition of emotion; whereas
Existentialism means a situation in one’s present that looks back to the past and
anticipates the future. It is inseparably a part of each individual’s being: that the
process of understanding extensively something, involving an act of
 Shirsath 43

interpretation of human experience. It deals with the theme of alienation.

Alienation is a feeling of not belonging; it can be physical, mental, religious,
spiritual, psychological, political, social, or economic and often a combination
of more than one of these types. Alienation is a driving force, which pushes the
human conscience to extreme whether it is alienation from civilizations or
alienation from society. Some post-colonial novels focus on different aspects of
the East-West encounter theme. They depict the life of the Indian who goes
abroad and try to adjust or fails to adjust the alien culture. Mulk Raj Anand’s
novel Across the Black Water depicts existential art; whereas R.K. Narayan’s
novel The Vendor of Sweets emphasizes alienation theme. G.V. Desani’s All
About H. Hatter mainly explores the colonial experience. Vikram Seth’s The
Golden Gate depicts the theme of alienation and isolation of young urban
professionals in the U.S.A. Anita Desai’s Where Shall We Go this Summer
depicts the theme of alienation and lack of communication in married life; and
her Fire on the Mountain shows the existential concept such as
meaninglessness and subjectivity through the character Lalu Sing. In Bye, Bye
Blackbird and Cry, the Peacock the theme of alienation and frustration the
immigrant in an alien country is depicted. Kamala Das is mainly known as
poetess but skillfully deals with the theme of quest of identity in a male
dominated society in her two novels Alphabet of Lust and A Doll for the Child
Prostitute. Bharati Mukherjee a prominent Indian novelist who has settled
abroad her novels Tiger’s Daughter, Wife, Darkness deals with the sensibilities
of the immigrants in America. Her novel Jasmine also deals with the same
theme. Girish Karnad’s Tughlaq also concerns the theme of the search of
identity. Arun Joshi a prominent novelist of today powerfully depicts
existentialist dilemmas evoking our cultural heritages and facts of alienation in
The Strange Case of Billy Bishwas, The Apprentice and The Foreigner all deal
with the theme of alienation and search of identity. Sashi Brata, an expatriate
living in England displays angry rebellion against the tradition bound Indian
Society alienation, rootlessness, and futile search for moorings in his novels
 Shirsath 44

Confession of an Indian Woman Eater and She and He. Saroj Cowasjee’s Good
Bye Elsa and Shiv K. Kumar’s The Bone’s Prayer and Nude before God also
deals with the theme of alienation futile search for meaning and resultant
agony, angst and restlessness. Y.P. Dhawan’s two novels Beyond the Guru and
Journey Through Hell, effectively depicts the existentialist theme of alienation
and its concomitant inner angst and agonized quest for meaning in life. Raji
Narasimhan, a journalist turned novelist, depicts the existentialist motifs of
freedom and sufficient constitute in his novels The heart of standing is you
cannot fly and Forever Free. Kamala Das’s Alphabet of Lust, Vikram Kapur’s
The Traumatic Bite, and K.M. Trishanku’s Onion Peel have the same theme of
alienation. Asif Currimbhoy’s The Dumb Dancer is based on an alien theme.
1.5.7 Theme of Diaspora
Homi Bhabha in his book The Location of Culture points out:
The study of world literature might be the study of the way in which
cultures recognize themselves through their projections of ‘otherness’
Where once, the transmission of national traditions was the major theme
of a world literature, perhaps we can now suggest that transnational
histories of migrants, the colonized or political refugees – these border
and frontier conditions may be the terrains of world literature. (12)
Historical migration of human populations begins with the movement of
Homo erectus out of Africa across Eurasia about a million years ago. The term
‘Diaspora’, as the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary explains stands for
“The movement of people from any nation or group away from their own
country”. (www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com) The term ‘Diaspora’ is used
as a marker of movement across cultures and the dislocation such movement
causes.
The terms, ‘Diaspora, exile, alienation and expatriation’ are
synonymous and possess an ambiguous status of both a refugee and an
ambassador. Migration brings the migrants a sense of Diaspora, exile,
alienation and expatriation. In Indian context, it has so many reasons operated
 Shirsath 45

by various conditions like employment, marriages and others. The sense of

homelessness which every migrant suffers is genuine and intense, but in recent
times, it has been minimized and made less intense through their, social
networking and sense of solidarity.
There are many examples of Indian Diaspora; the writings by many of
Indian writers reflect this sense of Diaspora in one way or the other. The
writers such as Raja Rao, Shashi Tharoor, Vikram Seth, Kenya born G. V.
Desani, Amitav Ghosh, Rohintan Mistry and others have contributed well to
the Diaspora literature with their sense of exile. The sense of expatriations is
the reflected in many of Indian women writers writing in English; many of
them married English men and settled there and wrote about India, Indian life,
atmosphere and problems; they are Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai, Jhumpa
Lahiri, Bharati Mukherjee and others. Salman Rushdie’s imaginary homeland
encompasses the world over, Rushdie and Naipaul had contributed in English
literature as a Diasporic writers. These writers concern with the global
problems of immigrants, refugees and all other exiles. The migrating
population formed Indian Diasporic literature. Sudesh Mishra in his essay,
‘From Sugar to Masala’ states,
This distinction is between, on the one hand, the semi-voluntary
flight of indentured peasants to non-metropolitan plantation colonies
such as Fiji, Trinidad, Mauritius, South Africa, Malaysia, Surinam, and
Guyana, roughly between the years 1830 and 1917; and on the other the
late capital or postmodern dispersal of new migrants of all classes to
thriving metropolitan centers such as Australia, the United States,
Canada and Britain. (276)
Indian Diaspora can be divided into two categories - The first category
forms the writing by Dean Mohamed with his The Travels of Dean Mohamed
(1794) and Kylas Chunder Dutt’s Imaginary History Journal of Forty Eight
Hours of The Year 1945 (1835). And second, the writings by the writers like
Desani, Santha Rama Rao, Raja Rao, Nirad Chaudhari, Balachndra Rajan etc
 Shirsath 46

who contributed to expatriate literature. David Scott Philip points out in the
connection, “Chaudhari’s image of India is West-Oriented and bound for
rejection while Narayan’s image risks xenophobia and national isolation
Mehta’s vision, on the other hand is a genuine composite which does not insult
nor overindulge Indian sentiments”. (135) Anita Desai’s Bye, Bye Blackbird
depicts the theme of alienation and frustration of the immigrant in an alien
country. Racial hatred, homesickness, and rootlessness have been explored in
novel. Dev, Adit and Sarah experience humiliation in England inspire of their
love for English, English history etc. Adit’s English wife Sarah faces reality
boldly. She married to an Indian and at times feels divided between her English
self and the role of Mrs. Sen. She feels that though she will have to go is India
with her husband she will not be able to forget England. The novel shows that
man cannot flourish and grow in an alien land. He always remains an outsider.
The Nowhere Man deals specially with the theme of East-West encounter
through individual relationships and experience. The characters in the novel are
Indian immigrants in England who experience the sense of alienation and
rootlessness. The novel is an indictment of violence of all type. The India born
writers who spent their childhood in India and then migrated to abroad form
one group of the modern Indian Diaspora literature which reflect a sense of
displacement; while writings by the writers who are not born in India but have
their roots in India reflect a sense of rootlessness. Thus, writings by these
writers focus on the theme of both displacement and rootlessness. The Indian
Diaspora literature deals with displaced characters and few of the writings also
represent both western as well as these characters. Many of the works of
Diasporic theme represent how Indians are discriminated in the western
countries and how they feel alienated, rootless and displaced there. The land of
immigrants has been very well depicted in Kamala Markandaya The Nowhere
Man, Anita Desai’s Bye, Bye Blackbird, Bharati Mukherjee’s Wife and
Jasmine; while Loose Ends written from the perspective of an embittered Viet-
Vet and assassin for hire, captures the violence that haunts the Diaspora, when
 Shirsath 47

those identifying exclusively with the nation state discover, that immigrant
bodies are redefining their country, and making them feel excluded. Salman
Rushdie inaugurated the field of postcolonial Diasporism with his debut novel
Grimus shows the plight of estrangement and alienation. Rushdie’s Midnights
Children Saleem, Shiva, Padma, Parvati face a calamity of identity,
disintegration of disposition, geographical, and cultural dislocation. Rushdie’s
novel depicts the theme of root, root, and rootlessness. Rushdie in his
Imaginary Homeland describes his own position as an expatriate in these
words:
It may be that writers in my position, exiles, emigrants, or expatriates,
are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back;
even at the risk of being mutilated into pillars of self. It is obvious that
there never can be a real and a factual reclamation of the lost homeland;
it will always be a fictional one. The Expatriate literature creates,
“fictions, not actual cities or village, but invisible ones, imaginary
homelands, India’s of the mind”. (10)
1.5.8 Other Recurrent Themes
Identity is one of the most recurrent themes in almost of all post-
independence Indian writers. The issue of identity in their writings is connected
to Indianness. They have twin purpose – first they are concerned with the
theme of search for identity within India, and then talk about their struggle to
establish their identity within the larger World literature. Apart from all
mentioned themes, there is a long list of themes that are many as dealt with by
writers writing in Indian English literature; these are as follows: ability,
absurdity, accusation, acquisition, acting, admiration, adoption, advice, alien,
life, anarchism, apathy, arrogance, atheism, aviation, beauty, belief, betrayal,
boredom, bravery, capitalism, change, citizenship, communism, confidence,
conservation, conspiracy, crime, curiosity, death, dedication, depression,
despair, disability, dreams, ecology, education, environment, pollution, ethics
evil, extinction, gambling, quilt, happiness, hate, history, hope, hypocrisy,
 Shirsath 48

ideas, ideology, ignorance, imagination, immortality, innocence, innovation,

irrelevance, jealousy, justice, kindness, leadership, liberty, life, linguistics,
loneliness, loyalty, love, passion, patience, patriotism, peace, perception,
perfection, performance, power, pride, protection, race, reality, regret, religion,
responsibility, relationships, mankind, maturity, monarchy, morality,
motivation, concert, surf-discipline, slavery, socialism, terrorism, truth,
unselfishness, violence, virtue, wisdom, youth etc.
1.6 Summing Up
To sum up, theme is the important aspect of writing. It is the central
topic or moral of the text. A theme may be explored through the feelings of the
main character about the subject chosen, or presented through thoughts and
conversations of different characters. Love, friendship, death may be the
different types of themes. The literary works utilized the themes in different
forms from ancient times. Themes changed according to the prevailing
conditions of the era. Theme binds together the various aspects of the main
character’s psychological and physical behavior. Literature of Ancient Greek
and Rome’s golden age in history is explored through the classical themes. It is
basically satirical. The epics or long verses are presented through mythological
themes. The characters of mythological themes possessed the supernatural
powers to face evil powers. Romantic themes in literature promoted a new
breed of writing bringing emotionalism and introspections with a new
concentration on the individual and the common man. Socio-cultural theme in
literature explored. The social conditions due to colonialism and its impact on
the culture of natives and immigrants are described. Political and historical
themes focused on the political condition which resulted in conflicts among
natives and rulers to achieve freedom from colonialism. The 20th century
brought the new themes in literature; they are the theme of Realism, Alienation
and existentialism, East-West encounter, Diasporic theme and others. It refers
to the world literature and its awareness towards reality, technological changes,
condition of women in the society and so many other themes as well.
 Shirsath 49

Works Cited

Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th edition, Heinle & Heinle,
1999.
Anand, Mulk Raj. “The Story of My Experiment with a White Lie” Critical
Essays on Indian Writing in English. Ed. M.K. Naik. Macmillan, 1977.
--- . Two Leaves and Buds. Liberty Press, 1954.
--- . “Why I write.” Mulk Raj Anand: Special Number, Kakatiya Journal of
English Studies. 2/1, Spring, 1977.
Asnani, Shyam M. Critical Response Indian English Fiction. Mittal, 1985.
Bande, Usha. Manohar Malgoankar. Sahitya Akademi, 2016.
Bhaba, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1944
Boulton, Marjorie. An Anatomy of Prose. Rouledge and Kegan Paul, 1979.
Chaudhari, Nirad C. “Tagore and the Nobel Prize” The Illustrated Weekly of
India. March 11, 1973.
--- . Thy Hand: Great – Anarch. Chatto and Windus, 1987.
Childs, Peter and Roger Fowler. The Rutledge Dictionary of Literary Terms.
1973, Routledge, 2006.
Dayanand, James Y. Manohar Malgonkar. Twayne Publishers, 1974.
Desai, Anita. Cry, the Peacock. P. Owen, 1963.
Heehs, Peter. The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. Columbia University Press, 2008
Isherwood, Christopher. Ramkrishna and His Disciples. Vedanta Press, 1983.
Iyengar, K.R. Srinivasa. Indian Writing in English, Sterling, 2004.
Kripalani, K.R. Rabindranth Tagore: A Biography. 1962. UBS Publishers,
2008.
Koontz, Dean quoted by Harvey Chapman, Novel Writing Help, 2008-2019.
https://www.novel-writing-help.com/what-is-theme.html
Malgaonkar, Manohar. A Bend in the Ganges. 1964. The Viking Press, 1965.
--- . Distant Drum. Bombay-Asia Publishing House, 1960.
Markandaya, Kamla. A Silence of Desire. 1960. Penguin, 2009.
--- . Nectar in Sieve. John Day Company, 1954.
 Shirsath 50

--- . Some Inner Furry. 1956. Penguin, 2009.

Middleton, Murray. The Challenge of Gandhi: Essays and Reflections. Allen
and Unwin, 1949.
Mishra, Sudesh. “From Sugar to Masala” An Illustrated History of India
Literature in English. Ed. M. K. Mehrotra. Permanent Black, 2003.
Naik, M.K. A History of Indian English Literature. Sahitya Academi,
1982.
Naipaul, V.S. An Area of Darkness. Penguin, 1964.
Narayan, R.K. Swami and Friends. Productivity and Quality Publishing,
1935.
Philip, David Scott. Perceiving India: Through the Works of Nirad C.
Chaudhuri, R.K. Narayan and Ved Mehta. Sterling, 1986.
Prasad, Rajendra. Forward. A Study of Nehru. Ed. Rafiq Zakaria. Times of
India, 1960.
Rao, Ranga. “The Book(er) of the Year”. The Hindu. 23 Sept. 1997.
Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands. Penguin, 1992.
--- . Shame. Jonathan Cape, 1983.
Singh, Khushwant. “Art and Literature” Khushwant Singh’s View of India. Ed.
Rahul Singh, India Book House, 1974.
--- . Train to Pakistan. Chatto and Windus, 1956.
William, H. M. Indo-Anglian Literature, 1800-1970. Orient Longman, 1976.
Yeats, W.B. “An Introduction” Tagore’s Gitanjali. 1912. Macmillan, 1913.
 Shirsath 51

Chapter 2
Making of V. S. Naipaul

2.0 Preliminaries
Postcolonial literature is an important part of the third world literature
that has emerged after the time of colonization. It deals with the life of the
colonials, who achieved their national identity after independence. The term
‘postcolonial’ emphasizes the significance of the impact of colonialism on the
colonized. Colonialism had formulated and shaped by many writers, who used
literature to articulate their creative urges and aspirations. Postcolonial
literature explores the realities experienced by the colonial people with their
new perceptions. It focuses on the forces of oppression and domination due to
race, gender, nationality and ethnicity. Postcolonial literature is a product of
resistance to colonialism and imperialism. It depicts subjugation, slavery and
loss of freedom. To the post-colonial writers, literature served as the important
purpose of protest. The protest was against inequities, oppression and the loss
of a culture and heritage. The prime concern of post-colonial literature in
English is historical and cultural differences, place and displacement. It leads to
identity crisis and search for self and place. Brian Crown and Chris Benfield in
the Preface to An Introduction to Postcolonial Theory discussed the term Post-
colonialism as, “A characteristic feature of the development of Western art a
forms during the twentieth century has been the frequent and highly fruitful
exploration of all kinds of materials drawn from nonwestern cultures”. (xi)
V.S. Naipaul is the product of post-colonialism; he is an eminent post-
colonial writer in English of the twentieth century. Naipaul is a multi-layered
international writer. He launched his literary career by going back to his
childhood days in Trinidad. Writing was a fantasy of nobility to Naipaul. In an
Interview with Tarun J. Tejpal, Naipaul quotes, “I wanted to be very famous
for writing. And the absurdity about the ambition at the time was that I had no
idea what I was going to write about”. (1) Naipaul’s leading themes of
 Shirsath 52

rootlessness, the alienating effects of the colonial past of post-colonial people,

have taken him around the globe in tracing the rootlessness of man and at last,
he found Trinidad, the land of his birth and upbringing as the right place to
launch his writing career. He states, “To be a writer was to be a writer of novels
and stories. That was how the ambition had come to me, through my anthology
and my father’s example”. (RW 22)
Gareth Griffiths has explained the process of post-colonial reading in
these words:
Post-coloniality of a text depends not on any simple
qualification of theme or subject matter, but on the degree to
which it displays post-colonial discursive features. What these
features may be is again open to interpretation as are those of any
discourse which seeks to constitute itself as ‘discreet, but I might
suggest that such concern as linguistic displacement, physical
exile, cross-culturalism and authenticity or in-authenticity of
experience are among the features which one mighty identity as
characteristically post–colonial. (237)
In his profile of V.S. Naipaul, Raghubir Singh writes,
Not only the Western view but also the Indian view is
incorrect about Naipaul. He is not the sad rootless man, Indians
make him out to be. The truth is that Naipaul’s roots are dug deep
into the terra firma of English literature. That is his universe.
That is his country. He walks like a king along the Avon in
Wiltshire. He is treated with great respect and deference by the
English. I saw him interact with… He has a deep commitment to
India and to truth. He is the Gangetic Plain’s co radian gift to the
world. (78)
Naipaul occupies an important place among the twentieth-century
writers in exploring, and interrogating post–imperial issues and realities. He
has overrun geographical boundaries and cultural space through his writings.
 Shirsath 53

He has dealt with man’s multiple confrontations with power, authority and
slavery.
2.1 V. S. Naipaul: The Man and the Writer
V.S. Naipaul is an essayist and a novelist, who won the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 2001. Trinidadian by birth, Indian by descent and British by
choice, Naipaul is known as a Trinidadian writer.
Almost all Naipaul’s novels are set in the developing countries. He is
associated with colonial and post-colonial realism. He is a leading novelist of
English speaking Caribbean Island. Naipaul himself stated, “The colonial
world was pretty awful world. People have now forgotten it but I still carry it
with me a little bit. I grew up in at the far end of imperialism. It was very
unpleasant… I haven’t written about personal psychosis at all, I’ve written
about real things”. (Singh 22).V. S. Naipaul is just like a literary navigator, in
his unique voice only sail around at home. John Theime has said in this respect,
“He is, of course, a writer who because of his scathing portrayal of Third
World Societies, particularly in his non–fiction, has attracted more than his fair
share of critical praise usually, though not always from metropolitan
commentators–and censure usually, though not always from non-metropolitan
commentator” (193). V. S. Naipaul a post-colonial writer holds a place of
eminence among the most distinguished novelist in English of the twentieth
century. In this respect Gottfried rightly points out,
Born to the limited hopes and narrow-horizons of an
impoverished colonial existence, heir by conquest-conquered, not
conquered of only one, great and powerful weapon or talisman by
means of which with luck perseverance and talent, he might elude
the mediocrity and frustration that had constricted his father’s life
that was V. S. Naipaul and the English language was his weapon
or talisman. (440)
At a very young age of 11, Naipaul was drawn towards writing, the wish
to become a writer surfaced in him. Writing is his sole profession. Naipaul’s
 Shirsath 54

father once sent Naipaul a little book entitled as, The School of Poetry an
Anthology edited by Alice Meynell. In his book Finding the Centre, he quotes,
‘it was a gift to a son with a message’, “To Vidiadhar from his father today you
have reached the span of three years, ten months and fifteen days. And I make
this, present to you with this counsel in addition. Live up estate of man follow
truth, be kind and gentle and trust God.” (44) The gift of book shows, that
Surajprasad Naipaul was sure that Vidiadhar was to be a writer. It was a
persisted desire of Naipaul’s father for Naipaul to be a writer. His father had
hung a framed picture of O’ Henry cut out from the Jacket of the Hodder and
Stoughton uniform edition. His father had read three stories for him of O’
Henry. The wish to be a writer was a direct development of that. He has
emerged as one of the very few writers of the twentieth century. Narration of
being a writer is scattered all over his books. He practically narrated and
explained the molding of his creative self from various angles. His works have
an autobiographical touch. Judging from Naipaul’s autobiographical essays
points out,
The most enabling presence behind his emergence as a
writer was the less conspicuous, late-flowering figure of his
father. Surajprasad Naipaul proved an ambiguous inspiration: he
come to embody writing as a desirable vacation, and yet, because
the unpropitious circumstances of colonial Trinidad stalled his
promise, he stood, too, as a chastening of the lonely destitution
that could accompany literary ambition. (7)
Naipaul’s father was a journalist and his ambition to writing was
spoiled, as he did not have enough opportunities in colonial Trinidad, when
Naipaul move from countryside to the city, the ambition to become a writer
started more and more. In India: A Million Mutinies Now, Naipaul writes, “The
ambition to be a writer was given by my father. He was a journalist for much of
his working life. This was an unusual occupation”. (29) In the initial stage, he
tried to resolve the creative crisis by recreating the stories of a Dickensian
 Shirsath 55

novel in the Trinidad context. Thereafter he utilizes the Caribbean experience

for writing in English. After his education he started working at the B.B.C. as a
freelancer right from there he got on a take-off as writer, by reeling of his
memories from Port of Spain the entire world of Trinidad come alive on his
pages but he faced the problem, while facing reviewers. Reviewers regarded he
writings as mysterious and fantasies though they are realistic description of
Trinidad. The greatest problem he faced was the lack of communication with
the mass-communication, in which American consider him British, and British
regarded him as foreigner, and the limitation of being colonial could not allow
him to write like an English or a French writer. In The Overcrowded Baracoon,
Naipaul writes, “because as a colonial, as I was to be spared knowledge, it was
to live in an intellectually restricted world, it was to accept those restrictions.
So step by step, through seeking each time only to write another book, I eased
myself into knowledge”.(28) As a writer while Living in England as an
expatriate. Naipaul’s ambition becomes a steadfast; it explored many problems.
In my fantasy of being, a writer there had been no idea
how I might actually go about writing a book. I suppose – I
couldn’t be sure that there was a vague notion in the fantasy that
once I had done the first the others would follow. In those early
days, every new book meant facing the old blankness again. My
imagination was like a chalk-scrawled blackboard, wiped clean in
stages and at the end blank against. (RW 27-28)
For Naipaul writing is a passion amounting to worship. Naipaul had
revised his father’s published short stories in Gurudeva and other Indian Tales
(1943) as The Adventures of Gurudeva and other Stories in 1976. This worked
as energy to Naipaul to write about the world he knew as a child, rather than to
search for other subjects. As Bruce King states is as,
This was the starting point for Naipaul’s own writing, to
which he brought a superior education and familiarity with the
classics of literature, . . . a greater dedication to of the writing, the
 Shirsath 56

ad vantages of exile, distance and opportunities to publish in

England . . . he brought a new depth and seriousness to West
Indian fiction . . . Naipaul contemporary English language fiction
… (14)
According to Naipaul, to be a writer was to have the conviction, that one
could go on and he himself lacked that conviction, and with a book written he
could not think himself a writer. In his 2001 Nobel Lecture “Two Worlds”,
Naipaul says, “My aim every time was to do a book, to create something that
would be easy and interesting to read”. (9) He thought, he should wait, until he
had written three novels and when a year after he had written a second, he had
written third he thought he should wait until he had written six novels.
Naipaul thus, became a writer through his unquenchable anxiety. In
Critical Perspectives on V. S. Naipaul, Robert Hammer observed him as, “One
of a rare breed of author who is an articulate critic, not only of society and
literary in general, but of his own life and work as well”. (xxi) He never bought
a paper to write on, he always borrowed, and he never numbered his pages.
Naipaul never wrote or typed his name himself on the finished manuscripts.
Naipaul was also interested in history, landscape and people. The process of
writing resulted in the production of books full of variety, along with a
changing view and irregular colours of human society and life. While
answering a question in an interview with Jeremy Isaacs on 16 May 1994 on
BBC 2 about the inspiration behind his writing, Naipaul answered, “An Idea of
nobility, a love of lettering wish to be famous all these things.” (Quoted in
Gupta 1)
Naipaul holds a unique place as a West Indian writer; he is the product
of triple alienation. These factors of triple alienation are largely responsible for
the shaping of his personality, and his evolution as a writer. He has become a
voice of the modern expatriate. He is an observer of the world’s follies,
especially those problems that have cropped up a result of the end of empire
and the withdrawal of European rule from the third world. Exile is the subject
 Shirsath 57

of Naipaul’s work, as he felt isolated due to displacement; loyalty to any

country, community or creed, Naipaul examined the world with an open eye.
His early works define his own situation, and established his identity as a
writer. In an interview with L. K. Sharma he has denied that his identity has
any problem he says, “Do you keep asking, ‘Who I am?’ never ask that
question. I always knew who I was. My research was for knowledge. My
writings have been my discoveries. I have no problem about my identity. None
at all. My work is not exploration of the self. No, it is the exploration of the
world.” (3)
2.1.1 His Life, Education and Career

Naipaul was born on August 17, 1932 at Chaguanas in Trinidad of

Indian parents, who migrated to the West Indies as indentured laborers.
Naipaul’s grandfather, Kopil arrived in Trinidad on the ship Hereford in 1894,
and was indentured as a coolie at Woodford Lodge estate. He gained a
reputation as a pundit, and was an office holder in the East Indian National
Congress, a fledgling organization inspired by the rise of nationalism in India.
In 1930’s Trinidad, Indians were depicted as poor, mean, rural, aggressive,
ethnically exclusive and illiterate; in such a world Vidiadhar Naipaul was born.
Naipaul was the second son of seven children in a large family of orthodox
Brahmins, whose ancestral roots lay in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. He is
named for a Chandela King, the dynasty which built the magnificent Hindu
temples at Khajurao in Northern India. His name means giver of wisdom. It
was an opposite name for the boy. The Chaguanas, from Hindu caste name
Chauhan was an Indian town with Hindu and Muslim districts had the religious
and caste rivalries of India, there Naipaul’s grandfather had bought many acres
of cane land and rice land, and build his Indian style house. Chaguanas was in
the heart of the sugar area and the Indian area of Trinidad, where Naipaul’s
mother’s family was established, as contract labour and were being big land
owners. Naipaul imbibed his fantasy of home, field and huts, the mango tree,
simple flowers and the lightning of fires in the evening from all his
 Shirsath 58

surroundings. His father Surajprasad was a journalist, used to contribute

occasional articles on Indian topics to the Trinidad Guardian, Surajprasad
wrote in book of Sentimental Poetry for children, addressing child Naipaul that
he had reached to the span of three years ten months and fifteen days. He made
the present to him with his counsel to be kind and gentle and to trust God. For
some years, his father left the Guardian, and he did odd jobs here and there
staying in Naipaul’s mother’s family or his uncle a rich man, founder and part-
owner of the biggest bus company in the island. He was himself poor, having
poor relations with agricultural labors. His father lived there and changed all
his life in half independence and half-esteem between, these two powerful
families. Again, in 1935, his father was taken as a city reporter to the
Guardian, and the family moved to Port of Spain, to the house owned by
Naipaul’s maternal grandmother. In an interview at B.B.C., Naipaul’s states,
the relationship in house hold were often hard, “Children were beaten with a
strap or with a stick. Outside we were surrounded by language that came from
the days of slavery. Parents would say, ‘I will peel your back side. I will beat
you till you pee. I will make you fart fire.” (68) There Naipaul was introduced
to the life of the street, for Naipaul his father was almost a stranger. He knew,
that he had a father, but he was almost absent from the house. The life and the
personality of his father remained vague and mysterious to the son. Naipaul’s
parents were orthodox Brahmins, but Naipaul himself was not interested in his
Brahmin identity and religious rituals. He disliked long and boring ceremonies.
He believed that all these ceremonies were almost similar and monotonous.
The language of prayer was unknown to him. He was never interested in the
images, because he didn’t know their significance; Naipaul himself totally
remained ignorant of Hinduism though he was born in an orthodox Hindu
family.

Naipaul’s early life was directionless, because of his father and family.
His life was unstable and jumbled; he could not see his father for days. Only
his school life was regular. His father’s condition was gradually deteriorated,
 Shirsath 59

and he was given one of the servant’s rooms. In Chaguanas, the family was at
the centre of a whole network of Hindu reverences, people come to Chaguanas
house to pay their respect, invited them and offer gifts of food, but in the house
at Montrose they were alone unsupported by that Chaguanas world. No one
from outside instructed them in their obligations. There were quarrels along
with the enmity and alliances. Nothing was stable, food was short and transport
difficult. His father was tense. One Sunday evening in anger father threw a
glass of hot milk at Naipaul about his right eye; his eyebrow still bears that scar
of his childhood. That incident also made an indelible impression on his mind,
that he became a recluse and an introvert. His father loved keeping documents
consisting letters from a London Writings School and from the Guardian.
Naipaul read them all many time with pleasure as past relies. The raised letters
heads meant more to Naipaul than the letters. There was a British unused
passport for same one with his father’s picture from the Trinidad colony and
Tobago. He has pasted his early writings for the Trinidad in a big estate wages
ledger. Naipaul’s thus grew up with the ideas of history and time. It was with
his ambition to be a writer, he points out in Finding the Centrem, “It was
where, from reading of my father’s stories of village life, I had set my fantasy
of home, my fantasy of things as they were at the very beginning: the ritualized
day, field and huts, the mango tree in the yard, the simple flowers, the lighting
of fires in the evening”. (43) In 1936 Naipaul enters the Chaguanas
Government School. He spent their two years. Naipaul was transferred to
Tranquility Boys School, in 1942; Naipaul won an exhibition from Tranquility
school. He came third in the island and was given a free place in Queen’s
Royal College, in Port of Spain. He inscribed in his Kennedy’s Revised Latin
Primer; a vow to escape from Trinidad within five years, when he was in the
fourth form at Queen’s Royal College he complete his education specializing in
French and Spanish. He failed to comply with the regulations for an ordinary
island scholarship. The Education Board created a special scholarship for him
for his brilliance. Somerset Maughm added an article to his first novel Liza of
 Shirsath 60

Lambeth on Naipaul’s contribution to the Queen’s Royal College, journal

during his stay. In January 1950, Naipaul returned to Queens Royal College as
a student teacher. In his book, A Way in the World he describes Queen Royal
College as, “Queen’s Royal College was famous island college. To go there
from an intermediate school was not only to make a big academic jump, but
also to be more grown up”. (212). He left for Oxford on 2nd August to study
English literature at the University College, Oxford, and started writing
occasional pieces for the BBC World Service Caribbean voices. The BBC paid
him a guinea for a poem broadcast on Caribbean Voices, an influential half-
hour weekly radio programmer on the BBC. It was his only poem entitled
“Two Thorium” which is a solemn, adolescent cry of anguish. It was read by
Jon Figuerao, a brown Jamaican.
Darkness piling up in the corners
defying the soulless moon…
it is neither today’s tomorrow
nor is it tonight’s last night
but now
and forever
and you are scared
for this is forever
and this is death
and nothing
and mourning
(BBC, Colonia Service 24/09/50)
Writing about his going to Oxford, Naipaul in Finding the Centre states,
In 1949, I won a Trinidad Government Scholarship. These
scholarships were meant to give a profession and they could last
for seven years. I decided to use mine to do English at Oxford. I
didn’t want a degree, I wanted only to get away; and I thought
that in three or four scholarship years at Oxford my talent would
 Shirsath 61

somehow be revealed and the books would start writing

themselves. (36)
Naipaul was awarded B.A. (Hon.) in English in 1953. He worked briefly
in the Cataloguing Department, of National Portrait Gallery, and became Editor
of BBC Caribbean Voices programmer in 1954. Naipaul writes in Finding the
Centre that at beginning he lived, “in an old house in Kilburn, just behind the
Gaumont State Cinema in a two roomed second floor flat, sharing bath-room
and lavatory with everybody else. Not that this was bad: in fact I thought I was
lucky: few people let our flat is non-Europeans in those day.” (45) In 1955,
V.S. Naipaul married to an English woman, Patrica Hale. They led forty-one
years of a good married until Patrica’s death with cancer in 1996. Naipaul’s
current wife is Nadira Naipaul, a former Pakistani journalist. In 1970, he went
back to Trinidad planning to live there, but ended up travelling from country to
country until he returned to England and finally settled there.
2.1.2 Naipaul as a Freelance Writer
As soon as he graduated, Naipaul launched on his career as a freelance
writer. During 1954 to 1956, he worked as a broadcaster for the BBC. He has
also written various reviews in the daily, New Statesman. He edited a literary
programme for the BBC, he published book, reviews and wrote features for
several magazines and journals. At the age of 23, he had completed first novel,
The Mystic Masseur. The native West Indian culture, the English culture, that
shaped his adulthood through the education, and Indian culture that forms the
part of his psyche and his mental makeup. In Reading and Writing Naipaul
states on a literary career of writing novels as, “To be a writer was to be a
writer of novels and stories that was how the ambition has come to me, through
my anthology and my father’s examples.” (22) He is able to assess all three
with objectivity. He has published three collections of the short stories The
Miguel Street in 1959, A Flag on the Island 1967 and In a Free State 1973
along with some other stories in different magazines Naipaul’s stories present a
vision of life as in his novels, of the rootless people. The rootlessness leaves a
 Shirsath 62

very damaging impact on their minds, making them pitiable, and they suffer
from inferiority complex. The short stories in Miguel Street are linked short
stories set in wartime Trinidad and Tobago. Many of the stories in this
collection are about Naipaul’s childhood life spent in Port of Spain. The word,
street in the title stands for the Luis Street at where Naipaul stayed along with
his family during 1940s. The stories in this book portray various characters in
different stories all narrated by the same boy narrator. In it Naipaul talked
about Hindu community. It also reflects on the black culture. Miguel Street
won the 1961 Somerset Maugham Award. In Miguel Street, the truth prevails
resulting into tragedy and comedy as understated and overstated respectively.
In Naipaul’s collection of short stories entitled, A Flag on the Island, (1967)
there includes a novella with the title, A Flag on the Island. It outtakes from the
previous novels, the short story entitled, The Enemy from his work, Miguel
Street and some other stories published in various magazines from England or
the United States. The list of stories that are included in the novel are My Aunt
Gold Teeth, The Raffle, A Christmas Story, The Mourners, The Night
Watchman’s Occurrence Book, The Enemy, Greenie and yellow, The Perfect
Tenants, The Heart, The Baker’s Story and A Flag on the Island. These stories
were written during the period 1950-1967: and the setting was from London
flats and hotels to West Indian homes, shops, and streets. The third story book,
In a Free State contains the stories like One Out of Many, From a Journal, The
Tramp at Piraeus, Prologue, Epilogue, From a Journal, Tell Me Who To Kill,
The Circus at Luxor and In a Free State dealing with the theme of freedom.
The novella presents two characters, who confront their private failures and
inadequacies. The tribal warfare surrounds them in a newly formed African
country. The stories My Heart, The Mourners, The Raffle and The Enemy
related with his childhood memories. The fantasy of bonding with dog Lassie,
was the centre of the story My Heart. The story is a psychological study of the
sadistic growth of a spoilt only child of well-to-do parents, Hari. He brutalizes
his own pet dog to take revenge on other figures of power such as his
 Shirsath 63

schoolboy, who bully him, or the aggressive Alsatian dog he passes by four
times a dog on his way to and from school. The story detects the theme of the
embarrassments of the parental presence for an only child, who wishes to make
his own identity and also exposed the myth of childhood innocence. The
Mourners explored the relationships of poor conditions. Sheila and her doctor
husband had lost their young only son, Ravi. The protagonist, Romesh was
repeatedly invited by Sheila, but Romesh locked himself within his more
important concern – preparing for The Scholarship exam, which will get him
out of the country if he succeeded. The poor relation status was very
humiliating, though Romesh was offered good food at Sheila’s house by the
servant girl, Soomintra. In the opening of the story the narrator states, that they
were poor relations they had been taught to respect the house and the family.
The partial resistance of Romesh to family indoctrination by holding on to his
powerful critical sensibility structures the tensions in the story. Naipaul
travelled to England from Trinidad and settled there as an expatriate, yet he
travelled many countries for various reasons. The outcome of those flights from
metropolitan center of London to the Third World Countries was the Corpus of
his Travel Writing. Naipaul’s travel writings are voluminous, and he is also
well known as travel writer. Naipaul is a comprehensive writer with many
facets is his writing. Peter Hughes states about Naipaul’s travel writing as, “We
come to recognize that this world and Naipaul’s paired narratives are finally a
reversal of ethnographic writing. His personal or travel account is meant is
accompany a novel, hot an impersonal description.” (103) Travel became his
means of exploring and examining the societies of the Third World through the
mode of non-fiction. Naipaul has travelled extensity and his travel books are
the outcome of his journeys. The travel experiences provided him the extra
material and subject matter beyond his childhood memories of Trinidad. The
experiences helped him to explore and reveal different lifestyles in various
countries. In Reading and Writing, Naipaul states, “Fiction, the exploration of
one’s immediate circumstances, had taken me a lot of the way. Travel had
 Shirsath 64

taken me further” (31) Naipaul in his Nobel Lecture ‘Two Worlds’ mentioned
that both fiction and the travel book had given him the way of looking. And all
literary forms are equally valuable for him.
V. S. Naipaul had written near about twenty-three fictional and non-
fictional works published during 1957 to 2010. His fictional masterpieces
include, The Suffrage of Elvira, The Mimic Men, The Mystic Masseur, Miguel
Street, A Bend in the River, Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion, A Flag on
the Island, Guerrillas, A House for Mr. Biswas, In a Free State, Half a Life,
Magic Seeds. And his non-fictional works can be listed as: An Area of
Darkness, The Overcrowded Barracoon, The Middle Passage, Loss of
Eldorado, Finding the Centre, India: A Wounded Civilization, The Return of
Eva Peron, Among the Believers, A Turn in the South, India: A Million
Mutinies Now, and the Killings in Trinidad, Beyond Belief, Between Father and
Son, Reading and Writing: A Personal Account, and The Masque of Africa:
Glimpses of African Belief.
Apart from his fictional and non–fictional works, he had written
numerous essays, book reviews and articles for newspapers and magazines.
The letters written in London to his father and sister Kamala are compiled in
Letters between Father and Son, depict the situation at home in Trinidad. These
letters shows the inimitable bond of love and affection between father and son.
He had written about books by Indians, West Indians, Americans, Englishman,
Russians, Japanese, Irishman, German and Italians. He has distinguished
himself as an essayist also. He published in 1972 a book called The
Overcrowded Barracoon, which is a collection of some of his more important
essays. The title essay of this collection, deals with the colonialism, which
prevailed in Mauritius. In the essay, Naipaul dwells upon unemployment,
fatalism, fantasy and the fragmentation marking the conditions there.
2.1.3 Awards and Honours
V. S. Naipaul’s writing resulted in the production of books, which were
full of variety, along with a kaleidoscopic view and variegated spectrum of
 Shirsath 65

human society and life. Due to the variety of writing, Naipaul has been ranked
as seventh in the list of the fifty greatest English writers since 1945 by The
Times in 2008. The Observer Literary Editor, Robert McCrum talking about
Naipaul’s achievement in his review on Naipaul and his Nobel Prize appeared
in Sunday’s Observer wrote:
VS Naipaul is perhaps more generally acknowledged than
any other novelist today to be the finest contemporary writer of
English prose fiction. Who are the other contenders? Saul
Bellow? John Updike? Martin Amis? It's a pretty short list but
certainly, if I was asked to nominate a top 10 for the last century,
Sir Vidia Naipaul would be high on my list of contemporary
great writers, admittedly a more than slightly fatuous exercise
beneath the eye of eternity. (www.theguardian.com/theobserver)
V. S. Naipaul’s writings bagged various Honours and Awards since
1957 the highest award of literature ‘The Nobel Prize’ is also conferred to him
in 2001. In his Nobel Lecture, Naipaul explained that his identity as a writer
and a human being is linked to the books he has written, “Everything of value
about me is in my books. I will say I am the sum of my books. Each book,
intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on
what has gone before, and grows out of it, I feel that at any stage of my literary
career it could have seen said that the last book contained all the others”.(5)
The novel The Mystic Masseur based on R. K. Narayan’s Guide won
John Llewellyn Rhys memorial Prize. Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion
based on the theme of slavery won ‘Hawthorn den Prize’. Miguel Street of V.
S. Naipaul won Somerset Maugham Award. Mimic Men won ‘W. H. Smith’
award of 1968. For In A Free State, he was awarded ‘Booker Prize’ for fiction
in 1971. He received T. S. Eliot Award for creative writing in 1986. In 1990,
the Queen awarded ‘Knighthood’ to the most prize – laden writer in England
and was addressed as Sir Vidia Naipaul. In 1993, he won the ‘David Cohen
British Literature Prize worth 30,000 pounds. The highest literary award, Nobel
 Shirsath 66

Prize was conferred to him in 2001. The University of West Indies conferred a
Hon. D. Lit Degree on him in 1975. Arts council gave him 10,000 pounds to
give to a young writer of his choice. While delivering the Presentation Speech
in Award ceremony, the Permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, the
member of Nobel Committee, Horace Engdahl asserted about Naipaul: “Sir
Vidia! Your life as a writer calls to mind what Alfred Nobel said of himself:
“My homeland is where I work, and I work everywhere.” In every place, you
have remained yourself, faithful to your instinct. Your books trace the outline
of an individual quest of unusual dimensions. Like a Nemo piloting a craft of
your own design, without representing anyone or anything, you have
manifested the independence of literature. I would like to convey to you the
warm congratulations of the Swedish Academy as I now request you to receive
the Nobel Prize in Literature from the hands of His Majesty the King.”
(www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2001/ceremony-speech/)

2.2 Naipaul as Diasporic Writer

The term, ‘Diaspora’ is used as marker of movement across cultures and
the dislocation the movement causes. The term Diaspora is defined differently
by different scholars. The term ‘Diaspora’ comes from the words ‘dia’ means
‘away’ ‘spirein’ meaning ‘scattered’ or ‘sow’. Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary points out Diaspora as, “The movement of people from any nation
or group away from their own country”. (347) Diaspora is approached through
paradigms as varied as that of hybridity, multiplicity, paradox, polyphonic
multiculturalism, cosmopolitan, citizenry, and cultural exogamy etc. Such
plurality makes it difficult to study Diaspora as a compartmentalized subject.
The history of Diaspora can be broadly divided into three phases, leading to the
post Diaspora, modernist Diaspora, namely: ancient Diaspora, medieval and the
modern Diaspora. The ancient Diaspora indicates the dispersal of Jews from
Israel, back in the sixth-seventh century BC, and later in the second century
from Jerusalem. The medieval era was from about 200 AD to 900 AD due to
large scale of migrations, especially due to opening of trade routes between
 Shirsath 67

different countries. Many tribes relocated themselves in search of better life.

Propagation of religions also the motivation behind exploring more grounds in
new lands. The modern era movements during the colonialism period were
largely due to war, slavery and search for economic betterment. People from
colonized lands moved to other colonies as indentured labourers or were
transported as slaves, for example the parents of V.S. Naipaul. Many people
belonging to Third World countries became refugees in the nations like
America and UK during the Cold War era. Naipaul identified Diasporic
identity with hybridism, cross- cultural and contaminated, social and cultural
regimes. Members of diasporic community are referred by different names,
based on their terms of mobility as traders, indentured labourers, exiles,
refugees and expatriates. As Gayatri Spivak rightly observes,
Over the centuries we had histories of let’s say, Indian indentured labour
being taken to the Afro – Caribbean, after the change or regimes in
certain African nations, Indians moved from Africa, then to Brittan; then
Indians in waves in the early 60’s, professional Indians went to the
United States as part of the brain drain. These Indians who are spread
out over the world, for different kinds of historical reasons they are
diasporic… (60-61)
Expatriate literature describes travel, displacement and homelessness.
Restlessness grows in the heart of an expatriate, which encourage him to
launch on temporary journeys. Common features of the expatriate’s life are
flights and escapes; the ships and airplanes recur in expatriate literature. When
Naipaul was the child the idea of flight first came to him as he was an
extraordinary child wanted to move towards creativity, so he moved to London
from Trinidad and from London to the various countries for temporary visits.
He travels to the West Indies, India, Africa, Islamic countries America and
writes his travelogues. National perspectives overcame there and new
consciousnesses emerge in an expatriate overriding all regional and national
boundaries. Derek Wolcott in this respect observes and states, “To have loved
 Shirsath 68

one horizon is insularity, it blindfolds vision it narrows experience”. (44)

Awareness of global vision emerges among expatriate literature, and the writer
becomes the citizen of the world, he is no more belongs to any country. Such
experiences not last long, when the reality starts asserting itself. The cross-
cultural existence, the culture shock and the encounter results in an identity
crisis. Naipaul’s novels explore such theme, and the gist of his expatriate
sensibility. The dominant mood and note of expatriateness and rootlessness
prevailed, and moves round and round as the central themes. Expatriate
literature bonds writer and his homeland, and results in the source of creativity
and happiness. The native land avails a creative writing, and live experience to
the writer. After his visit to India, Naipaul criticized his native land in his
works India: A Wounded Civilization, and An Area of Darkness. He remains
Indian in feeling but judge India through western standard. When Naipaul was
asked about an anti-Indian view his reply was stated by C.D. Narasimhaiah. He
replied, “I am profoundly Indian in my feeling, profoundly Indian in my
sensibility, but not in my observations.” (153) The Diaspora longs to return
home through his characters, but in reality never return home. He only talks,
plans and dreams to return his native land. He only talks about it through his
writings.
Naipaul holds a unique place as a West Indian writer: he is a product of
triple alienation. He is an Indian uprooted from his ancestors land, secondly a
West Indian by birth and upbringing, and finally he has taken up residence in
London due to his self-chosen exile. Naipaul is an observer of the world’s
follies, especially those problems that have cropped due to post-colonialism,
and the withdrawal of European rule from the Third World. He felt isolated,
due to displacement from any country, community and creed, Naipaul
examined the world with an open eye, displacement from India and Trinidad
are the main forces behind his vision, for him exile is a recurring between self
and others that separates him from his Hindu community in Trinidad, from
other Trinidadians, from Indians in India and from the peoples in the
 Shirsath 69

developing countries, to which he travels and lives as an observer. In his

Commonwealth Literature, William Walsh observes that in Naipaul, “The
mixture . . . of creeds, cultures and continents, with his expatriate career, his
being able to practice an art in and of totally dissimilar worlds, all gives him a
peculiarly contemporary quality.” (46). Naipaul has explored the predicament
of the exile, the pair of homelessness and loss of the roots, Naipaul tried to
create an identity and construct a home in the world of his books. Naipaul is an
exception as he is an authentic Diasporic writer, who has felt the pangs of
homelessness, rootlessness and fiascos, along with the futility, alienation,
emotional draught, and absence of established and accepted norms and values.
Naipaul has moved in three worlds, each with its own culture and social
fundamental different from the other two. He is the product of typical
combination of circumstances, which were favorable for an understanding
realization and delineation of hybridity and cultural pluralism through his
books. Ashcroft points the concern of post-colonial literature as “historical and
cultural differences, place, displacement and pervasive concern with the myths
of identity and authenticity …” (9)
Naipaul, a third generation immigrant from India, born in Trinidad
studied in Queen’s Royal College, in Port of Spain, where he won a scholarship
to the University college of Oxford. In this way, grown up with the burden of a
borrowed culture, mimicry and dependence, both are cultural and intellectual.
He has widely travelled in Asia, Africa and America, but he left with a
profound feeling of homelessness due to the circumstances he faced. An
expatriate may experience an exile in spite of acquiring citizenship in an alien
country was Naipaul’s experience. Naipaul has lived in England for 46 years,
in spite of his prolonged stay and his marriage with an English lady, he is an
expatriate and a feeling of rootlessness persists with him. The writings of
Naipaul draw upon an experience totally based on layered levels of alienation
and exile. As a result, his works have become model of the whole genre and a
major current in twentieth century life, thought and art. He observes the
 Shirsath 70

changes in civilization, guided by historical upheavals. He covers the

Caribbean islands, Africa, India, the Middle East and England. In an article,
Helen Tiffin says, “Although the writers we studies came from vastly different
cultures, indeed because of this, the common factor in their writing was
particularly noticeable… This literature had, to us as axiomatic and
paradigmatic above and beyond the specifics of a culture, Universal; the height
of excellence”. (119) Naipaul is a global persona who writes novels of the
present, for present and also for all time.
His works mainly comprises novels and short stories, some documentary
work, there is no single city in Trinidad, England or even in India with, which
we could or could not identify him. In true sense he belongs to none of these
three nations, though all the three have contributed to the evolution of his
sensibility as a writer, and as an individual. His lack of roots enabled him to
depict hybridity of cultural and social atmosphere and show the position of
Diasporic existence. The West Indians view him as an Englishman, because of
his British Education, English look upon him as an Indian for his ancestry and
the colour of his skin, and the Indians regard him as a West Indian writer. In
Finding the Centre, Naipaul comments, “A writer after a time carries his world
with him, his own burden of experience, human experience and literary
experience (one depending the other); and I do believe that I would have found
equivalent connections with my past and myself”. (10). His writings include –
A House for Mr. Biswas and Middle Passage (set in the Caribbean countries),
The Return of Eva Peron, Islam Among the Believers, Beyond Beliefs (set in
Argentina), An Area of Darkness, India a Wounded Civilization, India: A
Million Mutinies Now (set in India), and A Bend in the River (set in Africa),
while A House for Mr. Biswas signifies an attempt to understand his position as
an Asiatic, and a Hindu born in Caribbean Island, The Enigma of Arrival tries
to explain his presence as an Asiatic Caribbean writing in English in the
Cottage of the Wiltshire Manor. A Way in the World contains stories about
people, some of which are drawn from historical manuscripts and others from
 Shirsath 71

reminiscences of the Naipaul’s adolescent years in Trinidad, or to his years in

England while he was struggling to establish himself as a writer. Naipaul’s
Half a Life novel is the story of Willie Chandran, an individual who is
frantically in quest of his identity, especially in a post-colonial world full of
cultural and hybridity and racial pluralism. Leaving India to study in London,
and then to Africa yet he remains searching for the meaning of life. Naipaul
also questions the meaning of history and civilization. Naipaul works as a
novelist, the function of a novelist goes beyond documentary realism. Naipaul
considers the novel as a medium of social inquiry and views the writer as one,
who owes responsibility of society and his work of great relevance in a world,
where a Diaspora suffer from emotional instability. His ruthless uphold to his
dark vision and refusal to be an optimist provides a persuasive power to his
depressing fictional world. In this way the literature of Diaspora in general and
Naipaul’s corpus in particular unfold the sage of alienation, short of attaining
eventual assimilation. In his In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, Aijaz
Ahmad states,
The idea of belonging is itself being abandoned as antiquated
false consciousness. The terrors of High Modernism at the
prospect of inner fragmentation and social disconnection have
now been stripped, in Derridian strands of postmodernism, of
their tragic edge, pushing that experience of loss, instead, in a
celebratory direction; the idea of belonging is itself seen now as a
bad faith, a mere ‘myth of origins’ … to the extent that truth is at
all possible, resides now in occupying a multiplicity of subject
position and an excess of belonging; not only does the writer
have all cultures available to his or her as resource, for
consumption but he or she actually belongs in all of them by
virtue of belonging properly in none.(129-30)
V.S. Naipaul as a post-colonial, and Diasporic writer in search of some
anchorage and was succeeded in having united narrative and incorruptible
 Shirsath 72

scrutiny in his works, that presents the clear picture to the readers to see the
presence of suppressed histories. In this way, the multinational canvas in his
works does not only explore the experience of three continents pains of cross-
cultural, hybridity, and embraces but a strong search for his own identity.
2.3 Summing Up
To sum up, V.S. Naipaul’s novels explore his multinational canvas of
the socio-cultural spectrum and other human issues. He repeatedly emphasized
that he became a writer only because of his effort of will. He has made himself
the theme of his writing due to the lack of subject matter. Naipaul’s writings
are merged with his personal experience. The main forces behind his literary
talent are the Caribbean Hindu India in which he was born and brought up. His
grandmother house provided the first link with his Hindu self, and with the idea
of his ancestors and second from his father’s stories. As he grew, he observed
chasm between the two worlds that he inhabited and he considered himself as
rootless, and tried to search for his identity through his writings. At the
beginning of his career, his attempts are block out, he experienced his own
society. He realized that it was out of his experience that his writings would
evolve and he started writing on his experiences. Through his creative writing
Naipaul throws illuminating light on corrosive influence of colonial rule on the
psyche of the colonized. The sense of insecurity springs from the identity crisis
that leads to existential fears which results in psychosis. The influence of
colonial rule is also visible on the human relationships in the writings of V. S.
Naipaul.
 Shirsath 73

Works Cited

Ahmad, Aijaz. Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. OUP, 1973.

Ashcroft, Bill et al. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-
colonial Literatures. Routledge, 1989.
Crown, Brian and Chris Banfield. An Introduction to Postcolonial Theatre.
University of Cambridge, 1996.
Derek, Walcott. Multicultural Ethos in the Fiction of Margaret Lawrence and
Anita Desai, in Expatriate Experience. Ed. R.K. Dhawan. Prestige,
1994.
Engdahl, Horace. (Permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, the
member of Nobel Committee). Presentation Speech (The 2001
Nobel Prize in Literature Award ceremony speech).
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2001/ceremony-speech/
Gottfried, Leon. Preface. The Face of V.S. Naipaul: Modern Fiction Studies.
Special Issue of V.S. Naipaul. 30.3. Autumn, 1984.
Gupta, Suman. V. S. Naipaul. Northcote, 1999. Online Book.
Griffiths, Gareth. A Double Exile: African and West Indian Writing Between
Two Cultures, Marians Boyars, 1988.
Hamner, Robert D. Critical Perspectives on V. S. Naipaul. Heinemann,
1979.Hughes, Peter. V.S. Naipaul: Contemporary Writers. Routledge, 1988.
Online.
Isaacs, Jeremy. Interview. “Face to Face: V.S. Naipaul”. Broadcast on BBC
2, 16 May 1994.
King, Bruce. V. S. Naipaul. Macmillan, 1993.
McCrum, Robert. “Naipaul’s Achievements.” The Observer.
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2001/oct/11/features.review7
Naipaul, V.S. A Way in the World. Heinemann, 1994.
--- . Finding the Centre, Two Narratives, 1984. Penguin, 1985.
--- . India: A Million Mutinies Now. 1990. Penguin, 1992.
 Shirsath 74

--- . Reading and Writing: A Personal Account. New York Review of Books,
2000.
--- . The Overcrowded Barracoon. Penguin, 1984.
--- . “Two Worlds: The 2001 Nobel Lecture”. World Literature Today. 76/2.
Spring 2002. www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2001/naipaul/lecture/
Narasimhaiah, C. D. Ed. Essays in Commonwealth Literature. Pencraft
International, 1994.
Nixon, Rob. London Calling: V.S. Naipaul, Post-Colonial Mandarin. OUP,
1992.
Sharma, L.K. Interview. “Fatigue of a Multilayered Writer”. Times of India,
11th July, 1994.
Singh, Raghubir. “Encounter.” Sunday Times. 19-2, 1990.
Singh, Rahul. “India has Vitality.” India Today Plus. 18 Feb. 1997.
Spivak, Gayatri. The Post-colonial Critic Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues.
Routledge, 1990.
Tejpal, Tarun J. “V.S. Naipaul’s way in the world” Interview. 41PP. 28 June
2011<http/www.randomhouse.comn/atrandom/vsnaipaul1>
Thieme, John. The Web of Tradition: Uses of Allusion in V.S. Naipaul’s
Fiction. Dangaroo Press, 1987.
Tiffin, Helen. “Lie Back and Think of England: Post-Colonial Literatures and
the Academy” A Shaping of Connections: Commonwealth Literary
Studies, Then and Now. Ed. Hena Maes Jelinek et al. Dangaroo Press,
1989.
Walsh, William. West Indies: Commonwealth Literature. OUP, 1973.
 Shirsath 75

Chapter 3
The Fictional World of Naipaul

3.0 Preliminaries
V. S. Naipaul who calls himself the “sum of his books” (Hussein 3),
lives a life of self imposed exile. He is an expatriate everywhere; he opens up
the boundaries of the world. His works elaborate on the suppressed Third
World societies, reflecting traumas of modern man in general. Really speaking,
he is a contemporary and cosmopolitan writer. His writing explores the
complex condition of the present day world where man wants to reassert his
individuality to redefine his personality. Being a super sensitive observer of all
the societies, he is critical of the country of his birth and origin, and this is
attached. His novels too present an expatriate who struggles to be maintained
and survived. His protagonist as he himself appears as a socially deprived and
displaced man who breaks the set ideas of identity, individuality and integrity,
strives to release from the trap of limitations. He struggles to obtain his own
place through self realization reaching to real self journeying through colonial,
racial and cultural consciousness. He claims to be only a human being
irrespective of caste, creed, race, belief or place. This reflects his individuality
and originality and highlights his world citizenship and advocates his place as a
universal writer. He declines the idea of nationality and belongingness which
specifies his most reliable existence. In an interview to Alastair Niven, Naipaul
admits, “The world has always been in a state of movement and flux. I can
think of no culture that is entirely of itself, self generated” (5). All this makes
Naipaul as a realist progressive writer.
After graduation, Naipaul felt himself rootless but found his voice as a
freelance writer in the mid 1950s. During 1954-1956, Naipaul examined his
own Trinidadian background and worked as a broadcaster of BBC during
1957-1961. He had been also writing reviews of fiction for the newspaper, the
 Shirsath 76

New Statesman. He commenced his career by contributing to fiction and still

continues to do it. He has a new publication every year due to his creativity,
and won numerous awards in the process. Naipaul made use of the West Indian
life as content for his fiction; but for structural purposes, his models were
British and European which he imitates. The inherent and latent Hindu
perspectives within him give a new direction and open a new dimension to
English fiction widening and extending its horizons. Robbert K. Morris rightly
points out “Much of Naipaul’s originality comes from his ability to relate the
‘universal predicament’ is the substance of place, as well as to its spirit. The
reason Naipaul’s sense place is paramount in his books should become clearer
once we understand that belonged nowhere…must gain fix on reality through
their art”. (67)
V. S. Naipaul, a well known novelist occupies the first and foremost
position in the world of literature. His acute observation of what he sees around
and the way he writes about those things with a critical perspective is
remarkable and praiseworthy that sets him the most powerful voice of his time.
The specialty of him is his writings deal that with the East Indian life in
Trinidad.
3.1 Early Trinidad Novels
Naipaul’s early Trinidadian works bring a few of Trinidadian
caricatures. These novels focus on the political issues and focus on the colonial
and postcolonial societies and their development towards decolonization.
Robert D. Hammer comments on Naipaul’s early novels in these words:
Of Naipaul’s early novels it has been said that others have recorded, but
that Naipaul ‘has given us the very smell, taste and tempo of life in the
Indian locations of Trinidad.’ Nevertheless, his landscapes are not
intended and do not appear to be sensuous indulgences in experience
simply for the sake of ‘atmosphere’. . . The fictional world in which his
characters live and breathe is not to be identified with the actual world,
but it is (as all fiction is) an outgrowth of the reality depicted. (209)
 Shirsath 77

V. S. Naipaul launched his literary career in 1957 with his debut novel,
The Mystic Masseur. The novel deals with the theme of identity crisis. It
describes the career of an imaginative islander who rises through a series of
failures as a teacher, a writer and a masseur to become a successful politician
and achieves the post in British Empire and M.B.E. The novel explores the
world of post-colonial political scene and focuses on the rise of a West Indian
Politician. It is concerned with the survival of the individual in the post-
colonial New World. The span of novel is from 1924 to 1954. The novel is
concerned with the problem of arranged marriage, the inevitability of one’s
Karma of fate, tradition verses modernity and with the act of writing as a
means of appropriating one’s reality. Shashi Kamra rightly explains The Mystic
Masseur as, “the log cabin in White House success story”. (59) It is about
Ganesh, who was alone but self-involved, working, conscientiously towards
achievement. The novel is an indication that its creator too would one day
become a literary force to reckon with. Ganesh, the protagonist of the novel is a
representative figure of the East Indians in Trinidad and their move towards
city life. He finds himself trapped in a conflict between the Eastern and
Western world. He believed that it would be shocking to find a mosque in Port
of Spain. Further, it is even more surprising to find a Hindu temple in a village
called Fuentes Grove, a temple which looked as if it had been bodily
transported from India. The main characters from Naipaul’s works face the
problem of insecurity and loss of identity. Thus, they are not tragic but appear
as sympathetic.
The Mystic Masseur describes the changes and the condition during and
after the Second World War. This novel, Naipaul deals with the political reality
of Trinidad just before the independence. It dramatizes the period of transition
from colonial rule to self-government. It talks about people from South Asian
society in Trinidad. The protagonist, Ganesh who is an Indian descent, is a
disappointed writer. In the course of time he rises up himself as a masseur and
cures illness.
 Shirsath 78

Ganesh was able to fuel a sense of purpose into his meaningless world
through his writings and it was due to his voracious reading. The boy narrator
in the book of The Mystic Masseur quotes in astonishment, “There are books,
books here, there and everywhere, books piled crazily on the table, books rising
in mounds of the corners, books covering the floor. I had never before seen so
many books in one place”. (15)
The novel narrates the story of Ganesh Ramsumair and his rise from
failing as a school teacher to the political official in Trinidad as well as a
reputed masseur and religious writer. Ganesh decides to become a masseur and
eventually emerges as the main medical practitioner at the time. While
attempting and failing to make a living masseur, Ganesh acquires books and
expands his education, but it also serves to give him some respect from the
other villagers as they see the books delivered to his house. He also self
publishes a small book on Hindu which is not sold well. As a kind of last gasp,
he puts an advertisement in the newspaper as masseur. The advertisement is
answered by one person who believes that their child was affected by an evil
spirit and Ganesh ministers to the child. He cures the child and his parents
recommend him to others. For Ganesh, treating children as a masseur becomes
his business. Slowly, he earns the reputation as an educated and religious man.
As his fame grows, Ganesh eventually moves into the Trinidad’s political
system.
At the end of the novel, the protagonist becomes a successful colonial
politician G. Ramsay Muir. The novel is Naipaul’s version of the Indian theme
in Narayan’s The Guide. The book reveals a living Indian society, rather Hindu
society where a protagonist struggles to discover his identity. Ganesh’s urge to
write is a reflection of Naipaul’s own life. As Naipaul himself states in Reading
and Writing, “I was eleven, no more, when the wish came to me to be a writer;
and then very soon it was a settle ambition. The early age is unusual, but I
don’t think extraordinary” (3). The fictional world of his book is India in
miniature. The theme of this fiction is both enduring and richly funny. A young
 Shirsath 79

man, Ganesh starts as a struggling student. After he passed on his second grade,
his father wanted him to get married or otherwise he had to live as an orphan.
Ganesh chooses to live as an orphan because he wanted to go to school. He is a
great lover of knowledge and books. After he finishes his studies he becomes a
teacher at a school, but he was not appreciated as a teacher and so he leaves the
school.
Ganesh Pandit collects books with little regard for their content. He has
near about fifteen hundred good books. He is sure that he is meant to do great
things, write great words, great knowledge and while going all of this,
becoming nothing else but great. His over and top respect of the books, his
belief in his ability to write and his extreme unwillingness to work, contribute a
great deal in his journey from a failed teacher to a struggling masseur, then an
admired mystic. The narrator’s mother too hints about his future popularity in
life. He is the sort of a man who would be a rishi in India. This story was
adapted for the screen by Ismail merchant, the novel mainly deals with
disenchantment, displacement, mental damaging effects and dynamics of the
postcolonial Trinidad and the Caribbean half mode societies. This masterpiece
novel shows the demoralizing effects of slavery indentured servitude and
colonial exploitation on generations of West Indians. It is worth mentioning
that the novel presents how colonialism has fractured the identity of the
colonized. It is ironical that under the name of civilization, the colonial power
devalued the past of the colonized country to exercise power more effectively.
In his book, The Location of Culture, Homi Bhabha rightly asserts in this
respect,
If colonialism takes power in the name of history, it repeatedly exercises
its authority through figures of farce…For the epic intention of
civilizing mission, human and not wholly irony, mimicry, repetition. In
this comic turn from the high ideals of the colonial imagination to its
low mimetic literary effects mimicry emerges as one of the most elusive
and effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge. (85)
 Shirsath 80

The Suffrage of Elvira (1958) is a comic novel set in Trinidad and

Tobago and published in 1958. It is an expansion of technique from the
episodic structure of The Mystic Masseur. It reveals an election scenario and
revels in the description of the arrival of democracy in Trinidad. It mainly deals
with the misadventures of political aspirants in rural island election campaigns.
The novel is organized around one main character name as Foreman, better
known as Foam is the eldest son of the most influential Muslim in Elvira,
Baksh. The circle of influence in Elvira includes Baksh, Chittaranjan Dhaniram
the pundit, the political candidates Mr. Surujpat, Harbans and Preacher
Francies. The machinery of election is educative and brings out all the different
communities together.
To the people of Elvira, suffrage means no more than opportunity for
personal gain with basic selfishness. And corruptibility Harban repeatedly
involves the people of Elvira in second political Election. Baksh who is
believed to be in control of the Muslim vote, votes election and bribed three
times first to support Harbans, then to stand for election himself and finally to
withdraw in favour of the popular candidate Baksh. Nomination necessitates
changes in the allocation of election symbols. It shows how things get mixed
up crazily in Elvira. In order to support Harban in the election, Chittaranjan
asks for the marriage of Harban’s son to his daughter, Nelley Chittaranjan.
Foam was thrust into the political arena by his father as a campaign manager
for Mr. Harbans. Without a mentor or a teacher to guide him, his political
education began. Foam forges ahead, learning by trial and error and from
observing and listening to the ever changing positions of the elders, including
his father. At home, Foreman as the eldest child looked after his younger
siblings by protecting their interests. One day when his younger brother
Herbert brings a stray dog named Tiger. Mrs. Baksh beats him, but Foam in
loud voice takes Herbert’s side which hurts Mrs. Baksh. He not only protects
but also helps in nursing the dog. Foam has attained a sense of self hood as a
young man, capable of taking decisions. Mr. Baksh’s political ambition was
 Shirsath 81

limited and controlled by his greed; he looks for personal profit, not for the
good of the Muslim community, Surajpal Harbans lacks the fortitude of mind
and spirit that would inspire anyone and he cannot be a model for Foam.
Harban says, “This democracy is a strange thing. It does make the great poor
and the poor great. It makes me a beggar yes, don’t stop me, I is a beggar and I
begging for your vote.” (156) Pandit Dhaniram’s interest was wrapped around
personal gain. His son’s runaway wife was dependent on the Doolahin for
domestic chores that includes caring for his paralyzed wife. Chittaranjan sees
Mr. Harban’s candidacy as an opportunity for him to orchestrate his daughter’s
marriage to Mr. Harban’s son who was the medical student in England. At the
first political campaign for Mr. Harbans, they gathered in the house of the most
influential Hindu in Elvira, Chittaranjan. It is a meeting to map out strategies
on how to counter the effectiveness of the Hindu sellout, Lorkhoor, who has
mounted an effective campaign for preacher. An electioneering speech in
Elvira reads:
People of Elvira, the fair constituency of Elvira, unite and cohere.
Vote the man who has lived among you, toiled among prayed
among you, worked among you. This is voice of the renowned
and ever popular Lorkhoor begging you and urging you and
imploring you and entreating you and beseeching you to vote
Preacher, the renowned and ever popular Preacher. Use your
democratic right on Election Day and vote one vote all. This
good people of Elvira, is the voice of Lorkhoor. (SE 166)
Political reality and electioneering constitute are the central theme of the
novel. Naipaul presents scenes dealing with family misunderstanding
neighborly quarrels breaches of etiquette lovers, meeting and other incidents.
The culture of the place is a hybrid culture and mimic. As Homi Bhabha
asserts, “Naipual’s colonial politician as play-actor (with others)… these are
the appropriate objects of a colonialist chain of command, authorized versions
of otherness.” (88)
 Shirsath 82

Naipaul’s Miguel Street (1959) won for him the prestigious award
Somerset Maugham. It is set in Trinidad and Tobago. This novel is
semiautobiographical. William Walsh rightly observes that,
The peculiar flavour of the book comes from the application of a severe
and sophisticated intelligence to conduct of the almost natively and from
the further paradox that the crazily ingenuous activity of the people one
realizes it gradually is embedded in a set of inarticulate but profound
convictions about the nature of human existence. (80-81)
The stories in Miguel Street are considerably influenced by the author’s
father Surajprasad Naipaul. Naipaul claims that it was through this book that he
discovered how the episodic structure of the book can be used to explore and
expiate the multinational canvas, which is memory of his father’s collection of
short stories, The Adventures of Gurudeva and Other Short Stories which
Naipaul may have used as model. The Miguel Street consists of seventeen
loosely interlinked episodes, each of which focuses on one particular character
living in the street. The narrator came to street from Chaguanas before the war
time and recollects the things as they appeared to him. It contains seventeen
stories of seventeen persons, though belonging to different ethnic racial and
colour groups, and have a common fate. They share among them the same
social and psychological problems and are the victims of the same complex,
implanted into their thoughts by the colonizers. The Miguel Street is filled with
people like John, Popo, B. Wordsworth, Morgan Elias, Eddoes, Bhaku among
others, they are the potential artists but have failed due to lack of any
opportunity. As a result, they are frustrated with their society and they live in
their fantasy world. Elias wanted to be a doctor but he becomes a dust-cart
driver. B. Wordsworth’s poetry cannot breathe in The Miguel Street, but he
imagines himself to be the spiritual brother of W. Wordsworth, because he can
watch the small flowers like the morning glory. He tells the narrator, “Now let
us lie on the grass and look up at the sky and I want you to think how far those
stars are from us.” (48) B. Wordsworth claims a spiritual relationship with the
 Shirsath 83

poet William Wordsworth and shares the latter’s love for nature. He images
himself as a Trinidadian Wordsworth represents only half the truth about him.
His roles of the calypso singer and the Romantic part are variants on the same
idea but both ideas failed to bring him real self-fulfillment. His attempts to
create his identity for himself by co-locating with Wordsworth failed to
discover himself. John Thieme in this respect points out, “His tragedy is that of
the artist manqué: both literary fame and romantic love are denied him. His
metropolitan fantasy is, Naipaul suggests, an ideal which can bring no
fulfillment to those born in the lower echelons of Trinidad society.” (18)
Bogart, the bi-Gamist, Popo the carpenter is a poetic man who always wanted
creative and original work. When his wife runs away with another man, he
forces to become materialistic, steals and sells other’s furniture after
remodeling them. Actually, Hat was said to be mad, but he is the voice of
sanity; he always reads newspapers. Morgan, the pyro-technician and the
famous, Man-Man is mad; he pretends the role of hell-fire preacher and shows
himself as the Christ and he stages his own crucifixion. The narrator-boy very
well introduces Man-Man saying that he is not sure that the he was mad, and
thinks that many people are much madder than Man-Man. The Miguel Street is
a comedy based on the amused revelation of the inconsistencies and the follies
of the Trinidad World of commoners. It deals with the conflict between
ambition and opportunity. A. C. Derrick rightly observes, “The sheer buoying
and comic exuberance of Miguel Street, the apparent casualness of its frame
work, reflect Naipaul’s delight in the human comedy he creates. Repeatedly he
draws attention not so much to the fact of failing in one sense or another as to
the comic ironies and incongruities associated with it.” (34) It is a world of
men living without purpose and they illustrate the weakness of the world of
Trinidad. The street explores brutality towards women and children elements. It
is the physical brutality of the strong towards the weak. The man-woman
relationships depicted in The Miguel Street are of a causal nature. In the first
story entitled, ‘Bogart’, when Bogart disappears from the street, Hat and his
 Shirsath 84

friends used his room as club-house they play cards, drink and even bring
woman to the room, Eddoes is caught off guard when Bogart returns and
discovers him with a woman. In George and the Pink House when George’s
wife dies, he brings another woman to stay with him and when she leaves him,
he converts his house into a brothel and starts entertaining American soldiers.
In The Miguel Street, child-beating and woman battering was a everyday affair,
for George it was a recreational activity. George was never a member of any of
the gangs in The Miguel Street. He used to beat his wife and daughter and son.
After the boy Elias grew too bigger, George started to beat his daughter and
wife more and more. Bhaku considers beating his wife a ritual. He uses a
cricket bat for the purpose and Mrs. Bhaku herself keeps the bat well-oiled and
ready for use, children are also treated no better. When the narrator and Hat’s
nephews, Boyee and Errol came together, they compare notes about beatings.
Hat tells them that his father used to give him foot blows; this automatically
makes him think that he too will beat his wife and children.
Women are portrayed as inferior beings though they hold the world
together. The tragedy of West Indian women’s lives is also portrayed.
Matriarchs like Laura having eight children by several men, but when her own
daughter becomes an unwed mother, she wishes that her daughter might die.
Considering her daughter’s lot, Laura cries. Her crying is not ordinary. She
always tries to cover up her crying with laughter. Mrs. Hercira, a white woman
who descends from the secure white world to the masochistic love of violence
and sadism. The whole novel is narrated by an unnamed fatherless boy who
himself is a part of a group of kids on Miguel Street. The story ends with the
narrator leaving the street as Naipaul had left Trinidad five years earlier.
Naipaul used calypso literary form in his short stories; The Miguel Street
is a sort of calypsos in prose dealing with the local social life in Trinidad. He
puts a Calypso on a husband wife relationship as:
Every now and then just knock them down.
Every now and then just through them down.
 Shirsath 85

Black up their eyes and bruise up their knee

And then they love you eternally. (87)
The seventeen stories of seventeen persons in The Miguel Street, though
belonged to different ethnic, racial and colour groups, have a common fate.
They share among themselves the same social and psychological problems and
are the victims of the same complex issues, implanted into their thoughts by the
colonizers. They suffer from an inferiority complex and think, all the foreign
things superior. The narrator feels that a stranger is most likely to
misunderstand the street as a slum. It is tolerant society that welcomes the
people and let them go freely. Thus immigration and emigration are the
constant experiences. The people feel that they are victims of the society and its
conventions. They feel that their talents have no chance to bloom and their
potentialities are wasted. In reaction, they turn victimizers and desire to take
revenge on the society. In The Overcrowded Barraccoon, Naipaul writes,
It was through them that I began to appreciate the
distorting, distilling power of the writer’s art. Where I had seen a
drab haphazardness they found order; where I would have
attempted to romanticize, to render my subject equal with what I
had read, they accepted. They provided, every writer is, in the
long run, on his own; but it helps in the most practical way, to
have a tradition. The English language was mine; the tradition
was not. (27)
Naipaul’s The Mimic Men presents the condition of newly independent
country in the Caribbean, the island of Isabella and presents the condition of
the people in post-colonial era. The title of the novel signifies the condition of
colonized men who indicates and reflects colonizers life, style and views. The
imitation of the Third World society is quoted in The Mimic Men as, “We here
on your island handling books printed in this world and using its goods, had
been abandoned and forgotten. We pretended to be real, to be preparing
 Shirsath 86

ourselves for life; we mimic men of the New World, one unknown corner of it,
with all its reminders of the corruption that came so quickly to the new.” (146)
The novel documents the experiences of the people on the island as they
are unable to establish their order and govern their country. The colonial
experience has caused the colonized to perceive them as inferior to the
colonizer. Colonial education and cultural colonization have presented the
English world, with its rich culture, as a world of order, discipline, success and
achievement. The natives are devoid of their own culture, customs and
traditions, religion and race; they consider themselves to be inferior to those of
their master and try to identify themselves with the empire. They suffer from
dislocation, placelessness, fragmentation and loss of identity even after the
independence is achieved. The narrator of the novel, Ralph Singh is a forty
year old colonial minister who lives in exile in London, by writings his
memoirs. Singh tries to impose order on his life, reconstruct his identity and get
rid of the crippling sense of dislocation and displacement. Selwyn R. Cudjoe in
In Naipaul: A Materialist Reading describes the rootlessness of the society that
Ralph resides in as,
In The Mimic Men, one finds the most comprehensive
social development of the first generation of freed East Indians,
who, bereft of the culture that nurtured the earlier generations,
float aimlessly in the shifting social relations generated by the
changing social order. No relationship is certain, and unlike Mr.
Biswas and the earlier generation of East Indians, the characters
are fragmented and uncertain of their positions within the society.
(99)
Ralph Singh’s father was a poor school teacher. Singh’s mother family
was prosperous and owners of the Bellla Bella Bottling works and the local
bottlers of the reputed Coca-Cola. Singh was proud of his mother’s family and
was aware that his privileged position in the Isabella society was a result of his
association with Coca-Cola. He felt a sense of security and fearlessness when
 Shirsath 87

he stayed in his grandfather’s house. When he stayed in his father’s house he

was surrounded with fear and desolation. Singh’s father disliked his in-laws for
their attitude of showing better than him though they weren’t. He was an
influential man in the Education Department; at the time of his marriage his
wife’s family was not rich. Ralph takes it as a kind of humiliation for his
underpaid school teacher father who according to him was forced into the
position. His father hated Coca-Cola and took a vow never to touch it. Singh’s
father became a Gurudeva, a Preacher of dock worker and the volunteers.
Gurudeva’s movements enhanced his family respect which later on used for his
political career. The novel consist of three parts, his life in London, childhood
and student days and back to London life. The autobiographical portion covers
his early days in England, his meeting with Sandra, marriage and breaking up
on it. His friend Browne encouraged him to do adventure in politics, soon he
returns to Trinidad, where a case is worked out against him. When Ralph is a
child, his father doesn’t return home. One day later they learn that he has
become the leader of a small quasi-religious, quasi-revolutionary group. He
works for home land and dreams of doing something high in life. Singh was
Rajput; so, he dreamt of Rajputs, Aryans, Knights, Horsemen and wanderers.
In his fantasy, he quotes,
I lived a secret life in world of endless plains, tall bare mountains,
white with snow at their peaks, among nomads on horseback,
daily pitching my tent beside cold green mountain torrents that
raged over grey rock, waking in the mornings to mist and rain
and dangerous weather. I was a Singh. And I would dream that
all over the Central Asian plains the horsemen looked for their
leader. (TMM 98)
All the children belonged to the mimicry. Singh was also suffered by his
negative sense of place in the island. The opportunity to leave the island came
to him when he secured a seat in London School. The period between Singh’s
preparation for life and his withdrawal from politics is termed as “Period in
 Shirsath 88

Parenthesis”. (TMM 32) In marriage episode, he was attracted towards Sandra

as she was charming with firmness and precision in her movements. Her social
ambition attracted him as he too had similar ideas. He married her at the
Willesden Registry Office. His dreams and hopes were shattered when his
mother disapproved of his marriage with a foreign girl. Singh was rejected by
the Isabella society for disobeying conventions. This left him isolated and
shipwrecked. When Sandra left Singh, Browne refilled her place. He succeeded
in carving out the political future for Singh.
After assuming power Singh realized that power and poverty were
interlinked in colonial societies. He was helpless to solve problems without the
assistance of the center, which was the source of finance. Politics proved a trap
for the colonial politician. He tried to define himself through his political
activities but realizes that he has become separated from his people and was
incomplete due to the meaningless role as a colonial politician. Third world
countries could not function independently without the bigger powers. So, he
escapes from flight to solve the problem of futile activity bordering on
humiliation. There are race riots and the afflicted people came to him. On
finding his inability to do anything to him, the leaders give him a passage to
London by air and allowed 66 pounds of luggage and 50,000 dollars. He was
also branded as a betrayer. In The Mimic Men, Naipaul writes, “The career of
the colonial Politian ends brutally. We lack order ... For those who lose, there is
only one course; flight to the greater disorder, the final emptiness, London and
home countries”. (10-11) Changing his name from Ranjit Singh to Ralph Singh
changes his identity for which later he search desperately. He feels incomplete
because he is aware of the meaninglessness of his role as a colonial politician;
he realizes that he can never be an Englishman in spite of his public education
and that one can be English only if he is born in England. To him, politician in
Isabella seek power and order without knowing the real meaning of those
concepts. William Walsh’s description about the The Mimic Men in his
Common Wealth Literature is as, “The Mimic Men a very much more
 Shirsath 89

substantial novel is the dramatized reminiscences of an exiled politician. The

framing effect of the reminiscences, the distancing of exile and the Sieve of
memory gives form to the novel and enables us to grasp the quality of
detachment in the protagonist and the weariness sapping a soul corrupted by
power”. (60) Naipaul explores the misery and twisted psyche of man, and also
his ambiguous and irrational self. The Mimic Men is not about politics or about
a particular race or society but it is about the dissociation of sensibility, about
the displacement, isolation and identity crisis.
A House for Mr. Biswas is a well-known work by V.S. Naipaul. It is the
story of Biswas, a fatherless, homeless child of six; it depicts his journey as a
child till he possesses his own house at the time of his death. It is a story of not
only of Trinidadian born Indian, Mohan Biswas, but also the social history of
the Indian community in Trinidad and by extension in the West Indies. The
novel deals with the theme of selfhood where an individual quests for identity
and struggles to acquire a personal place i.e. ‘House’ an evocative symbol. In
the novel, the house becomes a kind of inverted fictional embodiment of
Naipaul’s own personal need for change and escape Mr. Biswas’s ‘unhoused’
condition and alienation are the problems of every contemporary Diaspora
which is presented in the autobiographical design of the novel. The novel’s
autobiographical study reveals the life history of Surajprasad and his son. V.S.
Naipaul is similar to Mr. Biswas and his son Anand who fails to absorb the
Caribbean climate. In this novel Naipaul’s own personal life is assimilated and
absorbed into art. It is the story of Mr. Mohan Biswas who is born in the village
of Trinidad at an auspicious hour of midnight in that country, in a wrong way
with unfavorable horoscopic signs, including a sixth finger and unlucky
sneeze,. The midwife warned that the boy will eat up his mother and father and
the pundit urges that Mr. Biswas should kept away from the tree and water
particularly water and prescribes his father Raghu not to see his son for twenty
one days. When Bisoondaye Biswas’s grandmother knows that even it was
very dark, she walks to the next village to get leaves of cactus; she cuts them
 Shirsath 90

into strips and hangs on every door, window and opening; she can find to word
off the effect of the evil spirits. Even Biswas proves unlucky for his father and
becomes the cause of his death. Bipti becomes widow, and she has no option
except meeting to the dark fate of the tradition through with she has to pass.
Her hair was cut and thus she was made to live as a widow forever. After
Raghu’s death, Biswas and Bipti have to move Pagotoes and live as dependents
on Tara, and from there the fragmentation of Biswas life begins.
Bipti’s sister who sends Biswas to the Canadian Mission School and
suddenly decides that he should be made a pundit. So, he is sent to pundit
Jairam to receive his training, Jairam is a strange man holding scandalous
views and is full of contradictions, Biswas is thrown out by Jairam because of a
disgraceful act on his part. He returns to Pagotoes to his mother but was
unwelcomed, Tara again sends Biswas away to help at her husband’s rum shop.
There Bhadant, Tara’s brother in-law steal money and he cheated the clients by
not pouring out the full measure in their cups, when they were intoxicated.
Biswas slept with the two sons of Bhadant on a hard, smelly coconut fiber
mattress on the floor. In the shop, Bhadant was growing in wealth. Tara’s
brother-in-law dislikes Biswas thinking him as Tara’s spy and accuses him for
stealing a dollar. He beats him and turns him out; and Biswas cries out in his
humiliation and asks his mother that why she keeps on sending him to other
people. He realizes his mother’s helplessness for sending him to other people’s
house, where he was humiliated and tortured. He assures his mother that he
will find a job on his own. Also he dreams to have his own house too. So, to
Biswas, a house is not simply where one lives. It is one’s identity-national,
cultural and spiritual. Biswas basically becomes a child of circumstances. After
declaration of independence Biswas takes up sign painting and also develops
the hobby of reading. He read Samuel Smiles and tried to identity with the
heroes who were young, poor and struggling like himself. He realized the vast
difference between his condition and theirs lived in a place where there could
no place for ambition they inhabited a land of possibilities. Mr. Biswas’s
 Shirsath 91

growth from being a sign-painter to a journalist and a man of letters and lover
of books is mentioned as “his hand became surer, his strokes bolder, his
feelings for letters finer. He thought R and S the most beautiful Roman letters,
no letter could express so many moods as R, without losing its beauty; and
what could compare with the swing and rhythm of S?” (76) There in his job as
a sign painter for the Tulsi store in the Human House, he puts a note to a young
girl whose parent takes it a sign of their love and leaves no chance for him to
escape. The situation is described thus,
The note was crumpled and slightly dirty and looked ineffectual .
. . she looked away and smiled. It was not a smile of complicity
or pleasure; it was a smile that told Mr. Biswas he had made a
fool of himself. He felt exceedingly foolish and wondered
whether he shouldn’t take back his note and abandon Shama at
once. (HB 83)
After marriage, Mr. Biswas lived there in the Hamuman house with his
wife, her mother and her relatives. He becomes a buffoon, a clown, a rebel and
is constantly in clash with others at home. Finally, he has to run out and work
on Tulsi estate. He also suffers from financial problems, and makes ill-advised
decisions that result in getting him deeper into debt. Mrs. Tulsi’s brother-in-law
and manager of the estate employ him as a driver. Biswas immediately voices
his dislike and exclaims, “Give up sign-painting? And my independence? No
boy, my motto is: paddle your own canoe”. (HB 107) He joins the Aryans, a
group of Hindu Missionaries from India to spite the Tulsi and advocates for
‘girls’ education, abolition of child marriage, caste system and idol worship. He
preaches against all the doctrines of the Tulsi’s hold dear. In the section,
entitled The Chase, Mr. Biswas begins his independent life with Shama. He
also thinks that life in Chase will help him discover his own identity, but it’s
the sense of isolation that looms and he fails to find his authentic selfhood. The
Chase was a long, struggling settlement of mud huts in the heart of the
sugarcane area which was absolutely remote, mostly with the workers in the
 Shirsath 92

sugarcane estate and on the road lived. Therefore, the place disappointed Mr.
Biswas. He felt lonely and disgusted. Though he wanted to comfort Shama, he
was himself uncomforted. It was very frightening place for him. Life was
different from Hanuman House which was noisy with activity. He was afraid to
disturb the silence, and open the door of the Shop which to him is a step into
the light.
When they had their first child born and Shama lived at Hanuman House
for that reason. Mr. Biswas was to suffer a lot and felt himself alienated in the
Tulsi organization. From Hanuman House he was sent to Green vale as a driver
and supervisor of the workers of the Tulsi estate. By now he had four children.
Anand started living with him in the barrack room. Mr. Biswas was suffering
from mental agony as he was unable to build his own house. Mr. Biswas’s
illness lasted for a longer period but he gathered his internal resources and
strength to meet the challenges of life in future. He left Hanuman House for
Port of Spain after his illness. On Port of Spain he finds some opportunities to
establish him professionally. He becomes a reporter for the Trinidad Sentinel,
with a salary of fifteen dollars a month. In course of time Mr. Biswas was
regarded as the best reporter of The Sentinel for which he was appointed and
his salary was fixed 50 dollars a month. After getting a scholarship Anand his
daughter Savi went to England for higher studies. After some days, Mr. Biswas
came to his own house and lived quite satisfactorily. The house is the
embodiment of the realization of his dreams of light, flowers and vegetation. It
is related with sunlight peeping through the open window and struck the
Kitchen wall. The wood work and forted glass were hot and the brick wall was
warm inside. The dazzling stripes of the sun were laid on the exposed staircase.
A job that helps him to earn some respect from the Tulsi’s too. As a
result he buys a house also. The job of journalist acquired professional
identification and an outlet for his creativity through writing process he took
control over his world. He established social identify and dignity as a
meritorious individual. He wrote articles about strange subjects like Mosquito
 Shirsath 93

Killers, Mental Home Warders and Night Soil Removers. Mr. Biswas was a
free man and the transformation in Biswas was brought about by his writing
process, when he joined The Trinidad Sentinel, it helped him to achieve
authentic selfhood breaking all shackles of his dependence upon the Tulsi
household and got due recognition in the life. The second illness lasted for
more than three months. The children were informed about that. Notice was
issued to him from Sentinel. The journalist was dead and Shama lived with her
children without a thought of going back to the Tulsis. Thus, Mr. Biswas had a
victory. First, his wife and children were liberated from the moorings of Tulsi
conservative set-up, then he gathered courage and strength to live all alone in a
practical world and finally Mr. Biswas died in his own house with full of
privacy and satisfaction. “Biswas had creativity and having kindness towards
his father’s hardship during instabilities of colonial Trinidad.” (Nixon 3)
A House for Mr. Biswas gives life to the vision of the broken individual
in the West Indies who suffer from deprivation longing rootlessness and
homelessness in the alien country. It is a master-piece novel of Naipaul. Keith
Garebian views it as: “Naipaul explores landscapes in order to provide
characters with a real home, a true place of belonging so that they will not
continue to be homeless wanders, unsure of themselves and their fates. But the
mythology of the land is tinged with embarrassment, nervousness, hysteria and
pessimism, all products in some way of Naipaul’s own history as a colonial
with an ambiguous identity”. (23- 24)
Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion is a novel sustaining the theme of
slavery in a frantic manner. The central character in this novel is middle – aged
man called Mr. Stone who has achieved little in his life and is frightened by
thoughts of his coming retirement the novel deals with his quest for renewal in
the midst of decay and signs of imminent extinction. The 62 years old, Mr.
Stone’s bachelor existence, his awkwardness in social gatherings, his
undemanding and unimaginative office life, and his hallucinatory moments in
the underground station are described to convey the loneliness. Mr. Stone’s life
 Shirsath 94

is described wonderfully as been suspended without roots between the twin

oaks of home and office. It is just such rootlessness that he is vaguely
becoming aware of at the start of the book and which contributes of his
disturbance and unease. This is the feeling that impels him to marriage, inspires
the scheme of the Knights Companion and ends finally in further
disillusionment and despair. Nothing else remains with him that he could
anchor himself”. Richard Stone working as a librarian at the Excal Corporation
a confirmed bachelor and a creature of habit takes a fiftyish widow Margaret
Springer as a wife whom he meets at the home of Tony and Grace Tomlinson;
he was attracted to her because of her bold and joking manner. When Mr. Stone
takes his wife to Cornwall, he comes across a scene which drives him to a
silent rage. He sees a just pensioned off as useless, worn out and helpless. The
workman had no work and he is in the power of others just because he has
retired and become a pensioner. Stone troubled by the idea of long, woman
dominated days in his own retirement. The emotion is expressed thus:
He is filled with helpless rage as he perceives that other people had
made his idea their property, and they were riding on his back. They had
taken the one idea of an old man, ignoring the pain out of which it was
born, and now he was no longer necessary to them. Even if he were to
die, they Whympers and Sir Henrys would continue to present
Excaliburs. He would be forgotten together, with his pain… (MSKC
225)
He conceives the project of the Knights Companion to send out visitors
to its pensioner workers to make them feel that they are still wanted not
useless. Mr. Stone’s Knights Companion are depicted as “pensioners of his
fantasy with long white beards, thick, knotted sticks and Chelsa Hospital
Uniforms…, tramping about the country lanes, advancing shakily through
garden in full bloom, and knocking on the doors of thatched cottages.” (MSKC
64) On acceptance of his proposal Mr. Stone grabs everybody’s attention in the
company first time. He gets name, fame, respect and the title, Knights
 Shirsath 95

Companion. Whymper is a man tormented new ideas and by uncontrollable

lust. He envies Mr. Stone his age, “I wish I were like you, Stone. I wish my life
was over. I wish everything had already happened. I can bear the thought of
having to go on”. (MSKC 114) Whymper burst into, Mr. Stone’s life and turns
everything upside down, made a success of the idea for his own personal gain.
Even though Whimper terminates his brief friendship with Mr. Stone and he
patronizes and insults Stone while burdening him with the administrative
details of the project, Stone is happy in his meaningful activity. He was not a
destroyer. Even if the world gets collapsed around, he survives.
Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion is Naipaul’s only novel with an
English background and setting and presents exclusively English characters in
England. It is largely about removal and alienation. V.S. Pritchett rightly
observes about the novel, “All right. The best novels come out of native
ground. But where nowadays is it? Outside of pockets which no longer have
any interest aren’t we all uprooted? What is the ground? Is it now and for all of
us anything more than the homeless English language?” (105) The
manifestation of Englishness in a kind of cultural alienation is presented and its
cultural remoteness is emphasized. He saw that all that was not flesh was of no
importance to man. All that mattered was man’s own frailty and corruptibility.
The order of the universe in which he had sought totally himself V.S. Pritchett
in his Climacteric, Critical Perspective points that the novel is ‘Original’… a
brilliant manipulation of the serious, the macabre and the comic”. (104)
The Loss of El Dorado is an historical account of Trinidad and the
surrounding area from 1592 to 1813. It is imaginative, analytical and episodic
in structure. It offers the descriptions of Antonio de Berrio’s and Walter
Ralegh’s fruitless search for El Dorado. Naipaul’s account of the English-
Spanish rivalry in the Caribbean is the search informed by accounts of voyages
of Hakluyt’s. Berrio is the first Spaniard to envision a fantasy on the earth of
the New World. The feeling of fantasy becomes the contention that goes
beyond dream to destruction. Naipaul uses Berrio as the meeting ground of fact
 Shirsath 96

and fiction. He embodies the two fantasies of the new world. He becomes the
first man to see the first schools of the first crop. El Dorado’s quest was to let
off the first gun that had been fired there since the creation of the world. El
Dorado is the myth of an ancient gold working civilization haunted by the
Spanish imagination El Dorado, a golden man, the gilded one, in Columbia,
was chief who once rolled in turpentine and was covered with gold dust and
then divided into the lake. The book is the description of the struggle between
the Spanish Antonio de Barrio and the English Sir Walter Raleigh for
possession of Trinidad as a base for El Dorado explorations. This narrative of
The Loss of El Dorado was made up of the originals documents, its copies
printed in the British Museum, the Public Record office London and the
London Library. Most of the translations are Naipaul’s own dialogues. Raleigh
was preparing big attack in London to become a possessive as Berrio in
Trinidad about Eldorado; both men were ridden with anxieties. The ensuing
raids which laid to Berrio’s capture by Raleigh increased his sense of pride and
possession of gold. Naipaul describes his own reflection through Raleigh’s
narrative on the fleeting of possession of El Dorado as:
To be received among them as a liberator: that was part of the
dream. In Raleigh’s memory those six days of Indian welcome on
the Orinoco blended with the memory of a magical forest, of a
‘mountain of Christall’sen from a distance, ‘like a white church-
tower on a exceeding height’, over which a mighty river
poured… to this there was added the knowledge of a ‘mine’
never seen. In the end it drew him out of the Tower of London,
which was his perfect setting, perfect subconsciously sought,
where, liberated from his inadequacy in the role age imposed on
him, he reached that stillness where the fact of life and action was
reconciled with the fact of death. This was what he had
plundered, this late homecoming to the quest that destroyed so
many. (55)
 Shirsath 97

The two themes emerge amid massacres and poisonings, plunder and
multinational intrigue. The grinding down of the Aborigines during the long
rivalries of the El Dorado quest and two hundred later, the man-made horror of
slavery, he starts with the relatively human laws relating to slaves in Port of
Spain in 1790 and moves on to a searing description of the gradual
dehumanization and degradations of slaves under Piction, and of slaves coming
to be used as bodies which can receive chastisement for their masters by proxy,
Naipaul describes the wave of slave rebellions in the wake of the French
Revolution of 1789, the ill-fated one in Trinidad; and he recounts the
underground slave organizations which were investigated and suppressed from
1805 in the Port of Spain. In this respect he states,
Negroes wore the tricolor cockade and sang the Marseillaise. It
was the part of the French absurdity; the slave revolt was not
wholly a race war. All the local hatreds were entangled with the
revolutionary politics of France. Paris supplied each side with the
same vocabulary of revolution, words that were like part of the
drama and promise,’ even the pretty climate names- germinal,
brumarie – of a new calendar of the North. (LED 139)
In this novel, Naipaul goes deep into the colonizer’s psychology,
the past and present that are separated by victory and defeat. Raleigh
and Miranda both are obsessed men mad with their desire to possess
wealth and power.
A Bend in the River is the story of an Arab-African man, Salim and his
journey through the rule of Mobutusese Meko of Zarie. The narrator Salim
begins by describing his trip from the eastern coast of Africa to the interior of
the country. It is the story of the meaninglessness of man’s effort to change his
position in the world where people face merely nothingness. Salim’s family is
Indian descent and has lived on the eastern coast of Africa for generations.
Aware of country’s growing unrest Salim becomes unsure of his family in that
area. He buys a store in the interior of the country; the past owner sold it
 Shirsath 98

cheaply after the revolution. The town is a natural market point by a bend in the
river. There he works and waits for the town to rebuild from the destruction of
the revolution. A family servant Metty tells Salim that his hometown was
attacked and that his family has scattered, and even the education has the only
purpose that of killing. All the so-called educated people do nothing but killing.
Killing is the only way for them to go back to the beginning. Salim slowly
makes friends with other people, who are waiting for the town to reemerge. He
meets a woman Zabeth who buys his merchandise and returns to a remote
village. She manages to travel this dangerous journey, because she is a
magician with protected oilment. Zabeth had a son who was of 15 or 16. His
father was trader from a tribe in the south. The son, Ferdinand used to live with
his father but was back to his mother. She brings her son Ferdinand to town to
go to newly reopened school and asks Salim to look after him. As a town
begins to grow, the President builds a huge government complex out the city.
Through the childhood friends Inder and Indian couple Mahesh and Shobha,
Salim is introduced to the people who work and live there. Inder is the person
who told Salim that their coastal community had no future. He went to school
in London, and was staying at the Domai as a guest of the President. He was a
lecturer and tours throughout Africa. Inder took Salim to a Party in the
Domain. Inder comments on President’s policy calling him as a conservative
revolutionary modernizer who makes the people work together. There he met
Yvette, a young white, small and beautiful lady. Salim was surprised that she
was barefoot. He begins an affair with Yvette the beautiful wife of a Raymond,
government historian who works for the President. Many call the older man as
The Big Mans White Man. The president of the new country is a demagogue
called the Big Man who hired Raymond as his speech writer. The Big man
spouted endless clichés about liberation and democracy as he crushed all
political opposition. Salim decides to get out to Africa for a while and he
travels to England and engaged to a woman from his hometown. He returns to
Africa to close his shop and get money. Salim begins dealing in gold and ivory
 Shirsath 99

and try to get as much money as much possible out of the country. He is caught
with ivory and jailed. Ferdinand saves him who turns out to be the new
commissioner and arranged for his escape. Ferdinand’s parting words to Salim
are so much touching and realistic. According to him, everybody in this world
is running behind material prospects only and nowhere the people are safe
altogether. All this is bad for them, and their life has become meaningless with
nothingness. Naipaul associates with the theme of homelessness in A Bend in
the River. The homeless expatriate travels frequently; the world outside is
changing and is in a continual flux; the individual too is in constant movement.
At the end of novel when Salim travels to England he remembers Inder’s
statement that airplane had helped him to adjust to his homelessness. The
aeroplane, the ship and the train and all modes of travels show the mobility,
displacement and constant change in the life of Salim, an expatriate. One day
he is in Africa, next day he travels to Europe and moves this way from one
kind of climate and people to another to the very next morning. And therefore,
both the places where he travels a day and next day appear unreal to him.
V. S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River is a post-colonial novel that depicts
post-independent Africa and the failure of its independence due to its
unpatriotic national leaders. It mirrors the picture of national crisis in the
decolonized states in Africa and points out the need for reshaping the ideology
of the national leaders and intellectuals for leading Africa and its people
towards prosperity. In the book, The Philosophy of History, G. W. F. Hegel
points out, “Africa proper, as far as History goes back, has remained-for all
purpose of connection with the rest of the world-shut up… the land of
childhood, which lying beyond the day of self-conscious history, is enveloped
in the dark mental night”. (91)
3.2 Travel Fiction
At the age of twenty – eight Naipaul’s life as a travel writer began when
he toured the Caribbean for a project on European colonialism in the Caribbean
and Latin America. He wrote only about which he saw acceptable and pleasant
 Shirsath 100

for him. He wanted to experience France in Africa, that he was fascinated by

the idea of hearing the French language spoken by Africans and drinking
French wine in a tropical street café. In Finding the Centre, Naipaul states,
“France in Africa: imagine the language in the mouths of elegant Africans; I
thought of tall, turbaned women, like those of Mali and the Cango; I thought of
wine and tropical boulevards”. (79)

In 1960, Dr. Eric Williams, the first Prime Minister of independent

Trinidad invited Naipaul to revisit his native country and record his
impressions. The Middle Passage (1962) is Naipaul’s first travelogue on his
return to Caribbean. In the book, the key figure is Naipaul himself. The subject
is social and physical character of the several latest West Indian territories. The
book records his impressions of colonial society in the West Indies and South
America. Naipaul writes his impressions of the societies and in The Middle
Passage, he describes it as,

Pursing the Christian-Heallenic tradition, the West-Indian accepted his

blackness as his guilt, and divided people into the white, fusty, musty,
dusty, tea, coffee, cocoa, light black, black, dark black. He never
seriously doubted the validity of the prejudices from which he suffered,
for he had inherited the prejudices of the culture of which he aspired. In
the French territories he aimed at Frenchness, in the Dutch territories at
Dutchness; in the English territories he aimed at simple whiteness and
modernity, Englishness being impossible. (68)

Naipaul takes the title of his book from the name of the route traveled by
the slaves from where they were transported from Africa to the colonies of the
New World. Naipaul has evaluated the countries, Trinidad, British, Guiana,
Surinam, Martinique and Jamaica and all the different cultural contexts which
are examined are presented as mimicry cultures. These cultures are colonized
cultures. They were influenced especially by the America and invalid their own
culture of West-Indies. The dominant cultures void of the West-Indies is also
 Shirsath 101

susceptible to dominant cultures in the case of Trinidad essentially the

American. According to Naipaul, modernity in Trinidad therefore “turns out to
be the extreme susceptibility of people who are unsure of themselves and,
having no taste or style of their own, are eager for instruction.” (MP 50) In
discussing the impact of dominant cultures, dominant as either an external
authentic cultures or a dominant capitalist force, the cultural influence of the
colonizer is depleted by the impact of dominant cultures. Behind the several
levels of mimicry and desire there were also confrontations and clashes
between the various racial and cultural groups in the West-Indies. Naipaul was
asked to comment on these societies at the time when racial and political power
was in full bloom. The Middle Passage served as a model for his travelogues. It
confirmed his position as a travel writer. In The Enigma of Arrival, Naipaul
describes his approach to The Middle Passage in the following words, “I knew,
and was glamoured by the idea of the metropolitan traveler, the man starting
from Europe. It was the only kind of model I had: but – as a colonial among
colonials who were very close to me – I could not be that – kind of traveler,
even though I might share that traveler’s education and culture and have his
feeling for adventure…” (140) In the Caribbean a historical vacuum has
created by colonialism. In this respect Suman Gupta rightly points out,

Naipaul sees little that is positive in the racially mixed

population: in his view the racial and cultural communities do not
harmonize, inevitably there is conflict amongst them. More
importantly, instead of synthesized hybridized culture appearing,
he encounters cultural and racial conservatism, which is matched
by the absurdity of their displacement from their origins. (35-36)

An Area of Darkness is a record of Naipaul’s travels in India. Naipaul

had wished to settle down in the country of his origin. He had mythical image
about India as a special sphere of his imagination. But in India, he found the
disgusting conditions and he therefore gave up his intension. Naipaul came to
 Shirsath 102

India with great expectations, India had a rich past and an ancient civilization
most of Trinidad Indians considered India as their mother land and accepted its
culture. The link with India gave them a sense of pride and saved them from
the self-contempt. Naipaul thought India’s largeness is not only geographical
but had a liberating largeness of the intellect, of culture and achievement. The
experience of a journey was an exploration of self and the book An Area of
Darkness is classified as autobiography. A renowned Critic D. J. Enright
comments on the book saying, “The book is not exactly about a journey, a
country, but largely about himself, a hybrid production, part novel, with
himself as hero, villain, victim and at times clown”. (210) His first landing to
India’s soil shatters his present ideas and he was shocked to the horror that
reflects the colonial self dominating in India. Elleke Boehmer, in his Colonial
& Postcolonial Literature remarks on Naipaul’s postcolonial response to
Indian situations as, “As a writer enamoured of British culture and scornful of
formerly colonized societies Naipaul is central to any discussion of assimilation
and duality of postcolonial identity”. (176) The story of the novel is a semi-
autobiographical account by Naipaul of a year he spent in India in 1964. The
opening section entitled, ‘Travelers Prelude’ deals with the difficulties
surrounding bureaucracy in the country. The book is divided into three parts. In
Part one entitled as ‘A Rising Place for the Imagination’, he speaks about his
ancestors coming to India as indentured laborers. He also deals with his first
experience on the issue of race, of Muslims and Hindus. Naipaul grew up in an
orthodox Hindu family. In India he explains about the past and the brutal
division of labor. It was an unpleasant concept for him. He was saddened at the
decay of old customs and rituals. Naipaul talks about the poverty in India.
Naipaul speaks about the Indian English mimicry and its fantasy. He goes on to
speak about the custom of defecating everywhere and the fact they refuse to
acknowledge. The people learn nothing from their past. He appreciates ancient
India where the things like telephone and atom bomb were said to be already
known and developed. He also appreciates the highly developed the surgery
 Shirsath 103

techniques practiced in ancient India and calls Indian shipbuilding as the

wonder. But what he found in present India is that the approach of many
villagers is not a pleasant experience. Naipaul takes Mahatma Gandhi as a
colonial blend to Hindu and Christen, East and the West.

The part two of this book opens with the image of a Doll’s House on the
Dal Lake. Naipaul had his mythological conception of India; the residue of his
childhood memories was different from what he really imagined about. During
his journey to India especially in Kashmir, among the mountains of Himalayas,
it was his it was his special joy throughout the pilgrimage. He enjoyed a lot
being among the mountains of Himalayas. He felt linked to all those brightly
coloured religious pictures at his grandmother’s place which was an inerasable
corner of his memory.
Naipaul speaks about his relationships with the various people who
worked in the hotel and the ensuring conflicts, which occurred. He joins a
pilgrimage to the Cave of Amarnath, the Eternal lord which is ninety miles
north of Srinagar. He speaks about the joy of other pilgrims as they climb the
Himalayas and tries to get inside a cave. Even though they are on a pilgrimage
Naipaul states inside the cave it was like a typical Indian bazaar. Naipaul
recounts many incidents among them one about a young couple called Rafiq
and Laraine. Rafiq is a poor musician. They spend a good deal of the fighting
but eventually they get marry but soon they split up because she is unable to
bear the poverty in India, and returns home to America. Part three of entitled
‘Fantasy and Ruins’. This section deals with British possession of country and
their withdrawal. What Naipaul observes is that during the time of English raj
in India, the Indians have lost their own history; and that Indians are unable to
look at their own history, culture and country directly.
Naipaul mentions Kipling as a good chronicler of Anglo-India and talks
about the Taj Mahal a great building without function. Furthermore, he speaks
about Indian railways and his friendship with Sikh while travelling by train in
the South of India. This novel is part autobiography and part travel genre,
 Shirsath 104

wherein Naipaul writes about his experiences in India over span of one year.
The general vision given in this novel of India is somber and dark. The title An
Area of Darkness refers to India. Many of the negative aspects of Indian culture
are highlighted and Naipaul exposes the culture in India at every stage. In his
An Area of Darkness, he explains the darkness of India in these words,
To me as a child the India that had produces so many of the
persons and the things around me was featureless, and I thought
of the time when the transference was made as a period of
darkness, darkness which also extended to the land, as darkness
surrounds a hut at evening, though for a little of my experience,
in time and place…those ways of thinking, and seeing, which are
no longer mine. (30)
Naipaul states India as a failed nation on every count. For him the
weather was oppressive, the horrifying poverty, people squat defecating all
over the place, they serve food with unclean hand. Though Hindu tradition
taught about sanitation, people didn’t have. Naipaul writes a note of people’s
awkward living condition in Indian villages. He finds them in staying narrow
mud huts situated with filth, dust and animal dung all around the narrow broken
lanes. Further, he describes the people in the offices that they work lack the
sense of work culture, they could not do any piece of work assigned to anybody
lower in rank than their own. Colonialism is an important issue in the story.
Naipaul states thus: “The reality of India was cruel and overwhelming to ignore
it, was to ignore too much of what could be seen, to shed too much of myself;
my sense of history and even the simplest ideas of human possibility”. (AD 21)
The main theme of this novel is poverty. Naipaul describes India as the
poorest country in the world; he describes caste system as the brutal division of
labor and something unpleasant. Colonialism one section of novel is devoted to
colonialism. He mentions about the pretention of the colonial country, as in
past the country’s mimicry was Mogul; it could be Russian or American in
future. He concludes by stating that the Indian English mimicry is like fantasy.
 Shirsath 105

The mimicry changes from Mughal to English and may be to American or so in

future, but the inner world remains constant.
The final chapter of book explores Naipaul splitting in two with his
feeling of frustration about India and that of a broken man into past and
present. So, he feels that it would be better if he wouldn’t have the journey
itself. In the words of Landeg White, Naipaul’s “visit to the village of his
grandfather arouses problems over language, fears about the food and water,
demands for money, and concludes with Naipaul’s angry refusal to give a
relative a lift into town. There is no home for him in India; his assumptions are
too much of the West…A Brahmin-cum-Englishman in Trinidad, a European
in India, an Indian in London”. (7)
India: A Wounded Civilization is a travelogue written during his second
visit to India in 1975, when he visited India first time the imaginary picture of
India was totally different from the real picture. He explored only the fifth,
poverty and unhygienic life styles. But in this book he wrote about Indian
culture, region, art and science. As an ancient civilization, India should have
advanced quickly. But instead of it become more and more archaic. The reason,
Naipaul believes is due to the constant invasions for past thousand years. He
says the whole creative side of India has died because of this conquering. The
effects are evident in Indian paintings, cinema, music and architecture. He
appreciated and described the Dal Lake, Shimla, Jammu and Kashmir,
Vijaynagar Empire, Bombay, Calcutta and Goa harbor. With each one of his art
forms, Naipaul observes that the Indian tradition has been broken. He believes
this creative loss has gone unnoticed for generations. He feels that Indian past
seems to be dead now and has been remained merely a kind of intellectual
inquiry and scholarship. There was an emergency when Naipaul visited India in
1975. He points out, “An inquiry about India, even an inquiry about the
emergency has quickly to go beyond the political. It has to be an inquiry about
Indian attitudes; it has to be an inquiry about civilization itself”. (IWC 9)
Naipaul looks at the history of India and observes that the various foreign
 Shirsath 106

assaults on the Indian civilization have only resulted in a number of wounds

and India remains a wounded civilization. India is a country of ruins which
accumulated year after year as the foreign attacks continued. The result has
been that there are layers of ruins everywhere – temple upon a mosque, or a
mosque upon a temple and so on. The old world India was purely Hindu,
purely Hindu India was conquered and dominated first by Islam and later by
British, which had resulted in a drain of the intellectual development and
creativity of the Hindu India. The great Hindu empire Vijaynagar established in
the fourteenth century was totally destroyed by an attack of Mogul in 1565.
The city was then one of the greatest in the world. Naipaul observes that
average Indian is caught in a narrow loyalties bound by consideration of caste,
clan or linguistic group.
Naipaul further takes India as dependent on the West and writes in
India: Wounded to Civilization that the India doesn’t exercise its own
principles and skills, on the contrary, exercises all that borrowed from the west.
This book is only of 175 pages tells about the Indian civilization as a
‘Wounded Civilization’ decayed and dying. The book is a selective
documentation of this fact. At the end of the book he clarifies that the crisis of
India is neither political, nor economically weak only. But it is the part of the
quickly decaying and decaying civilization as there remains no hope but merely
the feeling of decay. It carries the aspects of the large crisis.
India: A Million Mutinies Now is a travelogue. In it, Naipaul looks back
and reassesses his past formulations. It is a continuation as well as revision of
his earlier views about India. In his India: A Million Mutinies Now, he likens
himself to Gandhi;
Growing up in far off Trinidad, I had no idea of class or region,
none of the supports and cushions of people in India. Like
Gandhi among the immigrant Indians of South Africa, and for
much the same reasons, I have developed instead the idea of the
kinship of Indians, The idea of the family of India. And in my
 Shirsath 107

attempt is come to terms with history my criticism, mg

bewilderment and sorrow, was turned inward, focusing on the
civilization and the social organization that had given so little
protection. (399)
His novel, The Middle Passage remarks about his identity, “Shedding
my Indian nerves, abolishing the darkness that spread from ancestral past”. (73)
In his first visit to India, Naipaul takes India as it was An Area of Darkness, but
in another book, India: A Million Mutinies Now, he reflects that that the
darkness is removed slowly, layer by layer and there are beams of a new light.
He admits in this book, the limitations of his earlier attitude when he was
blinded by shame and humiliation by the remembrance of the fact that his
ancestors had to migrate from India to Trinidad as indentured laborers out of
sheer necessity.
After invasions and wars, the freedom movement which led to the
independence of India symbolizes to Naipaul the truest kind of liberation. It
awakened people to knowledge of who they are and what they owe themselves
and this liberation of spirit has taken the form of rage and revolt. Further he
touches the present realities also stating that
India is now a land of million little mutinies supported by the groupings
of religion, class, caste and family which is to him, difficult to understand.
Naipaul moves from west to east and from south to north. India: A Million
Mutinies Now seems to parted into different groups and identities, according to
religious communities: Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Sikh, Buddhist, Tamil, Bengali;
religion overlapping with Lucknavi, Muslim, Kashmiri Muslim, Tamil Hindu,
caste upper, middle, lower ideological persuasion Shivsena, Congress,
Naxalite; caste overlapping with religion, Dalit Maharashtrians’ celebrating Dr.
Ambedkar’s birthday etc. And the celebrations, become a moment of triumph
and honor to the particular group of people, the awareness of their particularity
and the courage to assert them are signs of confidence and change. This
 Shirsath 108

complex picture depicts the traditional beliefs of the India. During the
discussion with the Brahmin scientists in Bangalore he reflects thus,
My thought, as I had driven down to Goa, through the untidy but
energetic town, full of the signs of growth and then through the
well-tilled fields at harvest time, had been of the Indian and more
specially, Hindu awakening. If Subramaniam was right, there was
hidden irony in that awakening; that the group of caste who had
contributed so much so that awakening should now find itself
under threat. (IMMN 161)
Naipaul begins with a description of Bombay. The crowd he sees in
pavements and the road points to something unusual. Naipaul’s tour of Bombay
brings him to contact with every cross section of that city. Pappu the stock
broker, Mr. Patil the Shivsena area leader, Anwar the young Muslim, the Hindu
Gangsters, the Dalit poet Namdeo Dhasal and his wife Mallika. They all think
wellbeing of the groups to which they belong, but they are analytical also.
Pappu with his vegetarianism is self-consciously aware of the absence of the
killer instinct in him. He lives in fear of Mafia and preparers for change and
revolution, vegetarianism, the legacy of his religion, becomes his identity. He
realizes that his survival depends on his ability to accept himself to the
demands of a changing society. He accepts the computer as it is in the
developed countries and attributes his success to his adaptability and ability to
take on these developments. Amir’s father Raja was both political and
religious. He had passed on many languages, many cultures and many modes
of thought and emotion to his son. During the independence struggle a new
India came into existence which does not existed before. Naipaul comprehends
it all in a formulation of India as a country of a million little mutinies, distress,
cruelty, rage and revolt.
The Return of Eva Peron with The Killing in Trinidad consists of three
major sections written primarily between 1972 and 1975. The title essay, ‘The
Return of Eva Peron’ describes the popularity of Peronism and the potency of
 Shirsath 109

the myth of Evita Peron in Argentina; and the final essays such as ‘A New
King for the Congo’ and ‘Mobutu and the Nihilism of Africa’; and ‘Conrad’s
Darkness’ view of Africa. In each section, Naipaul analyzes the state of each of
these countries and the emerging leadership, the legends about Eva Peron in
Argentina, Mobutu in Africa and the rise of Malik as a leader in Trinidad. The
black government of Eric Williams has been in power since 1956. The racial
enthusiasm had taken him to power and wanted to sweep him away. Naipaul
attacks on the new politics of newly independent countries and the politicians
who usually shut out the intellectuals. And he appreciates the American black
power as a new tint to popular discontents. The revolution broke in Trinidad at
the time of Carnival. Malik announced a Black Power Building Programme in
London. But he gave up him everything and corresponded with Erric Williams
and he went to Trinidad. The Black House was taken over by Stanley Abbott
and looted. After 14 years of his stay in London. Malik had restored to a flight
from there. He found an associate Jamel, but their activity ended in violence
and Malik was hanged. The Black Power Revolution ended in a disaster; Malik
is the best example of this type of the incident. It is explained as below:
. . . how much of Black Power away from its United States source
is jargon, how much a sentimental hoax. In place like Trinidad,
racial redemption is an interval for the Negro as for everybody
else. It obscures the problems of a small independent country
with a lopsided economy, the problems of fully consumer society
that is get technologically untrained and without the independent
means to comprehend the deficiency. It perpetuates the negative
colonial politics of protest. (REP 70)

Naipaul’s second piece in this book is on Argentina. He talks about the

post-colonial situation after the withdrawal of the British Empire. He focuses
on what takes place later on. He observes that the colonial agricultural
economy gets industrialized slowly.
 Shirsath 110

Peron holds out a hope when there is despair everywhere. The people
consider him as a saint, who had died earlier. Argentina a decolonized
countries was a land without history. In attempt to create new history,
Argentina was unsuccessful, Peron was hanged and forgotten. The essay on the
Congo in Africa (Zaire) centers round Mobutu. General Mobutu an African
freedom fighter. Naipaul describes the river Congo’s banks and the
revolutionary activities. Everyone was busy in making money and forgotten
their past General Mobutu embodies all the African contradictions as an
African nihilist. The common man finds him more close to than Karl Marx. He
becomes the African king and loves the poor Africans. He established the
tradition of the African leader in the post-colonial context. Naipaul narrates
Mobutu as a man without fear, without faith and without any colour. He
continues to state that he is not suffered because of either primitivism or
wilderness, but because of the pioneers’ civilization on Mont Ngaliema.

In the essay, ‘Conrad’s Darkness’, writing about Africa, Naipaul admits

that he liked Conrad like Dickens as they left a deep impact on him. Conrad’s
story ‘The Lagoon’ was read out to him by his father. Naipaul’s reaction about
Conrad’s literary contribution is very well reflected in his essay entitled as
‘Conrad’s Darkness’. Talking about Conrad, he says that Conrad has wrought
about highly organized societies. But at the same time he did not find his world
reflected in Conrad. Naipaul’s writing about Africa are similar to Conrad’s the
familiar racial formula and cultural evaluations, Naipaul’s writings are more
pervasively occupied with racial fixation and consequent cultural evaluations.
As Naipaul puts it in his one of popular essays, ‘Conrad’s Darkness’,

And I found that Conrad- sixty years before, in the time of great
peace had been everywhere before me. Not as a man with a cause
but a man offering, as in Nostromo, a vision of the world’s half
made societies as places which continuously made and unmade
themselves, where there was no goal and where always
 Shirsath 111

‘something inherent in the necessities of successful action …

Carried with it the moral degradation of the idea. (REP 216)

The Return of Eva Peron is Naipaul’s one more book reflecting

on the postcolonial situation in several African countries. Finding the
Centre records Naipaul’s early days as a writer. It also gives glimpses of
his beginning family life in Trinidad. The title Finding the Centre has
multiple meanings or core of the narrative, the centre of the truth of
human experience, the central essence of human life and the
philosophical centre of one’s beliefs, ideas and emotions. In Finding the
Centre, Naipaul projects on a kind of autobiography of his writing life, a
process of spiraling down to reach the centre. But Naipaul states, “It is
not an autobiography, a story of a life or deeds done. It is an account of
something less easily seized: my literary beginnings and the imaginative
promptings of my many sided background”. (vii) Finding the Centre
consists of two parts Prologue to an Autobiography and The Crocodiles
of Yamoussoukro. Both the narratives deal with the process of writing.
They are all about the process of writing. Prologue to an Autobiography
is mainly V.S. Naipaul’s childhood memories in Trinidad and further
back to his grandparents’ emigration from India. It is the portrait of his
father, a reporter who covered the Indian community for the Trinidad
Guardian. It is also a portrait of himself as a son. During an outbreak of
rabies in Trinidad his father reported that Indian weren’t introducing
their cattle. They didn’t want to pay the high price of medicine and were
sacrificing their goats to the Hindu goddess Kali. After the story
appeared, he got a note mentioning that he could die in a week if he
didn’t make the same sacrifice. It was an insult for a man who try to
escape the narrowness of Trinidad’s Indian community through his
writing but found himself unable to stand up to the threat and performed
the sacrifice, for Naipaul it was painful to read when another journalist
sends him a clipping about the event. It happened when he was a baby
 Shirsath 112

and he never heard about it. At first he takes it as a joke, but he looks it
up in the Trinidad Guardian and finds another reporter’s account of
sacrifice his father performed. He found his father’s article too. It was
the superstition that was performed by his father. In the Prologue to An
Autobiography, Naipaul characterizes a conversation into a fictional
dialogue with his mother that he had. He states thus:
I said to my mother one day when I came back from the Port of Spain
newspaper Library, “Why didn’t you tell me about the sacrifice?” She
said simply, “I didn’t remember”, she added, “What form did my
father’s madness take?” I asked, “He looked in the mirror one day and
couldn’t see himself, and began to scream”, she said. (PA 70)
Prologue to an Autobiography is about Naipaul’s documentation as a
struggling writer. He reconstructs his ancestry and his family history to explore
his background and discovers his father’s ambition of becoming a writer not
much educated and knowing little English in a small agricultural colony.
According to Naipaul, his father was a victim of the limited, poverty stricken
backward Hindu world. Naipaul points out his difficulty in selecting subject
material because of his many sided background. He focuses on how a beginner
as a writer he did not know where to focus.
The second part, ‘The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro’ is an exploration of
a place in the wet forests of Africa. Naipaul explains about his travelogues
writings. His travel to the Irony Coast enriched him with an objective
experience of adventure and human discovery for his own sake. His travel to
colonial territories in the Caribbean, South America as well as Africa had
political, social and cultural intensions. He travelled not as a colonial but as an
observer of the attitudes of people. He changed his focus from that of a novelist
to that of travelogues writer. His interest in history, people and landscape led
him to express the same with a different narrative technique. He lived deep into
the heart of Africa to find the remote parts of this Dark Continent and reveal
these life styles of people living isolated lives. His curiosity of the unknown
 Shirsath 113

was due to his colonial Trinidad background. The alien and remote places of
Africa fascinated him, drawing him towards them in his mind with what he
already knew. Thus he talks about a writer’s curiosity rather than
ethnographer’s or journalist’s. A travels, and also lives and constructs a novel
out of his moving from not knowing to knowing, with person to person and
leading through incidents.
Naipaul’s trip to the Ivory Coast corresponds to his writing centre.
Naipaul depicts Africa as being ruled by two forces the modern and ancient the
enormous pull of modernization had overtaken the land. The President wanted
Yamoussoukro to be big and one of the great powerful cities of not only Africa
but also the entire world so. The beautiful leveled land with modern buildings
everywhere in the city and the golf course attract visitors. The president did not
play the game himself, but wanted his people nearly sixty tribes of the Ivory
Coast to practice the game. Accommodation for visitors and players was made
in a twelve storey buildings of Hotel President. The hotel brochure described
with the words “Find the traces of the native village of President Houphouet
Boigny”. (FC 76-77) Africa’s aura of origin and completeness displayed
impact and hold of Western imperialism. The entire gamut of civilization in the
Ivory Coast was fragile and its continuance was threatened and this aspect was
brought out in the government project down to the waiters at a restaurant. In
Finding the Centre, they are described as,
The waiters, impeccable the day before were casual, vacant.
There were long delays, mistakes; some of the portions were
absurdly small the bill when it came was wrong. Someone was
missing, perhaps the French or European manager. And with him
more than good service had gone; the whole restaurant idea had
vanished. An elaborate organization had collapsed. (129)
In the President ancestral village of Yamoussoukro, his spiritual
crocodiles were daily fed with fresh meat. People who came as a tourists
visited the place to witness the ritual. Naipaul visited this place with Gil
 Shirsath 114

Sherman on the independence day of the Ivory Coast. The President’s

crocodiles waited for the ritual feeding at five O’clock. The interminable palace
wall had to take beside it. The lake had crocodiles. Some were hardly
noticeable in the muddy water. The tall and strong feeder fed them. He wore a
skull cap and a flowered gown. The feeder made a rattling sound on the iron
rails before throwing the meat. The crocodiles on the paved embankment were
sluggish in their movements. They sometimes have to search for the meat,
which had fallen into the crevices between the paving stones or on their backs.
The official standing beside the feeder called the crocodiles softly entreating
them to swallow the meat. For Naipaul, the feeding the crocodiles was
symbolic of possessing power and cruelty. He felt it as a remnant of ancient
Egyptian earth-worship that had come to Africa. He felt the crocodile was a
mighty animal that was symbolic of the powers of the rulers. Living long the
reptiles is the strongest creature in water; it sleeps with eyes open. And thus it
appears as an emblem of the ruler’s power. Africa served as a concrete place of
migration to the displaced black people of the world. The Crocodile of
Yamoussoukro examines the relation of expatriates to their ancestral Africa.
Naipaul has portrayed displaced people. Both Prologue to an Autobiography
and The Crocodile of Yamoussoukro are based on variable facts that Naipaul
uses as a fictional mode of self-expression. Rather than creating an imaginary,
fictional world. Into a narrative style of his own Naipaul translates the events of
his past life and his experience in Africa. He manipulates facts into a system of
meaning and wrote the novel in narrative style. Writing about the writing
process makes Naipaul a complete man.
Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey is about Naipaul’s account of
his trip to Iran, Indonesia, Pakistan and Malaysia. When he was in U.S.A. the
idea of travelling to Islamic countries came to him during the Iranian
Revolution. When in 1999 after the overthrow of Shah he went to Iran at a time
when most of the people were leaving that country. Naipaul analyses the
process of the revolution and the forces of history that operate in the country.
 Shirsath 115

In Iran the tension of twin revolutions against the Shah Khomeini and the
mullahs and Abolhassan Bani-Sadr and the secular nationalist is illuminated
through Behzad, a young leftist from a provincial town who is a science student
in Tehran. In the chapter “The Interchangeable Revolutions” of Among the
Believers: An Islamic Journey, Naipaul writes,
To replace all this Islam sanctified rage-rage about the faith, political
rage; one could be like the other. And more than once on this journey I
had met sensitive men who were reading to contemplate great
convulsions. In Iran there had been Behzad, who had shown me Tehran
and the holy cities of Qom and the Mashhad. He was the communist son
of communist father, not a Muslim. But his communism was like a
version of Shiva rage about injustice; a rage rooted in the overthrow by
the Arabs of the Old Persian Empire in the seventh century. (354)
Naipaul portraits the Pakistan’s dilemma who shares the Indian
parentage in spite of their rejection of that part of their identity implied in their
deliberate choice of partition. Pakistan moved to military dictatorship just four
decades after partition from India under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and General Zia
Ul Haq. Rootlessness the base of Naipaul’s identity is the subject Naipaul
suggests Islam as a dogmatic set of rules, which created harmony with the
spiritual faith, social and imperial aspiration of the medieval Arabia and after
the Prophet. The great Islamic enterprise existed only as an ideal expression of
the highest faith and of political insecurity. Muslims lived in Muslim
homeland. Naipaul’s attitude towards the loyalty of the Muslims is not only
personal as he confesses in Among the Believers; it comes from feelings of
group hatred. It may be sprang from psychology that was nurtured among the
Indian community of Trinidad. Naipual clarifies it thus,
Muslims were part of the small Indian community of Trinidad into
which I was born; it could be said that I had known Muslims all my life.
The difference was more of a matter group feeling, the mysterious the
animosities our Hindu and Muslim grandfathers had brought from India
 Shirsath 116

softened into a kind of folk wisdom about the unreliability and treachery
of the other side. (AB 111)
The British implemented the two nation theory in it before handling
over the country to the natives; they sowed the seeds of communal disharmony
in the name of religion. It is because of this reason that the Kashmir has
remained a disputed place between India and Pakistan in the post-colonial
period. It has become the historically rooted global phenomenon. When
Naipaul visited these countries, there was turmoil of one sort or the other in
each of these countries. There were American hostages Tehran, Afghanistan
was overrun by his travels to the Indian subcontinent, Naipaul’s narration
includes an account of his planned or chance meetings and encounters with
hotel staff, guides, interpreters, important personalities and newspaper offices.
The center point of Naipaul’s understandings of Islam is that it is not a single
branch but concentrates on the major branches of Islam. The main issue that he
examines is the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. The theme of loss is depicted
through the presence of a large number of lost individuals men and women
who have lost their place in the world whom Naipaul meets in the course of
this travels. Shafi who grieves for the Malaya village life he had loss who
suffered the pain of the first man expelled from paradise, about the Tamil
driver Naipaul writes in post-colonial, Muslim Malaysia he was squeezed out.
He was as much a lost man as Shafi and the other village Malays. And perhaps
he was more lost, not having a faith to turn to and not being able to blame the
world and not knowing who to blame. The Ahmedi girl in Pakistan her sect is
declared non-Muslim by the government, making them suddenly an insecure
minority in their own land. Nusrat wished to serve the faith above everything
else, and who suddenly found herself quite alone in the land of faith. For all
these rootless and placeless people Naipaul shows a compassion, a concern and
there pain. In Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey, he focuses on the role
of religion, as he sees it in affecting the creative and intellectual resources
needed by nations to develop. The book elaborates how the present state of the
 Shirsath 117

world has been developed into a new civilization. In the following line as on
their own roaming far from his native Trinidad and adopting Britain, he uses
his skills as a novelist for reportorial purposes on his journey to Iran, Pakistan,
Malaysia and Indonesia. On the way he repeatedly finds a reason for
backwardness in the very devotion to Islam which brings buoyancy or serenity
to so many he meets. Naipaul states,
The fundamentalism, insecure, with their un-historical view,
feared alien contamination. But fundamentalism offered nothing.
It pushed men to an unappeasable faith; it violated the ‘basic’; it
could never wall out the rest of the world. And I thought it was
possible, looking not many steps ahead, to see how in Pakistan,
by the very excesses of fundamentalism, Islam might be
preparing its own transformation. (285)
Beyond Belief is the result of Naipaul’s five month journey in 1995
through Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia. Their descendants of Muslim
converts live at odds with native traditions, and where dreams of Islamic purity
clash with economic and political realities. It is a travelogue with a theme. The
narrative presents portraits of a theme. The narrative presents portraits of
number of people caught in the great post-colonial search for identity, after the
removal of colonial power, Beyond Belief is littered with sympathetic
encounters with authentic and essential evidences. Naipaul had surveyed the
colonial and post-colonial culture of the Caribbean and India. He thinks Islamic
imperialism was regressive and medieval, whereas imperial West was liberal
positive. In Naipaul’s opinion Western imperialism allowed for intellectual
development and the growth of a sense of history, whereas Islamic imperialism
has simply impoverished intellectual growth from his comparative experience
of India and Pakistan, he points out in Beyond Belief,
The British period [in India] – two hundred years in some places,
less than a hundred in others – was a time of Hindu regeneration.
The Hindus, especially in Bengal, welcomed the New Learning
 Shirsath 118

of Europe and the institutions the British Brought. The Muslims,

wounded by their loss of power, and out of old religious scruples,
stood aside. It was the beginning of the intellectual distance
between the two communities. This distance has grown with
independence; and it is this- more even that religion now- that at
the end of the twentieth century has made India and Pakistan
quite distinct countries. India, with an intelligentsia that grows by
leaps and bounds, expands I all directions. Pakistan, proclaiming
only the bounds, expands in all directions. Pakistan, proclaiming
only the faith and then proclaiming the faith again, ever shrinks.
(65)
Unlike Naipaul’s other books, Beyond Belief is a book about the masses
and not about the writer in particular, nor it is about opinions, and it is less a
travel book also. The writer remains in the background; he is a discoverer of
the people and trusting to his instinct he finds stories of them. The reviewers
like The New York Times commended the book as the brilliant notable book of
the year. Beyond Belief describes that Islamic expansion outside Arabia is the
weak form of imperialism. The Prologue of the book explores on Islam, Arabs
and Muslims. It finds an authentic explanation to how Islam has its origin in
Arab religion, and the Muslims are the convert.
Beyond Belief is repeatedly the observations of Among the Believers. In
Beyond Belief Naipaul revisits places he had been sixteen years before and tries
to revisit the people he had met earlier Indonesia had prospered in the sixteen
intervening years, Imaduddin the protester Islamic teacher and lecturer whom
he had met earlier who had become an important government person in the
interim, Imaduddin, originally an electrical engineer visits West to acquire the
scientific knowledge require for the conquest of the world. At Iowa State
University, Fazul-ur-Rahman Pakistani visited him and instills in him a vision
of a grand revival of Islam under the leadership of Malay-speaking Muslims.
Imaduddin borrowed only science and technology from the West. Imaduddin
 Shirsath 119

incidentally met Suharto’s trusted Habbie and becomes the pillar of Indonesian
state based on Islamisation. Noticing the success stories of the Muslim
Intellectuals Naipaul points out that for years or so until 1400, Indonesia had
been a cultural and religious part of Greater India; they were animist, Buddhist
and Hindu. Islam come to India not long before Europe. It had been kept alive
informally in colonial times, in simple village boarding schools perhaps based
on an idea of Buddhist Monasteries. The other successful stories of Indonesian
Muslims are of Lukman Umar the publisher, the computer software designer
Budi.
A Turn in the South is Naipaul’s middle piece of the series of
travelogues. The book has a link with other travel books. It is not only a
narration of his travel, but also a serious investigation into the nature of the
civilization. It is about his visits to South American countries; and it shows the
revision of his old idea about the countries. The book is about South America,
its modernization and the Southern black people who learnt to adapt the new
changes. The reflection of the changes on the black people is a major part of his
writings. Naipaul meets the young radical, and liberal, religions and atheistic,
black and white. His voyage of discovery takes him to Atlanta, Charleston,
Tallahassee, Tuskegee, Jackson, Nashville and Chapel Hill. While going
around in North Caroline, Hetty Howard’s, mothers observes in In Turn to
South, “Black people, there, Black people there, White people there Black
people, black people white people. All this side black people, all this side white
people. White people, white people, black people, White people”. (10) Naipaul
himself remembers his own childhood and adulthood in a black and white
country that serves as a linking and a uniting factor. He visits inhabited areas of
black people; and areas of the white settlements. He met some white
expatriates. He visits some people of the Nissan Assembly plant and also the
church of Christ members. He wanted to know the slavery question, comparing
South American with slavery in Trinidad and Tobago. He visits slave
plantations and emphasis on achievement of individuals. He wanted stability,
 Shirsath 120

rootedness and continuity tries to create a work of art with order and harmony.
In his attitude towards U.S.A. he associates U.S.A. with racial discriminations
and cultural crudeness. For England he has a different attitude as it is a cultural
home to him. It is the land of his commercial dealings and publishing. In this
book, he also distinguishes between the condition of black Americans, a
powerless victimized minority and the self–governing black African or West –
Indians, especially of Trinidad and Tobago. The American or South was
associated with Trinidad and Tobago though the scenes differ. Naipaul created
a network of characters speaking through them. He met the characters in travel
through by chance encounters or arranged interviews. He writes about both
black and white people that come from different back grounds and belong to
various classes. Naipaul reflects over slavery in the south. In the British
islands, the slavery was abolished, but it had persisted in South America in an
ugly form. He feels it disgusting to find that the white masters from the South
did not think it wrong to continue slavery even after years of its end in British
islands. The masters were not ready to accept that the slaves are human beings
and should not be tormented for long.
Naipaul highlights the difference between the black Caribbean in post –
colonial days, who finds himself in majority on his own island whereas the
liberated black American finds himself in a minority his own island. Naipaul
has found out the truth at last that the irrationality of slavery and the years after
slavery had made many individuals irrational and self – destructive. Naipaul
describes this book as his first travel book undertaken at the suggestion of Eric
Williams, the first black prime minister of Trinidad about some of the former
slave colonies of the Caribbean and South America he was twenty eight then
and felt it as his last travel book based on the travel theme about the old slave
states of the American south-east.
The Masque of Africa considers the effects of beliefs in indigenous
animisms, of Christianity and Islam the cults of leaders and mythical history
upon the progress of African civilization. The theme of political belief or
 Shirsath 121

economic realities is focused. Naipaul journey across the Africa continent takes
him from Uganda’s, where he lived for a short while in 1960s, to Nigeria and
then to Gabon via the Ivory Coast and Ghana and finally to South Africa.
Along the way he meets and talks to people about their beliefs in African
countries. Naipaul discourses with teachers, writers, academics, pharmacists,
kings, queens and chiefs, businessmen and friends. Naipaul met all the
intellectual classes. He navigates the complexities and conflicts of their culture
and describe what they have lost with the passing of the old religions they
negotiate they cultures and understand which rules can be accepted and which
cannot. In Uganda Susan, a poet has a love, hate relationship with her Christian
name. Habib a wealthy businessman raised as a Muslim was taught to despise
the African religion. The imperialists use that theme throughout world in
country after country. Once when Naipaul was on a long walk to see the bones
of ancestors in Gabon, a helpful local persuade him into a wheel barrow. He
finds Africa a struggle and journeys are almost longer than he is told, he kept
on waiting. There’s rubbish everywhere and the temperatures are intolerable. In
East Africa he explores the ancient Kingdom of Uganda, admires the straight
roads. He meets the Queen Mother of Toro. He retains the sense of humour. In
Nigeria he was not comfortable for his accommodation in hotel. There he hears
spirit legends from the Oba of Lagos and meets the Oani of Ife and Oba of
Osun and seeks the permission to see the sacred groves which took away
Naipaul’s breath away. In Ghana, he had hard time. The poor Ghanians suffer
his ire may be because he discovers, they eat cat in the south of the country and
Naipaul is the big Cat lover. His Ghanian guide, Richmond told him that cats
are killed by being dropped alive into boiling water. Gaa made Naipaul
nervous. He bolts him from a meeting with the high priest. In Ivory Coast they
eat cats too. He finds beauty in the basilica built by the country’s first
president, Felix Houphouet, Biogny, a replica of Sent Peter’s in Rome, In
Gabon he has recovered some of his equilibrium and in the forests, he finds
something akin to Africa’s true spirituality In South Africa the legacy of
 Shirsath 122

apartheid was prevailing In another section of the book he depicts about the
ritual killing of the hundreds of people for the funeral of President Houphouet
Boigny. The Masque of Africa is a book for outsider who may never visit
Africa or may know it only superficially. It is also book in which African
themselves may find something to learn.
Guerrillas is based on Naipaul’s non – fictional essay, ‘Michael X and
the Black power killing in Trinidad’ the action of Guerrillas recasts the story of
post colonialism depicts the relationship between four people Roche an activist
in South Africa, who has suffered at the hands of the apartheid regime, the
native English adventures Jane, the Black power activist Jimmy Ahmed, the
black politician and power broker Meredith, and the white expatriate settler
Harry. Naipaul returns to an imaginary Caribbean island which bears
similarities to both Jamaica and Trinidad. Roche’s presence in the island as
Jimmy’s master emphasizes the persistence of colonialism in the era of
political independence in the Caribbean islands. Jimmy Ahmed returned from
London after involving himself in sexual assault is feared by everyone. The
government fears him because of his English glamour and the capitalistic firm
like the Sablich’s who have investments in the island fear him as a Black power
man who can bring about a revolution in the land. Only Jimmy knows his
potentials well, that he is the only man stands between them and revolution.
The wealthy capitalized his existing energy in agricultural commune which
encourage and employ the idle energies of the island Jimmy calls the commune
Thrush Cross Grange and leads the slum youths to bring about a revolution
based on land. The choice of name, Thrush Cross Grange is an indication of
Jimmy’s uncritical acceptance of the images of English culture. And then,
Jimmy’s home apes English middle–class suburbia is narrated in Guerrillas
thus, “A square of English carpet, electric blue with splashes of black and
yellow almost covered the floor… A Three piece suite, square and chunky,
with fat cushions, was covered in a tiger – striped synthetic material, thick and
 Shirsath 123

furry. On the fitted bock shelves a number of books in the some magenta
binding, stood solidly together”. (23-24)
Sablich hires Peter Roche as the social worker to supervise over the
project. Roche is a white liberal, who has been tortured in South Africa for his
involvement in the anti – apartheid cause. Thus an ideal public relations man
for the Sablich’s because of their unsavory past as a slave trading firm. Jane is
Roche’s girlfriend who has followed him to the island because she believes
Roche to be an engaged doer but soon realize that Roche’s position in the
island is like a refugee. The image of Roche that Jane nurtures in her mind is
shattered when on coming to the island she understands it and imagines that the
island had once been the setting of action that would undo the world. Roche, a
refugee has no place to go back to. Her disillusionment with Roche takes her to
Jimmy but the relationship takes off on a wrong footing with Jane dominating
over Jimmy resulted incurring his hatred. The situation in the island becomes
explosive when Stephen, one of the inmates of the commune had been killed by
the police, Jimmy carries the body around the town and picks up a big
procession, violence breaks out because the mob was becomes riotous. The
police are unable to control the mob. The mob rejected Jimmy’s leadership and
he was shocked and trapped in his despair feeling for death alone unlored and
wished for death. Jane and Roche also decide to leave the island. Jane goes to
meet Jimmy before going away and frustrated Jimmy, subjects Jane to an
indecent insult and offers her to Bryant who kills her. Roche helps Jimmy to
erase all evidence about Jane’s presence in the island and escapes is London
leaving Jimmy alone.
The major themes are reflected in the action, characters and images are
of crippled personalities of those marginalized by history. Naipaul’s central
idea about post – colonial society is its inability to create an identity. His vision
of colonialism in Guerillas is a dynamic. The guilt and shame are deeply
imprinted in the mind of these individuals. Jimmy’s words clearly through light
 Shirsath 124

on everyone’s mentality to fight for nothing and how everyone appears like a
Guerrilla. Thus, this novel is a representation of the entire mankind.
3.3 Later Novels
Naipaul makes a statement about the relationship between experience,
vision and art as a third world reality in his later novels like In the Free State. It
consists of a Prologue and Epilogue with enclosure of two short stories and a
novella though different but linked with each other integrally. The concept of
political, social and psychological dimensions of freedom had been examined.
The feature of the novels is the people in exile, expatriates tourists belonging to
different nationalities far from their home. In Prologue the people belonging to
nationalities as diverse as Indian, African, American, Pane Sweden, German,
Chinese and Egyptian. The Egyptian Greeks travelling to Egypt but Egypt is no
longer their home as invaders expelled them but soon the Egypt is free and
these Egyptians are the casualties of that freedom. The First story One out of
Many, Santosh an Indian domestic from Bombay given an account of his life in
Washington, who has no real alternative at home, accompanies his master on a
diplomatic mission to Washington. In Washington, he becomes aware of
himself as an individual. His involvement with a black woman initiates his
self–awareness. With the self–awareness his perspective changes and he
develops a critical eye and states in In the Free State: “Now I found that,
without wishing it, I was ceasing to see myself as part of my employer’s
presence, and beginning at the same time to see him as an outsider might see
him, as perhaps the people who came to dinner in the apartment saw him”. (41)
Santosh also realized that return to Bombay was impossible for him. He
becomes aware of his identify. The miserable life with his new self – awareness
makes him susceptible to Priya, a restaurant owner whose philosophy attract
him because she remind him his life in Bombay. He feels independent but his
status was of illegal immigrant he realized that and instead of calling Priya by
her name he addresses her as Sahib reaffirming the master slave relationship.
Santosh realizes his mistake and quotes,
 Shirsath 125

I had used the wrong word. Once I had used the word a hundred
times a day. But then I had considered myself a small part of my
employer’s presence, and the word was not servile; it was more
like a name, like a reassuring sound, part of my employer’s
dignity and therefore part of mine. But Priya’s dignity could
never be mine: that was not our relationship. (IFS 52)
When Santosh discloses all his secrets to Priya, she advises him to
marry the black woman to legalize his presence in Washington. Santosh
follows Priya’s advice but that freedom brings him loneliness and
fragmentation of his life into three unrelated worlds. Ultimately Santosh
considers that his freedom fulfills only his physical needs. He thinks that it has
brought him only the knowledge that helps him to have a face along with body,
food and clothe few years only.
The next story Tell Me Who to Kill is narrated by East Indian, who
wanted to complete his dreams through his brother Dayo and Christianity is
held up as the sign of progressiveness. The narrator tells about his well-
educated uncle Stephen who lives in the city and considers his christen name as
a mark of his progressiveness. The narrator also manages to send his brother
Dayo to England and he also follows him to take care of him while Dayo was
studying Aeronautical engineering and here the narrator feels completely lost.
His life in London becomes a series of journeys to strange places. Till the end
the narrator was totally unrelated to his surroundings in London and
concentrated his hopes on his brother Dayo but when he knows Dayo was
simply idling away his time in London he loses all sense of direction and
becomes totally lost. Eventually when Dayo drifts away from the narrator and
marries an English girl, his brother was half – crazed with hatred but unable to
pin his enemy. He only cries out in anguish: “O God, show me the enemy.
Once you find out who the enemy is, you can kill him. But these people here
they confuse me. Who hurt me? Who spoil my life? Tell me who to beat
back… Tell me who to kill”. (IFS 107) Disillusionment with England forms the
 Shirsath 126

major theme of Tell Me who to kill. Freedom becomes a state of being aimless
and adrift. The narrators who cannot bear his failure send back a message that
he is dead. And he finally realized the temporal reality of Dayo’s love.
The title story In a Free State portrays a newly independent unnamed
African country. In the Free State is set in “an English – Indian creation in the
African wilderness”. (111) The major characters in the story are English. Linda
and Bobby, expatriates in Africa at the time of civil war have also found
freedom of a sort in their expatriate’s compound. Bobby is an administrative
officer in one of the departments of central government. On his way to the
governmental compound where he lives, he has offered a lift to Linda, another
colleague’s wife. Bobby tries to remain aloof from Linda. They have
conflicting views about Africa – Bobby is liberal and demonstrates a protective
attitude towards the Africans while Linda is mildly racialist. Bobby is rebuffed
by a young Zulu when he tries to pick him up at the Hotel bar. The educated
Africans, the new men of the country remain as inarticulate as their brother’s in
the bush villages. Their lack of identity reflected in their English made suits
and hair done in the English style, when Linda and Bobby see a large number
of Africans in new clothes, the farmer comments on their “savage” ways! In In
the Free State, Linda comments: “Somewhere up there they’ve taken off their
nice new clothes and they are dancing naked and holding hands and eating
dung”. (105)
The things go bad to worse when they put up at the Hotel run by an old
Colonel who cannot adapt to the new conditions in the country. There, they
have dinner and they witness scene between the colonel and his servant Peter,
whom he accused of planning his murder. The two reach their destination but
not before witnessing the site where the king was recently murdered Bobby
was beaten by the army at the check point. The situation prevailed in Africa is
conveyed through the image of the hunting dogs that have gone wild on being
abandoned by their white masters. These dogs were used by their white masters
to attack Africans, becomes a danger to everyone. The dogs become suggestive
 Shirsath 127

of a wild A Free State into which the Africans themselves have fallen after
their white masters have left.
In A Free State, Naipaul concludes with his journal entitled, The Circus
at Luxor which forms the Epilogue Naipaul makes an unexpected gesture of
involvement. While in the prologue, he mutely witnessed the bullying of the
tramp, in the prologue he physically intervenes to put a stop to the drama of
human misery and indignity he witnesses the Luxor. The nation-building task
after independence becomes a major problem due to the fragmentation.
Apart from all these fictional and un-fictional novels Naipaul had also
written the diary entitled as A Congo Diary Naipaul’s travel diary of Zaire a
brief and unorganized collections of notes was published in a limited edition of
330 copies as A Congo Diary and The Overcrowded Barracoon. It is a
collection of essays published over years in various magazine and journals,
which are mentioned in the book along with the year of publication. In this
book there is no thematic unity. The book consists of four sections. Essays
entitled, ‘London’, ‘Jasmine’ and ‘East Indian’ play around the theme of his
identity, a concept with which he had to come to terms before he launched on a
more serious project. In the essay East Indian, he analyzes various aspects of
his identity.
A Way in the World is the collection of fictionalized and
autobiographical three pieces. Firstly Naipaul’s overarching perception of
Caribbean and post-colonial history secondly autobiographical reflections in
the light of his changing views and lastly intertwined with both of these are
thoughts regarding idealistic or revolutionary politics. The novel presents the
strivings of migrant societies, in Trinidad, coming firstly as indentured workers
from many parts of the world. The communities under the oppression of the
colonizer, suffered from inferiority because of their identity, as their ancestral
identities were not theirs. The displacement and cultural rootlessness led them
into the identity crisis, which force them to accept the hybridity. The novel
depicts the view of in Naipaul colonial past and present. A Way in the World’s
 Shirsath 128

narrative is mostly interlinked. Naipaul notes everything and everyone from the
great naval battles in the Caribbean Sea to the twentieth century protagonists of
secret organization, and writers involve in a conflict in a perennial state of role-
playing. The first section ‘An Inheritance’ begins by a recall of Naipaul’s
cyclical pattern of visit to Trinidad and his return. He found the dream like
quality changes in it. In this section the focus in on Leonard Side, a mortician
of Port of Spain boy. He taught women the art of icing with his devilish
looking hairy fingers. Though in his professional way he used to decorated the
dead bodies, the first part of book is the mixture of awe and terror Side, a
Mohammedan of the Indian origin decorating christen bodies making of nice
things as well as decorating the dead body beautiful upsets the narrator.
The second section, ‘A Smell of Fish Glue’ began when the young man
in between fishing school and leaving Trinidad was waiting for a scholarship.
He had a small time job in the Registrar General’s office. Linked is related to
Naipaul’s biographical and historical details. His visit is Port-of Spain
excursions the child narrator’s excellent and awe at the city spectacle with its
English street names. The references to the building housing and offices of
Port of Spain Gazette Guardian and the Trinidad Guardian are connected chain
of child narrator into the register general’s office: Nazaralli Baksh, the tailor
who made the last pair of clothes that narrator takes with him to England, the
early impressions about race by his friend’s father Evander and the narrator’s
struggles for the black men to attain respectable positions in the race and
violence torn Trinidad of various strands. It is significant experiment. It deals
with the various standards of the Caribbean background; it is inseparable from
the background.
The Enigma of Arrival closely resembles to Naipaul’s early years passed
in a tropical island, his study in England and all the ups and downs of his
writing career. The first section offers a study of man a writer from Trinidad
named Jack. Who went to live in a lonely valley in Wiltshire. It is an
autobiographical novel. It depicts the portrait of the intellectual the landscape
 Shirsath 129

of one who has long o reach the high status of the mind above all other forms
of life. Naipaul’s narrator in The Enigma of Arrival exemplifies commentators
concerns. The man is from a colonized Caribbean island speaks of England in
the first section entitled, as ‘Jack’s Garden’ Naipaul described a garden full of
the life and subtleness and greets a man called Jack who is the owner of the
property throughout the chapter he realizes that Jack has not-always lived there
and that Jack has created the beauty of the garden with his bare hands which
influences the narrator to believe that the surrounding of a home plays the role
in the person’s characteristics. As he gets old Jack dies in the dampness of his
cottage and garden, the new people move in, which indicates a change of
guard. The garden turns into a farm under the leadership of the new owners. In
The Enigma of Arrival, Naipaul describes the period when he lived in a cottage
on the Wiltshire estate. In his V.S. Naipaul’s Contemporary Writers, Peter
Hughes states,
Most recent of these visionary worlds appear in the ‘plateaux of
light’, the historical past of England and Rome that the narrator
of The Enigma of Arrival creates out of the landscapes, houses
and people he returns to live among. He returns to the other
worlds of his books however, and each stage of his life in that
Wiltshire countryside, including its beginnings, is directly related
to a crisis in his writing career. …And his meditations… circle
repetitively and then cyclically around images of decline that
become intimations of his mortality and confrontation with death.
(77)
Naipaul describes Stephen Tennant, sunset scene, over Stonehenge. He
watches the changes in the landscape, and the moment of the season with an
innocent eye as a child watches first time. His presence in landscape is as a part
of historical process when he came to Wiltshire. In the second chapter, ‘The
Journey’ he focuses more on his experiences and thoughts when he first entered
in England. The journey from Trinidad to England with a scholarship received
 Shirsath 130

to attends Oxford. ‘The Journey’ deals with several aspects of the writing
process of the protagonist-narrator. It is Naipaul who tells the story of his life
as an aspiring writer of winning scholarship and undertaking the journey. He
also reflects on his development as the writer and quotes.
In the chapter, ‘Ivy’, Naipaul makes a vast and first appearance with his
landlord who drives by him in his flashy and elegant car the land lord of the
house also symbolizes the fading imperial of the house, also symbolizes the
fading imperial world and Naipaul stands for the newly emerging third world
writer. Naipaul also revises his own view of England which was earlier a
colonial view. In the last two chapters, ‘Rooks’ and ‘The Ceremony of
Farewell’, The narrator talks about Alan the writer in his novel who is a native
towards English culture and understands the concept of the English. The
Painting of Chirico is identical to the name of the novel. It also talks about the
journey to Wiltshire the surprise in Naipaul’s life that gave him the power to
accept chance. The story ends with the death of Naipaul’s sister Sati in
Trinidad and the description of the Hindu ceremony that follows to honor her
life. The death of his sister, Sati brings awareness that unifies the writer with
large, the idea of both the life of man and the uneven journey to death is the
motif.
Half a Life is mainly the story of Willie Somerset Chandra. Half a Life
centers on the life and fortunes of the protagonist Willie Chandran who tries to
find a place for himself through writing. The novel deals with the cultural clash
of exile, the homelessness and dislocation arising out of colonial oppression
and post-colonial situation. The narrator moves to three continents in search for
home and to find out his roots. The novel opens with the beginning of Willie
Chandra’s search for his roots as Willie asks his father “Why is my middle
name Somerset?” (HL 1) The novel highlights the facts that man is at the mercy
of social and political forces and own personal liking for Willie Chandran, his
name was his destiny half of his name does not belong to him, as it was
borrowed from famous writer Somerset Maugham, his first name proclaims
 Shirsath 131

him as a Christian whereas his surname signifies his mixed ancestry. Half a
Life is a novel in three parts, scattered over three continents, India, England and
Africa - The first part is set in post-independence India at the politically
protected court of the maharaja, living with his Brahmin father who tells Willie
Chandran the story of how he married a low caste, woman for the sake of his
political ideal whom he never loved. The marriage was in the interest of his
political ideal. Willie Chandran obtained scholarship with the help from one of
his father’s contacts in London. He joins the immigrant bohemian society of
Notting Hill and gets an opportunity to write radio pieces for the BBC. In
London he came in contact with a lot of people belonging is different races,
who had came to London to try their luck, sick of his privileged life as a
Brahmin and eager to follow the footsteps of Gandhi, Willie’s father made an
vow to turn back on his family and do the noble thing that may be possible
which was to marry the lowest person, so he married a dark-skinned woman of
a lower caste. Chandran got acquainted with Roger, a young lawyer who wrote
a weekly London letter for a provincial paper. He showed Roger the stories
written during his school days. He advised Chandran to write about real rather
than out of reach, imaginary thing. So, Willie read Hemingway specially his
The Killer and used the art of writing from The Killer as a model. Willie was
surprise that writing gave him to look in the life. In Half a Life, he states that
writing “gave him a new way of looking at his family and his life, and over the
next few days he found the matter of many stories of a new sort. The stories
seemed to be just waiting for him; he was surprised he hadn’t seen them before;
and he wrote fast for three or four weeks. The writing then began to lead him to
difficult things, things he couldn’t face, and he stopped”. (102) He saw that
people in London wanted West Indian people to drive the buses but nobody
rent rooms for the accommodation for the black people. So, some black people
like Percy were encouraged to buy properties and rent to West Indian drivers.
The third part of the novel is straight narrative. It is describes by Willie to his
sister Sarojini. Willie Chandran found himself in African country where he
 Shirsath 132

came in contact with Ana. Ana had African blood and a family estate in the
country. She is a mixed Portuguese and black African Girl, who admires his
book, and they arrange to meet. They fall in love and Willie follows to her
country an unnamed Portuguese colony in Africa. Meanwhile Willie’s sister
Sarojini marries a German and moves to Berlin. The novel ends with Willie
having moved to his sister’s place in Berlin after his 18 years stay in Africa.
Magic Seeds is a sequel of Naipaul’s Half a Life. Magic Seeds picks up
where Half a Life left off. Willie Somerset Chandran a transplanted Indian
living with his sister in Berlin. He was forced to come to Germany after a
revolution in an unnamed African country. Magic Seeds is the sequel to Half a
Life. In the first novel Willie leaves his family ashram in India to be a
scholarship university student in England during World War II. Willie lives
with his sister Sarojini in Berlin with the memories of 18 years wasted in
Africa. He has irritated Sarojini with his indolence. She is an idealistic she is
idealistic who makes documentaries for German television about
revolutionaries correcting social inequities. She impressed by an Indian thinker
who proposes recasting his country without the class warfare that turned other
revolutions into bloodbaths, and she pushes her brother to join the
philosopher’s rebel army, which has succeeded in taking over a rural region
Willie acquiesces, thinks such a commitment in revolution might bring purpose
to his life. After much hardship, he is taken to a rebel training camp. Long
sections are in the form of letters to his sister. He was forced to come to
Germany after a revolution in African country. His sister arranges for him to
return in India and become involved with communist guerrillas over there,
Sarojini admires Kandapalli a revolutionary and Willie joins his movement. He
accepts this mission, but without any real sense of commitment to the rebels
cause. He immediately realizes that there has been some mistake and he has
fallen among the wrong people, but involved with them partly out of Inertia
and party out of fear that his farmer comrades might kill him and sticks with
them for seven years. In the area they are active; the group has the ability to
 Shirsath 133

establish hold over villages and parts of great grassy area of territory; there is
too much land very far from any cities or towns, for the government is was not
easily.
The guerrillas have some success, but it is limited with the little hope for
grand or revolutionary accomplishment over the long term. Their ideology was
not clear for what they fight for adapted to the situation they find themselves
in, there’s no attempt to improve the life of the peasants, but force them to
serve the revolution around them. It was very boring life for Willie as it was
aimless to him. He simply works as courier posted ante letters from his sister in
Germany. Willie lost soul and unable to find a hold in the real world.
Eventually he gets captured and imprisoned and he prefer to a life on the run.
He released from the prison when his English friend Roger arranges for an old
collection of his short stories to be republished which cause some
embarrassment to the Indian government Willie moves to London and there he
finds himself in an upper middle class social set and he slowly drifts into the
life in the suburbs.
3.4 Summing Up
V.S. Naipaul is a post-colonial Diaspora writer known for his
multinational vision of writing. He is a product of ‘Diaspora’ a common feature
of twentieth century life. His Hindu immigrant background, upbringing in
Trinidad and flight to England for advanced study makes his vision multi-
dimensional, vast and complex. The West Indies view him as an Englishman
because of his British education; English look upon him as an Indian for his
ancestry and the colour of his skin: and Indians regard him a West Indian
writing. Many third world immigrant writers live in London; the imperial
metropolitan city is Naipaul’s creative activity center. Though he had back to
Trinidad or wishes to go to his original home India. Among such challenges
Naipaul blossomed as a writer in England. He is a writer of the Diaspora. He
failed to search his roots but has established himself as an expatriate writer.
 Shirsath 134

Colonial world is highlighted in his novels. He himself considers as a

man without roots. He appears a natural outsider and interwove his own
feelings, with others. His recurring themes the past and to the land where he
lived is due to the loss of the sense of history. He pursuits the story after story,
and it has autobiographical links. He started writing in London about the East
Indian minority in the Caribbean. The West Indian hybrid society made up of
Negroes, whites and Asians who lacked a common tradition. So he realized to
seek his own literary tradition. He channelizes new themes from the West
Indies, in experiments with the literary form of the novel. His father was his
role model. In the first stage Dickensian influence was on his writing He wrote
comedies like Miguel Street, Mystic Masseur and The Suffrage of Elvira. It is a
humorous portrayal of the Third world newly independent countries. A House
for Mr. Biswas is a sort of fictional biography of his journalist father
Surajprasad Naipaul. Mr. Stone and the Knight Companion is the only novel
with English theme. A Bend in the River and Guerilla explored the post-
colonial scenario in Africa. In a Free State he deals with the concept of
freedom from various angles in the post-modern style. A Way in the World
contains stories about people, drawn from historical manuscripts and
reminiscences; An Area of Darkness was the outcome of his first visit to India
and India: A Wounded Civilization is the second book on India, India: A
Million Mutinies Now is Naipaul’s third book in it he has analyzed and
explained the constructions of his own first response to India. A House for Mr.
Biswas, The Middle Passage and The Miguel Street explore the themes of
identity crisis, rootlessness and colonized problems. The Suffrage of Elvira is
the exploration of theme of second elections in 1990 in Trinidad. Among the
Believers, Beyond Belief Islamic Journey, Apart from these he has written
many articles, short stories and news articles. He is the well-known writer of
the 20th Century.
Thus, Naipaul’s writing covers the huge canvass where he portrays the
fractured identity of individuals who strive hard for stable identity in the
 Shirsath 135

atmosphere of post-colonialism. The issues he has discussed in his novels are

identity crisis, essentials of individual as well as political freedom, elements of
hybridity and its effects and ethnicity and many more. His novels intellectually
document the physical, mental and cultural dislocation of the people on the
account of colonization. Accordingly, his works point the urgent need to have a
collective campaign for human welfare making his characters world citizen,
global fellows by going beyond of each and every wall of discrimination.
Therefore, they are always in search of their identity. They move and move like
Naipaul himself and thus become global. They are confined to a specific
country. They suffer from rootlessness and struggle and strive to survive. They
try their best to find their home in their ideal at every place, but they are
frustrated everywhere to find such place. They cannot feel at home at either at
the place of their origin or of their ancestors. So, they get a view of their place
in their imagination, preferably a place like England.
Naipaul’s writing project the image of modern world as fractured state
of chaos, instability and uncertainty. He finds everyone as rootless, lonely and
in search of a home. He finds people from the modern world displaced and
suffered a lot. This is all Naipaul’s perception of the modern world where
modern man suffers from a kind of dilemma of identity and survival. In the
course of time Naipaul’s characters realize that human life is full of
complications; and therefore, they swing in between the two worlds of illusion
and reality being conscious of it.
The main concern of Naipaul’s writings is to pinpoint the problem of the
fractured identity of modern man which is a result of his being heterogeneous.
This is the reason why his protagonists feel rootless, alienated, and uncertain.
Even their shifting from a place to another place doesn’t help find solace.
Therefore, they get the feeling of being marginalized and expatriate. All this
results into their feeling helplessness due to which they work more and more
and find no desire, vision and destination.
 Shirsath 136

Thus, Naipaul’s works present a world of displaced situation in the life

of the modern man who wanders in search of prospects and happiness. His
works give glimpses into the socio-political and psychological history of the
world today. They offer the multifaceted chaotic world scenario very
poignantly. His fiction appears historical and geographical documentary
exploring both inner and the external reality as well. The protagonists of
Naipaul’s fiction bring out the complexity of the present day rootless
generations striving to establish identity and order in life. They struggle to
transform their chaotic world and for manipulating their life. Naipaul’s vision
is clear and entirely unique in his exploration of the third world reality. His
works offer a journey of analysis, exploration, clarification, confirmation and
confrontation.
 Shirsath 137

Works Cited
Aamer, Hussein. “Delivering Truth: An Interview with V. S. Naipaul.” Times
Literary Supplement. 2 Sept. 1994
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. 1994. Routledge, 2004.
Boehmer, Elleke. Colonial & Postcolonial Literature. OUP, 1995.
Derrick, A.C. “Naipaul’s Technique as a Novelist.” The Journal of
Commonwealth Literature, 1969.
Enright, D.J. “The Sensibility of V.S. Naipaul: Who is India?” Man is an
Onion: Essays and Review. Ed. D. J. Enright. 1972. Library Press,
1973.
Garebian, Keith. “V.S. Naipaul’s – Negative Sense of Place”. The Journal of
Commonwealth Literature. Vol. X, No. 1, Aug 1975.
Gupta, Suman. V.S. Naipaul. Atlantic, 2010.
Hamner, Robert D. Critical Perspectives on V.S. Naipaul. Heinemann, 1979.
Hegel, G.W.F. “Introduction,” The Philosophy of History. Trans. J. Sibree,
1836. Dover, 1956.
Hughes, Peter. V.S. Naipaul: Contemporary Writers. Routledge, 1988
Kamra, Shashi. The Novels of V.S. Naipaul: A Study in Theme and Form.
Prestige, 1990.
White, Landeg. V.S. Naipaul. Macmillan, 1975.
Morris, Robert K. Paradoxes of Order: Some Perspectives on the Fiction of
V.S. Naipaul. University of Missouri Press, 1975.
Naipaul V.S. A Bend in the River. 1979, Clarion, 1980.
--- . A House of Mr. Biswas. 1969
--- . A Turn in the South. Penguin, 1964. 1989.
--- . A Way in the World. Heinemann, 1994.
--- . Among The Believers. 1981, Penguin, 1982
--- . An Area of Darkness. 1964, Penguin, 1968.
--- . Beyond Belief. Vintage, 1998.
--- . Finding the Centre: Two Narratives, 1984. Penguin, 1985.
 Shirsath 138

--- . Guerrillas. Andre Deutsch, 1975.

--- . In a Free State. Andre Deutsch, 1971, 1972.
--- . India: A Million Mutinies Now. 1990. Penguin, 1992.
--- . India: A Wounded Civilization. 1964, Penguin, 1979.
--- . The Middle Passage, Andre Deutsch, 1962.
--- . The Miguel Street. 1959, Penguin, 1964.
--- . The Mimic Men. Penguin, 1984.
--- . The Mystic Masseur. 1957, Penguin, 1982.
--- . The Overcrowded Barracoon. Penguin, 1967, 1972.
--- . The Loss of El Dorado. 1964, Andre Deutsch, 1969.
--- . Reading and Writing: A Personal Account. New York Review of Books,
2000.
--- . The Return of Eva Peron. Penguin, 1983.
--- . The Suffrage of Elvira, Penguin, 1982.
Niven, Alastair. Interview. V. S. Naipaul talks to Alastair Niven. 15 March
1993. Wasafiri. 21, Spring, 1995.
Nixon, Rob. London Calling: V.S. Naipaul, Post-colonial Mandarin, OUP,
1962.
Pritchett, V.S. “Climacteric, Critical Perspective”. Critical Perspectives on V.
S. Naipaul. Ed. Robert D. Hammer. Heinemann, 1979.
Selwyn R. Cudjoe. V.S. Naipaul: A Materialist Reading. University of
Massachusetts Press 1988.
Thieme, John. The Web of Tradition: Uses of Allusion in V.S. Naipaul’s
Fiction, Dangaroo Press, 1987.
 Shirsath 139

Chapter 4

Thematic Patterns in V.S. Naipaul’s Select Novels

4.0 Preliminaries
V. S. Naipaul’s novels depict very poignantly and realistically the
condition of modern man from the half made societies of the colonial and
postcolonial times, as he himself is the product of such societies and therefore,
he feels at home in analyzing their condition. Almost all of Naipaul’s works
talk about the pains, pangs and experiences of the colonized people. The
societies of such people generally lack any goal and the real direction to
develop with its people. Naipaul’s early works portray the condition and state
of the society of his country of birth, Trinidad. But slowly a measurable shift is
seen in his later works which concentrate on the condition, plight and pangs of
such people in other countries and societies as well.
Naipaul becomes an analyzer of all Third World countries from a
preoccupation with the traumas of displacement and dilemma of finding a new
place in the New World, he moves to his concerns with the aftermath of
migration and decolonization. In the words of N. Ramadevi in her book, The
Novels of V.S. Naipaul: Quest for order and Identity aptly brings out:
Naipaul takes up the more crucial question of whether thinks in the
Third World have not declined after the colonies have been
emancipated. As Third World intellectuals have themselves ascribed,
most of the present barbarities and degradations are to be seen in their
own histories, which were bad before colonialism and bad after
colonialism (21).
Naipaul’s works explore how the colonized world including its people,
its culture, its traditions, its resources are deployed in the course of colonialism,
and how at the same time it affected the world positively too. He deals with the
very paradoxical state of being that the modern man strives his best for his
 Shirsath 140

individuality on one hand, while realizes the reality of being the part of this
global world on the other.
Alienation, exile, disintegration of the social order, the sense of
rootlessness, diasporic experiences, migration, colonialism and post-
colonialism are the most important themes of the World literature in the present
times. Naipaul’s fictional works very clearly underline that his people represent
the modern men truthfully. Talking about the themes in Naipaul’s fiction,
William Walsh rightly points out,
Themes for Naipaul assume the forms of action and ideas applied to him
only in so far as they satisfy for him, as per Henry James “The appetite
for the illustrational”. His vision is his own, innervated by contemporary
social clichés or political routine…. He is engaged with the stresses and
strains we recognize as crucial in our experience. His writing is nervous
and present…. This together with the mixture in him of creeds, cultures
and continents with his expatriate career, his being able to practice an art
in and totally dissimilar worlds. All gives him a peculiarly contemporary
quality (3).
Naipaul’s writing has a unique quality as to analyze others creatively
through self-analysis. Although his writing appears autobiographical, it
certainly gets transformed into creative and objective portrayal of experiences
and rootless condition of the masses. He doesn’t romanticize or idealize
anything he likes; he is not biased for anything as liking or else.
The Diaspora writers made their special place of pride among English
Literature. Alvine Toffler in Future Shock says that the modern man belongs to
“a new race of nomads.”(75) Post-colonial literature focused on the realities,
experienced by the colonized people. Naipaul’s subjects and themes search
new literary forms suitable for the complexities of the modern world. V.S.
Naipaul, a descendent and one of the most controversial writers of today, was
grown up in an impoverished rural Hindu speaking area of Trinidad. His
writings talks about the colonial consciousness. He hated the narrow and brutal
 Shirsath 141

life surrounded in colonial Trinidad, where he had born and brought up. He is a
rationalist, secular and strong believer in Western individualism, though
emotionally he was attracted towards Indian fatalism. His writing provides the
space for Passivity and philosophy. During his school days, he earned
scholarship to Oxford University, where he had his higher education. While
studying he started working for BBC as a freelance writer. His job was small
and uncertain. He utilized his spare time in study and writing. Eventually, he
made good progress in writing and published several books. Today, he is one
of the best writers in Modern English Literature. Naipaul has carved his place
in British fiction by his extraordinary quality of writing. He won several
literary awards during his writing career including the highest one ‘the Nobel
Prize’. Even if Naipaul is recognized as the global persona, who created his
place in literature, through his writing he considered himself as rootless.
Naipaul in an interview with Hamilton Ian, clarifies that despite of being
outsider in London and suffering from rootlessness, he has struck his roots on a
literary and cultural level in London. London is his literary and commercial
home. In an interview with Hamilton Ian, he replied, “I’m touched by it, asked
Naipaul. Without London, without the generosity of the people in London, of
critics and editor, one would have been trying to write in a wilderness, without
any sort of tradition behind oneself. It would have been an important
occupation. So that has mattered to me, Yes”. (987-989) Naipaul is an
anglicized model of the immigrant Hindu in the West Indies. He remains
outsider in England because socially and culturally he cannot relate to England
and India due to his stay in Trinidad hundred miles away in the New World.
All these sufferings of Naipaul appear in the form of theme in Naipaul’s
novels.
4.1 Major Themes
The majority of Naipaul’s novels deal with Trinidadian themes. They
are connected with diasporic experiences of those people. They can be
discussed in detail as follows:
 Shirsath 142

Migration and Diasporic Existence

The question of national belonging is reflected in the literatures of the
Diaspora along with others of internationalism, of divided loyalties. The
concept of Diaspora is old. Different ethnic groups based on their different
original cultural heritages in the domain of post-colonial literature focus on the
theme of Diaspora and migration. V.S. Naipaul himself experienced, and
repeatedly described in fiction the same theme. As a colonial, V.S. Naipaul has
always needed to locate his place in the world through writing. Naipaul had no
proper tradition of literary discourse to depend on. As a result, he has to
construct a natural and human background of his own special way, for his
readers, which made it necessary for him to look outward. The moving forces
of his novels and essay are more often of social order and culture. Twice
displaced from his ancestral homeland of India, V.S. Naipaul thinks himself as
the diasporic writer. Naipaul identifies diasporic identity with hybridism, cross-
cultures, and contaminated social and cultural regimes.
The effects of displacement of people, their forced migration, their
deportation, their voluntary emigration, and their movement to new lands,
where they made themselves masters over others or became subject of the
master of their own new homes repeated down the years. Naipaul in his essays,
and many interviews made his own myth, that a writer as a displaced person
have no community, one who is an entirely an individual, a man without a
home are his heroes in his novels. Expatriation as a state of mind pleases him.
It looks as he is at home in expatriation, Naipaul’s inability to accept any
country as his home, in spite of his struggle to do so is due to a deeper
exploration and understanding. The fact relates to his own sensibility, which
developed out of his stay in Trinidad as an immigrant and then in London,
again as an immigrant.
Homesickness or the rejection of home or longing for a house or
homelessness becomes motivating factors in his novels. Migration is out of his
quest for home, and therefore his writing is the literature of home. Naipaul has
 Shirsath 143

a more subjective approach towards the problems or identity crisis, especially,

on India and most of his novels have autobiographical touch. He has a fact in
mind that home can only have meaning once on experience a level of
displacement from it. In his Bring Memory to Silence, Myers Lettie observed:
To be an Indian from Trinidad, them, is to be unlikely and exotic. It is
also to be a little fraudulent. But so all immigrants become. . . They
have adopted the language of the sheltering country and their own
language has become a secret gibberish. Immigrants are people on their
own. They cannot be judged by the standards of their older culture. (79)
V.S. Naipaul was born and brought up in Trinidad in a family of Hindu
immigrants settled there. His ancestors had migrated as indentured laborers
there. He narrated, this repeatedly in several novels. In An Area of Darkness, he
narrated that his ancestors come from India. He remembers some characters
from ‘Gold Teeth Nanee’, who was his mother’s family friend and Bapu from
Trinidad. Naipaul grew up in the midst of all these people. He writes, that India
in a special way been the background of his childhood. A special Indian
atmosphere prevailed, there and the impact of their living was deep on Naipaul.
When Naipaul was in search of a West Indian tradition to commence his
writing this immigrant Indian community served as a good model for him. V.S.
Naipaul progressed from, this starting point and in the effort, he brought is it
refinement of education, knowledge of classics and the English literary
tradition. Naipaul an established writer of repute has twenty three books in his
credit. Naipaul is a multi-layered international writer and the question of his
identity crops up because of his immigrant background and displacement.
Naipaul’s novels’ themes center on varieties of dislocations, migration, exile,
the idea of being unanchored and displaced, the enigma of a decentered and
disorienting experience in the explosive and disconcerting realities of the post-
colonial world. In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon had written about
this problem as, “The only thing that will give us an international dimension…
It is at the heart of national consciousness that international consciousness lives
 Shirsath 144

and grows. And this too-fold emerging is ultimately the source of all culture”.
(199)
The memories of immigrant’s homelands, social life with social taboos,
inherited lifestyles, and customs keep fear in the minds of migrants and make
their loneliness more acute. Naipaul’s confession to his mother is indicative of
this. He thinks that he will die if he stays longer in Trinidad. He details of the
place as small, but the people of it are pretty with wrong values and racial
prejudices. While the world is pretty awful, he doesn’t take it a suitable place
for him to stay there longer.
V.S. Naipaul’s A Way in the World, which is published nearly two
decade ago, opened a series of questions about deeds of a human being in the
human world, that means ‘doing’ and ‘not doing’ of a human being, while
attaining his goal. The theme is based about the responsibility or remaking the
world or the choice to write the world instead. The novel has nine chapters,
including some autobiography about Naipaul’s youth in Trinidad, efforts to
begin as a writer, and encounters with Foster Morris, the narrator’s fiction
mentor in England. The story of Naipaul’s narrator’s life is posed to those of
Trinidad would be revolutionaries. Woven between these sections, are three
unwritten stories, that construct historical encounters with people, including
Francisco Miranda and Sir Walter Raleigh. A Way in the World performs life of
Erich Auer Bach’s historical being, who comes into consciousness of himself
in history, and the experiences historical multiplicity, an ethical vocation,
which requires constant interrogation of heritage, birthright, home and work in
the world. Diaspora theme comes, when the narrator searches for his home
identity.
Naipaul remains unmindful of the Trinidad that made him; the India that
had haunted him and the England that housed him. “While justifying Naipaul’s
travel experiences, one can locate him in that he is a citizen of the world, and
that his culture and identity are relatively movable and unfixed.” (Kalita 82)
Naipaul’s violent intolerance of other and forceful individualism are exposed in
 Shirsath 145

this novel, A Way in the World. Writing of Naipaul in the 21st century is the
reanimation of late 20th century that discourses on post-coloniality, Diaspora,
migration, alienation, translation and acknowledgment. His novels mostly
depend on the theme of migration as he has the same experience in his own
life. In A Way in the World, Leonard Side, a mortician of Port of Spain, a
Mohammedan of the Indian origin is as disconnected like the crest. The
mystery of ancestry or inheritance is something like living through memories
one carries of thousand of beings.
The feeling of attachment with the place in new world is very well
described by the narrator:
The town had been important for me. Its discovery had been one of the
pleasures of my childhood: The discovery of fine buildings, squares,
fountains, gardens, beautiful thing meant only to please people. Yet I
had known the colonial town for only ten years. To me it had always
been a strange place, a place I had come to form somewhere else, and
was still getting to know. Now on this return I felt it had passed to other
hands. (AWW 33)
In A Way in the World, the narrator negotiates the relationship to the
marginal nation of his birth, the history that threatens to determine him and the
central Western canon into, which he strives to write himself. The writer-
narrator presents the characteristic society of migrants in Trinidad, coming
firstly as indentured workers from many parts of a world. The communities
under the oppression of the colonizer suffered from inferiority, because of their
vacant cultural identity, as their ancestral identities were not theirs’ any more.
In A Way in the World, societies of migrants coming from many parts of the
world such as India, China, African countries come together to give birth to the
new society of Trinidad and Tobago. Naipaul’s writings continued to be
appropriated by dissertations, anthological. The character of Lebrun in A Way
in the World is revolutionary one. He is depicted as one of the prophets of
black revolution. Although his name is not found in the history books, he
 Shirsath 146

worked patiently for years and had been all one of the African and Caribbean
liberation movements. Naipaul nevertheless remains stick to certain
identification. England may be his chosen home, but the author is not English.
A self-proclaimed exile was on him but not for it and not of it. The lawyer
Evander, a man with a revolutionary dream, who appeals him on the level of
identity politics, his voice sounds in that of the narrator of A Way in the World.
He wanted only to be a white and to have nothing to do with the blacks; and he
was interested only in fighting for himself.
The Enigma of Arrival is an experience in the Diaspora, as it constitutes
one aspect of the act of migration. The title of the book itself indicates the act
of migration, as the name of the book is The Enigma of Arrival. That is
migration in literal term across national frontiers and from rural to city and
beyond the literal-migration of ideas it images from old self to new ones. Due
to migration a new land or being connected histories of migration, the diasporic
subject faces the Enigma of Arrival. Diasporic past always affects the diasporic
present. The Enigma of Arrival is mostly an autobiography including travel
writing, analysis, and function. The book is composed of five sections, which
reflects the growing familiarity and changing perceptions of the author, upon
his arrival in various countries after he leaves his native Trinidad and Tobago.
The descriptions of writer’s period of residence in a village near Salisbury, an
isolated time, reflected intermittently the writer’s past. The impact of thought
of missing his homeland is presented in each and every line of this novel.
While walking in Jack’s garden, many ideas worked in writer’s mind and many
things happened.
The main part of the novel takes place in Wiltshire in England. The
narrator writes about his colonial past and the colonizer’s heritage, the writer’s
past as a struggling writer and his present position as an established writer, of
his Trinidad roots and his sense of belonging to England. The writer entered a
cottage in the countryside, on the eve of the arrival, he sees the area near his
cottage as a frozen piece of history unchanged for several hundred years, as his
 Shirsath 147

stay gets extended he begins to see the area surrounded him. He realizes that
the place is a constantly changing place. The narrator revealed from Trinidad
the immigration experience in detail in this novel. He re-examines his own
emigration from Trinidad to New York and his subsequent removal to England
and Oxford. With a desire to prove himself he develops the tender sense of an
unaccommodating world.
Naipaul’s narration illustrates the growing understanding of his place in
this new environment and the very complex relations of the people and the land
around them. As he states,
Fifty years ago, there have been no room for me on the estate; even now,
my presence was a little unlikely. But more than accident had brought
me here. Or rather, in the series of accidents that had brought me to the
manor cottage, with a view of the restored church, there was a clear
historical line. The migration, within the British Empire, from India to
Trinidad had given me the English language as my own, and a particular
kind of education. This had partly seeded my wish to be a writer in a
particular mode, and had committed me to the literary career I had been
following in England for twenty years. (EOA 55)
Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival and A Way in the World clearly
illustrate his nostalgia for his own homeland. In The Enigma of Arrival,
Naipaul describes Jack, living at the end of an age, a remnant of the past, living
in the middle useless, among the ruins of nearly a century. While describing so
he stretches the meaning to see, him as a Wordsworthian figure, bent going
gravely about his peasant tasks, as in the Lake District Solitude. The writer-
narrator searches through every house, manor, garden, hedge, agricultural
paraphernalia, road but sees the subtle seeds of decline that have already made
life full of retrained sorrow, and an anguished tolerance. Jack’s situation in the
post war age is an imagination through which, Naipaul expands his
formulations remarkably to convey a whole ruined past beyond his isolated
figure.
 Shirsath 148

In a book, A Way in the World, the theme of homeland is very

interestingly described. Naipaul’s sense of terribly missing his homeland is
very well expressed thus: “I’ve thought a lot about that. And I think, father, that
the difference between us, who are Indians, or half Indians, and people like
the Spaniards and the English and the Dutch and the French, people who know
how to go where they are going, I think that for them the world is a safer
place”. (AWW 205) The writer very well portrays migration and Diaspora
experience through the characters in both the novels, The Enigma of Arrival
and A Way in the World.
V.S. Naipaul himself is very much interested in migration, because his
biography says how he moved from Trinidad to London. His marriage with Pat,
his increased passion for travel and his characters in the novels, like him
migrate from one place to another. He wrote the novels with great speed during
the early months of 1957. As migration and Diaspora are the heart of Asian
history, Naipaul’s novels also stand for migration and Diaspora. The forces of
history are furiously at work and Naipaul as the writer has a towering vision of
it. The following lines of The Enigma of Arrival express it well: “…Cities like
London were to change. They were to cease being more or less national cities.
They were to become cities of the world, modern day Rome.” (EOA 154)
Half a Life and Magic Seeds are framed in relation with the subject of
cultural difference, and the complex and shifting identities of shame and
respond spatial politics of belonging. The writer-narrator uses various
theoretical frameworks to explore diverse groups of people with variety of
experience in a wide range of cities. In London life, Willie, the protagonist
comes close to few people living half-life in their own way, sharing the feeling
of dislocation. Percy Cato was one of them. Some of them appear that of mixed
parentage like Jamaican who was more brown than black. Willie and Percy,
both exotics, both on scholarships, had been wary of one another in the
beginning, but later they exchanged stories of their antecedents.
 Shirsath 149

The old Indian Diaspora of indentured laborers and the modern Indian
Diaspora of I.T. Technocrats have an inherent exilic state in all dislocated lives,
whether it is voluntary or involuntary migration. Therefore, Diaspora is
interconnected with migration, displacement, whether forced or self-imposed in
many ways brings a calamity. A peculiar point is that writers in their
displacement act as a stimulant for them. Immigration threatens one with the
loss of heritage, which an immigrant desperately tries to preserve in language;
attrition of heritage, language finds an important place in the immigrant
mindscape. Language is the tool to expressed existence of the power, which
aggravates the sense of alienation. The immigrant’s life in a foreign land and
his escape depends on his adaptability of that alien country. An inability to
forget the native language casts a shadow on the immigrant’s prospects in his
adopted country, Naipaul understand the grief of losing one’s language. In his
Nobel lecture, Naipaul revealed the pain of migration and consequent loss.
Further when he travelled to Ana’s country from Southampton, he had realized
the fact that frequent changes occurred in the setting. While traveling through
the Mediterranean, Willie was trying to deal with the knowledge that had come
to him on the ship that his home language had almost disappeared, that his
English was going, that he did not carry his own expression.
In Magic Seeds, the first line indicates movability; it hints the migration
of the narrator, “It had begun many years before, in Berlin. Another world. He
was living there in a temporary, half-and-half way with his sister Sarojini”. (1)
Naipaul’s Half a Life is a novel to date, a study of the dishonest
bargains, of immigrants for their identity. It represents the most successful
point of narrator’s career. The action of the novel moves from India to England
to Africa. The son of a Brahmin ascetic, and his lower-caste wife, Willie
Chandran grow up sensing the hollowness at the centre of his father’s self-
denial and bowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the
immigrant and literary Bohemians of 1950 London, to an easily achieved and
 Shirsath 150

unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portuguese colony in

East Africa, where he finds happiness, he then compelled to betray.
Half a Life is the story of Willie Chandran, whose father was the son of
a successful clerk and proud Brahmin. He was always difficult at school. When
his teacher told him to read Wordsworth and Coleridge, he discussed it as a
pack of lies and ruined his career. He abandoned his college degree and
submitted himself to a political first sacrifice. Heeding the call of Mahatma
Gandhi he turned his back on his Brahmin heritage. Chandran’s father believed
himself as an idealist by marrying a low-caste girl in response to the call of the
Mahatma. He bid to English literature and abandoned his education. He
married a woman of a low-caste and then had the mixed feeling of pleasure of
embracing an untouchable woman. But later he had rebelled, ashamed and
moved.
The novel moves around Naipaul’s familiar themes of dislocation, racial
intersection, shame, and class, ultimately Willie’s is a migration of minor social
excursion. Willie is like an alien. He arrives in London not knowing anything.
He drifts himself from bar to dinner parties, to newspaper offices, and his fun
lies in watching, and observing odd social customs, and out of place sad class.
Naipaul presents London as, a town of impressionable young heirs, still
learning to promote them in a world shaped by imperial forbears. Everyone
looks up at to his or her ancestors for having created such splendor. Willie falls
in love with Ana, gets married, and moves to Portuguese East Africa. He spent
18 years there, as his middle class wife is mainly a Portuguese. Willie submits
to the consolations of Bourgeois comfort. Willie discovers sensuality in his
sexual relationship and feels sorry for his father, who never had the chance in
India, because of their ignorance towards lovemaking ideas and orthodox
background.
Naipaul’s Magic Seeds continues the story of Willie Chandran,
continuously dissatisfied, and self destructively native protagonist of his best
setting Half a Life. He left his wife and livelihood in Africa, Willie persuaded
 Shirsath 151

to return to his native India to join an underground movement on behalf of its

oppressed lower-caste. Instead, he finds himself in the company of dilettantes
and psychopaths relentlessly hunt by police and rejected by the people, he
wanted to liberate. This is one stop in a quest for authenticity that takes in all
the fanaticism, and folly in the postmodern era. Moving with dreamlike
swiftness from gorilla encampment to prison cell from the squalor the rural
India to glut and moral desolation of 1980, Magic Seeds is a novel of hidden
meaning power. This book is full of migration and diasopric feelings of the
protagonist, Willie Chandran’s search for his identity.
Identity Crisis
V.S. Naipaul’s subject of writing is the third world under colonialism,
revolution and cultural conflicts due to his own identity crisis he had faced. His
characters too suffer from and face the problem of identity; everywhere they go
get the feeling of insecurity and therefore, they get the feeling of rootlessness
and that of loss of identity.
The book, A Way in the World mainly based on his own life experience,
starts as a young man living in colonialized Trinidad, later left for England and
became a writer. His writing style is amazing, that this book combines his
autobiography and fiction. He digs up history, brings live unknown, obscure,
and half-forgotten characters, and fills them with rich details in a very matter of
facts manner. Caribbean and South American history are laid bare through the
misadventures and cruelties of characters like Francisco Miranda from
Venezuelan Revulitijary, and Sir Walter Raleigh, who were men of mission
never the less. Human frailty is ultimately explained in this novel with high
style of English and the cultures of various countries are discussed, in it, the
book is transnational.
V. S. Naipaul’s novelistic writings are as a process of identity recovery
undergoing a series transformations; he denies or neglects his Caribbean
homeland, adopts a stage of mimicry in England, searches for his cultural roots
in India and eventually reconstructs his identity out of his multi-cultural
 Shirsath 152

particularity and uniqueness. Rootlessness and alienation from cultural heritage

in India and colonial predicament writings for self-definition are the stages of
his writing career. Writing about for self-definition, the fictional character of
Naipaul’s changing and shifting identity was examined by ‘I’ this view of ‘I’
show that there is an ‘identity’, which are not his societies. The Caribbean and
Trinidad population was composed of people coming from the outer land,
especially from Asia and Africa, and they came because of European
colonization. They belonged to different backgrounds and due to the different
background of each society, there had many cultural traditions and cultural
conflict among them, and they had to face many problems surrounded by.
Therefore, the colonizer applied the colonial cultural identity in order to repress
the cultural conflicts in addition; the colonizer had the authority to control
them. In A Way in the World, it is stated as, “It went into independence in its
state of black exaltation almost a state of insurrection and with its now well-
defined racial division the Indian Country side the African town, and soon the
town I had known began to change”. (AWW 33) V.S. Naipaul’s novel, A Way in
the World expresses post-colonialism, since the idea of banishing the colonized
society’s inferiority of the colonizer is viewed as the attempt to reconstruct a
new society with new identity. The story begins with the description of these
cultural changes, which are natural for displaced people due to their new
environment. The representation of the hybridity of identity is examined
through the changes happening in the new society of Trinidad and Tobago.
Those are viewed as the attempts at reconstruction, which consist of
reconstruction as the reality of change, reconstruction as the new generation,
and of reconstruction as the new society in the New World. These
reconstructions are very complex, because the society basically has a unique
condition. It is alienated from the colonizer’s cultural traditions, and is
subordinated or inferior as a controlled society within the domination of the
colonizer. In A Way in the World, the situation is very well expressed. After a
long journey, naturally the narrator expects some kind of welcome. The heavy
 Shirsath 153

white man asks the boys to take him to his house in a foreign voice in Canadian
intonation.
The changes are natural and ordinary dealing with the life of migrants
because the member of immigrant society must have to adapt to their new
environment. Naipaul comes across all these four states in all the four novels,
especially in the novel A Way in the World, by accepting his homelessness and
statelessness. In A Way in the World and The Enigma of Arrival, there is
consistent twin angle from which he views English and the Caribbean setting
and history, his own Caribbean India and Hindu past and views of Caribbean
through changing colonial phases. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival clearly
states how miracle occurred in his life at the manor cottage in the heart of
England, and although he was alien there, how he experienced newness and did
the best. He has also made it clear that travelling and writing audaciously
helped him to heal himself and how everything changed thereafter.
Naipaul creates his own identity in exile. He himself searches his own
identity, and he is much confused to fix himself in any part of the place since,
he is really unique. He has no emotion for any place he lives; he lives in a
position without a home and he stands as homeless person. A voice not only for
himself but also for other marginalized people. The narrator translates cultural
particularity. English literature has made a significant contribution to Indo-
English literature by its exposure to multiculturalism. Though the sense of
displacement is an essential condition of Diaspora literature, it is not
experiencing precisely with the same identity by all, it differs according to time
and place. Naipaul writes about the spirit of exile and alienation and like other
diasporic literary writers searches rehabilitation in his writings. Naipaul
established a permanent place in the minds of his readers that, he is in search of
his own identity. Naipaul consistently paints the picture of derelict man in the
desolate landscape. Through his writings, Naipaul attempt to salvage his own
family history and history of the Trinidadian, Indian community, so the heroes
of his novels make final effort to create a new world out of nothingness. A Way
 Shirsath 154

in the World is considered a lasting masterpiece of V.S. Naipaul, as it goes

beyond his early fictional narratives in terms of narrative technique and style. It
is the lasting effort of author’s search of self as an individual and writer,
Naipaul has understood the meaning and significance of experience for an
author. He further knew the importance of translation into words of personal
and external realities. When Naipaul came face to face with an Amerindian hut,
and its social and natural realities, he experienced cultural ideological mind. In
the first section of A Way in the World, Naipaul states,
…I had grown up thinking of cruelty as something always in the
background. Theme was an ancient, and not so ancient, cruelly in the
language of the streets; casual threats, man and parents is children,
punishments and degradations that took you back to plantation times.
There was the cruelty of extended-family life, the cruelty of the Indian
countryside and the African town. The simplest things around us held
memories of cruelty. (18)
Diaspora brings various assumption and images. It can be positive site
of achieving and individual identity or a negative site of fear and anxiety for
losing one’s identity. Various aspects of modern life such as culture, time,
space, language, histories, place and people affect Diaspora. Migrant people
depend often on the other’s land but they form new communities that are a
mixture of their tradition and the newly acquainted foreign culture known as
hybridity. This formation leaves the migrant people into a dependent state, and
the only way they could be free from dependency is through their self-
realization. The identity crises of the migrant characters of V.S. Naipaul’s
novels show their problems, because the author himself is an alien, he is not
still able to come to a decision about his nationality, and he has no self-
realization. The cultural mixture plays a role in shaping mind frame and
identities, the vast varieties of religion and norms makes the emigrant question
about their value. They find difficulties in finding the answer, in finding their
own route thus, resulting being lost in the other’s culture and identity. This
 Shirsath 155

identity crisis and the lack of communication forces people to look for their
home within new surroundings. This is the reason of Naipaul’s characters
search for homes in new surroundings in almost all the select novels.
The general idea of identity’s development also throws light on the
experience of displacement and homelessness. The characters in Naipaul’s
novels face various complex issues viz. the idea of home and nation, the
delusion of mixed nationality and Diaspora, identity questions, belongingness,
dependence, transforming stepping away from familiar areas, independence
and issues relating to generation of immigrant, the difference between lose of
identity among the generation, the religious participation in defining the
Diaspora character as well as identity. To describe emigrant identity the
characters should be in a nation that gives them multi-cultural environment and
helps them develop their individuality.
Naipaul’s novels A Way of the World and An Enigma of Arrival prove
the above statement through their characters. Naipaul in his fictional concerns
is reviewing novels in those cultures, where his search for a sense of identity
and the need to establish a past on which the present can stand has a special
force. Naipaul carries three conflicting components in his personality of being a
Trinidad colonial, an English metropolitan and a person of Indian ancestry. He
clearly emerges a different type of new individual, a new idea of the third
world. He does explore, and moves into his self-exploration towards a new
restoration and vision of wholeness. The Enigma of Arrival which was
published in 1989 can be regarded as fiction only by the most extremely elastic
definition. It is a series of essays with a sequence. Naipaul thinks deeply and
shapes his natural identity in both the books. The book begins and ends with
unexpectedly personal autobiographical sketches of Naipaul as a boy in
Trinidad, as a bright young clerk with a scholarship and in future as a fledging
writer, struggling in London and at the end in later period in an unknown,
unnamed East African country, where he re-encounters character from his
youth. The section two of The Enigma of Arrival deals with several aspects of
 Shirsath 156

the protagonist narrator’s writing process, Naipaul’s name is never mentioned

in the narrative, but it is known that the writer of the novel corresponds to
Naipaul due to the identical biographies. It is Naipaul, who tells the story of his
life as an aspiring writer. His urge to write, for the scholarship, and undertaking
the journey by his writing discoveries. Naipaul’s relationship with his original
cultures had always been problematic. The Trinidad was a small place, a
village that he had to leave for lack of opportunities. He admits, that the island
had given him the world as a writer, given him the themes that in the second
half of the twentieth century had become important, and had made him
metropolitan.
The immigrants are helpless, because they have no identity and no self-
realization. They cannot command or show original face in the foreign lands.
They have no way to connect with the country, where they are living and they
are homeless as they miss their motherland. They are all restless in search for
their identity. This is the identity crisis, they face throughout their life, and this
is reflected mostly in all of Naipaul’s novels.
Naipaul’s Half a Life and Magic Seeds are full of literary echoes and
references to Naipaul’s own writings. Identity crisis and the crisis of
belongingness and placelessness are the two issues that feature in the two
novels. The major themes are the crisis of placelessness, unbelongingness, and
identity crisis. The writer built the story of these novels with these two main
issues. A strong desire for independence and identity crisis in both the novels is
also conscious. His novels display a mood of biography of departure and exile
from the background of Trinidad to the cosmopolitan and multi-culture culture
of England. He has a strong opinion that colonizers produce the colonial
culture society, and the knowledge, the culture of those societies come from
outside. The protagonist of these two novels is Willie Somerset Chandran who
clutches to get something from the encounters, he has been facing. He is
changed and turned into a mimic man because he is unable to justify himself
with the colonizers. The colonizers have justified their presence in various
 Shirsath 157

aspects of colonized nations in which they live. The protagonist Willie loses his
identity everywhere he goes and he becomes a mimic man. Half a Life is an
invention about countries, periods, and situations in which Naipaul portrays
and evaluates the lives of the people of mixed descent in three countries and
their struggle to discover their identities. The novel is about the confused
identities, a theme that Naipaul used in almost all the books, he had written
about the people coming from small places, smaller historical contest and
struggling with the looseness of their selves and their lives.
Hybridity is described between two separate races of cultures and
theories of mimicry and the third space as the identity making process, which
turned the condition of the dislocate and dispossesses people as mimic
individual. Therefore, Willie Chandran is a person, who has no identity, as he
is neither a Brahmin nor a low caste in the society. The novel opens with the
Willie Chandran’s search for his roots. Willie asks his father why his middle
name is Somerset, and also reports him how the boys at school have just found
out, and they were mocking at him. Then his father said that he is named after a
great English writer.
Willie’s father belongs to a highly orthodox family of Brahmin
community, whereas his mother is a Dalit woman and her origin is from the
lowest caste. He becomes contradictory individual. He was unwelcome aspect
of colonial discourse for the colonizer. For Willie Somerset Chandran, his
name is his destiny. Half of his name borrowed from the famous writer
Somerset Maughm, his first name indicates him, as a Christian, whereas his
surname signifies his mixed ancestry. In this way Willie’s existence prepare the
background of his half-life in half-made societies with people, who are
themselves leading a life which is half-discovered, half-realized and half–lived.
Willie Chandran in the Half a Life and Magic Seeds exemplifies the category
that to whom many displaced people are similar. Chandran wanted to get away
from his mission school at the age of twenty. Willie leaves his education
incomplete with no idea of what he wanted to do; only with the fantasies of the
 Shirsath 158

Hollywood films of the thirties and forties that he had seen at the mission
school, goes to London.
Willie had grown up witnessing his parents dislike for each other and
experienced the heartaches caused, because of the rigid society in which they
lived. He despised his father’s ineffectuality and his mother’s coarseness and
blamed every calamity of his life on the failed idealism of his parent’s union.
He wanted to flee away from the situation. The situation is described as,
. . . I was as ashamed of her as much as my father and mother and the
principal, and people of our sort generally, were ashamed of me. This
shame was always with me, the little unhappiness always at the back of
my mind, like an incurable illness, corrupting all my moments, all my
little triumphs. I began-though it might seem strange to say so-to take
refuge in my melancholy. I courted it, and lost myself in it. Melancholy
became so much part of my character that for long periods I could forget
the cause. (HL 33)
The opportunity for higher education in England provided him scope to
redefine his identity and prove his worth as an individual. Hybridity and
mimicry are fundamentally associated with the occurrence of post-colonial
discourse and culture imperialism. Effect of hybridity upon identity and culture
is there in these novels. Hybridity is an illustration of colonial anxiety. The
principal intention is the hybrid of colonial identity, which is in a cultural form,
made the colonial ambivalent and as a result, altered their power and identity.
As the colonizers reveal themselves as members of civilized nations, the
colonized native tries to identify themselves as colonizers. They try to
communicate with Europeans and imitate them so that, they can show that the
opinion about them is not true. Throughout these actions and reactions, the
colonized nations would not be anything but hesitant and ambivalent.
Naipaul has been involved with a wide possibility of interwoven issues
and contexts. The issues range from personal history to the historical
determination of post-colonial status from the complexities or racial groups,
 Shirsath 159

religious communities and nationalities to the broader concerns of human

spiritual needs, intellectual life, and from fictional to non-fictional version like
his two novels that echoes his identity of the intellectual protagonist. Naipaul is
natural outsider, but he possesses a capacity to interweave his own feelings
with those of other to recognize in them his own fallibility, which give his
writing an intense humanity. This has been very well explored and explained in
The Enigma of Arrival. The writer’s vocation was one that could never offer
him anything but momentary fulfillment.
In Half a Life, Chandran was teased by teacher about his parentage. He
longed to go to Canada from where his teachers came. He even thought of
adopting their religion and becoming like them, so that he could travel through
the world teaching. When he wrote an English composition about his holidays,
he pretended that he was Canadian as he writes all about the foreign life the
upstairs houses, the children’s room that had been taken from American comic
books which had been circulating in the mission school. These details had been
mixed up with local details, like the holiday clothes and the holiday sweets,
some of which his parents had at one stage out of their own great content given
to half-naked beggars. This composition was awarded full marks, ten out of
ten, and Willie was asked to read it out to the class.
In his narratives Half a Life and Magic Seeds, the protagonist Willie,
travels across three continents in which Naipaul explores the theme of
borrowed life, half-made societies and mimicry of false identities. Magic Seeds
and Half A Life explains the story of Willie Somerset Chandran, whose father,
following the call of Mahatma Gandhi turned his back on his Brahmin heritage,
by marrying a women of low caste, a decision he would live to regret. At the
age of twenty, Willie’s flight from the burned of the family’s painful situation,
takes him from India to London, where he tries to arrange a new identity. In
London, he attempts to prove himself through writing. He entered London’s
immigrant, Bohemian, and journalistic life. In order to settle down in the
strange new atmosphere of London, Chandran remade himself, by presenting a
 Shirsath 160

different picture of his family background. He was free to reinvent himself. He

adopted certain ideas he had read about, and spoke of his mother as belonging
to an ancient Christen community of the subcontinent. Failing to do so, he is
rescued from self-doubt and determines to become a writer by supportive
woman named Ana. Together, they go to her African country to live out the last
doom-days of colonialism, there Willie remains for 18 years as a spectator in
another life that is not his own. With the help of his sister, he runs away to
Germany, the story Magic Seeds starts in Berlin, where Willie Chandran joins a
Guerilla movement in India. There he is dependent on the encouragement of
his sister, without his own identity. He is lacking energy and zeal and because
of his own slowness, he joins the Guerilla movement in India. He spent seven
years in revolutionary campaigns and the eighth year in imprisonment. He
concludes that their revolution had nothing to offer to the poor peasants. He
comes back to England, where thirty years before, his waste wanderings began.
In London again, he is dependent on his friends for accommodation and he is
not aware of his future and wanders here and there. He wonders about his
future and was worried about fresh livelihood at the time of his retirement age.
Willie has allowed one identity after another to be extended upon him. His life
has taken him from his native India to England, Africa in his last colonial
years, a stop in Berlin, back to his homeland, then back to England again to
settle in the colonized country that has entire predicament and his ancestor
relate to them. Throughout the two novels, the protagonist wanders like a gypsy
to so many countries in search of identity.
Mimicry is in connection with identity. In colonial and post-colonial
literature, mimicry is commonly seen as the member for colonized society they
imitates, the language, dress, politics, or cultural attitude of the colonizers. In
the context of immigration and displacement under colonialism, mimicry is
seen as an unprincipled pattern of behavior. Every individual copies the person
in authority because he or she hopes to have accessed to that same power
within himself or herself. While copying the master, they have to intentionally
 Shirsath 161

over power, their cultural identity, though in some cases immigrant and
colonized nation are left confused by their cultural encounters with the
dominant foreign culture and there may not be a clear previous identity to
suppress. Identity crisis or crisis of belongingness is always a feature in the
novels of V.S. Naipaul. Therefore, it creates various crises which have been
portrayed in Half a Life and Magic Seeds.
Rootlessness and Alienation
Indian Diaspora with its growth holds a very powerful place in Indian
English literature. After the independence of India, Indian diasporic community
has become more conscious and it comes as a result of their increasing
acceptance by the west. However, the writers such as Raja Rao became an
expatriate even before the independence of India and Nirad C. Chaudhari
stayed all through his life in England because his caustic views were not
accepted in India. Indian English literature has almost transcended the barriers
and has almost become the part of English literature. Indian writers like V.S.
Naipaul and Rushdie contributed chiefly in the exile literature. They are not
Indian alone; they are global citizens. The eternal theme dealt by V.S. Naipaul
is the sense of displacement or in the world of rootlessness and alienation. His
exilic status gave birth to displacement and rootlessness. In connection with
reaction of the British slavery, Naipaul asserts in an interview with Israel
Shankar:
The British have a Sunday school reaction is all this… You have very
nice liberal people who go out to a colony, which is a deliberately crates
interior society and wonder why people in that place are interior and
why if they wish to become writers they have to leave. They would not
ask Hemingway why he left his own provincial town, they would not
ask. Pound why he left the Middle West, but they always will ask the
man from what they accept as an inferior society”. (50)
V.S. Naipaul stands tall amongst all Indian diasporic writers. His
grandparents’ were part of those indentured laborers, who were sent to serve as
 Shirsath 162

plantation workers in the far off lands during the British rule. Naipaul was born
in the small town of Chagunmas on the Island of Trinidad, for a long time, now
he lives in England, an act of self-impost exile on his part. The sense of
homelessness comes naturally to him and it is the main thing with which most
of his writings is concerned. In a country, marked by political upheaval mass
migration, colonization, revolution is inevitable. Most important within this
category is the exile literature that means the writings of the displaced are
dispossessed. The writings of V.S. Naipaul draw upon an experience totally
based on layered levels of alienated exile that his works become a major
current of the 20th century life, thought and art. In this respect Edward Said
states in his Culture and Imperialism,
Gone are the binary oppositions dear to the nationalist and imperialist
enterprise. Instead, we begin to sense that old authority cannot simply be
replaced by new authority, but that new alignments across borders,
types, nations and essences are rapidly coming into view, and it is these
new alignments that now provoke and challenge the fundamentally
static notion of identity that has been the core of cultural thought during
the era of imperialism. (xxviii)
Cross-culturalism lies at the heart of any migrant of Diaspora and so
about Naipaul. A Caribbean writer with Indian origin, who lives in England, is
the prime example of cross-cultural influence. Cross-cultural influence lives in
his mind only because of his alienation. Naipaul’s Half Life deals with the
young man newly arrived in the England of 60s to make his way in the world.
Willie Chandran the protagonist of the novel had to reinvent himself in proper
order. He relearns all that he knows. Willie’s problem arises out of his cultural
displacement. He cannot have the sense of belongingness because of his senses
of alienation. In this respect, Stuart Hall states that, cultural identities,
especially in the Caribbean are defined by heterogeneity of features, racial,
cultural and experiential. He observes, “The Diaspora experience… is defined,
not by essence and purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity
 Shirsath 163

and diversity; by a conception of ‘identity’ which lives with and thought, not
despite, difference; by hybridity. Diaspora identities are those which are
constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, thought transformation
and difference.” (HL 402) The sense of alienation is evident in his speech,
when he leaves Ana, “…I can’t live your life anymore. I want to live my own”.
(HL 136) Thus, it can be said that Willie, like any other member of migrant
population leads his life in rootlessness and searching for belongingness.
Naipaul has employed historical perspective along with personal ideas about
the Caribbean in both his fiction and travel narratives. Subramani rightly points
out,
No discussion of his works can ignore the historical dimension, which is
inseparable from the philosophical artistic dimensions …. Man’s
homelessness is not an external fate: Naipaul attribute it is concrete
historical circumstance. Naipaul often finds the plot for his novel in
history, and the dramatics actions flow from the conflicts between
character historical circumstances. (Quoted in Roldan-Santiago 85)
The Enigma of Arrival is Naipaul’s most subtle perfectly celebrated and
least sentimental understanding of empire. The imperial link coheres with the
word, that is Naipaul’s bond and then the world of quiet Wiltshire is
uninfected. The military ranges of the down reverberate to war, past, present,
and future. Domestic humiliation still everywhere and turn into a killing.
Domestic humiliation is due to alienation of the author, whose origin is India.
The author finds a dictator named solvency. Naipaul respects his privacy. He
loves the distant country for his unseen property owner, which has been seen
only twice over all the years. He love the solitude because, he has a sense of
rootlessness and he like to live alone in the world with a lot of peace. This
mentality has come to him only because of his alienation, and he is a foreigner
to a place where he is settled. The whole story of great estate its owner and its
gardener, its steward and its tenants by Conrad to which, Naipaul has recurred.
Few men realize that life, the very essence of their character, the audacities and
 Shirsath 164

capabilities are only the expressions of their beliefs in the safety or their
surroundings. The insecurity of himself as a pessimistic youth shows his urge
for safety. His insecurity is racial, sexual and financial. He thinks they are
distinct even though they are minor and distinguishable. These insecurities are
only to be cooled, calmed, and even cured after twenty years in England.
Naipaul enters the peace, the refugee of his cottage and his neighbour. All these
qualities are seen in this novel, which remarkably show the rootlessness of the
author. In The Enigma of Arrival he states,
…In each there were aspects of myself. But, with my Asiatic
background, I resisted the comparison; and I was travelling to be a
writer. It was too frightening to accept the other thing, to face the other
thing; it was to be diminished as man and writer. Racial diminution
formed no part of the material of the kind of writer I was setting out to
be. Thinking of myself as a writer, I was hiding my experience from
myself; hiding myself from my experience. And even when I became a
writer I was without the means, for many years, to cope with that
disturbance. I wrote on with my indelible pencil. I noted dialogue. My
‘I’ was aloof, a man who took notes, and knew. (138)
Naipaul’s themes have the global touch. The displacement of people,
who are from a colonial background and colonialism, is in the themes. Naipaul
mixes with the theme of historical overview of displaced persons these are all
heroes of his book especially A Way in the World. They are all symbols of
alienation. Thoughts about colonization and feelings of the people, who lived
in the colonized world, the effects of the colonization that affect the people
personally are described with the effect of alienation and rootlessness. In his A
Way in the World, Naipaul’s sense of alienation is reflected through his full of
uncertain position in London.
The people in the colony have no faith, no self-confidence, no self-
realization and they always have hopes of having their own home. They have a
feeling that they are without freedom and they are always in search of total
 Shirsath 165

independence. They look for a change in their life, and they live in an
imaginary Third World with full freedom and total independence. They want to
have self-realization with a secured life. Naipaul’s characterization of
Christopher Columbus, Walter Raleigh and Francisco De Miranda are
beautifully shown in this book as confident artists and grafters. Naipaul
imagines a film which he wanted to do on Columbus, Raleigh and Miranda
with new different stories, different people with their changing style of clothes.
It is note that someone, who came from different culture, where they were
close enough to understand the events, but also a Caribbean observer detach
from both Latin American and North American perspectives. In A Way in
World, the author’s feeling of alienation is spread everywhere and a sense of
rootlessness is felt through almost in all the characters. As the writer aptly
states,
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, at the time of the
Dutch and British slave plantations of the coast – the Dutch and British
no longer interlopers on the Spanish Main, but sovereign powers – when
slaves ran away to the interior, Amerindians hunted them down for a
bounty. Now, at the time of the story, the Africans on the coast,
descendants of the slaves, have inherited the authority of the old colonial
government. They have a substantial educated and professional class.
They are the rulers now; and the Amerindians are culturally what they
were two hundred years before. (AWW 46)
Alienation means separation resulting from hostility. This alienation
happens to human beings only because of their loss of property, loss of lovable
person or loss of status in the society. The cause for alienation can be
rootlessness. This happens, when the human being loose his wealth or
deteriorate in his health in the mentioned novels the rootlessness occurs due to
loss of the belongings of the protagonist Willie Chandran. Home and Exile are
the two faces of the same coin; the full meaning of one can be graphed only in
relation to the other. Home is not simply where one lives. Both home and exile
 Shirsath 166

denote one’s identity. It denotes one’s culture and national spirit. Home is
where one belongs. It is the soil, which has nurtured one’s body and spirit.
Home stands for security. Exile is the loss of home. Home is the place with
which, human beings remain intimate even on movement of intense alienation
from it. In A Way in the World, he expresses it very clearly that even if he
visited many places; he always returned back to his base in England, Europe,
and Canada. Home was a kind of fulfillment for him. His vision of Africa was
a harmless fantasy.
Naipaul’s Half a Life is published just before he received Nobel Prize,
portrays and evaluates the life of the mixed descent in three countries – India,
England and Portuguese Africa (Mozambique), and their struggle to discover
their identities. The novel partly autobiographical, analyses beautifully the
pangs of exiles, their living, a half-life, their sense of alienation and their
cultural traditions. The novel is set on three locales – India, England, and
Africa. A princely state in British Indian untouched by colonial education is the
setting of the first part of the novel. A visit from Somerset Maugham is
explained. The third part named, “A Second Translation” has its setting in the
province of Portuguese Africa. The protagonist Willie Chandran born in India
for a Brahmin father, and lower class mother leaves India, and goes first to
England and then to Africa. Willie’s life in London is fraught with many
frightening experiences. He portrayed it as a young man, who is good for
nothing but only his promise as a writer; drifting aimlessly groping of a voice
in surprise he states,
“…It gave him a new way of looking at his family and his life, and over
the next few days he found the matter of many stories of a new sort. The
stories seemed to be just waiting for him; he was surprised, he hadn’t
seen them before; and he wrote fast for three for four weeks. The writing
then began to lead him to difficult things, things he couldn’t face, and he
stopped”. (HL 102)
 Shirsath 167

Willie suffers from alienation and emptiness – a sense of being without

history or understanding, the difficulty from the colonies faces in finding
materials and his shocking sexual encounters even the fear of losing Ana. He
thinks that he must go with Ana to her country. Willie finds love in chance
encounter with young, small thin and pretty Ana, a mixed race girl from Africa.
At home, his mixed inheritance split everything. Even the love he felt for his
mother, which should have been pure was full of the pain he felt for their
circumstances. At Ana’s estate house in Africa, Willie feels like a stranger may
be because of the culture. At the end of the novel, the protagonist decides to
leave Ana realizing that it is not his life; he feels her life as foreign and wants
to live his own life. Therefore, perhaps he decides to go after eighteen years
with his sister Sarojini in Berlin. Willie uprooted from his own culture, and he
is not able to get any permanent fulfillment anywhere. He cannot adjust
anywhere as he leads Half a Life. His sister Sarojini also leads a Half a Life;
she wanders here and there with her German husband, who is a film producer.
Percy Cato, who is friend of Willie, also leads a Half a Life, and he finds no
proper place to stay. The friends belong to the same background. Some other
characters in the novel also move from town to town, job to job and house to
house. He does not know their destinations, and their struggle for survival
never ends. They all think that the local rich people ruled everything and did
everything worse for the poor people. Willie believes in magic and his things
one day, soothing would happen, and illumination would come to him, and he
would be taken to a place by a set of events, to the place he should go.
Magic Seeds is the sequel of Half a Life. The protagonist Willie
undertakes a reverse journey from his sister’s place Berlin to India. His sister
also inspires him to go to the real place with real people. This remark indicates
the existential tremors of rootlessness and homelessness. It is quoted as,
…this India began to assault him, began to remind him of things he
thought he had forgotten and put aside, things which his idea of his
mission had obliterated; and the distance he felt from his fellow
 Shirsath 168

passengers diminished. After the long night, he felt something like panic
at the thought of the India that was approaching, the India below the
colour-destroying glare he could see from his window. (MS 26)
He decides to go to the new world that too his own world. He
continuously searches for his identity, the meaning of life. He realizes with
dismay that he has been hiding from himself and risked for nothing. He thinks
that India is his own world. He likes to join some revolutionary mission in
India, but the movement instead of leading any sense of fulfillment filled his
heart with the sense of homelessness. Willie told Ramchandra,
…I was in Africa. A Portuguese colony on its last legs. I had been there
for eighteen years. My wife was from that colony. I was living in her big
house and on her land, twenty times more land than anyone here has. I
had no job. I was just her husband. For many years, I thought of myself
as lucky. Living where I did very far from home: India was the last
place I wanted to be-and in that high colonial style. (MS 114)
Willie is successful in releasing himself from prison with the help of his
writer friend Roger, and ultimately he finds himself back in London, where
after he has to stop a search for home, he feels rootless and goes to the extreme
of alienation in both the novels Half a Life and Magic Seeds. In Magic Seeds he
assailed and quotes,
…I have never slept in a room of my own. Never at home in India, when
I was a boy. Never here in London. Never in Africa. I lived in somebody
else’s house always . . . Will I ever sleep in a room of my own?’ And he
marveled that he had ever had a thought like that before. (185)
In India, Africa and South East Asia, colonial education alienated men
from their own culture and tradition and made them exile in their own land.
V.S. Naipaul is a victim of double Diaspora as his grandfather migrated from
India to Trinidad in 1880, since then his family lived there. He decided to study
at Oxford University College, and later on settled there as he has strong desire
to settle down in England, since his childhood. The sense of expatriations was
 Shirsath 169

in his blood, because he was born and educated in a country, which was not his
own and at present, he is residing in England that can also not to be called his
home. He can only be a visitor wherever he goes. For the author, India is his
ancestor country, and his not of his own generation and Trinidad, where he
spent his childhood became a country because of colonialism. In addition, for
England, he is just an alien. Hence, the blood, which is boiling in veins belong
to one country, while he lived in another country and settled in the third
country. The same thing happens to the protagonist of the novel Half a Life and
Magic Seeds. The reflection of author’s impression is much noted in the
protagonist life.
Colonialism and Post-Colonialism
Colonialism and post-colonialism are also the important themes in the
works by Naipaul. His works deal with the effects of colonial power on the
third world countries; how their native cultures get affected due to
overpowering effect of the colonizers’; how the colonized get under the
shadow of the colonizers’ culture, traditions and way of living and thinking and
so on. Naipaul has very well explained how colonialism damaged the native
and how it has damaged the psyche of the colonized people; how it has
disfigured everything for its being. At the same time he has offered an
authentic presentation of the change in the overall scenario after seeking the
independence. His works very poignantly record the post-colonial times too.
Naipaul’s earlier works mock at the post colonial state of the third world
countries; how they struggle to preserve their treasure of independence.
Naipaul’s early works deal with the plight and spoiled life of the colonized
people of the third world country like Trinidad; how the colonial rule damaged
their aims, hopes and aspirations! And Naipaul’s later fictional works present
an objective analysis of the life of the post colonized people, their hopes and
aspirations, their expectations and frustrations, their dreams and nightmares. He
also focuses on their lost, damaged and disfigured self and culture.
 Shirsath 170

Decolonization is also one of the important themes in Naipaul’s fiction

which portray present condition of the decolonized people. Naipaul projects
how decolonization has been a boon to the third world countries; how it offered
them the opportunities for change and fortune. He has also observed keenly the
truth that how the third world independent countries faced the chaotic situation
after independence; how they were unable to balance the change and how it
created disorder and worst condition than the earlier; how they were unable to
find new rules and way of administration, new hopes and aspirations, new life
for their people; how they carried and continued the same order of their
colonizers in both theory and practice! His fictional works elaborately explore
how even after independence they go with their habits of borrowed life of their
colonizers; how they forgot their native original way of life to lead and initiate
for something new and go with everything readymade of their colonizers.
Naipaul has exposed the hollowness and rootlessness of such all people of third
world countries by bringing out their sense of nothingness and negativity with
damaged psyche and lost aspirations. His writing explores how it was merely
political independence that couldn’t provide complete independence to the
people, and how political power disappointed the people they were expecting.
Naipaul further brings out the results of this situation through his characters
who are frustrated migrate from their land to that of their dream, but it doesn’t
help them much. On the contrary, it results into their problem of identity crisis
and competition in the sub-cultures created due to migration, dislocation and
cultural pluralism. Naipaul’s fictional world is well known for its record of
measuring gaps between the people from different backgrounds, different
cultures and the difference of their origin, race, country and colour. It also
focuses on the tensions, stress, crisis and conflicts the people undergo. Naipaul
is keen to the problem of loss of identity, loss of self, loss of individuality, loss
of integrity, loss of inherited traits, loss of status and adoption of mixed culture
that affect the people with disorder, disappointment and decay. He focuses on
how the attempts of fusion in the target atmosphere and culture on the part of
 Shirsath 171

migrated people are just experiences which result into failure and how, in such
atmosphere they are unable to enjoy real freedom as they get controlled by
their greed and futility. Therefore, they develop into complex entity with the
feeling of otherness, superiority and inferiority, enclosedness and self-
centeredness, resistance and resignation as they find themselves as of the
weaker culture dominated by the powerful west.
Post-colonialism is concerned with self-definition of post-colonial
literature. In The Empire Writes Back (1989), its author Bill Ashcroft writes
that more than 75% of the people of the world, and their lives were inflamed by
colonialism, “The semantic basis of the term post-colonial might seem to
suggest a concern with the national culture after the departed of the imperial
power”. (1) Post-colonial is a period after colonialism. Some critics have
argued that the literature, that express an opposition to colonialism is produced
during a colonial period may be defined as post-colonial, primarily due to its
oppositional nature. Post-colonial literature often focuses on race relations and
the effects of racism and usually indicates white or colonial societies. Post-
colonialism proves the fact even now and then the effect of colonization affects
Africa, Asia and South-America; these continents are still not equal and
economically unequal is Europe and North America. The space and scope of
modern European Imperialism as well as its extraordinary organized character,
including the cultural licensing of racial domination has sometimes lead to the
perception of colonization as a modern phenomenon. Modern colonialism was
not a discrete occurrence, and that an examination of pre-modern colonial
activities will allow for greater and more complete understanding structures of
power and domination serving illuminating the operation of older histories in
the context of both modern colonialism, and contemporary race and global
political relations. In his Naipaul on Naipaul: Two Autobiographical Pieces,
Naipaul states,
In England, I was also a colonial. Out of the stresses of that, and out of
my worship of the name of a writer, I had without knowing it fallen into
 Shirsath 172

the error of thinking of writing as a king of display. My very

particularity-which was the subject sitting over my shoulder-had been
encumbering me. The English or the French writer of my age had grown
up in a world that was more or less explained… I couldn’t be a writer in
the same way, because to be a colonial, as I was, was to be spared
knowledge. I was to live in an intellectually restricted way; it was to
accept those restrictions… (45)
V. S. Naipaul’s realist fiction and application of post-colonial
observations have resulted in a celebrated literary career spanning over fifty
years, in this respects he says, the historian seeks to abstract principles from
human events, but his approach was the other, he sought to reconstruct the
human story as best as he could. He was supported by his story, the themes, it
touched on: discovery, the New World, the dis-peopling of the discovered
islands; slavery, the creation of the plantation colony; the coming of the idea of
revolution; the chaos after revolutions is societies so created. He is accelerator
authentic author and a contemporary thinker. Naipaul’s canon has been praised
for its political perspective, and its interrogation of the political ideologies
under priming society and culture. The focus of his work simple is the
transcending the temptation articulating a specific political agenda or motive.
His works are considered definite voice of contemporary English literature, and
he is one of the prominent writers of post-colonial fictions. Much like his
fictional contribution to contemporary literature, his non-fiction explores the
theme of post-colonial societies in the wake of independence. He is notorious
for his often- controversial public proclamation, having famously launched an
attack on women writer, and his conservative politics in relating to India attract
by leading post-colonial thinker. Naipaul remains a fascinating figure despite
many criticisms, because he was the one, who introduced the term post colony
into the dictionary of English literature. Edward Said asserts in an illuminating
statement,
 Shirsath 173

Yet is no exaggeration to say that liberation as an intellectual mission,

born in resistance and opposition to the confinements and ravages of
imperialism has now shifted from the settled, established, and
domesticated dynamics of culture to the unhoused, decentered and exilic
energies, energies whose incarnation today is the migrant, and whose
consciousness is that of the intellectual and artist in exile, the political
figure between the domains, between forms, between homes and
between languages. (403)
Naipaul exposes the ghastly evil of the post-colonialism that it has not
erased the disparities; on the contrary it molded old problems into its new, and
it is seen in the problems of racial politics, fanaticism, insecurity and identity
crisis. Naipaul’s ancestors from India moved to Trinidad a colony to work in
the sugarcane lands. He lived in the environment of colonies; he prefers to
write the colony politics, and he focuses the post-colonial situation. He has a
great liking for making stories with the real surroundings of post-colonial
politics and culture. His novels and fictions mostly depicts the colonial;
atmosphere in the post-colonial period. His main characters have thirst for
freedom, since they do not like the way in which they live and they often look
for a drastic change in the political atmosphere rather they wait for freedom or
independence of their own land. V.S. Naipaul is an important writer of modern
post-colonial literature. As a man formed and defined by two cultures, of the
East and West, he expresses in his works, the psychology of the people in the
third world and the obstacles that he met with as a rootless person, when
striving to find his cultural attributing and spiritual home. Naipaul’s stories are
in effect the stories of former colonies before the imperialist colonies withdrew.
His subsequent novels developed themes that are more political in the
postcolonial period. His works offer the realistic picture of colonial
consciousness and the process of transformation into decolonization. In A Way
in the World, the following lines make it clear,
 Shirsath 174

…If you say that the laws should be Spanish, there is no one here to tell
me what those laws are. The law-books and the lawyers are all on the
other side of the Gulf. A military governor can only follow the advice of
responsible citizens. That’s what Tom Picton did, and that’s what did
after him. And you know the full bill against Picton. Thirty-seven
charges. Execution without trial, false imprisonment, torture, burning
alive. Bail set at forty thousand pounds. The man ruined, his life
darkened these last three years. (270)
In The Enigma of Arrival, he points out the feelings with Angela in the
London, the boarding house is stated as,
. . . How could my knowledge of the world not be abstract, when all the
world I knew at the age of eighteen was the small colonial world of my
little island in the mouth of the Orinoco, and within that island the world
of my family, within our little Asian-Indian community: small world
within small world. I hardly knew our own community… a colonial
governor and a legislative council and an executive council and a police
force. (156)
The Enigma of Arrival which was published in 1987 as a personal
account of his life in England. A Way in the World which published in 1994 is a
formerly experimental narrative that combined fiction and non-fiction in a
historical portrait of the Caribbean. Half a Life was published in and explains
the adventures of Willie Chandran in post-war Britain, a new life initiated by
chance encounter between his father, and the novelist, Somerset Maugham.
Magic Seeds, which was published in 2004, continues the same story of Willie
Chandran.
The failures of colonial and post-colonial and post-colonial societies
have depicted by Naipaul, and read by many critiques. They have also given
much controversy to his writings. Derek Walcott the Nobel Prize winner of
1992, a Caribbean poet George Lamming criticized Naipaul, for his chronic
dispiritedness on the point of colonialism in his book, The Pleasure of Exile
 Shirsath 175

and states, “When such a writer is a colonial, ashamed of his own cultural
background and striving like mad to prove himself through promotion to the
peaks of a superior culture whose value are gravely I doubt, then satire, like the
charge of philistinism, is for me more than a refuse”. (225) Salman Rushdie has
not only condemned Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival for being devoid either
of passion or love but more recently abused him of aligning himself with the
dangerous and fantastic element of Hindu Nationalism. To prove that V. S.
Naipaul is a combined writer of colonial and post-colonial themes, a paragraph
from the novel The Enigma of Arrival, by the writer-narrator can be quoted,
In my late thirties, the dream of disappointment and exertion had been
the dream of the exploding head; the dream of a noise in my head so
loved and long that I felt with brain that survived that the brain could not
survive that this was death; now in my early 50 after my illness, after I
had left the minor cottage, and put an end to the section of my life began
to be awakened by thoughts of death, the end of things, and sometimes
not even by thoughts so specific, not even by fear rational or fantastic
but by a great melancholy. (375)
The feeling of a person who is not in his native land but in a colony, and
yet the sadness comes from the heart of his hearts and crates a melancholic
feeling. The narrator expresses his views about people in their own land, and
foreign land in colonies in the lines in the novel Magic Seeds. “For the first
time in his life he began to experience a kind of true pride. He felt himself so to
speak, taking up space when he walked in the streets and he wandered whether
this was how other people felt all the time without effort, all the secure people
he met in London and Africa”. (22) The process of colonialism can be seen to
have crated not only the political and economic boundaries of the modern
world, but also its national characteristics. It could be argued that Europe was
designed as an entity by colonialism as much as those countries that were
colonized by it. In Magic Seeds, Joseph calls the colonized countries as the
saddest places sadder than even Africa. V.S. Naipaul in his The Enigma of
 Shirsath 176

Arrival and Magic Seeds writes, about colonialism as well as post-colonialism.

He describes countries in detail especially Africa and he explains about
England, which was the main place for crating colonies. The narrator of A Way
in the World reports that a number of educated people of Lebrun’s generation
had joined the Back-to-Africa movement during 1920s and 30s. The seemingly
revolutionary movement appears to him, a sentimental and escapist. In The
Enigma of Arrival, the writer wrote:
St. Kitts was the earliest British colony in the Caribbean, established in a
region from which Spain had withdrawn. In shape it was – apart from a
tail – round. It had a central mountain, forested at the top; and the
slopes, covered with even sugar-cane, ran all the way down to the sea.
The island was edged with a narrow asphalt road, and there were the
little house of the workers, descendants of slaves, along this road. Sugar
and slavery had created that simplicity, that unnaturalness in the
vegetation and landscape. (176)
In Magic Seeds, Willie detects the colonialism. He learns about the
window tax in England and on bricks which had been lasted from about the
time of French revolution to about the time of the Indian Mutiny. In Half a
Life, Willie states the same situation which was like giving a new glimpse of
the history.
V. S. Naipaul highly achieved the name and fame in the history of the
post-colonial Indian Diasporic literature. He unites in the history of English
literature. Naipaul is a very meticulous artist, aware of the importance of the
past into the artistic whole. His focus is exclusively on the various types of
identity. He originally designs the web of identity through different characters
in different situations, in different periods such as colonial and post-colonial
periods. His way of depicting Indians is indispensable. He is regarded as a
harbinger of Indian identity. He blends myth, reality multiculturalism,
Hinduism, modernism and traditionalism. V.S. Naipaul is a renowned novelist
of the colonial experience, he situate his novel in both colonial as well as ex-
 Shirsath 177

colonial societies and portrays vividly the complexities inherent to such

societies. In The Enigma of Arrival, he states, “…The fight between my idea of
the glamour of the travel-writer and the rawness of my nerves as a colonial
travelling among colonials made for difficult writing. When, the travelling
done, I went back to London with my notes and diaries, to do the writing, the
problems were not resolved”. (167)
The crisis of unbelongingness is always a feature in his novels Half a
Life and Magic Seeds. He thinks, that colonial society was the priest of the
colonizers and a knowledge of those society has come from outside, In The
Overcrowded Baracoon he states, “because as a colonial, as I was to be spared
knowledge, it was to live I an intellectually restricted world, it was to accept
those restrictions. So step by step, through seeking each time only to write
another book, I eased myself into knowledge”. (28)
In London also the writer never felt at home in his first twenty years. He
seems that he knows very little about England and has a few friends there but
in Trinidad, he knows more people. Willie said, “My life has been a series of
surprise. Unlike you, I had no control over things. I thought I had. My father
and all people around him thought they had. But what looked like decisions
were not really. For me it was a form of drift, because I didn’t see what else
there was for me to do. I thought I wanted to go to Africa”. (MS 179) In The
Enigma of Arrival too the narrator in this respect points out, “I went first of all
to my own island, Trinidad. I wanted to see the island where I had been living
in a new way in my imagination for the last two years, the island I had
restored…So, as soon as I had arrived at a new idea about the place, it had
ceased to be mine”. (173) The same feeling of non-acceptance is echoed in
Magic Seeds; as it is stated by Ramchandra thus:
You see how fine old manners and fine old ways equip people for
slavery. It’s the ancient culture our politicians talk about. But there is
something else. I understand these people because I am one of them. I
just have to pull a little switch in my head and I know exactly what they
 Shirsath 178

are feeling. They accept that some people are rich. They don’t mind that
at all. Because these rich people are not like them. The people like them
are poor, and they are determined that the poor shall remain poor. (119)
These words prove that his life in colonial Trinidad comparatively was
much better than the life he experienced in London an independent country. He
went there because he had no other place to go. His sense of alienation is
reflected in most of his writings. He has always written about the problems of
Indian Diaspora, whether his subject is Trinidad, London, Indian, or East
Africa. His fiction is designed to convey to the readers the experience of a
particular person, in particular situation in which alienation and absurdity occur
in contemporary life. He has given the description of the Third World and for
him that is the world of colonies inhabited by the immigrant people. These
people went there as a labor. They have no root there and large parts of the
world population, living in those colonized islands have sense of identity crisis
as laborers with their particular culture.
In his books Magic Seeds and Half a Life, Naipaul writes about the life
of mixed descent in three countries India, England and Portuguese Africa, a
princely state in British, Indian untouched by colonial power. Willie enjoys the
status of a tourist and through him; the writer impresses the readers by
explaining about colonialism and post-colonialism. The title, Magic Seeds
refers both to the unsuccessful revolution sown by the revolutionaries and to
the seeds, that will produce a race-less society, where a class of drifters stay.
For them, ‘home’ remains a idealistic dream, which is never realized even in
the post-colonial countries.
Ethnicity and Multiculturalism
Naipaul is a keen observer of the problems the outsider has to face in the
third world countries. The experience through which he has undergone helped
him to depict the true nature of the plight, an outsider (Indian) had to undergo
in the contemporary era. Being an Indian, he had pathetic experience in West
Indies, treated a West Indian in England and a nomadic intellectual in a post-
 Shirsath 179

colonial world. Hence, Naipaul’s novels are the authentic impersonation of his
own experience. He visited and lived in so many places; he is very well known
to deal with multiculturalism. In A Way in the World, it is experienced as
stated,
THE COUNTRY was full of a special hate. It was for the small Asian or
Indian community, who as elsewhere in East Africa, were mainly traders
and shopkeepers and made a closed group. There would have been
ancient connection between the coast and India…But people didn’t
carry this kind of history in their heads; and the Asian community that
was hated was the more recent one that had come over and settled in the
half century or so of British rule. (348-49)
Naipaul knows the cultures of different countries, and he has
experienced the same. He discusses beautifully the cultures of different
countries through his characters in almost all the famous novels written by him.
Having grown up in a colonial country, Naipaul used to a colonial way of life.
When he came to India, he was in another colonial country; he compares
colonial Trinidad with colonial India, the narrator in An Area of Darkness
writes,
I could not link with colonial Trinidad. Trinidad was a British colony;
but every child knew that we were only a dot on the map of the world,
and it was, therefore, important to be British; that at least anchored us
within a wider system. It was that system which we did not feel to be
oppressive; and though British, in institution and education as well as in
political fact, we were in the New World, our population was greatly
mixed, English people were few and kept themselves to themselves, and
England was as a result only one of the countries of which we were
aware. (188)
Naipaul takes his readers to a journey through his works, and it was the
journey of experiences from the local to the global and from a narrow
perspective to a broader and more encompassing vision. Naipaul’s works are
 Shirsath 180

set in many places and explore many themes but the best known for his
knowing depictions of Trinidad, where he was born with explorations of
modern day India, his ancestral land and his harsh dislike portrays of post-
colonial countries in Africa, Asia, and South America. His fiction is often
autobiographical, writing repeatedly the themes of rootlessness, alienation,
tensions, and burdens of the past and the present chaos. He accepts this idea in
one of the speech given during his Noble Prize award winning ceremony. His
books carry the life history of brought up, and continued his livelihood. He has
chance of meeting several people in several countries with various cultures.
The fiction of V.S. Naipaul carries the message of multiculturalism.
Trinidadian themes occupy main place, in the majority of Naipaul’s
writings. In Trinidad, every small issue turned out to be a big event for people.
The psychology of people of Trinidad is depicted through a galaxy of
characters in most of the book, especially in The Miguel Street. In addition to
this, some novels and short stories do not longer refer to Trinidad as such, but
replace it with islands. But there are many elements like geographical,
historical and ethnic, which reflect the multi-cultural character of Trinidad. It is
difficult to define in Naipaul, case home, because the word home is linked to
identity. His words are offences on identity, quest and displacement. His works
frequently carry references to his cultural heritage, rooted in Trinidad
(birthplace) India (ancestral place) and Britain (place of education). Naipaul in
The Overcrowded Barracoon states, “The English language was mine, the
tradition was not”. (28) He is not a multi-linguist, but he is a multi-maintaining
distinctiveness of multiple cultures assimilation and racial segregation. The two
novels of V.S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival and A Way in the World are
mainly with the theme of multiculturalism. His characters in the novel face
settlement policies like social integration. He mocks at how even the very
word, multiculturalism remain many times merely a word to pronounce. He
points out the difference in its being and its actual practice. He also brings out
very poignantly how cultural differences matter even today, and racial
 Shirsath 181

differences work to divide people. Naipaul’s book, The Enigma of Arrival

explores thus:
Man and writer were the same person. But that is a writer’s greatest
discovery. It took time – and how much writing! to arrive at that
synthesis. On that day, the first of adventure and freedom and travel and
discovery, man and writer were united in their eagerness for experience.
But the nature of the experiences of the encouraged a separation of the
two elements in my personality. The writer, or the boy travelling to be
written, was educated; he had a formal school education; he had a high
eider of the nobility of the calling to which he was travelling to dedicate
himself. But the man, of whom the write was just a part (if a major,
impelling part), the man was in the profoundest way – as a social being
– untutored. (119-120)
Naipaul debates with cultural hybridity and with the help of that, he
examines the place and meaning of cultural hybridity in the crisis-ridden
isolated world, taking its starting point, the fact that cultural identities are
themselves ethnic and multi-cultural to the contributors. They illuminate the
complexity and flexibility of culture and identity, defining their potential open.
Their closures show anti-racism and multiculturalism is very difficult to fight
even today.
The narrator shows, the contrast of leaving and coming remembering
and forgetting. Narrators experience in the English country side is elaborated in
the second part of The Enigma of Arrival the explanation of the nature scene is
proof for his taste of multiculturalism,
The river was called the Avon, not the one connected with Shakespeare.
Late when the land had more meaning when it had observed more of my
life than the tropical streets, where I had grown up – I was able to think
of the flat wet fields with the ditches as water meadows or wet meadows
and the low smooth hills in the background, beyond the river as
 Shirsath 182

“downs” but just them, after the rain, all that I saw – though I had been
living in England for twenty years were flat seas and narrow rivers. (3)
The passage shows for his knowledge of various natural scenes present
in two different countries – Caribbean land, where he spent his childhood,
England, where he was transported for education. He gains the knowledge from
his childhood, youth, and he interprets in the novel beautifully. Mixing semi-
autobiography, travel writing, documentation, character analysis, and fiction
are his best level of producing novels. A Way in the World is a book of nine
sectionalized mediations through which V.S. Naipaul arrives at a deeper
understanding of his multi-cultural heritage and hybrid identity. The novel also
celebrates Naipaul’s skill of using different literary genres, to illuminate
surroundings to transmit his diasporic experience. Inhabiting two worlds, the
world are inside his East Indian extended family in Trinidad and that of the
outside world. Naipaul seeks to translate liminality by incorporating individual
stories into the geo-political and socio-cultural history of Trinidad with
ethnicity. In The Enigma of Arrival, the writer points out as, “… In 1950in
London I was at the beginning of that great movement of peoples that was to
take place I the second half of the twentieth century – a movement and a
cultural mixing grater that the peopling of the United States, which was
essentially a movement of Europeans to the New World”. (154)
Multiculturalism deals with minorities and implies a relation with the
majority, but these two categories are defined in articulation between advanced
capitalized countries and the third world. Naipaul in his Half a Life and Magic
Seeds describes it. In general, the organizing factor for the minorities are such
terms as race, ethnicity and indignity, while their origin are casually linked to
migration, to colonization and other kinds of subjugation involved in
representing minorities than to the existence of unproblematic racial category.
Ethnicity as a defining category was initially employed as a definite term to
avoid race and it implications of discredited scientific racism. In The Enigma of
Arrival the writer points out, “…Racial diminution formed no part of the
 Shirsath 183

material of the kind of writer I was setting out to be. I was hiding my
experience from myself… And ever when I became a writer I was without the
means, for many years, to cope with that disturbance”. (138)
Ethnicity easily attached to the European migrations and rapidly
increased around the two world wars. Multiculturalism implied focus on
culture or minimized specific political activists and their histories. While
multiculturalism is often taken as an empty, signifies on to which groups
project their fears and hopes, the inherent hybridity may caused
multiculturalism and mobilization. V. S. Naipaul explains Multiculturalism and
ethnicity in his novel Half a Life and Magic Seeds through the protagonist
Willie Chandran. He goes to different places, and wanders as a gypsy; he met
various kinds of people with entirely different cultures. Through all the main
characters the theme of the novel mainly centers about the ethnicity and
multiculturalism in a broad way. Roger’s view is indicative of multiculturalism.
He talks about his ambitions. He is half-way there and has five mulatto children
by five white women. He wishes to have a grandchild who will be pure white
in appearance. He wants when he would be old he would like to walk down the
King’s Road with his white grandchild.
Multiculturalism in political philosophy is the thought about the proper
way to response to cultural and religious diversity, minority groups are not
treated well. Some group differentiated rights are held by individual members
of minority groups, as in the case of the individuals, who are granted
exemptions from generally applicable laws in virtue of their religious believes,
individuals, who seek language by group rather by its member, severally such
rights are properly called group rights as in the case of indigenous groups and
minority nations, who claim the right of self-determination. Multiculturalism is
closely combined with nationalism. The protagonist Willie Chandran’s father
in the novel Half a Life belongs to the minority Brahmin group and he is
married to a lower caste woman. By the individual member of this minority
Brahmin group, his action is condemned, and he goes against the religious
 Shirsath 184

belief and customs of that particular community. Willie Chandra’s father and
mother are of different cultures, and they are representatives of
multiculturalism. He float in the bottomless sea of multiculturalism, for a while
Willie seems to have found his ground when all of a sudden he comes to a
realization, that he did not need to rebel for the simple reason that distance
from his roots has given him freedom without asking. In search of his identity
in a strange world, Willie again projects a borrowed identity and ventures to
live the image once again in Half a Life it is stated as, “… he adapted certain
thing he had read, and he spoke of his mother as belonging to an ancient
Christian community of the subcontinent, a community almost as old as
Christianity itself. He kept his father as a Brahmin. He made his father’s father
a ‘courtier’. So playing with words, he began to give him a feeling of power”.
(61)
In Magic Seeds, the protagonist Willie joins Guerilla group to correct
the errors of the society and to support casteism, which is prevailing throughout
the country. The ethnicity of the character is proved by this action in Magic
Seeds, and through that action of joining that movement, he faces failures. The
heap he wishes to give to the society becomes a dangerous event to him, and he
is put in jail for his activities. Willie Chandran goes back to England, after he is
released from the prison. Again, due to travel to various places, Willie
Chandran mixes with multi-cultural people and learns a lot about different
cultures. Willie said, “In many part of India it’s the big issue nowadays. What
they call the churning of the castes. I think it’s more important than the
religious question. Certain middle is groups rising, certain top groups being
sucked under. The guerrilla war I went to fight in was a reflection of this
movement, a reflection, no more. India will soon be presenting an untouchable
face to the world. It won’t be nice. People won’t like it”. (MS 207) Naipaul was
born in Trinidad, and grew up in the cultural environment with full of Indian
atmosphere, after his graduation from Oxford University he became a member
of Britain. In this sense, he is a post-colonial writer with complicated status.
 Shirsath 185

Literature is like mirror of social reality this is proved in Naipaul’s literary

works Half a Life and Magic Seeds.
Half a Life is set in India, Africa, and Europe to the more specifically in
London, Berlin and Portugal. It tells the story of Willie, whose father is a
Brahmin and mother is a Dalit. In response to Gandhi’s call, Willie Chandran’s
father married women at lower caste. Willie had visited his father in the
temple, where his father was living under a wow of silence. Wow of silence is
a culture-oriented system followed by Hindus especially by Brahmins. His
father stayed in a temple of silence, and however, he looks down upon his
father as an escapist from the reality. He was eager to get away from what he
knew. Half a Life is a novel of incompleteness; and Magic Seeds is a sequel of
Half a Life.
Very similar to Naipaul’s experience the protagonist Willie was born in
India and grew up in Indian culture. He went to England for higher studies at
the age of twenty after graduation; he married Ana and stayed in Africa for
eighteen years. There he realized that was not the place, where he really liked
to settle and he did not want to live Ana’s life. The surrounding of Africa is
narrated thus,
Most of the shops we used were Portuguese. One or two were Indian. I
was nervous of going into them at first. I didn’t want to get that look
from the shop people that would remind me of home and bad things. But
there was never anything like that, no flicker of racial recognition from
the family inside. There, too, they kept their heads down and did what
they had to do, so that for me, as for the overseers, though in different
ways, the place offered an extra little liberation. (HL 148-149)
Naipaul left his wife and went to Berlin to live with his sister and his
sister persuaded him to go back to India to take part in the underground
movement. The multi-cultural backgrounds of Naipaul, leads to the result, that
he lacks self-recognisational level of culture.
 Shirsath 186

At the beginning of the book Magic Seeds Willie states, “I am always an

outsider, now as well. I am in Berlin; but what can I do”. (1) Willie is homeless
and he wants to integrate into the novel society, but he is confused by his route
Indian culture. Naipaul’s works are closely connected, with his real life
experience, and served as his autobiography, which reflected his shadow. The
theme of ethnicity and multiculturalism runs to the whole process of his writing
in this respect. Half a Life tells the story about the male protagonist, Willie who
loses his home, goes to England, Africa and then returns to India and England.
He meets his African lover, Ana, goes with her, learns, and experiences a
different culture. After spending so many years there, he feels isolated and
comes to Berlin, in seeking his lost identity and culture. Belongingness to
Berlin and is seeking his lost identity and culture. Belongings are of vital
importance in people’s daily life, not only Willie, but also the human beings
are searching it constantly. The author’s understanding of multiculturalism and
ethnicity is explained everywhere in Half a Life and Magic Seeds.
4.2 Minor Themes
Naipaul’s novels deal with certain minor themes also; they are treatment
of the history, cultural dislocation and displacement, problems like economic,
social and political, self-formation, self-absorption and so on. A Way in the
World is about V.S. Naipaul’s unwritten histories, attending to find a proper
form suitable for his every kind of experience. Naipaul often writes against and
beyond generic boundaries, because the literary forms he practiced flowed
together and supported one another. Naipaul’s literary mode he studied and
applied due to his colonial education, do not work for him because they deal
with entirely different societies, in which the possibility of the wide learning,
and idea of history a concern with self-knowledge exist on account of his
travels to many different parts of the world. In order to translate the essence of
his Indo-Trinidad-English experience, Naipaul finds his own way in the field of
English literature. He fights against historical incompleteness, and he creates a
new world. By re-enacting the historical past, he fight against absent
 Shirsath 187

personalities, and he brings the forgotten characters to the living world. He

makes re-enactment of the part in the present by documentary, thinking, and
imaginative construction. From the novel A Way in the World chapter three, six
and eight New clothes: A Unwritten Story, A Parcel of Papers, A Roll of
Tobacco and In the Glue of Desolations, subtitled as, are of Naipaul’s way of
writing about figures. They are intended to be true, but they are lost histories.
He transforms histories by bringing a personalized past into the cultural and
historical past of Trinidad. It is quoted as, “I’ve thought a lot about that. And I
think, father, that the difference between us, who are Indians, or half India’s,
and people like the Spaniards and the English and the Dutch and the French,
people who know how to go where they are going, I think that for them the
world is a safer place”. (AWW 205) He is capable of writing story within a
story, as if his build up and epic. In The Enigma of Arrival, Naipaul comes to
the terms with his own cultural dislocation and displacement. In The Enigma of
Arrival, he points out,
I had thought that because of my insecure past – peasant India, colonial
Trinidad, my own family circumstances, the colonial smallness that
didn’t consort with the grandeur of my ambition, my uprooting of
myself for a writing career, my coming to England with so little, and the
very little I still had to fall back on – I had thought that because of this I
had been given an especially tender or raw sense of an
unaccommodating world. (EA 99)
Thus, most of Naipaul’s novels have a dominant theme of alienation,
rootlessness, and displacement. Naipaul has represented societies that have
recently emerged from colonialism. Though imperialism has passed, and the
colonies have attained independent statues, but the nations of the Third World
faces a lot of problems like economic, social and political.
Naipaul’s writing forms a theory of about a number of key Hindu
philosophical concepts, and he writes it in the form of Caribbean ‘Katha’. The
Hindu influence in Naipaul’s world is always recognized. He believes in the
 Shirsath 188

subcontinent Indian, by time and distance. This is compounded by the lead to

holiness as per Naipaul’s observations. The presence of an Indian heritage and
people’s lead for it, are the central importance, on which Naipaul’s ideas
revolve, and it is evident from his select novels for study.
The Enigma of Arrival is negligible as a novel, and crucial an
autobiography. It is largely set in the countryside of Naipaul’s background. It is
largely set in the countryside of Naipaul’s adopted Wiltshire, in and around a
cottage near Stonehenge. In this respect, Pankaj Mishra points out, “This
autobiographical novel is suffused with Naipaul’s sense of wonder at his own
transplanted physical self in England … who not only conceived of, but
managed to realize, a high literary ambition; and it takes the reader through all
the complex stages – the ignorance, resumption, failure; and slow self-
knowledge – of Naipaul’s discovery of his subjects and themes”. (15) On the
same point, Abdul Razak Gurnah comments, “Both Morris and Lebrun are
fictions. It is an interesting piece of mischief. The Enigma of Arrival, so
unmistakably about Naipaul himself, was a ‘novel’, yet the story of Morris and
Lebrun, so plausibly interwoven in Trinidad’s and Naipaul’s own history, turns
out to be disguised”. (12) The same charge may also be made of A Way in the
World given the trajectory of development in Naipaul’s traced observations.
Naipaul has walked the path that rejects categories before. In these two
narratives, there is a flagrant refusal of the categories of theory, history and
autobiography and fiction as exclusive. The Enigma of Arrival and A Way in
the World comprised an autobiography, but the narrative is socially constructed
to continue the epistemological interrogation set up in finding the center.
However, The Enigma of Arrival is an interpretive introspection on the writer’s
life and thus self-centered and self-absorbed. A Way in the Worlds is concerned
with the sole of the other in self-formation. The later begins, where the former
ends with the narrator’s acceptance that the highest pursuits of the artists’
vocation is the conceptualization of life and man as mystery, and the true
religion of men the grief and the glory. It is in A Way in the World, Naipaul
 Shirsath 189

won speculation co-incidence with, and reflects the strongest most carefully
concealed elements of Hindu philosophy. Naipaul’s experiment with narrative
strategy shows, that discovery and invention are indispensable and representing
a receptor a remote past. In A Way in the World, Naipaul gives account of his
growing knowledge of himself and others as well as his efforts to discover and
recreate personal and cultural histories. A Way in the World accounts Naipaul’s
search for a way in the world of fiction to contest liminality through re-
discovering, re-constructing and rectify history so that his personal experience
are the experience of individual life. He had represented and incorporated it in
literary and culture histories. In the final section of The Enigma of Arrival,
Naipaul points out The Ceremony of Farewell provides a reflection on the
motif of death as,
My theme, the narrative to carry it, my characters – for some years I felt
they were sitting on my shoulder, waiting to declare themselves and to
possess me. But it was only out of this new awareness of death that I
began at last to write. Death was the motif; it had perhaps been the motif
all along. Death and the way of handling it – that was the motif of the
story of Jack. (376)
The lack of a sense of belonging and the loss of home of the two minor
themes are discussed in these novels. In the novels of Half a Life and Magic
Seeds, the description of bus-station, airport, dock, hotel, and camp is of high
frequency, which presents an image of homeless exile. Willie said, “I am not
staying here. I am leaving. I will spend a few nights here and then I will find
some way of going away”. (HL 133) For him, there is not a home always to
stay. He was eager to have a house belongs to him, a bed belongs to him, and
this was the reason, why every time Willie went to a place, he gave close
observation and description of the house in the novel Magic Seeds. He
described weaver’s house, house of the police station and gathering of the
railway workers. The house is not only a shelter from wind, rain and sun to
Willie, but is more like a place to live and it becomes a symbol of dignity to
 Shirsath 190

him. In Magic Seeds he described it as, “…There was really no space for Willie
and Einstein, but space was found. Each house they came to was like the one
they had left, with some local variation: uneven thatch instead of tiles, clay
bricks instead of plastered mud ad wattle. At last they crossed the state border,
and for two or three weeks the weaver network on the other side continued to
protect them”. (148) His major theme concerns to have a house of his own and
to lie in his own bed. House means the symbol of sense of belonging, to an
individual. The lack of the sense of the belonging largely is a result from the
loss of home. When a baby is born, he or she belongs to a family first. So home
through it is the smallest group in the society, it is the first place, that people
can have a sense of belonging. The determinant of happiness index is family
happiness index.
Willie’s father was born in the Brahmin family, highest caste in India. In
response to Gandhi’s call, he married a Dalit girl. Philosophers, say that the
image of mother is the image of soul and Willie hates his mother to the core as
she belongs to the low caste, and for him, she is foolish and backward. He is
sarcastic about his mother, and he feels that, he was born incomplete and a half
blooded hybrid, and so he hates his mother. Because of the lack of his mothers’
love, he lacks the sense of belongings too. He spent his whole life perusing for
his belongings. He looks down upon his father also. Willie’s grandfather works
as a secretary in the government, whereas Willie’s father lives as a mere
escapism according to Willie. He neither likes his father nor grandfather and he
goes abroad to get rid of them. Willie has said, it’s not only his home and it
can’t be as he could not stay in India too. Willie has resistant of his home,
when he is young, so the feeling or home does to take root in his heart, the lack
of parent’s love, resulted in loss of home and a loss of sense of belonging. He
spends his whole life in search of these belongings, but he fails in all his
attempts. He realizes at the end, that he miss-understood his father.
It was too late for him to know that another relation is Sarojini, his
sister, and first chapter of Magic Seeds starts with the dialogue between both of
 Shirsath 191

them. She only encourages him to take part in the underground movement, and
he later finds this to be a wrong decision. Willie never takes his own decision,
and he leaves his life to other’s decisions. He never plans about his life, and
rarely thinks about how to live. This makes the matter worse.
Willie does not find his life, ideal, because he has no definite plans, no
life goals, and he has no ability to practice a sincere life. It is his destiny; he
causes the lack of belongings to some extend only. Working takes up a long
time. It is not simply to feed their stomach; it provides the way to understand
the self-value of life and good life goals. Without true love with Ana, he wants
her to reciprocate the love. In this sense, he focuses attention outside the
family. He has relationship with Jone, Pardita and some prostitutes. He creates
such context for fun, and his sexual satisfaction. He left Pardita, just because
she is a white British woman. He is not true inside and outside the family, and
he is finding fault with others for his mishappenings.
Naipaul’s select novels almost have the recurring themes in order to
fulfill the narrator’s physical and mental needs, the characters search
everywhere they go and want to prove their identity. Needs of the
people, which are necessary to survive in the society can be classified
into psychological needs, safety needs, love, belonging needs, and self-
actualization. The satisfaction of each need will influence people’s
personality. Naipaul uses the musical type of structural form in The
Enigma of Arrival and Half a Life and it involves with the developments
of particular themes at different points. Garden, journey, beaches,
market women, coconut trees, banana trees, sun, big-leaved trees related
with nature and panic, sacrifice related with emotions, competition, race,
failure related with education are same minor themes.
4.3 Summing up
To sum up, Naipaul’s themes have the global touch. The themes of
Naipaul’s novels are related to the problems of colonized people, their
displacement, their homelessness and their sense of decolonization. His novels
 Shirsath 192

focus on an Indian migrated from India to Trinidad in his ancestor’s period and
who later on travel to European countries. So ultimately, for the author, India is
a country of his ancestors’ colony of Britain. At that time the place where he
lived became a country of colonials (Trinidad), and the place where he was
born and the place where he lived were colonies. This is the reason Naipaul
writes in his novels more about colonialism and post-colonialism.
The displacement of the people, who are from a colonial background, is
one of the powerful themes in his writings. Naipaul mixes with the theme of
historical overview of displaced persons. They are all victims of alienation due
to migration and displacement. Thoughts about colonization and feelings of the
people, who lived in the colonized world, the effects of the colonization that
affect the people personally are described with the effect of alienation and
rootlessness.
The eternal theme dealt by V.S. Naipaul in many of novels is the sense
of displacement or in the world of rootlessness and alienation. His exilic status
gave birth to displacement and rootlessness. Naipaul stands tall amongst all
Indian Diasporic writers. His grandparents’ were part of those indentured
labourers, who were sent to serve as plantation workers in the far off lands
during the British rule. The sense of homelessness comes naturally to him and
it is the main thing with which most of his writings is concerned. In a country,
marked by political upheaval mass migration, colonization, revolution is
inevitable. Most important within this category is the exile literature that means
the writings of the displaced are dispossessed. The writings of V.S. Naipaul
draw upon an experience totally based on layered levels of alienated exile that
his works become a major current of the 20th century life, thought, and art.
Cross-cultural issues lie at the heart of any migrant of Diaspora and so
about Naipaul. A Caribbean writer with India origin, who lives in England, is
the prime example of cross-cultural influence. Cross-cultural influence is seen
in his thought and art only because of his alienation.
 Shirsath 193

Naipaul recounts the results of colonialism and post-colonialism that the

modern man is confused about everything including his own culture itself. He
suffers from decay, disappointment, disorder, nothingness, meaninglessness
and loss. Individual’s self stands against the society in Naipaul’s novels and the
society is taken as ultimate. His works expose the problem of the postcolonial
generation that of imitating everything of the colonizers including their culture,
and suffer from disillusionment. They also highlight the need to achieve
affirmation and identity as to extinct from stress and tensions of the present and
he also advices not to live in past and future.
Naipaul’s characters face challenges and struggle to be fit into the wider
world. They realize the need of culture and principles and do away with all
type of narrowness in thinking. Naipaul attacks on doing anything in the name
of religions and rituals. He doesn’t favour the Europeans; on the contrary, he
attacks them for deploying developing counties in her socio-political
conditions. He gives utmost importance to one’s roots and acts as a mediator
who is ready adjust. He attacks the colonizers and those of colonial
consciousness for not meeting to their responsibilities and appeals them to
cooperate in the process of decolonization. It is observed that his novels
evaluate variety of countries and societies where one can feel comfortable. He
tries to escape from the conditions in Trinidad, and find the world a secure
place for anyone like him. His works point out the world as an unstable place
because of which a foreigner naturally feels uprooted living in the exile. He
himself moves from place to place and depicts empires collapsing and forming
new ones. He gives utmost importance to the law of change, which he believes
is utmost important for success. He also emphasizes the need of adjustment,
understanding and oneness.
 Shirsath 194

Works Cited
Ashcroft, Bill. The Empire Writes Back. Routledge, 1989.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. 1961. Penguin, 1971.
Gurnah, Abdul Razak. “V.S. Naipaul and the Nihilism of Primitive People”
T.L.S. May 20, 1994.
Hall, Stuart. “Culture Identity and Diaspora.” Colonial Discourse and Post-
Colonial Theory. Eds. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1994.
Hamilton, Ian. Interview. “Without a place: V.S. Naipaul in conversation
with Ian Hamilton”. Conversations with V.S. Naipaul. Ed. Feroza
Jussawalla. UP of Mississippi, 1997.
Kalita, Jumi. Search For Roots The Diasporic Sensibility of VS Naipaul. Ph.
D. Thesis. Assam University, 2016.
Lamming, George. The Pleasure of Exile. Michael Joseph, 1960.
Mishra, Pankaj. “The House of Mr. Naipaul”. Rev. of Letters between a
Father and Son. Review of Books, 20 Jan. 2000.
Myers, Lettie A. “Bring Memory to Silence: The Celebratory Nature of V.S.
Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas.” Journal of Indian Writing in
English. 12. 2, 1984.
Naipaul, V.S. A Way in the World. Heinemann, 1994.
--- . An Area of Darkness. Penguin, 1970.
--- . Half a Life. Picador, 2001.
--- . Magic Seeds. Alfred A. Knopf, 2004
--- . “Naipaul on Naipaul: Two Autobiographical Pieces”. Gentleman
Magazine, Feb. 1984.
--- . The Enigma of Arrival. 1987. Macmillan, 2002.
--- . The Overcrowded Barracoon. Penguin, rpt.1984.
Ramadevi, N. The Novels of Naipaul: Quest for Order and Identity. Prestige,
1997.
 Shirsath 195

Roldan-Santiago, Sarafin. “V. S. Naipaul’s Vulcanization of Travel and Fiction

Paradigms” V.S. Naipaul: Fiction and Travel. Ed. Rajeshwar Mittapalli
and Michael Hensen. Atlantic, 2002. eBook.
Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. 1993. Vintage, 1994.
Shenker, Israel. Interview. “V.S. Naipaul: Man without a Society.” Critical
Perspectives on V.S. Naipal. Ed. Robert D. Hammer. Three Continents
Press, 1977.
Toffler, Alvine. Future Shock. Bantam, 1972.
Walsh, William. V. S. Naipaul. Oliver and Boyed, 1973.
 Shirsath 196

Chapter 5

Conclusion

Thus, V. S. Naipaul is well known for his continuous writing about

marginal people with suppressed histories dealing with the themes of shifting
identities, roots and homes, expatriation and the changing realities of the
migrants. His fictional works are concerned with the individual’s complex fate,
societies and culture. His recurring themes are the outcome of the collusion of
culture. The themes in the colonial situation produce a special human psychosis
of unbelongingness, resulted either in success, or failed to survive in the new
atmosphere. Naipaul belongs to the background of unbelongingness, as his
grandfather was indentured labourer consisted of a cross-section of cultural and
religious group, whose education availed the opportunity of education to all the
people including immigrants. This results in awareness of their rights and rose
in their standard as a learned person.
Twice displaced from his ancestral homeland of India, V.S. Naipaul
takes himself as a diasporic writer. Naipaul identifies diasporic identity with
hybridism, cross-cultures, and contaminated social and cultural regimes.
Naipaul deals with different ethnic groups based on their different original
cultural heritages in the domain of post-colonial time. The theme of Diaspora
and migration is connected to V.S. Naipaul’s own experiences which
repeatedly get described in his fictions as themes. V.S. Naipaul’s grandfather’s
house provided him the link to his ancestral Indian life and culture, the idea of
Indianness as well as the Hinduism. The group of immigrants created miniature
India, in Port of Spain. His father’s stories helped him to retain the idea of
Indianness. As he grew up, he observed the difference between the two worlds,
one he inhabited, and other is one he belonged. A writer, therefore Naipaul is
an interesting example of Diaspora with his Hindu immigrant background,
 Shirsath 197

upbringing in Trinidad and fame as a writer from London. The imperial centre
becomes the creative activity centre and literary centre for Naipaul.
Expatriation as a state of mind pleases him. It looks as he is at home in
expatriation. Naipaul’s inability to accept any country as his home, in spite of
his struggle to do so is due to a deeper exploration and understanding. The fact
relates to his own sensibility, which developed out of his stay in Trinidad as an
immigrant and then in London, again as an immigrant.
Homesickness or the rejection of home or longing for a house or
homelessness becomes motivating factors in his novels. Naipaul has a more
subjective approach towards the problems or identity crisis, especially, on India
and most of his novels have autobiographical touch. He has a fact in mind that
home can only have meaning once on experience a level of displacement from
it. When Naipaul was in search of a West Indian tradition to commence his
writing this immigrant Indian community served as a good model for him.
Naipaul is a multi-layered international writer and the question of his identity
crops up because of his immigrant background and displacement. The themes
of his novels center on varieties of dislocations, migration, exile, the idea of
being unanchored and displaced, the enigma of a de-centered and disorienting
experience in the explosive and disconcerting realities of the post-colonial
world. The memories of immigrant’s homelands, social life with social taboos
and inherited lifestyles, customs keep fear in the minds of migrants and make
their loneliness more acute. Naipaul remains unmindful of the Trinidad that
made him, the India, that had haunted him and the England that houses him
still. Naipaul’s violent intolerance of other and forceful individualism are
exposed in this novel.
Naipaul nevertheless remains stick to certain identification. England
may be his chosen home, but the author is not English. A self-proclaimed exile
was on him but not for it and not of it. His voice sounds in that of the narrator
of A Way in the World, who says unapologetically after encountering the
lawyer Evander, a man with a revolutionary dream who appeal to him on the
 Shirsath 198

level of identity politics. His The Enigma of Arrival is about the issue of
migration and immigrants’ problems and their diasporic consciousness. The
title of the book itself indicates the act of migration. It talks about migration
across from villages to the cities and from the old to the new ideas of the
people. They face the enigma of arrival into the new land and due to
connecting with the history of land of migration. Diasporic past always affects
the diasporic present.
Naipaul illustrates his nostalgia for his own homeland in The Enigma of
Arrival and A Way in the World clearly. In his A Way in the World the same
theme is very interestingly described. The writer very well portrays migration
and Diaspora experience through, the characters in both the novels, The
Enigma of Arrival and A Way in the World.
Naipaul wrote the novels with great speed during the early months of
1957. As migration and Diaspora are the heart of Asian history, so also stand
for Naipaul. The forces of history are furiously at work and Naipaul as the
writer has a towering vision of it. An inability to forget the native language
casts a shadow on the immigrant’s prospects in his adopted country; Naipaul
understands the grief of losing one’s language. In his Nobel lecture, Naipaul
revealed the pain of migration and consequent loss. His novels move around
Naipaul’s familiar themes of dislocation, racial intersection, identity crisis,
alienation and Rootlessness, colonialism and post-colonialism. Ultimately
Willie’s is a migration of minor social excursion.
Identity crisis or the crisis of belongingness always features as an
important theme in the novels of V.S. Naipaul. His subject of writing is the
third world under colonialism, revolution and cultural conflicts due to his own
identity crisis he had faced. Naipaul’s novelistic writings are as a process of
identity recovery undergoing a series transformations; he denies or neglects his
Caribbean homeland, adopts a stage of mimicry in England, searches for his
cultural roots in India and eventually reconstructs his identity out of his multi-
cultural particularity and uniqueness. His writing career comes in four stages -
 Shirsath 199

rootlessness and alienation from cultural heritage in India, colonial predicament

writings for self-definition. Writing about for self-definition the fictional
character of Naipaul’s changing and shifting identity was examined by ‘I’. This
view of ‘I’ shows that there is an ‘identity’, which is not his society. The
Caribbean and Trinidad population was composed of people coming from the
outer land, especially from Asia and Africa, and they came because of
European colonization. They belonged to different backgrounds and due to the
different background of each society, there were many cultural traditions
among them and cultural conflict, and were one of many problems they had to
face. Therefore the colonizer applied the colonial cultural identity in order to
repress the cultural conflicts in addition the colonizer had the authority to
control them.
The representation of the hybridity of identity is examined through the
changes happening in the new society of Trinidad and Tobago. Those are
viewed as the attempts at reconstruction, which consist of reconstruction as the
reality of change, reconstruction as the new generation, and of reconstruction
as the new society in the New World. These reconstructions are very complex,
because the society basically has a unique condition. It is alienated from the
colonizer’s cultural traditions, and is subordinated or inferior as a controlled
society within the domination of the colonizer. Naipaul creates his own identity
in exile. He himself searches his own identity, and he is much confused to fix
himself in any part of the place since, he is really unique. He has no emotion
for any place he lives, he lives in a position without a home, and he stands as
homeless person.
V.S. Naipaul writes about the spirit of exile and alienation and like other
Diasporic literary writers searches rehabilitation in his writings. Though the
sense of displacement is an essential condition of Diasporic literature, it is not
experiencing precisely with the same identity by all, it differs according to time
and place. Naipaul established a permanent place in the minds of his readers
that, he is in search of his own identity. Naipaul consistently paints the picture
 Shirsath 200

of derelict man in the desolate landscape. Through his writings, Naipaul

attempt to salvage his own family history and history of the Trinidadian, Indian
community, so the heroes of his novels make final effort to create a new world
out of nothingness. Naipaul has understood the meaning and significance of
experience for an author. He further knew the importance of translation into
words of personal and external realities.
The identity crises of the migrant characters of V.S. Naipaul’s novels
reflect on the problems of the third world man, as he, himself is still an alien,
he is not still able to come to a decision about his nationality, and he has no
self-realization. The cultural mixture plays a role in shaping mind frame and
identities, the vast varieties of religion and norms makes the emigrant question
about their value. They find difficulties in finding the answer, in finding their
own route thus, resulting being lost in the other’s culture and identity, this
identity crisis and the lack of communication forces people to look for their
home within new surroundings. This is the reason of Naipaul’s characters
searching for homes in new surroundings in almost all the select novels.
The general idea of identity development also throws light on the
experience of displacement and homelessness. The idea of home and nation,
the delusion of mixed nationality and Diaspora, identity questions,
belongingness, dependency, transforming stepping away from familiar areas,
independence and issues relating to generation of immigrant, the difference
between lose of identity among the generation, the religious participation in
defining the Diaspora character, identity. Naipaul in his fictional concerns is
reviewing novels in those cultures, where his search for a sense of identity and
the need to establish a past on which the present can stand has a special force.
Having his roots into Indian ancestry, Naipaul appears a conflicting personality
as a Trinidadian English metropolitan. In the same way the immigrants like
him are helpless as they have no identity and no self-realization. They cannot
command or show original face in the foreign lands. They have no way to
connect with the country, where they are living and they are homeless as they
 Shirsath 201

miss their motherland. They are all restless in search for their identity. This is
the identity crisis, he faces throughout his life, and this is reflected mostly in all
of his novels.
Naipaul’s Half a Life and Magic Seeds are full of literary echoes and
references to Naipaul’s own writings. The issues are identity crisis, and the
crisis of belongingness and placelessness. These two features are common in
the two novels Half a Way and Magic Seeds. The theme of the crisis of
placelessness, unbelongingness and identity are presented powerfully. These
are the two main features, which help the author to build up his stories. A
strong desire for independence and identity crisis in both the novels is also
conscious. His novels display a mood of biography of departure and exile from
the background of Trinidad to the cosmopolitan and multi-culture culture of
England. He has a strong opinion that colonizes produce the colonial culture
society, and the knowledge and culture of those societies come from outside.
Naipaul portrays and evaluates the lives of the people of mixed descent
in three countries and their struggle to discover their identities. The novel is
about the confused identities, a theme that Naipaul used in almost all the books,
he had written about the people coming from small places, smaller historical
contest and struggling with the looseness of their selves and their lives.
Hybridity is described between two separate races of cultures and
theories of mimicry and the third space as the identity making process, which
turned the condition of the dislocate and dispossesses people as mimic
individual. Hybridity and mimicry are fundamentally associated with the
occurrence of post-colonial discourse and culture imperialism. Effect of
hybridity upon identity and culture is there in these novels. Hybridity is an
illustration of colonial anxiety. The principal intention is the hybrid of colonial
identity, which is in a cultural form, made the colonial ambivalent and as a
result, altered their power and identity.
Naipaul has been involved with a wide possibility of interwoven issues
and contexts. The issues range from personal history to the historical
 Shirsath 202

determination of post-colonial status from the complexities or racial groups,

religious communities and nationalities to the broader concerns of human
spiritual needs, intellectual life, and from fictional to non-fictional version like
his two novels that echoes his identity of the intellectual protagonist. Naipaul is
natural outsider, but he possesses a capacity to interweave his own feelings
with those of other to recognize in them his own fallibility, which give his
writing an intense humanity. In his narrative Half a Life and Magic Seeds, the
protagonist Willie, travels across three continents in which Naipaul explores
the theme of borrowed life, half-made societies and mimicry of false identities.
The eternal theme dealt by V.S. Naipaul in many of novels is the sense
of displacement or in the world of rootlessness and alienation. His exilic status
gave birth to displacement and rootlessness. Naipaul stands tall amongst all
Indian Diasporic writers. His grandparents’ were part of those indentured
labourers, who were sent to serve as plantation workers in the far off lands
during the British rule. The sense of homelessness comes naturally to him and
it is the main thing with which most of his writings is concerned. In a country,
marked by political upheaval mass migration, colonization, revolution is
inevitable. Most important within this category is the exile literature that means
the writings of the displaced are dispossessed. The writings of V.S. Naipaul
draw upon an experience totally based on layered levels of alienated exile that
his works become a major current of the 20th century life, thought, and art.
Cross-cultural issues lie at the heart of any migrant of Diaspora and so
about Naipaul. A Caribbean writer with India origin, who lives in England, is
the prime example of cross-cultural influence. Cross-cultural influence is seen
in his thought and art only because of his alienation.
Naipaul’s themes have the global touch. The displacement of people
who are from a colonial background and colonialism, is one of his powerful
themes. Naipaul mixes with the theme of historical overview of displaced
persons who are all heroes of his book especially A Way in the World. They are
all victims of alienation. Thoughts about colonization and feelings of the
 Shirsath 203

people, who lived in the colonized world, the effects of the colonization that
affect the people personally are described with the effect of alienation and
rootlessness.
Naipaul is a victim of double Diaspora as his grandfather migrated from
India to Trinidad in 1880, since then his family lived there. He decided to study
at Oxford University College, and later on settled there as he has strong desire
to settle down in England, since his childhood. The sense of expatriations was
in his blood, because he was born and educated in a country, which was not his
own and at present, he is residing in England that can also not to be called his
home. He can only be a visitor wherever he goes. For the author, India is his
ancestor country, and his not of his own generation and Trinidad, where he
spent his childhood became a country because of colonialism.
The lack of a sense of belonging and the loss of home of the two minor
themes are discussed in these novels. In the novels of Half a Life and Magic
Seeds, the description of bus-station, airport, dock, hotel, and camp is of high
frequency, which presents an image of homeless exile.
V.S. Naipaul’s realist fiction and application of post-colonial
observations has resulted in his celebrated literary career spanning over fifty
years. The historian seeks to abstract principles from human events, but his
approach was the other; he sought to reconstruct the human story as best as he
could. He was supported by his story and the themes. It is about discovery of a
new lands, new colonies, new ideas of life, revolution and chaos etc. He is
accelerator authentic author and a contemporary thinker. Naipaul’s canon has
been praised for its political perspective, and its interrogation of the political
ideologies under priming society and culture. The focus of his work simple is
the transcending the temptation articulating a specific political agenda or
motive. His works are considered definite voice of contemporary English
literature, and he is one of the prominent writers of post-colonial fictions. Much
like his fictional contribution to contemporary literature, his non-fiction
explores the theme of post-colonial societies in the wake of independence.
 Shirsath 204

As V.S. Naipaul lived in the environment of colonies, he prefers to write

the colony politics, and he focuses the post-colonial situation. His ancestors
from India moved to Trinidad a colony to work in the sugarcane lands. He has
a great liking for making stories with the real surroundings of post-colonial
politics and culture. His novels and fictions mostly depicts the colonial;
atmosphere in the post-colonial period. His main characters have thirst for
freedom, since they do not like the way in which they live and they often look
for a drastic change in the political atmosphere rather they wait for freedom or
independence of their own land. V.S. Naipaul is an important rider of modern
post-colonial literature. As a man formed and defined by two cultures, of the
East and West, he expresses in his works, the psychology of the people in the
third world and the obstacles that he met with as a rootless person, when
striving to find his cultural attributing and spiritual home. Naipaul’s stories are
in effect the stories of former colonies before the imperialist colonies withdrew.
His subsequent novels developed themes that are more political in the
postcolonial period. He wrote about colonial and post-colonial societies in the
process of de-colonization.
The failures of colonial and post-colonial and post-colonial societies
have depicted by Naipaul. The feeling of a person, who is not in his native land
but in a colony, and yet the sadness comes from the heart of his hearts and
crates a melancholic feeling. V.S. Naipaul highly achieved the name and fame
in the history of the post-colonial Indian Diasporic literature. He unites in the
history of English literature. Naipaul is a very meticulous artist, aware of the
importance of the past into the artistic whole. His focus is exclusively on the
various types of identity. He originally designs the web of identity through
different characters in different situations, in different periods such as colonial
and post-colonial periods. His way of depicting Indians is indispensable. He is
regarded as a harbinger of Indian identity. He blends myth, reality
multiculturalism, Hinduism, modernism and traditionalism. As a novelist of the
colonial experience, he situates his novels in both colonial as well as ex-
 Shirsath 205

colonial societies and portrays vividly the complexities inherent to such

societies.
The major themes of his novels are related to the problems of colonized
people, their displacement, and their homelessness. Naipaul, an Indian
migrated from India to Trinidad in his ancestor’s period decided to study at
England in Oxford University. Naipaul lived in London as a diasporic. He went
there because he had no other place to go. He had no choice. His sense of
alienation is reflected in most of his writings. He has always written about the
problems of Indian Diaspora, whether his subject is Trinidad, London, Indian,
or East Africa. His fiction is designed to convey to the readers the experience
of a particular person, in particular situation in which alienation and absurdity
occur in contemporary life. He has given the description of the Third World
and for him that is the world of colonies inhabited by the immigrant people.
These people went there as a labour. They have no root there and large parts of
the world population, living in those colonized islands have sense of identity
crisis as labourers with their particular culture.
Ethnicity and multiculturalism is one the very important themes of
Naipaul. He knows the cultures of different countries and he has experienced
the same. He discusses beautifully the cultures of different countries through
his characters in almost all the famous novels written by him. Having grown up
in a colonial country, Naipaul used to a colonial way of life. When he came to
India, he was in another colonial country; he compares colonial Trinidad with
colonial India.
Naipaul is a keen observer of the problems both as an in and the
outsider, who is to face in the third world countries. The experience through
which he has undergone helped him to depict the true nature of the plight, as an
outsider (Indian). So, his novels are the authentic impersonation of his own
experience. He visited and lived in so many places; he is very well known to
deal with multiculturalism.
 Shirsath 206

Naipaul takes his readers to a journey through his works, and it was the
journey of experiences from the locale to the global, and from a narrow
perspective to a broader and more encompassing vision. Naipaul’s works are
set in many places and explore many themes but the best known for his
knowing depictions of Trinidad, where he was born with explorations of
modern day India, his ancestral land and his harsh dislike portrays of post-
colonial countries in Africa, Asia, and South America. His fiction is often
autobiographical, writing repeatedly in the themes of alienation, the burdens of
the past and the confusions of the present. His books carry the life history of
brought up, and continued his livelihood. He has chance of meeting several
people in several countries with various cultures. The fiction of V.S. Naipaul
carries the message of multiculturalism.
Trinidadian themes occupy main place, in the majority of Naipaul’s
writings. In Trinidad, every small issue turned out to be a big event for people.
The psychology of people of Trinidad is depicted through a galaxy of
characters in most of the book, especially in The Miguel Street. In addition to
this, some novels and short stories do not longer refer to Trinidad as such, but
replace it with islands. But there are many elements like geographical,
historical and ethnic, which reflect the multi-cultural character of Trinidad. It is
difficult to define in Naipaul, case home, because the word home is linked to
identity. His words are offences on identity, quest and displacement. His works
frequently carry references to his cultural heritage, rooted in Trinidad
(birthplace) India (ancestral place) and Britain (place of education).
Naipaul deals with multiculturalism and ethnicity in his novel Half a
Life and Magic Seeds through the protagonist Willie Chandran. He goes to
different places, and wanders as a gypsy; he met various kinds of people with
entirely different cultures. Through all the main characters, the theme of the
novels mainly focuses on ethnicity and multiculturalism in a broad way.
Multiculturalism deals with minorities and implies a relation with the majority,
but these two categories are defined in articulation between advanced
 Shirsath 207

capitalized countries and the third world. Naipaul’s works are closely
connected with his real life experience and served as his autobiography, which
reflected his shadow. The theme of ethnicity and multiculturalism runs to the
whole process of his writing in this respect.
Naipaul debates with cultural hybridity and with the help of that, he
examines the place and meaning of cultural hybridity in the crisis ridden
isolated world, taking its starting point, the fact that cultural identities are
themselves ethnic and multi-cultural to the contributors. They illuminate the
complexity and flexibility of culture and identity, defining their potential open.
Their closures show anti-racism and multiculturalism is very difficult to fight
even today.
To conclude, Naipaul’s themes have the global touch. Most of his
novels have dominant themes of alienation, rootlessness, displacement,
multiculturalism, hybridity, identity crisis, ethnicity, sense of
(un)belongingness, cross-cultural issues, nostalgia for homeland, Diasporic
presence, spirit of exile, colonial and post-colonial life. Naipaul has represented
societies that have recently emerged from colonialism. Though imperialism has
passed, and the colonies have attained independent statues, the nations of the
Third World face a lot of socio-economic and political problems.
Findings
1. The themes of Naipaul’s novels cover the global issues especially of
the immigrants spread worldwide.
2. Most of his novels have dominant themes like alienation,
rootlessness, displacement, multiculturalism, hybridity, identity
crisis, ethnicity, sense of (un)belongingness, cross-cultural issues,
nostalgia for homeland, Diasporic presence, spirit of exile, colonial
and post-colonial life.
3. The theme of Diaspora and migration has connection with V.S.
Naipaul’s own experiences which repeatedly get described in his
writings.
 Shirsath 208

4. The displacement of the people, who are from a colonial background

and colonialism, is one of his powerful themes. Naipaul mixes with
the theme of historical overview of displaced persons who are all
heroes of his fiction.
5. Expatriation as a state of mind pleases the immigrants; it looks as
they are at home in expatriation.
6. V.S. Naipaul focuses on the theme of alienation of the immigrants
from the Third world countries; this feeling leads to transplantation,
exploitation, and rootlessness.
7. The eternal theme dealt with by V.S. Naipaul in many of his novels
brings out a sense of displacement, rootlessness and alienation of the
immigrants.
8. The sense of alienation in his novels gives birth to the sense of exile
and isolation; the feeling of exile leads isolated people to travel from
one place to other in search of their identity.
9. Dispossession of place, homelessness and loss of identity emerges as
the problem for diasporic people. The notion of home provides a
sense of belonging and security.
10. Displacement links to the past and to the land of belongingness, the
loss of the sense of history and the efforts to heal it produce great
problems and sufferings.
11. Colonialism uproots dereliction and illiteracy, and it encourages
mimicry of the colonizers.
12. Diasporic acceptance affects the life of the people in regards to
geographical, history, cultural and racial problems of belongingness.
13. Multiculturalism leads to the mixed and confused life history of the
colonizers.
14. Most of Naipaul’s novels are stressful in case of female relationship.
They intimate love and free sexual life in European and African
countries.
 Shirsath 209

15. The theme of the crisis of placelessness, unbelongingness and

identity are the main features, which help the author to build up his
stories.
16. Hybridity is a state between two separate races of cultures and
theories of mimicry and the third space as the identity making
process, which turned the condition of the dislocate and dispossessed
people as mimic individuals. Hybridity and mimicry are
fundamentally associated with the occurrence of post-colonial
discourse and cultural imperialism.
17. Homesickness or the rejection of home or longing for a house or
homelessness becomes motivating factors in his novels.
18. Identity crisis or the crisis of belongingness always features in
Naipaul’s novels. His subject of writing is the third world under
colonialism, revolution and cultural conflicts due to his own identity
crisis he faced. Naipaul’s novelistic writings are as a process of
identity recovery undergoing series transformations.
19. Ethnicity and multiculturalism is one the very important themes of
Naipaul. He is a keen observer of the problems both as an ‘in and the
outsider’.
20. Naipaul’s protagonists are not happy in the alien country due to
migration of their ancestors. Therefore, there is a kind of conflict
between old and new generations.
21. Finally, Naipaul’s writing imparts a very important message that
there should be proper understanding and mutual compatibility to
build up sound relationship.
Implications
The study has the following pedagogical implications:
1. This analysis is important in understanding the life of the people
with diasporic feeling.
 Shirsath 210

2. It would help readers to understand the causes of Diaspora,

rootlessness and the ways to come over their difficulties in respect of
their identity.
3. It would provide academicians like teachers, researchers and
students to understand the concept of Diaspora as a world-wide
issue; how the feeling of expatriations is the result of immigration
and diasporic existence.
4. It would highlighting how the possession of one’s own identity to a
particular country is important as it gives stability, peace of mind,
self-respect, dignity, and belongingness to feel at home.
5. Many NRI’s and unemployed youngsters fledge to foreign countries,
in the hope to lead the advanced life as they are offered heavy
packages. This study would help them understand, overcome and
adjust with the problems.
Scope for further Research
V. S. Naipaul’s writing forms a theory of about a number of key Hindu
philosophical concepts, and he writes it in the form of Caribbean “Katha”. The
Hindu influence in Naipaul’s world is always recognized. He believes in the
subcontinent Indian by time and distance. This is compounded by the lead to
holiness as per Naipaul’s observations. The presence of an Indian heritage and
people’s lead for it, are the central importance, on which Naipaul’s ideas
revolve, and it is evident from his literary works. Of course, this would be the
topic for further research in this area of study.
 Shirsath 211

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