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LITERATURE:V.S.NAIPAUL
An Area Of Darkness
 "Indians
defecate everywhere. They defecate, mostly, beside the railway tracks.
But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they
defecate on the riverbanks; they defecate on the streets; they never look
for cover. Muslims, with their tradition of purdah, can at times be secretive.
But this is a religious act of self-denial, for it is said that the peasant,
Muslim or Hindu, suffers from claustrophobia if he has to use an enclosed
latrine ...
"These squatting figures-to the visitor,
after a time, as eternal and emblematic as Rodin's Thinker-are never spoken
of; they are never written about; they are not mentioned in novels or
stories; they do not appear in feature films or documentaries. This might
be regarded as part of a permissible prettifying intention. But the truth
is that Indians do not see these squatters and might even, with complete
sincerity, deny that they exist: a collective blindness arising out of
the Indian fear of pollution and the resulting conviction that Indians
are the cleanest people in the world."
India: A Wounded Civilisation
 "Indian
poverty is more dehumanizing than any machine; and, more than in any machine
civilization, men in India are units, locked up in the straitest obedience
by their idea of their dharma. The scientist returning to India sheds
the individuality he acquired during his time abroad; he regains the security
of his caste identity, and the world is once more simplified. There are
minute rules, as comforting as bandages; individual perception and judgement,
which once called forth his creativity, are relinquished as burdens, and
the man is once more a unit in his herd, his science reduced to a skill.
The blight of caste is not only untouchability and the consequent deification
in India of filth; the blight, in an India that tries to grow, is also
the over-all obedience it imposes, its readymade satisfactions, the diminishing
of adventurousness, the pushing away from men of individuality and the
possibility of excellence.
"Men might rebel; but in the end they usually
make their peace. There is no room in India for outsiders ... "
A Million Mutinies Now
 "A
million mutinies, supported by twenty kinds of group excess, sectarian
excess, religious excess, regional excess: the beginnings of self-awareness,
it would seem, the beginnings of an intellectual life, already negated
by old anarchy and disorder. But there was in India now what didn't exist
200 years before: a central will, a central intellect, a national idea.
The Indian Union was greater than the sum of its parts; and many of these
movements of excess strengthened the Indian state, defining it as the
source of law and civility and reasonableness. The Indian Union gave people
a second chance, calling them back from the excesses with which, in another
century, or in other circumstances (as neighbouring countries showed),
they might have had to live: the destructive chauvinism of the Shiv Sena,
the tyranny of many kinds of religious fundamentalism (people always ready
in India to let religion carry the burden of their pain), the film-star
corruption and racial politics of the south, the pious Marxist idleness
and nullity of Bengal."
Half A Life
 "I
must go back. We come from a line of priests. We were attached to a certain
temple. I do not know when the temple was built or which ruler built it
or for how long we have been attached to it; we are not people with that
kind of knowledge. We of the temple priesthood and our families made a
community. At one time I suppose we would have been a very rich and prosperous
community, served in various ways by the people whom we served. But when
the Muslims conquered the land we all became poor. The people we served
could no longer support us. Things became worse when the British came.
There was law, but the population increased. There were far too many of
us in the temple community. This was what my grandfather told me. All
the complicated rules of the community held, but there was actually very
little to eat. People became thin and weak and fell ill easily. What a
fate for our priestly community! I didn't like hearing the stories my
grandfather told of that time, in the 1890s.
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