'Hindu Revivalists Are Mimicking Islamic Fundamentalists'

I had this idea of moderating a discussion between two of my favourite writers. Oneof them, V.S. Naipaul, or to give his full name, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, isethnically Indian but Trinidad born. He has won almost every major literary award and hasreportedly been considered for the Nobel Prize several times. He was in India recentlywith his charming wife, Nadira, to pick up another award, this time from the MaharanaMewar Foundation. This was Sir Vidia’s ninth trip to India. He has written 25 books,three of them on India. The Editorial Board of Modern Library has considered A Housefor Mr Biswas one of the best novels of the 20th century. In both fiction andnon-fiction, Sir Vidia has explored the emotional and political geography of what he callshalf-made societies. His unforgiving prose has won him many admirers but there are alsomany in the liberal establishment who see him as a force of reaction for not holding amore optimistic view of the developing countries. I first met him when he had come to NewYork in November 1980 to collect the prestigious Bennett Award given by the HudsonReview in recognition of "his outstanding accomplishments as a novelist and manof letters".

The other writer, Khushwant Singh, is the doyen of India’s writing fraternityand the author of the First Great Indian Novel of post-Independence India, A Train toPakistan. Lawyer, diplomat, editor, broadcaster, parliamentarian, novelist andcolumnist, Khushwant is now in his eighties and still going strong. He won the Grove PressAward in 1954 for the best work of fiction. The two-volume History of the Sikhsreceived rave reviews when it was first published 35 years ago and is still in print. Heis probably the most widely-read Indian writer. I have been a friend of the family formany years except for a six-month period in the 1960s when he wouldn’t talk to me dueto a youthful indiscretion on my part.

The three of us met on a hot Saturday morning in Delhi with photographers andlights in tow. I am sorry to relate I was largely redundant. It was a love fest betweenthe two writers. My role was to hold the tape recorder, interjecting occasionally, naamke vaaste.

Bhaichand Patel: How long have you two known each other?

Khushwant Singh: We first met in 1962 when he had come to research thefirst of his three books on India, An Area of Darkness. Even then, almost 40 years ago, Iwas completely overawed by his stature in the literary world. I was surprised to find himsuch a gentle, soft person.

V.S. Naipaul: I was 29 years old and you were 20 years my senior. Yetyou greeted me as if we were of the same age. It was extremely generous of you.

Singh: I remember taking you to a party hosted by some industrialistat the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. We were the first to arrive and lo and behold there werehalf a dozen whores lined up at the party. I tried to engage them in conversation butfound them totally illiterate. Only then it occurred to me who they were. They had beenprovided by the host for the benefit of any guests so inclined!

Naipaul (laughs): I don’t remember that at all.

Singh: I also took you to a mela at Surajkund on the outskirts ofDelhi. The view of the valley at sunset was spectacular. You stood there silently for along time. I thought you were moved by it and would write a lyrical description. But whenI read the book I found that you were more moved by the village children in rags withflies hovering around them.

Naipaul: I was not in a position to appreciate what you were showingme. Earlier you had taken me to the Qutab and showed me the pillars taken from a Hindutemple for its construction. You told me that Surajkund was one of the few Hindustructures still standing in that area. I was just beginning to comprehend, in anhistorical sense, the Indian calamity.

Singh: The New Yorker magazine recently carried an exchange of lettersbetween your father and you while you were at Oxford. Writing seems to run in your family.Your late brother, Shiva, wrote a number of books, including that very fine novel, TheChip Chip Gatherers. Your father worked on a newspaper and had writing ambitions of hisown. But you seem to have written letters only to your father, none to your mother or yourbrother.

Naipaul: Shiva would have been too young. He was only eight when myfather died. My relationship with my father was very close, unusually close. My mother mayhave read some of the letters I wrote to my father but she wouldn’t have known whatto make of them. My mother was not a reading woman. I don’t think my mother read aline of what I have written or a word of the newspaper pieces my father wrote.

Singh: Which part of India does your family come from?

Naipaul: We are now several generations away. It is very hard after ahundred years to pinpoint the ancestral homeland. There would be eight great-grandparentsfrom different parts of India. I know my mother’s father came from eastern UttarPradesh, a village near Gorakhpur. I went there in 1962. That was one firm address we usedto have. Now we have lost even that connection.

Singh: Did you speak Hindi in your family?

Naipaul: Hindi faded away as a house language in Trinidad in theforties when I was a child. English overcame Hindi.

Singh: I found A House for Mr Biswas amazing. Good writing, humorousand evocative. Is it based on your father?

Naipaul: There is a great difference between real life and fiction.Real life is often very messy and does not lend itself to neat episodes. My father was avery serious man. Mr Biswas, on the other hand, is more of a comic figure. I took a familystructure and elaborated on it. The novel was an exercise in imagination. Much of it takesplace in the twenties. I was born in 1932.

Singh: It received a rare full-page review in The Observer of London.

Naipaul: It was a big gesture on the part of the critic ColinMacInness. He asked the editor for a full page. It was largely due to him that my careertook off. I suppose writers need a bit of luck like that.

Patel: Do you think English is becoming more and more part ofthe large group of Indian languages?

Naipaul: It certainly is much better spoken and written in thiscountry these days.

Singh: There is no question about it. The new Indian writers are muchmore at ease with the English language. The Jhumpa Lahiris and the Arundhati Roys are muchbetter writers than the R.K. Narayans and the Raja Raos of the past. They handle thelanguage much better.

Singh: In a Free State won the Booker Prize. Would you consider ityour best book?

Naipaul: Yes, I suppose that one and A House for Mr Biswas. The BookerPrize judges wanted to give me a prize and they used In a Free State to hang it on. Prizesare a new innovation. In the old days there used to be end of the year round-ups of worthybooks. Some books faded and some stayed afloat. Publishing has changed so much over theyears. The novel has become a kind of a commercial product.

Singh: You were obviously very disappointed with India when you firstcame in 1962. That disappointment was reflected in your book, An Area of Darkness.

Naipaul: I was wounded. It wasn’t disappointment. It was a greatwound. You must remember we were a very depressed community in Trinidad. There were nostories about India. We assumed that our ancestors must have left some rather awful placeto come to a place like Trinidad. Our idea of India was a grim one. It was a country neverphysically described to us and therefore never real. I was not equipped to deal with Indiawhen I first came here.

Singh: I thought there was a sense of disenchantment. You came herewith a notion of a great civilisation and culture and you didn’t find it.

Naipaul: No. It was India’s poverty that laid me low.

Patel: In Beyond Belief, your last book, you differentiatebetween Arab Muslims and non-Arab Muslims.

Naipaul: It was a later discovery on my part. In its origins, Islam isan Arab religion. Everyone who is not an Arab is a convert. Islam is a demanding religion.A convert to Islam changes his view of the world. His holy places are in another country,his sacred language is Arabic. He rejects his own history and turns away from his ownhistorical background. In a profound way the converted Muslims are a colonised people.

Singh: Can you explain your disenchantment with Islam?

Naipaul: I have been misinterpreted. It is not disenchantment. I ambeing realistic. I have been trying to penetrate and understand Islam. The fundamentalistsin places like Malaysia and Indonesia want to get rid of everything that reminds them oftheir non-Muslim past. This is also true of Iran. Persia was a great country. It rivalledthe Roman Empire. It challenged classical Greece. Now they are saying that the pre-Islamicperiod is not important. Ayatollah Khalkhalli, Khomeini’s hanging judge, tried todestroy the ruins of Persepolis and the remnants of Cyrus’ palace built 2,500 yearsago. This is madness. This is the direction fanaticism will take people. One has tocompare that with other societies where the past is cherished and endlessly explored.

Singh: You see that more sharply in a country like Egypt. IslamicEgypt is totally different from the Egypt of the pharaohs. They will exploit their richcultural heritage for tourism and at the same time disown it as idol worship. You see thisdichotomy also in Pakistan. The fact that once they were Hindus and were once ruled by theSikhs has been wiped out from their memories.

Patel: Any opinion on the new Hindu nationalism that iscreeping into the mainstream of Indian politics?

Naipaul: I haven’t gone into it in any great detail: Khushwant,tell me about it.

Singh: It distresses me. There has been an uprise of intolerancetowards everything that is not Hindu and it is gaining momentum. A good example of this isthe action taken against M.F. Husain when he painted a Hindu goddess in the nude. Theydestroyed his paintings and ransacked his house. I am pretty certain such vandalismwouldn’t have occurred if he were a Hindu. You can walk into any antique stop andpick up a carving of Shiva and Parvati coupling. There are many paintings of Radha andKrishna making love in the most graphic manner.

Naipaul: Surely there is an element of mimicry in this. The Hindurevivalists are mimicking the Islamic fundamentalists.

Singh: I think they feed on each other. The Hindu fundamentalists arereacting to the constant calls by their Muslim counterparts in Afghanistan and Pakistanfor jehad against the non-Muslims in India.

Naipaul: But these are minor eruptions.

Singh: Like destroying the Babri mosque in Ayodhya? You can’tcall that a minor eruption.

Naipaul: I would call it an act of historical balancing. The mosquebuilt by Babar in Ayodhya was meant as an act of contempt. Babar was no lover of India. Ithink it is universally accepted that Babar despised India, the Indian people and theirfaith.

Singh: One had always imagined that we had made a new beginning in1947. The past would be left to the past. Unfortunately that hasn’t happened. TheHindu fundamentalists are asserting themselves and are targeting the adherents of the tworeligions that have come from outside, Islam and Christianity.

Naipaul: Christianity and Islam have been so intolerant themselves.Their history has been a history of intolerance. Christianity too has a dark history.Christianity that was brought here by the Portuguese was very dark intellectually andvery, very cruel. The twentieth century Christianity is much more humane.

Singh: Still, I wish the venom would go out of Vishwa Hindu Parishad.They have 300 mosques on their list for destruction. Two of them have been accepted fordestruction even by the BJP, those in Mathura and Varanasi. This kind of insanity willspell disaster for the country.

Patel: Vidia, I hear you are writing a new novel and this time it’s aboutlove.

Naipaul (laughs): I am not even going to deny it. There are all sortsof rumours. I am doing a piece of work. I am afraid that if I talk about it I will loseit. Khushwant, tell me about love. What aspect of love interests you?

Singh: The earthy aspect, the physical aspect, the lusty aspect, allaspects of love. But I find the whole concept so elusive that I never try to define it,either to myself or in anything I write. I do understand lust but, as hard as I try, Ican’t understand the concept of love.

Naipaul: I think people who are not sexually fulfilled are hard peopleand extraordinarily damaged. They are terribly unhappy and unreliable. Lots of sexualrepression comes out in the form of violence. A lot of religious intolerance is a productof sexual frustration.

Singh: I said to L.K. Advani once, "You are a good and an honestman. But you don’t drink, you don’t smoke and you don’t womanise. Such menare dangerous!"