New stuff:
- Mukul Kesavan on the rise of Jinnah and the Muslim league
- Kamila Shamsie on Tariq Ali’s A Sultan in Palermo
- Amitava Kumar’s critique of Salman Rushdie in Tehelka; my disagreements with Kumar
- Cranky comments from V.S. Naipaul in the New York Times; my bewilderment
1. Novelist Mukul Kesavan has an essay on the rise of the Muslim League in the 1940s (via India Uncut). He argues that Muslim politics only really consolidated between 1937 and 1942. Key incidents include the Congress’ decision to participate in elections in 1935, and the changes in the political landscape that occurred with the beginning of World War II.
Kitabkhana links to Kamila Shamsie’s review of Tariq Ali’s latest novel A Sultan in Palermo (the fourth of five in Ali’s “Islam Quintet”), in The Guardian. If you weren’t aware that Palermo (i.e., in Sicily) had Sultans, you might want to read this review, and perhaps Ali’s novel as well.
Hurree also links to Amitava Kumar’s long critique of Salman Rushdie at Tehelka. The article at Tehelka isn’t accessible to the public, so Kumar has posted the article for us at his personal website. Kumar isn’t just dismissing one of Rushdie’s books, or even a group of them — he’s going after Rushdie as a whole.
Though I generally admire Amitava Kumar, here I have to disagree with him, especially the central thesis of this essay — the idea that what Rushdie has been writing about all along is himself (“It is impossible to escape the suspicion that the one who is to be redeemed most often seems to be the writer himself”). There is undoubtedly narcissism there, but there is also a real feel for the subject matter (especially in the earlier books). Not to mention brilliant wordplay, compelling storytelling, and verve. And Rushdie’s narcissism, especially since it is checked by self-consciousness about the same, need not be a mortal sin. In the right hands, it can also be revelatory.
(Incidentally, isn’t it a little bit odd that Kumar marks Rushdie’s narcissism in a review that is largely structured as a personal essay?)
And this passage in the Kumar essay troubles me:
His is no doubt a powerful voice; often, it has been an oppositional voice; but it is a voice of a celebrity promoting commendable causes; more seriously, in some fundamental way, it is the voice of a metaphorical outsider, and therefore incapable of revealing to ourselves, in an intimate way, our complicities, our contradictions, and our own inescapable horror. I don’t deny that it is a voice that can engage and delight and of course annoy, and yet it is very important to make a distinction: what Rushdie writes can easily provoke, but it is rarely able to disturb.
It sounds impressive, but aren’t the distinctions Kumar is making here a little vague? What is a “metaphorical outsider”? To what is Kumar referring to by “our own inescapable horror”? And what is the distinction between “provoke” and “disturb” in the last sentence? To me, this is a critical sleight of hand: Kumar is telling us that there’s something not-quite-right about Rushdie (which might be true), but he’s not really showing us what it is.
Finally, it’s strange to me that Kumar praises the recent Naipaul (Magic Seeds) while digging into Rushdie. Kumar has mentioned his own debt to Naipaul’s prose style before, in Bombay, London, New York (which I reviewed informally here), and I can fully see how important Naipaul’s dispassionate, methodical eye might have been to someone like Kumar.
The truth is, both Rushdie and Naipaul do have significant fallibilities. Naipaul has an ugly, sneering side, scarcely controlled in early books like India: An Area of Darkenss, or the early African narratives he wrote. He also has a hatred for things Islamic that he has expressed and expressed and expressed — writing three long, mean-spirited books about the Islamic world, and giving his blessing, before last year’s elections, to the ideology of India’s Hindu right.
Rushdie is still in my good graces, though he’s slipping. He may have many of the weaknesses Kumar cites — chief among them narcissism and a tendency to the academic — but all in all his voice has done a lot more good for Indian literature than bad. That said, I have no trouble at all accepting Kumar’s dismissive verdict on the forthcoming Shalimar the Clown. With each bad book, people remember the brilliant, compelling, original Rushdie a little less, and think of the smug, “celebrity” Rushdie a little more. That’s a substantial loss.
4. Speaking of Naipaul, I’m surprised that no one has been discussing the long essay on him in the New York Times, the product of an interview conducted by Rachel Donadio. Naipaul here reproduces many of the comments about the state of contemporary literature that he’s made elsewhere, though he now seems to be reaching a new, completely unprecedented level of transcendent crankiness. The zinger I can’t believe he gets away with is his straight-faced claim that the novel is dead:
Yet the fact that Naipaul has continued to write novels does not undercut his acute awareness of the form’s limitations; indeed, it amplifies it. His is the lament of a writer who, through a life devoted to his craft, has discovered that the tools at his disposal are no longer adequate. “If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it’s O.K., but it’s of no account,” Naipaul said. “If you’re a romantic writer, you write novels about men and women falling in love, etc., give a little narrative here and there. But again, it’s of no account.”
This is just one of many things in the interview that one can’t take seriously. (Another is Naipaul’s claim that he’s a better travel writer than Joseph Conrad.)
Another bizarre moment is this paragraph:
In conversation, another dynamic becomes apparent, in which the more dismissive Naipaul is of a writer, the more likely it is that he has engaged deeply with that writer’s work. Sitting a few feet away from a bookshelf of French novels, Naipaul called Proust “tedious,” “repetitive,” “self-indulgent,” concerned only with a character’s social status. “What is missing in Proust is this idea of a moral center,” he said. Naipaul also had little respect for Joyce’s “Ulysses” — “the Irish book,” he sniffily called it — and other works “that have to lean on borrowed stories.” Lately, he has found Stendhal “repetitive, tedious, infuriating,” while “the greatest disappointment was Flaubert.”
Here, it seems as if Donadio knows that what Naipaul is saying is incoherent and absurd. But she poses it completely seriously — as if it makes perfect sense. With the first sentence of the above paragraph, Donadio gives Naipaul’s literary nihilism a free pass.
Kesavan’s article follows the argument of Ayesha Jalal’s “The Sole Spokesperson” in trying to emphasize the role of political circumstances rather than ideology in the eventual partition of the subcontinent — the “late-surge” of the Muslim League is cited as proof of this.
Two criticisms: 1) The “late-surge” argument minimizes the role of ideological differences which had been percolating for centuries. 2) The focus on Muslim League-Congress politics minimizes the role of other regional and national groups in the independence period.
having become progressively more and more disappointed with Rushdie, with each of his latest works, I’m not entirely surprised to hear that Shalimar The Clown may be a real stinker. Fury was dead awful, and Step Across This Line was soporific. I say this with nothing but love– love for Midnight’s Children and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, especially.
I guess he’s distracted…
Correction: the book’s correct title is “The Sole Spokesman”. Apologies!
Just read Q and A by Vikas Swarup in one sitting. Couldn’t put the book down!
Naipaul’s lament about the death of the novel isn’t new. He had a similar plaint in an essay, originally published in the NYRB, and republished here..
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0940322382/ref=pd_sim_b_2/103-2632411-4800665?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance
In that same essay, Naipaul says that the 20th century’s dominant creative medium was film.
While VSN’s claims about the death of the novel may be exaggerated, or more accurately, a tad premature… but I do think that Naipaul is mostly right. Unfortunately, because I’m an omnivorous bibliophile.
However, it’s pretty clear that no novelist today has the impact/ influence that a Pushkin or Dickens did, or even Joyce or Lawrence.
The sheer number of alternatives available (film, TV, magazines, Web, video games and more) + the increasingly faster society we live in = less time for novels.
I’m willing to bet that in any random sample of people (whether in America or India) an infinitesimally small percentage will have read the same novel. The similar percentages for a particular movie or a TV show are likely to be much, much higher.
Wish I could write more but got to run.. no time 🙂
Amardeep, I was just visiting SM to see if anyone had posted on that Naipaul interview yet. I had to take a break from reading it, because of all the crankiness. It’s interesting that you noted the literary criticisms. I was agog at the comments made about Muslim women wearing headscarves- “If you decide to move to another country and to live within its laws you don’t express your disregard for the essence of the culture,” he said. “It’s a form of aggression.” Wow.
Jay,
Ok, I see what you’re getting at. But it sounds like you think Partition was inevitable.
I prefer to think of it in these terms: partition wasn’t inevitable, but once the seed of an idea of a separate nation was planted throughout the Indian subcontinent (including amongst Muslim leaders in regions where they were the minority), everything seemed to slide in that direction.
But I don’t think that historical event is truly inevitable, even if there is a ‘cultural’ disposition. Specific political events and processes matter a lot.
In this case, I think Kesavan makes a good point when he says that World War II — a war based in Europe (and in competing European ideologies) — may have upset political calculations both in the Congress and in the Muslim League.
Prashant,
However, it’s pretty clear that no novelist today has the impact/ influence that a Pushkin or Dickens did, or even Joyce or Lawrence.
The sheer number of alternatives available (film, TV, magazines, Web, video games and more) + the increasingly faster society we live in = less time for novels.
I think both of these statements might be questioned. First, it’s highly questionable to say that there’s no novelist today who has the impact Dickens did. In fact, Dickens wasn’t even the best-selling novelist of the Victorian era — I believe G.W.M. Reynolds (who is mostly forgotten today) has that honor. Dickens sold very well, but sales figures may not get us very far. (Dan Brown also sells very well.)
From what I remember of the arguments in “Reading & Writing” about the novel, Naipaul was saying there that he thought the form of the novel was stagnating. And there too I wonder: on the one hand, one can point out that there are many interesting experiments being done with the novel all the time, whether we are talking about Indian writers like G.V. Desani or postmodern Americans like Don DeLillo or Thomas Pynchon.
Alternatively, one could take a different tack, and concede that the fundamentals of the form were set 100+ years ago, but the reason the basic form is static is that it continues to work for people. (Evidence could be adduced to support either approach.)
Finally, on your point about competing media. Again, there are many places to question, but let me just offer one, and that is to point out the sheer number of successful — and highly influential — films that had their start as written texts of one kind or another. (I’m mostly thinking of the U.S. context here; India is a different matter, though even there it’s interesting to see that several of this year’s big Hindi films, especially ‘Parineeta’ and ‘Paheli’ had their start as written stories).
It might be objected that film adaptations generally supercede the novels they are based on commercially, but even so they can be read as shortcuts that confirm the centrality of the form of storytelling they are based on. In other words, they can be read as adding to the centrality of the novel, not taking away from it. The novel is the site where the story is worked out in all its complexity and ambiguities; the movie is where the money is made.
I agree that people are getting lazier about reading novels, but I also most literate people — when they sit down with good books — still connect with the stories they read. Novels aren’t dead, even if middle-class and upper-middle class people are more distracted by other media than ever.
I might also add that the delight people still take in some of Naipaul’s own stories (i.e., Biswas) are evidence in favor of the novel’s continued life…
In contrast to Naipaul, I would say that it’s not the novel that’s dying, it’s the publishing industry. Even the latter may not be dead: once publishers find a way to profit from the digital revolution, the industry might find a new lease on life…
Brimful,
“If you decide to move to another country and to live within its laws you don’t express your disregard for the essence of the culture,” he said. “It’s a form of aggression.” Wow.
Yes, that’s nuts, isn’t it? If you think that way, you could say the same thing about anyone who decides (for instance) to stay vegetarian in the west, or who worships at a Mandir or Gurdwara, or who retains any culturally specific traits whatsoever.
He tells us a lot about his own experience of deracination with statements like this.
Do you care to explain what your criticism of Naipaul’s “literary nihilism” is? You seem to take it as an affront to the novel as an art form, but really, as Naipaul says, it’s of no account, which is essentially is a self-contained vortex which also sucks down his opinion of the modern novel, along with everything else. Naipaul has throughout his career affected a miasmatic disillusionment with his literary precedents, and then tried to reconcile his apparent contradictions with shallow allusions to the contrasting personas of the artist on the page and the artist in reality. Whilst these contradictions may be great academic fodder, they’re really of no account to Naipaul’s fictional world, which like it or not, also manifests in his more historical works as a sometimes puerile, and always imperious, treatment of the terse world of politics. For Naipaul, revolutions, and on a smaller scale politics, are the grand excuses made up by the caricatures he creates in his novels, to tuck away their own petty aims in all that sound and fury. That’s not always fair, but that’s the style which makes him who he is. Now in the dusk of his career, cut his “nihilism” some slack. Quite recently, the great boxing champ quit Kosta Tszyu quit on the stool after taking a beating from a younger fighter. Lot’s of people called him a coward, but after almost ten years of putting everyone on the canvas, I think he had a right to do so. Naipaul’s made some great contributions to literature. So what if he now chooses to quit on the stool?
Yes, Amardeep, it’s highly wacko, in scientific terms. 😉
I’m actually a little put off by how lenient that article was regarding him. Calling him “controversial” and “irascible” is letting him off rather easily. If a Caucasian writer made remarks like that, I doubt the NYT would have been so even-keeled. Maybe that’s just my interpretation- I’m clearly biased against Naipaul.
Jeevan,
He’s not just quitting on the stool (though I like the metaphor, I must say), he’s taking everyone down with himself. It’s especially disturbing to hear Naipaul disparage the people who have clearly influenced him the most as a writer, especially Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad (and also maybe Flaubert — a master stylist with a bite, if ever there was one).
So that is Naipaul’s Nihilism: I don’t exist, and neither do you, even if you think you do.
Amardeep,
What are Naipaul’s mean-spirited views on Islam. I see this repeated quite often. But I have yet to see an enumeration. Is there an essay or book that you could refer me to.
I have read the three India books and Among The Believers. I did not find ATB particularly mean-spirited. I do not remember it clearly though.
Naipaul is cranky. But his books (at least the Indian ones) have moved beyond the crankiness. The first is less a book about India and more about his reaction to India. The second is his view of India. And finally the last one is mostly Indians talking about India.
I believe in the NYT (audio clip) he casually says that India is a country without thinkers. A billion people and no thinkers. And then there is the wholesale dismissiveness in Wounded Civilization. I don’t think he is necessarily Pro-Hindu. I doubt he is pro-anything, for that matter.
I think to categorize him as a Pro-Hindu/Anti-Islam ideologue (I donÂ’t mean to say you are doing this) is to miss out on a lot. He insists that he is an intuitive writer. But he is quite often accused of having an agenda. I think this has to do more with his interview pronouncements rather than his books.
Regarding Mukul Kesavan:
I think he is pointing to just ONE reason why the Muslim league rose. The ball for a muslim league was set rolling for quite sometime back in England, by muslim intellectuals. Part of the problem with any joint party (of hindus and muslims) was the stipulation of (near) equal weightage of votes to muslims and hindus. Given the actual ratios of population were 1/3 to 2/3, this would have meant a double vote for every muslim. It is hard to see how this was going to be tenable in a united India. If at all, the congress’ decisions merely accelerated the division. This problem of weighted votes (some people are more important than others) persists to this day in Pakistan which the military uses to become the defacto ruler. A sort of hierarchy of ethnicities which stipulates who can rule whom. It is interesting that the entire Bangladesh freedom movement can be linked back to this idea, that if you have equal votes to both (then) west pakistan and (then) east pakistan, you could end up with a east pakistani ruling over pakistan. Hence the military action to invalidate the bangladeshi election and the subsequent killings and independence.
Regarding Naipaul:
The “novel is dead” theme may seem to be a result of ‘Man bites dog’ sensationalism and a lament for times past. Naipaul’s has made the case elsewhere. However, the most savage and brilliant attack on the ‘modern novel’ is by Tom Wolfe in his “The Three stooges” essay. Here he talks about why the novel doesn’t engage anymore and the best talent has gone to film (something even VSN touches on). Like Tom Wolfe, VSN seems to espouse a ‘reportage’ type novel as more relevant. There is merit to this argument, not for me the pseudo-scientific thermodyamics/gravitation novels of american post-modernists. A Balzac describing budding capitalist france, a Dickens on industrializing London or Zola on the coal mines is a hundred times more insightful and interesting. Also, I do think Naipaul is a better travel writer than Conrad. Personally, I felt “Apocalypse now” was a much better movie/script than “The heart of darkness”. Naipaul’s Islamic journeys are far more insightful and prescient than either (think of any writer today who is talking about things that will relevant twenty years from now).
Tef,
Regarding Naipaul’s anti-Muslim feelings, it’s pretty well documented (I also don’t remember Among the Believers well enough to say, but I felt it was dripping on nearly every page of Beyond Belief).
Online, a starting point might be this article in the Guardian from last spring.
I’ve also talked about this a bit with regard to Naipaul’s take on the sacking of Vijayanagar. (I also talked about Vijayanagar in the context of a review of Githa Hariharan’s novel In Times of Siege).
You’re right that he’s not been consistently ‘pro-Hindu’ for all his antipathy to the Indo-Islamic tradition. Many of his early stories parody Hindu religiosity quite aggressively (The Mystic Masseur, Biswas, etc.).
The Hindu right, which embraced Naipaul after he started making nice-nice noises about the Sangh Pariwar’s “passion,” doesn’t really know this side of him very well.
Is he slipping? What is a good novel, novelist after all? To me, it is not the prose but the sentiment beneath – and he speaks of me, for me – I love that. Picked up Satanic verses a couple of times- couldnt read past the third page. Then I picked up East – west for a plane ride. Ho-hum most of the way until I got to the last line on the last story. I went numb, the senses went blank – do you remember the passage- “I buck. I snort… I choose neither of you, and both”. Few books that have done that. Each novel – you take away the bizarre – and the guy’s baring himself on totally desi terms. Home, family, belonging… it’s all there… Attended his reading from “Step across” at Ryerson U. There was a moment in which he said “afghaanistan” with the soft “gh” and the “aa” … oops — he corrected his slip – said it again as “afgannistan”. I havent read him after”Step across” which was really post-dating old stuff – cheating – but even he’s mediocre now – in his dotage now … sitting in a rocking chair drooling about sevaiyan and shammi kebabs … he’s still a good buddy. be gentle
Babloo,
A Balzac describing budding capitalist france, a Dickens on industrializing London or Zola on the coal mines is a hundred times more insightful and interesting.
Yes, but even novels of reportage are doing quite well. They aren’t dead; they still have their effect on a decent sized body of readers. (A body of readers that is growing rapidly in India in particular, I think)
Amitav Ghosh, for instance, has been publishing some quite beautiful versions in this form, with The Glass Palace and The Hungry Tide.
Also, I do think Naipaul is a better travel writer than Conrad. Personally, I felt “Apocalypse now” was a much better movie/script than “The heart of darkness”.
Well, that’s a matter of opinion, and I might disagree. But Conrad is a canonical, major author. It’s pretty absurd to question The Heart of Darkness, as he does in this interview, because its “fiction is excessive and feeble,” and to say that the best part is its “reportage.”
The strength of Conrad’s serious fiction (especially Lord Jim and HoD) has nothing to do with “reportage” (or for that matter, with plot); it’s about the language, stupid. It’s as if Naipaul has forgotten how to appreciate finely turned sentences altogether.
Moreover, in her Times piece, Donadio is letting him off easy on the flagrant self-contradiction. He now says “Conrad had no influence on me.” But that not at all what he said in 1974, when he bemoaned the fact that Conrad had seemingly done all the good topics already.
Thanks for the links. I think I ought to read Beyond Belief as well to figure this thing out.
I don’t think a majority of the Sangh Parivar has read Naipaul. But Wounded Civilization, has recently been translated into Hindi. And the book release was attended by the luminaries of the Parivar. I suspect most of the upper echelons of the Parivar have read Wounded Civilization and do not have a problem with it.
I don’t think you can read “India: A Wounded Civilization” and come with the idea that he is anti-hindu. If at all, the summary is that Islamic impact on hindu civilization has been catastrophic. All the great minds, symbols and talents that were hindu were either destroyed or converted. What you have left of hinduism is a deeply wounded civilization that will take quite a bit of time time to recover, all the creative energies been wiped out – courtesy Islamic invasions of course. Hence numerous examples of the characteristics of a wounded civilization. It wouldn’t be surprising that the Sangh parivar supports this view. A lot of people in Pakistan would support the view of Islamic civilization dominating the hindu civilization. Well that’s what the book would purport (as I remember). Of course for the truth, that is something else 😉
Every rule-breaking novelist is narcissist almost by definition. They have to like the sound of their own distinctive voice and be self-confident enough to ignore the dominant Weltanschauung.
The title gives me serious pause. But on the basis of a single quoted passage, you’re willing to discard one of the greatest writers of the age? Suspend judgment, please, until you’ve read a bit more. Fury was among his weakest works, but I’m sure he’s heard that ad nauseum by now.
Rushdie is voluble in the press; it’s a good skill to have, the ability to market oneself and one’s creative works. What’s the point of being a solitary genius, only to die in obscurity and be repopularized by some subaltern studies workshop 50 years later? 😉
Very interesting blog entry once again on literature. Links look very interesting to read though unfortunately dont have enough time right now to read and to comment on the articles of amitav and Naipaul.. here is quick comment..
I read almost all of Naipaul novels, travelogues and also books like India a wounded civilization. Some of Naipaul novels seem to be autobiographical ( his life in england and africa) and are also great travelogues. They are not about describing beauty of places but more about getting deep into the culture and the protagonist willie coming from outside trying to fit into a new country’s culture everytime and looks at every country critically with an emotional detachment , be it india, africa or england…willie seems to be a misfit everywhere, is weak at heart and surrenders to destiny and let the countries and its culture take him through new experiences.
Thats the best thing about Naipaul, his emotional detachment and looking at every country critically like a traveler perceiving ordinary things in an extraordinary way and writing with a brutal frankness. His novels are realistic and his protagonists experiences are unique. Not many writers can do that.He richly deserves the nobel prize.
I met a journalist in india who told me how Naipaul collected his material for his last novel “Magic seeds” loosely based on naxalites in Andhra pradesh or could even be based on “Ltte groups in srilanka”.
And I come from a place in india where even now in some towns naxalites live and I have to admit Naipaul’s magic seeds is a very realistic portrayal of naxalities and their lives and there again in magic seeds willie is this confused mentally weak protagonist struggling to fit into that system and gets lost in that system..
And I also read most of Salman Rushdies novels. I think he is another one who richly deserves a nobel prize. Rushdie has a unique style of writing and plays very well with words and verbs while Naipauls style of writing and english are pretty simple. Rushdie is creative genius and his protagonist are very unique, strangely eccentric yet very human and not all his novels are autobiographical. His characters and protagonists are different in each of his novels adn are very unique, u cannot find his kinda protagonists anywhere else..Fury is probably the only novel close to being autobiographical ( his life in NY after fatwa) and all the rest of his novel’ s first hundred pages may be autobiographical or his ancestors stories but as the novel progresses he gets out of that, the rest of the pages he manages to create and develop his characters so well, that they dont seem to be autobiographical anymore. I like Rushdie’s sense of humor and eccentricity a lot and his style of writing is very unique and original. I liked his assays on various issues “step across the line” too. There is a lot to write about Rushdie but this post is getting real long should stop here…
But one thing both Naipaul and Rushdie have in common are they both had grandparents born in india/ ancestral roots in india and they both look at india differently than most of us who lived in india for years and years and seem to take most things they write about for granted and dont think they are special enough to weave stories on ( like naxalite issue in magic seeds or about indian families/children living/born around 1947 in bombay as in midnights children)..
Amardeep says
First, it’s highly questionable to say that there’s no novelist today who has the impact Dickens did. In fact, Dickens wasn’t even the best-selling novelist of the Victorian era — I believe G.W.M. Reynolds (who is mostly forgotten today) has that honor. Dickens sold very well, but sales figures may not get us very far. (Dan Brown also sells very well.)
When I spoke about the impact that Dickens had, both during his lifetime and after, and in places far beyond England — I wasn’t thinking of sales at all. A red herring there 🙂
Exactly which novelists of today have (and will have) the same impact that Dickens did?
Re films having their antecedents in novels or the written text: I think this sort of proves my point? Yes, films or video games (the likely dominant medium of the next few decades) have a start with the written word… but what percentage of the film’s viewers or the video game addicts actually read the original written word — some really small number
An appropriate analogy is with poetry: while poetry is mostly dead, the lyrical muse has found other outlets….
http://www.stringinfo.com/pkblog/archives/002419.html
I don’t like the decline of the novel (and reading, in general). However, it’s a fact that we’ve got to live with — even if you’re an am omnivorous bibliophile like me.. or like, I suspect, most of the commentors on this blog.
I dont know why Indians/PIO’s are so reserved when it comes to pointing out the absurdely violent Islamic invasion on India a few centuries ago. Why should a novelist/historian not say what actually happened?
To your note: Amartya Sen, lately has also been praising Indian traditions.
What do critics of Naipaul’s writing on Islam have to say about the journalist reports of 7/7? The truth about Islam is offensive to left/liberals.
Great post. I respond here: http://vijayblog.blogspot.com
hammer_sickel said, :I dont know why Indians/PIO’s are so reserved when it comes to pointing out the absurdely violent :Islamic invasion on India a few centuries ago. Why should a novelist/historian not say what :actually happened?”
Good question. India doesnt have real freedom of speech. Some of Naipauls books were banned in India. (I dont know the present status) Rushdies Satanic Verses still is. Ginsburgs poetry was edited to remove offensive material.
With that said there have been novelist who have pointed out islamic conquest eg Check out Khuswant Singh’s Delhi. He has been a congresswallah so he probably had enough clout in the system.
The academic discourse still is dishonest on many issues and one can thank schools and governemt and the dont care attitude. The following point will illustrate the governments role. ASI (Archealogical survey of India) is incharge of Qutub Minar in Delhi. There is no sign, that mentions what the ruin next to it is. There is an offcial board in english and one in hindi which summarizes the history of the minar. It simply states that qutub minar was built by qutubbuddin aibak in year so and so… and ashok stambha has not rusted yet. But any one can go and see that there is a ruin of a temple. But there is no official doccumentation explaining what the building was before and what happened to it. IT was a jain temple complex but this information is not presented. The figurines have been smashed and bricks turned over. The doccumentation however exists on what is there but is not that easily accessible. For the most part indians dont care about their history. A high school graduate in india has no sense about history. All he has been taught is ‘british bad indians good’ and ‘hindu muslim sikh isai hum sub bhai bhai’.
hai friend,, have you read about Magic Seeds By v.s naipaul? if you have read it, what is the appropriate theme for this book????????? i want to discuss it with you, if you don’t mind to share your idea to me,, please send your opinion about this case to me in iche_eam@yahoo.com, thanks