The Hindutva storm-troopers would feel let down, having been trained to abuse the secular Hindus, liberals, intellectuals, dissenting writers and a minority community.

RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat (left) and BJP National Chief Amit Shah release coffee table book on the life of the PM Narendra Modi, July 2017. Hindustan Times/Press Association. All rights reserved.

The RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), India’s self-styled “cultural” organisation, whose political wing BJP runs the Government, held a public outreach programme designed to soften its image and make itself palatable to the opponents of its Hindu nationalism and sectarianism. That caused a political stir because as an insider says, this militant Hindu right-wing organisation, manned by a huge network of paramilitary volunteers, never admits there is anything flawed or outdated in its ideology.

The RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has made some startling statements going against core principles of this organisation founded in 1925 with the objective of providing character training through Hindu discipline and unifying the majority Hindu community, to lead to the formation of a Hindu nation. Bhagwat’s intervention has confused followers accustomed to hard talk.

Hard talk

Bhagwat has suggested, for example, that the organisation wholeheartedly take on board the Indian Constitution. His statement endorsing the Indian Constitution – which he called “the consensus of the country” – made news, because RSS leaders have always criticised the secular and socialist Constitution of India. Commentators have predicted that if the BJP wins a clear majority in the 2019 elections, it will delete the word “secular” from the Constitution. But Bhagwat’s remarks should end the speculation that a BJP Government would amend the Constitution to turn India into a theocratic state, Hindu Rashtra.

Another key statement by Bhagwat has suggested that a Hindu nation will have space for Muslims. “The day it is said that Muslims are unwanted here, the concept of Hindutva will cease to exist”. This somewhat reassuring gesture towards Muslims comes at a time when the community is feeling besieged. It has been politically marginalised by the BJP. Not a week passes without newspaper reports of lumpen mobs carrying the Hindutva banner and threatening Muslims for selling beef or being friendly with Hindu women. In many cases, police in BJP-ruled states have shown religious bias. So, Bhagwat’s nuanced statement was very sensible and timely.

But what is going on? These statements made ahead of the general election reflect the realisation that aggressive Hindutva politics may not yield a rich harvest of votes this time around – there are limits to religious polarisation promoting the interests of the political wing of the RSS.

These statements made ahead of the general election reflect the realisation that… there are limits to religious polarisation.

Of course, Bhagwat’s lecture was promptly hailed by its member who is currently deputed to the ruling party BJP as its national general secretary. He wrote: “Bhagwat has disarmed most critics through his Glasnost.” He projected Bhagwat as a “reformer”, comparing him to Gorbachev who had said: “If not me, who? And if not now, when?”

Some ordinary Hindus and Muslims dismissed Bhagwat’s remarks as an election-eve gimmick. If an atheist starts swearing in the name of God, it will make the news. So, Bhagwat got massive publicity. Most commentators said Bhagwat must walk the talk and make the rank and file follow him.

As elections approach, political parties modify their ideological commitments, depending on the prevailing national mood as recorded by their strategists. With parliamentary elections coming up in a few months, India is sinking under a flood of political rhetoric. It is in this context that the nominated supreme leader of the RSS thought of rebranding the “cultural” organisation that runs India by remote-control.

Survival instinct

The RSS has always possessed extraordinary political instincts. Without political acumen, this cultural organisation would not have survived for more than 90 years during which it compromised with the British and kept its distance from the Congress-led freedom movement. After independence, the RSS got blamed because one of its former members killed Mahatma Gandhi. It faced a ban that was lifted after it gave an undertaking to remain a cultural organisation. Sardar Patel was then Home Minister.

While the RSS became a pariah in the eyes of most Indians because of its sectarian agenda, it was admired even by its opponents for its record of rescue and relief operations during calamities. The RSS is justifiably proud of its capacity to respond quickly through its efficient organisation. It claimed that it can deploy its volunteers even faster than the army deploys its soldiers!

The RSS found easy acceptance among a large section of Indians settled abroad. The Hollywood Hindus of America, feeling insecure about their identity, find comfort in lending digital support to RSS ideology. They would run miles from the White nationalists in their country but support the Hindu nationalists in India! A London-based Gujarati trader grumbling about India teeming with Muslims fell silent when told that white skinheads would complain that London had got far too many Patels.

The RSS tradition of public service and hard work in the areas of education and health, designed to counter the influence of missionaries among the tribals and the unprivileged Hindus, kept the organisation in good shape, even in an adverse political environment. All those years before it tasted the fruits of political power, the RSS kept working without fanfare, without publicity, quietly and secretively, attracting more volunteers to its sectarian ideology and expanding its network.

As part of its growth strategy, it says Hinduism is in danger and Hindus face a demographic challenge. Its political instinct reflects the way Hindu society has survived the threats posed by invaders, at times compromising with alien rulers but always sticking to its faith in private. All other Hindu organisations such as the Hindu Mela, Ram Rajya Parishad and Hindu Mahasabha withered away. The RSS saw ups and downs and its political wing grabbed every opportunity to mainstream itself by joining and quitting coalitions.

Their biggest opportunity came when Jayaprakash Narayan needed volunteers to fight the Indira Gandhi Government. The RSS and its political wing were more than willing to join his movement, notwithstanding ideological differences. Subsequently the socialist leader regretted the entry of the communal forces into his movement, but by then the communal outfit had gained a measure of respectability because of its association with others. The RSS and BJP have spent the past four years trying to mainstream Hindutva ideology, based on exclusion and extremism.

For this “cultural” organisation, Indian culture means pre-Islamic Indian culture.

For this “cultural” organisation, Indian culture means pre-Islamic Indian culture. It does not accept regional diversity or the differences marking different phases of India’s history. Its storm-troopers would malign any historian admiring an Indian culture that had assimilated influences from the Greek world and from Central Asia, from the Christian Jewish Near East or from Islam and from Europe. Its leaders participated in the demolition of the Babri mosque and its volunteers are ever ready to demand the renaming of the roads named after the Mogul emperors.

Under the saffron flag

Ironically, the RSS shows European influence in the garb of its volunteers, in its commitment to the model of the nation-state and its admiration for powerful European leaders who crushed the minorities!

It marches on with the saffron flag, playing temple politics and ignoring the basic tenets of the Hindu faith. Its followers cannot be called Hindu fundamentalists because, as scholar Richard Gombrich said, they do not follow the fundamentals of the Hindu faith. Some of the principles propounded by the RSS do not reflect Vedic culture, and are imports both from Islam and Christianity, who have only one central authority and one single holy book. The Hindutva warriors, who threaten dissenters and writers of books on Hinduism, were never exposed to the Vedic hymn questioning the Creator!

Respected religious leaders and learned scholars usually keep mum when politicians hijack a religion, be it Islam, Christianity, Buddhism or Hinduism. Had it not been so, the vast Hindu masses might have come to understand the sharp difference between their faith and the “Hindutva” being propagated by the RSS and its affiliated organisations.

The groups carrying saffron flags are always out to “defend” Hindu Gods and Goddesses who are supposed to protect mortals! In this version of the ancient faith, killing a cow is a sin, but killing a human acceptable.

In this version of the ancient faith, killing a cow is a sin, but killing a human acceptable.

The RSS expects its makeover to dissuade those disturbed by Hindutva extremism from deserting its political wing, whose popularity shows some signs of decline. The RSS chief decided to project a slightly liberal face at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a former RSS functionary, has run into a political storm.

There are signs of the revival of temple politics that once yielded a rich harvest of votes for the BJP. Considering the outbreak of religiosity in the political arena in the past four years, the fear of secular forces seems justified. In the coming elections, will the ruling party make even greater use of the Hindutva card since its development plans have not delivered?

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the other day that the primary duty of the judiciary is to protect the secular spirit of the Constitution – a task that has become more demanding because “political disputes and electoral battles are increasingly getting laced with religious overtones, symbols, myths and prejudices”.

Modi came to power by appealing to the votaries of Hindutva as well as promising rapid economic development. The votaries called him Hindu Hridhay Samrat (Emperor of the Hindu Hearts). The promised economic nirvana attracted those opposed to religious polarisation, hate speech and political marginalisation of a significant community.

The combination of Hindutva and economic development has not worked. So, has the RSS concluded that the Hindutva card may not give a majority to the BJP? It had chosen Modi as the BJP’s nominee for the prime-ministership. It may have a Plan B in case its political wing does not get an absolute majority.

The BJP will need coalition partners and since Modi has turned out to be a polarising figure, the potential partners will need an excuse to support a party tainted with religious hatred. In that event, the RSS will quickly field Modi’s replacement from within its ranks to attract coalition partners.

The controversial but firm ties between the RSS and its political wing once led to the fall of the coalition Janata Government on the issue of “dual membership” as the RSS members in the Government refused to ditch their mentor-organisation. Now that Modi’s charisma, notwithstanding his fiery oratory, has started to diminish, Bhagwat has also made a very subtle attempt in his speech to distance the RSS from its political wing.

Now that Modi’s charisma, notwithstanding his fiery oratory, has started to diminish, Bhagwat has also made a very subtle attempt in his speech to distance the RSS from its political wing.

While the BJP leaders have gone after the Congress and its leaders past and present hammer and tongs, Bhagwat unexpectedly lauded the role of the Congress. He said the RSS did not believe in cleansing the nation of the Congress, contradicting the BJP leaders who say they would eradicate the Congress from the soil of India. Some say the RSS is preparing for the time when a hostile party comes to power again! So, Bhagwat found it necessary to make some conciliatory noises and slightly distance the RSS from its political wing.

Hour of glory

Bhagwat’s sudden appearance as a “reformer” surprised both insiders and outsiders. No questions have ever been raised within the organisation about the fundamental principles on which it was founded. This need to reform has surfaced in the organisation’s hour of glory when its political wing, for the first time in its history, commands unrestricted political power.

Since the coming of Prime Minister Modi, the RSS has gained immense influence, leading to the expansion of its nationwide network of volunteers who hold regular drills, armed with sticks. A few bureaucrats, judges, policemen and even the Army chief at times say things that please the RSS but would have horrified any past political establishment.

A mini-cultural revolution involving cultural assassinations of selected national heroes has been sweeping the nation.

A mini-cultural revolution involving cultural assassinations of selected national heroes has been sweeping the nation. All kinds of autonomous institutions are now led by RSS persons. A massive anti-Nehru campaign has been unleashed. The profile of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library has been modified. Bhagwat’s address on the RSS annual day was telecast live by the nation’s public broadcaster. Bhagwat’s public outreach programme was launched in the most prestigious government auditorium. So, in things big and small, the RSS has been richly rewarded by the Modi Government.

The RSS, for its part, let the Modi Government go against some of the principles as well as economic policies that were dear to it. Far from uniting Hindus, Modi’s divisive politics has splintered the community further. Some Hindus now feel ashamed to belong to this faith. The global brand of Hinduism has been damaged. The comparison is not appropriate, but some refer to the Muslim Brotherhood while talking of the RSS.

The outbreak of regional and sub-regional pride is not what RSS considers desirable in view of its commitment to Akhand Bharat (the one nation concept that at one time included the separated Pakistan). But regional and sub-regional pride was fuelled by the BJP leaders to win votes. If BJP-ruled Gujarat will reserve jobs for Gujaratis, the concept of one India does not go far.

Similarly, some of the Modi Government’s economic policies are what the organisations belonging to the Sangh family fought against when their party was not in power. These include the opening up of the big retail trade, privatisation, role of the foreign corporates, labour reforms and the diminished importance of self-reliance. The RSS has overlooked all this. It has silently watched Modi’s glorification as an individual at the cost of an institution which again is not part of the RSS ethos.

However, RSS has not regretted that it picked up Modi as the prime-ministerial candidate because it is Modi’s poll campaign that secured an absolute majority for the political wing of the RSS. The RSS came into the limelight and became attractive to the fence-sitters and many of its former opponents. Its influence increased, and its network expanded as new people flocked to it.

Double-edged sword

Ironically, this success has turned out to be a double-edged sword. Seen as running the Government through remote-control, the RSS has got itself exposed as an unconstitutional authority. It has come under fierce attacks from opponents of the BJP. It used to attract less hostility when the BJP was not in power.

RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat with former PM Manmohan Singh, and BJP Leader M.M. Joshi during a cremation ceremony, August 2018. Hindustan Times/Press Association. All rights reserved.

Now its non-participation in the freedom movement or its preference for a saffron flag is recalled ever more frequently. The critics point out that its constant talk of Hindu nationalism never helped in the nation-building undertaken by the Congress leaders. The RSS showed no respect for either the national flag or such key principles of the Constitution as secularism, socialism, federalism or even democracy. Its organisational set-up is itself undemocratic.

In the name of nationalism, the RSS opposed every friendly gesture towards Pakistan. It called positive discrimination, ‘appeasement of the minorities’. Some commentators call this organisation anti-national because of this conduct and its record of exacerbating Hindu-Muslim tensions.

Its ideology is blamed for physical and verbal attacks on the minorities, the BJP leaders’ hate speeches and an aggressive campaign aided by ministers to rid some educational institutions of leftist influence. It is blamed for attacks on the critics of Hindutva and those challenging the dominant castes. Even for the Government’s failures, the RSS gets blamed by association!

Liberal critics have pointed out that Bhagwat skipped some controversial views expressed frequently by BJP leaders and followers. For example, he kept silent on the inter-religious marriages that have led to mob violence and even police harassment of Hindu girls marrying Muslims. Groups trespass into the homes of such couples or accost couples sitting in public places, questioning their identity. He did not say a word about the campaign asking the Muslims to reconvert to Hinduism, the faith of their forefathers.

In an organisation like the RSS, one cannot stray too far from the given line even in the name of reform. Bhagwat would have faced less problems in making a slight departure before its political wing polarised the nation on religious lines and exploited the fault lines of communal and caste rivalries. Many Hindus now feel charged with communal passion and support Modi precisely for his ability to “fix” the enemies of Hinduism.

In an organisation like the RSS, one cannot stray too far from the given line even in the name of reform.

Hyper-extremism

Hyper-extremism follows extremism. A mildly aggressive organisation that fuels violence is either taken over by a more violent leader or superseded by a fierier rival organisation. What a Modi does, a Yogi can do better! Had Yogi, the Hindu monk-politician, not been accommodated as a state chief minister, he could have troubled his party, the BJP, more than any opposition leader. If the RSS moves towards liberalism, the Hindutva storm-troopers, energised and empowered during the past four years, would feel let down. They have been trained to abuse the secular Hindus, liberals, intellectuals, dissenting writers and a minority community.

Organisations displaying their Hindutva credential have proliferated during the past four years and new names keep cropping up in news reports about mob violence, intimidation and lynching. 

The volunteers of the vast moral police are provoked by those selling beef, entering into inter-religious marriages, or not showing respect to a Hindu God or the national flag. Women who wear short skirts or enjoy drinks in a bar have to be a bit more careful about their personal security. Romantic couples find that neither public gardens nor private homes are quite safe. The recent cases of violence will perhaps bring down the number of inter-religious marriages!

Lynching

Scholar Christopher Jaffrelot, who has written extensively on the RSS, has this to say: “Not only has the Prime Minister abstained from condemning lynchings, some legislators and ministers have extended their blessings to the lynchers. Whenever lynchers have been arrested, the local judiciary has released them on bail. If the executive, legislature and judiciary do not effectively oppose lynchings, India may remain a rule-of law country on paper and, in practice, a de facto ethno-state.”

When the ruling party president Amit Shah called Muslim infiltrators “termites”, a foreign journalist was reminded of a particular tribe in a distant land being called “cockroaches” for justifying violence against it. These days more abuses are heard in India’s political discourse than in a den of criminals. Fired by bigotry, millions have taken to social media. A large section, comfortable only in their mother tongue, convey their violent messages in Hindi written in the Roman script.

Fired by bigotry, millions have taken to social media.

In this kind of a toxic atmosphere, even the supreme leader of the cadre-based RSS, will find limits to his authority. His nuanced comments, designed for image makeover, are unlikely to lift the threat of Hindutva extremism that now comes from the expanding number of outfits that keep cropping up.

The BJP is already facing protests from its upper-caste supporters angered by a legal provision to protect the Dalits that the Modi Government was forced to enact by its coalition partners belonging to the oppressed communities. The core supporters of the RSS and its political wing have always come from the upper castes who are unhappy with what they see as “appeasement” of the Dalits!

Some Hindu leaders will denounce any reformist Hindu extremist as “a fake Hindu”. They have learnt that it pays in politics to call your secular Hindu opponent a Muslim, “sickular”, and an agent of Pakistan! Some Hindutva hotheads are asking why the Government has not passed a law to build the promised Ram Temple on the site of the demolished Babri mosque!

They can snatch back the crown they had placed on the head of the Emperor of the Hindu Hearts! The communal virus has made violent eruptions routine. It will not be easy to push this genie back into the bottle! 

30 September 2018

https://www.opendemocracy.net/openindia/l-k-sharma/hyper-extremism-tends-to-follow-extremism

Naipaul always felt that his books would stand the test of time. But which of his books on India, after multiple visits to his ancestral land, will stand that test?

V.S.Naipaul. Photo taken by the author.

Naipaul was obsessed with the idea of exile. His composite hero is a quintessential exile and most of his books reflect continuity. His ancestors came from India. He grew up in Trinidad, spent his life in England and experienced double exile. The scattering of the people from their original homes fascinated him, pained him and gave him material that he treated with pathos and humour. His relationship with India remains a topic of intense exploration.

Naipaul’s travelogue An Area of Darkness, published in 1964, portrayed a poor and filthy India. It caused grave offence in his motherland. What mattered was its negative portrayal of India and Indians, not the book’s literary merits. No one read the title differently. Naipaul may have been suggesting that for him, India was and remained an area of darkness. He provoked sharp retorts in India and the book was banned. It was categorised alongside Mother India in which Katherine Mayo had attacked India’s society, culture and religion. The American historian’s polemical book, published in 1927, had been called by Gandhi “a drain inspector’s report”.

Naipaul may have been suggesting that for him, India was and remained an area of darkness.

Poet Nissim Ezekiel issued a famous rejoinder “Naipaul’s India and Mine”, criticising the writer for his description of the grossness and squalor of Indian life, the routine ritualism, the lip service to high ideals, the petrified and distorted sense of cleanliness and a thousand other things. Another distinguished literary critic C. D. Narasimhaiah said Naipaul’s comments lacked sympathy, penetration and concern for people as people. He himself gives a long list of India’s faults and shortcomings – but from Naipaul he had expected an in-depth study of the Indian mind!

Since the poverty and public defecation could not be denied, no one said that Naipaul had portrayed an imaginary land, not a real country. Many seemed to say: Yes, the reality is ugly, but let no outsider expose it. Indians indulge in self-criticism but do not appreciate others criticising them. The damning reports appear in the Indian newspapers every day; an “outsider” does not have to ferret out any “inside information”.

Some readers blamed Naipaul for painting an incomplete picture. That was not all in their India, they said. Some charged Naipaul with viewing India with the Western Kaleidoscope. Some wanted him to be sympathetic. Some doubted his intellectual integrity, saying that he wrote to suit western readers. Many saw the book marked by cantankerousness and vitriolic asperity.

Fortunately, An Area of Darkness was published when Indians had not yet discovered “the extreme form of literary criticism” that has in recent years silenced more than one writer. So, the book was just discussed and not burnt by those offended by the book. Nor did the book prevent Naipaul from visiting his ancestral land again and again. He was welcomed warmly and assisted by volunteers during his travels and interviews for his subsequent books.

The barrage of criticism by the nationalist Indians gradually dried up but Naipaul was never written about without a mention of his offensive description of India. Inevitably, such references figured in the obituaries and eulogistic articles published after the death of the Nobel laureate. Eminent poet Keki Daruwalla, for example, recalls that reading An Area of Darkness he had felt Naipaul “physically assaulting” India.

Eminent poet Keki Daruwalla recalls that reading An Area of Darkness he had felt Naipaul “physically assaulting” India.

In basic terms, Naipaul’s encounter with his ancestral land was not so unusual. Imagine a person born in Bombay who at the age of 30 goes for the first time to his ancestral village in a distant backward state of India. He was brought up on his grandmother’s stories about the idyllic rural scene – beautiful trees and the river and the small temple and the courtyard, with the family members sitting and chatting. But what would this Bombay man see in the same poverty-stricken village after having lived in a metropole for three decades.

Naipaul had a distinctive way of seeing. A professor of literature commuting daily by the local train in Bombay looks at the rows of men defecating, and sees little. But Naipaul looked and saw. He wrote about it and the critics could not take it. Some said Naipaul was obsessed with excrement because of his “Brahminical fastidiousness”. It could have been attributed to the British influence! Film-maker Danny Boyle says it is a British obsession. Many British films and TV ads have a toilet scene. His own film featuring Bombay shows human excrement.

To understand Naipaul’s observations, one must study where Naipaul came from and what expectations he took with him on his visit to the land of his forefathers. The phrase “love-hate” does not explain it fully. Naipaul’s relationship with India has to be seen in the context of his early life experience and his observation of the lives of his father, mother and other Indians living in Trinidad. While growing up, he learnt about his ancestors who had carried India in their memories.

The Hindu rituals and Ram Lila performances were replicated in Trinidad. The Ram Lila, the most popular event, conveyed a subtle message about India. That idea of India had enthralled Naipaul during his childhood while expectations about India were built up by the elders who knew all about Gandhi and Nehru. He heard great stories about the “political” India. He detected the civilizational strengths of the place from which his ancestors had come. Naipaul saw the able, resourceful, wise and somewhat learned Indians as well as a different kind of people with a darker complexion.

India of the imagination

Naipaul was exposed daily to the Remembered India! He grew up with the “mangled bits of old India”. Naipaul felt deep bonds with India formed during his childhood. He was not a critical “outsider” who went to collect embarrassing facts to cause sensation and serve his western readers. He went as an Indian with a bagful of romantic memories of a mythical India. The Hindu religious rites and other private ways created a belief in the “wholeness” of India. It was a romantic belief that got shattered when he found that the ancestral civilisation to which they paid tribute, had been broken and rendered helpless before the invaders. It shocked him. He found the gap between the imagined India and the real India so large that initially he even thought of not writing a book.

In India, Naipaul witnessed a fractured society. There was no “wholeness”. Even the Trinidadian sense of an Indian community was missing. The people in the ancestral land needed to hold on to smaller ideas of who and what they were. “With my idea of an Indian identity, I could not be reconciled with it.” So, his visit ended in “personal confusion, in futility and impatience… self-reproach and flight”.

To study Naipaul’s ties with India, one does not have to consult the history of Trinidad and the shipment of Indians to this distant British colony needing cheap labour. Naipaul left enough clues. “India was the greatest hurt. It was a subject country. It was also the place from whose great poverty our grandfathers had had to run away in the late nineteenth century.”  He compares the rawness of his hurt to that reflected in Gandhi’s discovery in the 1890s of the wretchedness of the unprotected Indian workers in South Africa.

Explaining the complexity of his relationship with India, he says: “I’m at once too close and too far. It isn’t my home and it cannot be my home; and yet I cannot reject it or be indifferent to it.” Naipaul makes a distinction between the political India and a personal India. He was deeply interested in the latter. He had no home anywhere and yet, perhaps the idea of homecoming filled him with anxiety. “I was full of nerves. But nothing had prepared me for the dereliction I saw. No other country I know had so many layers of wretchedness.”

Naipaul could never handle poverty. The poor gave him neurosis.

Naipaul could never handle poverty. The poor gave him neurosis. He was to later record his contempt for “the men who are nothing and who allow themselves to become nothing”. Such men have no place in this world, he declared. So, poverty in India aggravates Naipaul’s old neurosis. The feeling does not leave him even during his visit to the village of his maternal grandfather that should have been a grand home-coming. He refuses to give a lift to a young boy whom he calls an “idler”. Naipaul reacts in a certain way when he sees “disagreeable people” whether in Africa or in India or while travelling by ship.

Naipaul did not want to falsify his intense personal experience by capturing it in a novel. That would have required an “apparatus of invention”. He did not want to repeat the failing of the Indian novel, a form borrowed from the West, that had learnt to deal with “the externals of things, at times missing their terrible essence”. So, he had to write nonfiction to “render his experience faithfully”.

Encountering the self

Naipaul went to India as an insider-outsider. It was an exploration of the self as much as that of a land. One western critic says An Area of Darkness was about a country and also about the writer visiting the land of his ancestors. He wrote: ‘…true autobiography arises when a man encounters something in his life which shocks him into the need for self-examination and self-explanation. He talks about the great hurt. What he saw in India pained him. He was to say later that it was a journey that broke his life into two. “It was a journey that should never have been made”.’

Indians may feel less offended by Naipaul’s sharp criticism and understand Naipaul’s anguish better if they read the Mahabharat’s story of Kunti and her son Karna. The unwedded mother abandons her baby who is brought up by a person of a lower caste and thus Karna is known as soota putra. An Indian psychoanalyst might have diagnosed Naipaul as suffering from the soot putra syndrome!

Naipaul was so distressed by the impotence of his great ancestral land, the land which his people had to leave in order to go searching for a better life in a far-away stupid plantation colony. Why did the motherland fail to protect them? Why were they thrown into the company of the insignificant “other” people? Why did the mother abandon her children? Was she indifferent? Was she cruel?

Naipaul goes to India and discovers that she was helpless. This aggravates his own helplessness. Aggravates his anger about the abandonment. His early writing on India reflects that rage.

Naipaul goes to India and discovers that she was helpless… His early writing on India reflects that rage.

Naipaul then finds the one to blame for the motherland’s plight. He zeroes in on the early invaders and spares those who captured India later, waving the flag of the universal civilisation! This led to another controversy about Naipaul but won him a new kind of admirer. In the eyes of some Indians, Naipaul’s image changed following his two books on Islam, his statements on the demolition of the Babri mosque and his favourable comments on the new India.

Naipaul’s analysis of the converted Muslims’ worldview was again read in simplistic black-and-white terms. Because of the vagaries of public perception, his Beyond Belief got classified in Pakistan with An Area of Darkness. The response in the west was different. Naipaul’s comments on Islam came when it no longer needed the Islamists to fight communism. Of course, after 9/11, the west came to value every critical comment on Islam. It was just a coincidence.

An expert on “dislocation” and its prime victim, Naipaul observed and beautifully recorded what Islam did to a large section of the world’s population constituted by the non-Arabic Muslims. But those uninterested in Naipaul’s luminous prose and masterly analysis got swayed by the rumour that Naipaul hated Islam. Encouraged by Naipaul’s view on the destruction of the Babri mosque, these few Indians gave Naipaul a hero’s welcome in New Delhi. Naipaul allowed himself to be appropriated by those who played politics in the name of a temple and caused bloodshed.

Had they read An Area of Darkness, they would have marched with its copy for a purpose other than reading! They did not know that Naipaul had coined the phrase “Hollywood Hindus” and ridiculed them for self-dramatizing. Nor did they know that Naipaul had called India a country of headless people, the matchstick people! Naipaul had once referred to the “barbaric religious rites of Hinduism”.

Those categorising a writer as pro or anti-Indian were pleased that Naipaul had struck a slightly optimistic note in his third India book India: A Million Mutinies Now. This was in the face of overwhelming anecdotal evidence that still validated much of what Naipaul had written in his first infamous volume. Those who admire Naipaul’s authenticity and his commitment to tell the truth were not impressed.

The stark realism of his comments on Indian politics appears even more striking so many years later.

The stark realism of his comments on Indian politics appears even more striking so many years later. While covering the Lok Sabha election campaign in Ajmer in 1971, Naipaul was dismayed by the politicians’ ignorance and hypocrisy. Today many political leaders make most unscientific statements that can embarrass even a school student. Every politician hides his real self and masquerades as someone else in order to make him electable. Masquerading is an art of great interest to Naipaul.

India is still busy “exchanging banalities with itself’. It continues to be “ruled by magic, by slogans and potent names”. Naipaul had noticed that Indians had a “strange frenzied attitude, the attitude of the conqueror who wants to plunder as fast as possible as if the opportunity might any moment be withdrawn”. Hasn’t the incidence of loot shot up in the wake of the economic reforms?

The daily public defecation festival is still on like a long-running western musical, but Naipaul had done with that kind of stuff. Naipaul’s favourite words were absurdity, banality, fraudulence, mimicry, mendacity, maladministration, chaos and corruption. Indians, perhaps out of respect for Naipaul, did nothing to falsify his narration incorporating these. And today’s India also “responds only to events”. The Indian malady of “taking shelter under grand words” is still rampant.

A new breed of Indians

Why did this great “discoverer of people” fail to discover the emerging new breed of Indians – the kind that provoked him in Africa to make biting remarks. Naipaul had expertly written about “frenzy for the sake of frenzy” but he did not see it in the TV images of the demolition of the Babri mosque. The cruel scenes of communal violence in India did not make him recall his description of a mob in a primitive society elsewhere killing a policeman and then gleefully dancing around his body.

During his last years before he fell ill, he visited India more than once and was fully aware of what was going on in India. But his public statements reflected optimism. Only once in 2003 he found it necessary to warn the Vajpayee Government against the “persecution” of the internet media company Tehelka.com of which he was a director. At his press conference in New Delhi, he also spoke of his goodwill towards the Bhartiya Janata Party heading the ruling coalition.

Has India progressed or regressed as a knowledge society? Has scientific temper become more popular? Has India’s march towards modernity slowed down? Is dissent valued or resented? Does the Government cherish the spirit if democracy? Is freedom of speech getting full play?

Naipaul noted with satisfaction the emergence of an intellectual class. One may argue that India had many more intellectual giants up until the sixties. No doubt since then the market intellectuals and promotional intellectuals have risen. What one sees is the disappearing breed of Indians who recited the Vedas in the morning and did blue-sky scientific research during the day, or those who lectured on political theory in universities and wrote books on classical theatre or music. Naipaul disliked the pointy-headed professors, but school and university teachers could have told him much about the falling standards of education. Naipaul was right in saying that the level of self-confidence among the people had shot up since his first visit. Naipaul has an eye for details and he was quick to spot that the standards of book design and production had improved. They did so because more standard publishing houses emerged and expensive printing and book-binding machines were imported! The market came to demand excellence in graphic design.

Naipaul was right in saying that the level of self-confidence among the people had shot up since his first visit.

Of course, a country changes. During his last few visits, Naipaul came to believe in an India that had given him no hope once. The Financial Times started covering this emerging economic power. Naipaul witnessed the crowds of aspiring Indians, those wanting to achieve something in life. “Achievement” mattered a great deal to Naipaul who had infinite disdain for the non-achievers.

If Naipaul had gone to his wretched ancestral village where he was seen as a “giver” in 1962, he would have been welcomed as a “receiver”. The poor boy whom he denied a lift in his jeep is perhaps a rich mining magnate controlling an army of musclemen and two Members of Parliament. He would have served Naipaul the most expensive Scotch. That may have reminded Naipaul of Africa where he had noticed some people suddenly coming into big money!

India did change but perhaps the reason for the writer’s new optimism was also personal. In 1962, Naipaul’s arrival and departure made no news. He was lost in the crowd as an ordinary Indian! In recent years, he always got a standing ovation in chandeliered halls brimming with made-up men and coiffured women. Naipaul found more Indians reading his books.

Like the country, the writer changed! Another set of critics would say that Naipaul in recent years had failed to see the negative trends. In fact, on the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of An Area of Darkness, some readers took to social media to appreciate Naipaul’s earlier criticism and to contradict the mellower Naipaul by saying that in most respects, the country had hardly changed in five decades.

Learned critics may say that Naipaul was wrong to appreciate the political fantasy acquiring a religious dimension. Naipaul wrote so well about the converted Muslims who fell under the influence of a faith that was not a matter of conscience or private belief but made imperial demands. And yet Naipaul did not see the rising political Hindutva seeking to replace Hinduism, the religion of his ancestors in India, and creating a disturbance throughout Indian society.

Naipaul said during his visit to India in 1962, he saw things “through the haze of my own nerves”. But the clarity of his vision then was certified even by the critics of An Area of Darkness. Naipaul’s intensely angry personal tone is missing in India: A Million Mutinies Now. An African proverb says only a friend tells you that your mouth is stinking. A compassionate and mellower Naipaul was not being very friendly!

Naipaul always felt that his books would stand the test of time. Considering the turn that his ancestral land has taken, will India: A Million Mutinies Now stand the test of time? Writing the third book was perhaps Naipaul’s way of making peace with his ancestral land. But his sympathy seems stained with a trace of inauthenticity. Leaving this book aside, India, marching on the path of perpetual sectarian strife, may yet validate Naipaul’s general pessimistic and disdainful assessment of the former colonies!

28 August 2018

https://www.opendemocracy.net/openindia/l-k-sharma/naipaul-abandoned-child-looks-and-relooks-at-motherland

23 April 2018

Many epithets have been used to run down the Commonwealth. The London summit may even be called the Commonwealth Games II…

Queen Elizabeth II hosts a dinner at Buckingham Palace in London during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. April 19, 2018. Toby Melville/Press Association. All rights reserved.

It was a grand family reunion. The head of the family opened her magnificent home for the members coming from all over the world. She won them over by a charming smile and the display of her wealth. Her wish became her command.

The Queen and her Government, suspicious of revolutionary fervour, easily convinced the diverse family members that continuity and stability were more desirable. With great foresight, the Queen intervened politically to suggest her successor, since the office of the Head of the Commonwealth is not hereditary. The member-nations readily accepted the suggestion. So, it was formally announced that when the time comes, Prince Charles will be the Head of the Commonwealth. The decision was an excellent gift to the Queen on the eve of her 92nd birthday.

The Queen, as the Head of the Commonwealth, and her Government that hosted the London summit, felt victorious. The endorsement by 52 other countries should discourage the minority of Britons who keep talking against the monarchy.

The endorsement by 52 other countries should discourage the minority of Britons who keep talking against the monarchy.

This summit was to have “transformed” the Commonwealth, a voluntary inter-governmental organisation of Britain’s former colonies. There was much talk of its being reimagined, renewed and revitalised. It was to have been modernised. That was what its supporters and critics had hoped. The intense involvement of the royals has thus come in for some criticism.

The decision to have the Prince of Wales as the next Head of the Commonwealth was variously attributed to “strong consensus” and “unanimity”. The pro-democracy activists would like to know the process through which this consensus was secured. The dark secret may be revealed when a retired head of the state writes his memoires.

A British correspondent asked at the press conference whether it was democratic that an unelected leader selected another unelected person to succeed her in the Commonwealth office. A Head of the State did not respond to this question.  

There were hostile comments from ordinary people including a member of the Indian Diaspora. Some said Prince Charles was not fit for the job. Some criticised royal nepotism. Some felt offended. Some saw a trace of racism and gender inequality because the Prince is a white male. One saw it as a hideous and laughable reminder of the Empire.

But that was not what the leaders had felt. They were not sensitive about the royal relationship. The “royal show”, as it was planned, did not remind them of the Durbar. The leaders quite liked being in Buckingham Palace and in Windsor Castle. It was a great photo opportunity, and some clicked away their mobile phone cameras. The constituents back home will be impressed that their leader shook hands with the Queen!

Of course, how could they defy the head of the family. Family values are deeply ingrained in societies in which the young ones respect the head. And the Queen is quite a sweet old lady. Only a British author would move her from her palace to a bed-sit.

So, the Queen ruled the Commonwealth Summit!

And the Queen is quite a sweet old lady.

Money well spent

It was a big diplomatic victory for the British Government that had discreetly lobbied for such future transition. The Prince of Wales readily recalled his association with the institution from his childhood. The Government that ran a huge bill on hosting the Summit saw it as money well spent.

The Commonwealth is no longer called the British Commonwealth but then what is in a name? Call it just “Commonwealth” but even decades later, as the London summit proved, it still smells like the British Commonwealth!

A vociferous section of commentators in Britain minds it. The tiny group of the Republicans minds it. But the member states themselves don’t mind it. Not even the leader of the largest member-nation who rails against dynasties. The British shahzada was acceptable to all!

Those ideologically opposed to the monarchy and dynasties do not see the other side of the coin. Most feudal societies do not care for their advocacy of elections for every office. And at times, elections cause a lot of trouble and instability!

The pragmatists recognise that during her long reign, the Queen has provided the glue that has kept this unique family of diverse nations together. She sided with the wishes of the majority in the family when a dominant member such as her own Government went against it, as happened during South Africa’s struggle against apartheid.

There have been many suggestions from British Labour leaders and others about having an elected Head of the Commonwealth. Considering the political confrontation going on in some of the democracies and semi-dictatorial regimes in the Commonwealth, a decision for having an elected Head could open a can of worms. Headship by rotation! Some wonder: when will the nation whose name begins with ‘Z’ assume office?

And what happens when an elected head of Government is thrown out of office in a mid-term election? So, howsoever outdated the concept of hereditary office in the context of the Commonwealth, no one has placed a better alternative on the table.

Civil society talk shows and other missed opportunities

Leaving the Queen’s role aside, some other steps could have been taken to modernise the Commonwealth and making it appear less tied to the royals and the British Government. In fact, in order to clinch the issue of succession, the Royals were made to play an even more dominant role this time. Most of its members of the royal family and their assets were deployed for impressing the guests from the former colonies. This had the desired effect. The Prime Ministers and Presidents walking on the endless stretch of the red carpet were overwhelmed by the images and statues.

The infrastructure for running the Commonwealth is largely British. The malady has been known for years. An old study had highlighted that the largest share of consultancy and aid programme contracts given out by the Commonwealth Secretariat were going to the British firms. There were case studies indicating how some projects in Africa had to be closed down because of the inappropriate technologies recommended or sold by British firms.

The sorting out of the succession issue may have ensured a measure of stability and continuity in future, but it distracted from whatever the London summit said to promote sustainable development, security and a clean environment.

The leaders’ meetings and the retreat were preceded by the civil society talk shows. The exchange of ideas among the activists belonging to the women, youth and human rights groups would have enriched the political perspective of any leader who could have spared any time to attend these meetings.

Moving tales were heard of discrimination and oppression and of suppression of the freedom of expression. A young successful woman politician lamented that she lost her first boy-friend and was having trouble with the second one because in her country it is believed that a woman cannot succeed in politics unless she has slept with a powerful leader!

While these fora were officially part of the summit, there was not much evidence in the official communique of any inputs received from these. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative or the Commonwealth Journalists Association, dealing with some of the burning issues today, have no reason to feel satisfied with the outcome of the summit.

The host Government, under domestic pressure to promote gay rights, felt afraid of displeasing the guests. So, The British Prime Minister had to remain satisfied by making a fleeting reference to this issue in her statement at the concluding press conference. She slipped in a comment about the use of nerve agent in the UK and the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

The summit highlighted the growing vulnerabilities caused by climate change and the rising sea levels. The issue concerns the Commonwealth even more since many of its member-nations are exposed to such natural calamities and being small states have no resources to deal with the tragedy. The summit sensitised the participating leaders to the pollution of the oceans by plastic. The issue was in the news because the host Government decided to do something about it like banning plastic straws.

The summit sensitised the participating leaders to the pollution of the oceans by plastic.

The leaders adopted a Commonwealth Blue Charter designed to cover one-third of the world’s national coastal waters and help sustain livelihoods and ecosystems globally. “They agreed on a bold, coordinated push to protect the ocean from the effects of climate change, pollution and over-fishing.”

Their communique inevitably covered cyber security, health and education and “Commonwealth values”.

Commonwealth values

The leaders expressed their concern over rising protectionism and reaffirmed their commitment to a transparent, rule-based multilateral system of free-trade. The issue of trade and investment was deliberated at length at the Business Forum. The leaders committed themselves to the vision of increasing intra-Commonwealth trade to 2 trillion US dollars by 2030 and expanding intra-Commonwealth investment.

Prince of Wales and Queen Elizabeth II greet Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Blue Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace. Matt Dunham/Press Association. All rights reserved.

Britain’s economic diplomacy in this context is under attack from two sides. The Europhiles say the Commonwealth will never make up the loss that Britain will suffer because of leaving the European Union. The Commonwealth supporters say Britain should stop looking at the member-nations just as trading partners! They want Britain to treat them as long-lost cousins who were betrayed when Britain joined the European Union.

This summit will be remembered most by the relief it brought to the Caribbean migrant families settled for decades in Britain who were facing the threat of deportation and some of whom had been deported as they could not prove their British citizenship. Known as the “Windrush generation” as their forefathers came by this ship to help a war-devastated Britain to rebuild itself.

The issue was taken up by the media and the opposition in a big way. Tragic stories of individual families were published and shown on the TV day after day. Migration is a sensitive subject in domestic politics: but despite that the newspapers and TV channels showed no bias in favour of the Government or waved the flag of nationalism. They all wanted to be “fair”.

The Prime Minister met the Caribbean leaders, offered apologies, promised immediate action and even agreed to the Labour Opposition’s demand for compensation to the families.

Since the issue had the potential to disrupt the Commonwealth event, the host Government went into fire-fighting mode to minimise the damage. The Prime Minister met the Caribbean leaders, offered apologies, promised immediate action and even agreed to the Labour Opposition’s demand for compensation to the families victimised by what was officially described as a “hostile immigration policy”. This lowered the anxiety of the concerned Commonwealth leaders and the summit was immunised against any ill-effect.

It was an unprecedented Commonwealth summit. It was the biggest such meeting. It got more than usual media coverage. Thanks to the distribution of Commonwealth information packs in schools, ignorance about this institution may reduce.

The summit was held amid extraordinary fanfare as well as trenchant criticism by the opinion-makers angered by the Brexit politicians flourishing the Commonwealth as a counter-veiling economic force to Europe! A book, launched to coincide with the summit queered the pitch. Ironically, it is written by the director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Philip Murphy. The book is called The Empire’s New Clothes: The Myth of the Commonwealth.

A book, launched to coincide with the summit queered the pitch.

The summit turned him into a media star and he let out a flood of comments about the Commonwealth facing “an existential crisis”. Many epithets have been used to run down the Commonwealth. The London summit may even be called the Commonwealth Games II.

The London summit did push the organisation towards tradition, frustrating the endeavour to make it modern. The dream of reimagining the Commonwealth will remain a dream for some time.

About the author

L K Sharma has followed no profession other than journalism for more than four decades, covering criminals and prime ministers. Was the European Correspondent of The Times of India based in London for a decade. Reported for five years from Washington as the Foreign Editor of the Deccan Herald. Edited three volumes on innovations in India. He has completed a work of creative nonfiction on V. S. Naipaul.  

https://www.opendemocracy.net/openindia/l-k-sharma/queen-rules-commonwealth