Sadly I haven't read Naipaul in years and I forgot that even when he's at his most vitriolic and condemning he writes with such passion, intelligence, and beauty that the narrative becomes so alive. India is a travelogue, mixed with cultural analysis from an outsider's perspective (he's from Trinidad and lives in the UK but has generations of Indian roots) and literary analysis from some of the more curious texts/novels Naipaul had come across in the mid-70s. This was written during India's 'Emergency', and it's no wonder why Naipaul is angered at the lack of positive political direction, the emphasis on the Indian past without a true vision of the Indian future, the subservient 'independence' of the individual, and the cruelty of the caste and dharma systems that hold people back.

Perhaps Naipaul sums his thesis best here:
'India is without an ideology - and that was the failure of Gandhi and India together. Its people have no idea of the state, and none of the attitudes that go with such an idea: no historical notion of the past, no identity beyond the tenuous ecumenism of Hindu beliefs, and, in spite of the racial excesses of the British period, not even the beginnings of a racial sense. Through centuries of conquest the civilization declined into an apparatus of survival, turning away from the mind (on which the sacred Gita lays such stress) and creativity (Vinoba Bhave finding in Sanskrit only the language of the gods, and not the language of the poets), stripping itself down, like all decaying civilizations, to its magical practices and imprisoning social forms. To enable men to survive, men had to be diminished. And this was a civilization that could narrow and still appear whole. Perhaps because of its unconcealed origins in racial conquest (victorious Aryans, subjugated aborigines), it is shot through with ambiguous beliefs that can either exalt man or abase them' (155).

Sir Vidia obviously believes the latter. And it's also no wonder that a lot of people despise this man, even outside of the serious scars of his personal life.

Naipaul fa una critica feroce dell'India e della mentalità indiana. Dà la colpa dell'arretratezza del paese all'impoverimento intellettuale degli indiani dovuto al forte legame che essi hanno con la religione e la mitologia del paese. Per colpa dell'accettazione della legge del karma e del sistema delle caste l'indiano non cerca di migliorare la propria situazione né quella del paese perché accetta il male che gli sta intorno come frutto delle vite precedenti ormai immutabili.
Naipaul consiglia agli indiani di staccarsi dall'antico passato e dalle sue tradizioni e regole ma li critica anche quando questi cercano di prendere esempio da paesi industrializzati dicendo che per colpa della loro arretratezza intellettuale non sono altro che una copia sbiadita e ridicola dell'occidente.
Questa forte rabbia con cui Naipaul esprime le sue opinioni è dettata forse dall'amore che egli prova per il suo paese d'origine. Spesso Naipaul rischia che il suo trasporto mini la validità delle critiche che potrebbero comunque avere un fondamento valido da tenere in considerazione per parlare della crisi indiana. La sua critica può apparire molto esagerata e dura ma bisogna comunque tener conto che questo libro è stato scritto nel 1975/76 durante lo stato di emergenza introdotto da Indira Gandhi.

4.5/5 This is the 2nd book in the 3 books that Naipaul has written on India. They were written in 1962, 1977 and 1989 but each of d 3 books seem relevant even today. While the 3rd one is almost completely in d words of ppl bring interviewed and there is little commentary, this one like the first, is all commentary by Naipaul - brutal, honest, relentless, sharp observations on India and Indians.
The author says that in our self-absorption, we engage in self-deception and false glorification of poverty and our history. Also, he makes searing comments on our apathy and lack of initiative/creativity for backwardness. Also, visible to him much more sharply was our caste system. Interestingly, He has also used authors Narayan, Tendulkar, Anantamurthy's books to analyse and illustrate these points.
While this may seem anti-India and may enrage nationalists who loved 'Purab aur Paschim', I did not find a single dishonest and malicious statement. Worth a read ! My 5th book by him and thanks to him for making me read travelogues.
PS:- Lucid but there is no comic relief and a lot to think. Suggest reading a lighter book in parallel.

Time has been a bit unkind to Naipaul's reflection on India during the political crisis of the 1970s. I am sure that it still carries some relevance and insight. However, it does not account for India's change and growth in the next half century.
India endured the Raj. It was bound to face a lengthy period coming to grips with the many traumas of colonization and its violent aftermath.
Despite this history, India's accomplishments and progress since independence have been considerable. This book largely paints a bleak and unoptimistic portrait, and gives insufficient regard to India's resilience. In less than a century, the nation has been rebuilt from subjugation to become an international superpower. There are still many challenges, but there is good reason not to underestimate the nation's potential.

As relevant today in 2024 as it was when written in 1976, VS Naipaul's observations of India hold weight and ask us to critically examine the shallow solutions we might contemplate to issues that have roots going back centuries. Others have reviewed this book in far more detail than I am doing, and I won't attempt to compete with those reviews. I will say only that the book is worth reading and worth thinking about. For someone that has examined India academically for decades, I still found new perspectives to consider and learn from after reading "India A Wounded Civilization."

The great G. K. Chesterton once noted that he had an idea for a novel that he was either “too busy or too lazy" to actualize. The plot concerned a yachtsman who through miscalculation lands in England when he believes he’s discovered a new island in the South Pacific. Despite some beautiful prose, I believe something akin happened to V.S. Naipaul when he traveled to India. Every broken lightbulb or beggar confirms his thesis of a failed people, unsuited for intellectual endeavor and seemingly Naipaul would then go into the shadow of a new hydroelectric dam to scribble these notes. There’s an uncomfortable invective on display. The fact that the visit occurred during the infamous Emergency is the sole consolation. Naipaul predicts a smashing of the great Indian nation state, a subsequent creation of small nations. During the mid 1970s many people predicted a number of such collapses as when the Love Canal caught fire, the last chopper left Saigon, the Junta assumes control of Argentina and Larry Mullins Jr. leaves a note in a Dublin rec center seeking band mates.

One should not fault Naipaul for his failures of prognosis. There’s plenty to dislike about Vidia, just don’t be cheap about it.

If you are truly an open-minded, read this book with a lot of humility.

To begin with, I felt the author was full of opinions. However, as I read through, it started introducing facts which are so true to the construct of the Indian fabric.

We Indians are mostly emotional people and truth is always bitter, and this book is that one true friend who shows us the mirror and leaves us to decide what we want to do with our future...

Lesson for us in Robert Frost's words...

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep...

I had never read anything by V S Naipaul before. Known first for fiction, his travelogues are highly regarded as well. "A Wounded Civilization" is the second in his trilogy on India, written during 1975 when democracy was under siege by the autocrat Indira Gandhi. The beginning of the triptych, "An Area of Darkness", was banned on the subcontinent for its 'negative portrayal of India and its people'.

Naipaul traveled for a year and surveyed what he saw as the decay of a past civilization. The trip is not arranged either geographically or chronologically, but followed the musings of his mind. Generally his thoughts were of a critical nature; he saw the people as backward, narrow minded and short sighted. For Naipaul eastern philosophy and religion were to blame for fatalistic and unambitious attitudes.

The saving grace of Naipaul’s approach was his writing, the reason I suppose for his fame. An easy going style undercuts the acidity of his observations. The combination is a stream of conscious rambling by a disillusioned son of the diaspora. It is easy to enter into his frame of mind and find fault in everything you come across. The risk is a lack of rigor, the same shortcoming Naipaul found within India.

Naipaul offered some interesting insights on caste, class and post-colonialism during the early decades of the Republic. He visited slums in Mumbai, fiefs in Pune and ruminated on Mahatma Gandhi's rejection of the West. It is an eclectic set of sketches and studies; how they contributed to his Nobel prize is unclear. My guess is that you would need to read his entire body of work in order to fully understand.

Postscript (2024): Further reflection on this volume of his trilogy impugns Naipaul’s assertion religion and superstition were the major causes of underdevelopment since 1947. He later indicted Islam as a culprit of poverty in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia. Here he omits subjugation of the subcontinent beginning with the East India Company in the 17th century and ending with Crown Rule in the 20th.

A house for Mr. Biswas was my introduction to Naipaul, i loved that book but i never understood what’s the hype around him. This book…this book did that for me. Phenomenal writing. You can disagree with him, but the way he presents his thoughts, it’s really hard to argue. A great experience reading this one!

Sometimes, on festive days, stripped divers, small and bony, sit or stand on the sea wall, waiting to be asked to dive into the oil, water. Sometimes there is a little band - Indian drums, Western trumpets - attached to some private religious ceremony. Night deepens; the ships' lights in the harbour grow brighter; the Taj Mahal lobby glitters behind its glass wall. The white crowd - with the occasional red or green or yellow of a sari - melts away; and then around the Gateway and the hotel only the sleepers and the beggars remain, enough at any time for a quick crowd, in this area where hotels and dimly lit apartment buildings and stores and offices and small factories press against one another, and where the warm air, despite the sea, always feel overbreathed. The poor are needed as hands, as labour; but the city was not built to accommodate them. One report says that 100,000 people sleep on the pavements of Bombay; but this figure seems low. And the beggars: are there only 20,000 in Bombay, as one newspaper article says, or are there 70,000, the figure given on another day Whatever the number, it is now felt that there are too many. The very idea of beggary, precious to Hindus as religious theatre, a demonstration of the workings of karma, a reminder of one's duty to oneself and one's future lives, has been devalued. And the Bombay beggar, displaying his unusual mutilations (inflicted in childhood by the beggar-master who had acquired him, as proof of the young beggar's sins in a previous life), now finds, unfairly, that he provokes annoyance rather than awe. The beggars themselves, forgetting their Hindu function, also pester tourists; and the tourists misinterpret the whole business, seeing in the beggary of the few the beggary of all. The beggars have become a nuisance and a disgrace. By becoming too numerous they have lost their place in the Hindu system and have no claim on anyone.
- A new claim on the land : The skycrapers and The Chawls (India : A wounded civilisation) by VS Naipul
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Can someone suggest ways to review this book when I am not an Indian, not even living in India (i did go to South India but only for 5 days which made me a tourist hence my experience were limited) and experiencing all the problems and difficulties about India that were described in the book. We are seeing India via lenses of V.S Naipul and let me tell you, it aint pretty. It is almost (80%) of India Bashing and this is something that i did not expect from the book. I was expecting some discourse about India Ancient Civilisation, History, Past Inventions instead what i got is more like a whiny analysis why India will never progress or why India will stay the same (outdated, caste infested nation) post Ghandi and Ms Ghandi death. My patience was really thin that i almost wanted to DNF this book but i persevered until the final page. I have to say the only part that i love is when he dissected the Indian literature written by R.K Narayan and connected it to Hindu way of life but that itself is just 1/8 of the contents featured in the book. If any Indian (that lived in India) that have read this book and wanted to share your insights on this book, i would very much appreciate your input. V.S Naipul stated in the book : India is for me a difficult country. It isn't my home and cannot be my home; and yet I cannot reject it or be indifferent to it; I cannot travel only for the sights. I am at once too close and too far. This statement at least showed that He did not deny his Indian heritage but this book did not even demonstrate it. All he got is just a contemptuous remarks and endless negativity towards a country he visited in a short while. I would like to end my review with what Jose Rizal wrote in ‘Noli Me Tangere’ : “ … and to hate one own’s country is the greatest of misfortunes”. Thats what i felt when i finish this book - pity that Naipul cannot see India beyond his bitterness and (maybe) complexity that he had with the country. I know every country has its own problems and for its incompetence to resolve it, one deserved criticism for it but this book is just not it (at least in my opinion). Putting this 2 stars simply because i learned something despite him cherry picking on spirituality and race consciousness. Overall, this was painful and not so satisfying reading to say the least.

This is book written by Naipaul during his visit to India during the Emergency period..it records his opinions and impression about India, both as a country and as a civilization. Being an person of Indian descent and born/brought up outside India, he simultaneously looks at India both as an insider and as an outsider. Some of his observations are truly astute and nuanced, especially about Gandhi.. and some of his comments can be considered brutal.. I think he is correct on the most part.. he scorns at Indians who speak of their civilization as great while simultaneously having no idea about it... and the key point he makes about Indians in general is that they lack a sense of history, a sense of cultural identity and a sense of being 'a people' while simultaneously hanging on to imperfectly understood and incorrectly interpreted ancient concepts like Karma and Dharma and misapplying them with very bad results..

The only gripe I have about this book is that even Naipaul falls for the mythical 'Aryan Invasion' theory that was proposed by the Europeans to divide India on a North-South basis... I understand that this book was written some 34 years back, when none of the recent research findings were known.. but still the lack of direct knowledge of the Sanskrit literature has made Naipaul fall into this trap.. For example, people like Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghosh and Subramaniya Bharathiyar rejected the 'Aryan invasion theory' decades before Indian independence based on literary evidence and pointed out how the Europeans were misinterpreting ancient Sanskrit texts.

On the whole, I would way anyone interested in India should read this book.. end of the day, it is a brutally honest observation by an interested person, though he is not always correct..

Naipaul is not a much-liked figure in India. There are good reasons for it. First, nation-states do not like being condemned or harshly judged, and India is no exception. Second, if a writer in his bashing enthusiasm goes on hitting while ignoring some key facts about a particular people and their history, he loses some of his credibility. However, there is a lot in Naipaul's oeuvre that cannot be dismissed, no matter how much his work makes one cringe.

He sees deep flaws in contemporary Indian culture and goes on to trace the genealogies of these flaws in Indian history and Hindu religion. Flaws that still reign the ordinary Indian mind. One of Naipaul's key findings is that Indians are neither skilled nor do they have any solid understanding of the real world. (For instance, Indians cannot make cheese). When facing a crisis, they take refuge in their glorious past, and retract from the immediate. Naipaul looks at history, key Indian figures, contemporary literature to prove his point.

What is so good about reading Naipaul is that he makes one listen and pay attention. There is a lot of truth in what he says about India. It would be foolish to dismiss his work. However, what is so annoying about the book is that he does not see anything good or worthwhile in India's present or even in its past. He completely ignores the syncretic traditions of India, its music and classical dance forms and so forth. He does not see much in them because he cannot. He does not know any Indian languages to judge the finer aspects of Indian culture. Even an average Indian person does not automatically become proficient in admiring and understanding classical Indian art forms.

Before Naipaul, in colonial India, there have been British historians, writers, politicians, who wrote extensively and perceptively about Indian culture, drawing attention to what was wrong with it. One can reject these texts but what is in them is actually all around us in present-day India. However, like Naipaul, the Europeans also showed ignorance and plain stupidity in the same texts. In other words, Naipaul makes similar errors.

However, what makes Naipaul different is that his dismissals are brilliantly crafted. I also feel that his engagement with the country is a way of dealing with his own past. One criticizes because one cares.

Reading Naipaul and thinking about his chief problems with India, and looking at today's world; civil unrest, climate change, diminishing resources, water crisis. It is okay that some people (Indians) are not practical enough, that they recede rather than take charge, that they dream and practice 'karmic' theories, that instead of raping environment (further) and turning rivers into drains for material gains. Naipaul sees this non-doing as an Indian Flaw.

In some weird way, primitive India, with its backwardness–that Naipaul so dislikes– is what in today's western Europe is referred to as sustainable living. Gandhi, with all his flaws and quirks, seems wise now. His idea of 'Swaraj,' which, apart from its layered meanings, is an appeal to Indian people to adopt sustainable and eco-friendly lifestyles; to embrace ways that are more inclusive, that go beyond the merely anthropocentric ones.

I must say that what is so exemplary about this book is Naipaul's language. If one reads him for long and then picks up a book by any other contemporary writer, one immediately recognizes that one is not in the same superior, exciting world of words any more. One should read his prose to enjoy its softness and porcelain like texture.