A phenomenal piece of work.

With the benefit of hindsight, it becomes clear how right Naipaul was (of course, not totally right, but right to quite a surprising extent all the same!). It makes India's post liberalization success look even more impressive. It also, somewhat inadvertently, explains why India trails China and why Indians still appear to crave validation.

The answer is in the title itself- a civilization wounded by hundreds of years of foreign rule that was unable to provide solutions to the problems of the modern world. The inadequacy of great men like Gandhi who were able to rouse the people up but unable to provide them a way forward. The destruction of places like Vijayanagara that, unbeknownst to the people, still stalk their consciousness. Concepts of 'dharma' which, depending on the state of the civilization and what is expected of people, can be creative or crippling.

And he does all this in about 160 pages!

A dated but good, easy read. Naipaul minces no words, dispensing with the romanticism of most non-Indian writers writing on India. Refreshingly honest.

Modern India has changed a lot since the 70s. The lack of ambition has been almost fully replaced by a huge energy to get ahead and get rich. But in some respect, the intellectual decay, glorification of the mythical past and unwillingness to break from the ills of this past remain civilizationally intact. The Indian Renaissance is still some time away.

The author seems to be having a poor understanding of India (he was born and brought up in carribean) mostly from western literature and through western lenses. The book is very confusing on what the author wants to say. Author is attributing India's condition (this was written in 1975) solely to the caste system and superstitious beliefs. If thats the case, then how India dominated world trade till about 15/16th century for 1500 years, the author does not seem to have any clue. It is another book of a western author who has a myopic or biased understanding of India.

In his An Area of Darkness V. S. Naipaul had measured the India of 1963 against the nostalgic, imagined India from his childhood days of growing up in the Indian community of Trinidad and – rather unsurprisingly – found it much wanting. Here, in his second book on India, he attempts to take the India of 1976 on its own terms – and the result are not much better, possibly even worse.

India: A Wounded Civilization is a very different book from its predecessor which according to Naipaul’s preface (added for a later edition of the book) was mostly due to the time he was visiting the country – he was asked by several publishers to write book on India during the Emergency – the state of emergency declared by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, suspending the constitution and for all practical purposes turning India into a dictatorship – and he accepted, apparently intending a more or less “normal” travel book, mostly based on him interviewing a number of natives. Those, however proved to be singularly uncooperative, and this led to Naipaul selecting a different approach, relying on secondary sources rather than first hand accounts.

Which, is has to be said, was not exactly favourable to the vividness and general colourfulness of this India: A Wounded Civilization – compared to An Area of Darkness, this book is a very dry affair, and humour is largely absent from it. This later book is (at least) as much analysis as observation, (at least) as much essay as it is travel narrative. In his preface to my edition Naipaul claims that there was (albeit only half-consciously) a thesis behind this book, namely that India and Indian culture over the centuries has been shaped by having been conquered several times over. Which seems both fairly obvious and quite trite to me (which conquered country would not bear the traces of that conquest?) – but fortunately, this by no means sums up what in my opinion is, for all its differences to An Area of Darkness another fascinating and highly perceptive exploration of India.

What is true about the claim of India: A Wounded Civilization having a central thesis, in any case, is that what Naipaul chiefly explores this time is not so much India as it presents itself and can be experienced, not so much the empirical India, but India in the way it relates to other cultures, those cultures that came to conquer and placed their indelible stamp on the country and its people. The unexpected thing about this is that Indians not only attempt to reject that foreign influence but that they even deny it, or, even beyond that, that they do not even perceive its existence in the first place even as it shows all around them.

In An Area of Darkness, Naipaul saw the way it held on to traditions and their relics as the essence of Hinduism; in India: A Wounded Civilization his view has shifted (or maybe expanded) somewhat – now, Hinduism appears essentially as a withdrawal to the self, a focusing on what is known and one’s own, and the exclusion of all external influences where they do not directly touch on that self. This Naipaul also makes out as the Indians’ primary defensive mechanism against the repeated conquests of their country, and considering that for all practical purposes this strategy amounts to burying one head in the sand, that is a pretty harsh judgment, making it somewhat understandable why so many people seem to hate this book.

But Naipaul does make a compelling case, drawing on some interesting sources – not just his own travels and newspaper and magazine articles but also Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography (in a particular brilliant chapter singled out for praise even by many people who otherwise dislike the book) and, most surprisingly, two Indian novels, one by R. K. Narayan, one by a contemporary author. Of course Naipaul does not read those as factual accounts, but rather as a kind of psychogram of the Indian mind; and it makes sense that when it comes down to exploring a people’s worldview and attitudes, the way it does (or, in this case, doesn’t) perceive things, then a novel makes as good source material as any magazine article or non-fiction study, might even surpass them for its more refined sensorium and is condensation of experience into significance.

Of course, it needs someone to be able to actually read and distill that significance from the source material, and Naipaul proves himself to be as masterful in deciphering secondary sources as he is adept in coaxing the essence out of firsthand experiences. It is less surprising that he censures the Indians so heavily for their failure in perception once one realizes just how uncannily perceptive Naipaul himself is, in the way he notices small things, in the way he combines those with other tiny details he has observed, and in the way he draws conclusions from this that are both surprising and compelling, presenting them in a language that is both precise and beautiful and moves along with a delicately articulated rhythm. V. S. Naipaul holds the balance between reporting from his experience and analysing his source materials and combines them into a distinct form, which marks India: A Wounded Civilization not so much as a travel narrative than something which would probably be most aptly called a travel essay.

In the course of my unofficial reading project on India I am planning on read Naipaul’s third book in India next, but seeing how much I have come to enjoy this writer (well, his works, for the man still appears thoroughly unlikable – although I suppose he should be rewarded some bonus points for not trying to conceal it), I will likely end up reading more of his work; in fact I am quite curious to find out what his novels are like.

1 star = Chetan Bhagat or disgusting, non-sense, waste of time. My advice don't read this book. 1 star is from my side means worst book. Author don't know anything about India. His English is good. That is the only thing this book has. Every person who have a knowledge of English language, claims to be a philosopher. This is what this book of Naipaul is! Mr. Naipaul may be a good fiction writer or non-fiction as well. But he don't anything know about India. So whole book is waste of time. I liked Just one paragraph from this book -
The turbulence in India this time hasn’t come from foreign invasion or conquest; it has been generated from within. India cannot respond in her old way, by a further retreat into archaism. Her borrowed institutions have worked like borrowed institutions; but archaic India can provide no substitutes for press, parliament, and courts. The crisis of India is not only political or economic. The larger crisis is of a wounded old civilization that has at the intellectual means to move ahead.
That is it. Other than this, this book sucks.

well written, naipaul carries that old school, classy english throughout. some of the arguments lost me, but at the end of the day it was probably just because this is a world i am unfamiliar with.
I think the book really sang to me whenever it analyzed history and literature (on some level, subjects i could connect with). the last swaths of the book that commented on the Emergency, while I'm sure important during its time, were just current events I couldn't relate to.
still, I guess the emergency is just the flashpoint in history that exemplifies naipaul's central idea- old india, burdened by dharmic trappings and caste consciousness among other things, is the corpse stultifying india's current growth. while on some level I agree, I can't say I would ever feel comfortable enough defending it. naipaul also makes a lot of weird comments about the "indian mind" and "indian intellect" that feel overly general and borderline insulting, but they make sense as a rhetorical device i suppose.

This collection of V.S. Naipaul's essays on India was finished in 1976, almost thirty years ago. Much has happened in India since then. For one thing, the economy has expanded rapidly, and India will soon supplant Japan as the world's third largest economy. Naipaul has continued to write about India, and this reviewer must now to on to read his more recent offerings. Still, as a scathing critique of India at a particular moment in time, when the Gandhian political tradition still continued to define and stifle India, this book is a masterpiece. Naipaul sees India as locked in infantile self-absorption, unable to find an ideology suited to the challenges of the modern world. Gandhi may have provided the energy for India finally to escape British colonialism, but his romantic attachment to simplicity and a highly romanticized view of the Indian countryside froze Indian politics and intellectual life for decades. Naipaul argues that Hinduism, to which Gandhi always reverts, provides a vision that turns everything into a kind of cosmic theater where any type of revolutionary seriousness becomes next to impossible. One memorable quotation in Naipaul's book is from a young woman who returns to India from abroad. When asked what she saw at the moment of arrival, "she said mystically, blankly, and with truth, 'I see people having their being'" (p.26). What hope is there for such a vision, Naipaul argues on page after powerful page, except "magic, the past, the death of the intellect, spirituality annulling the civilization out of which it issues, India swallowing its own tail" (p. 153).

It is a beautiful written memoir cum commentary on India's civilisation. Naipaul says that many of the problems faced during 70s India (something applicable even today) is because we are not sure about the true nature of our own civilisation. We are a nation that has adopted foreign institutions to solve Indian problems. And whenever we are struck we go back to the distant imperfect past of our nation. That seems to be counterproductive in the opinion of Naipaul.

Thought provoking , unfamiliar worldview to Americans.

Of course, I knew the geography of India’s subcontinent funneled conquest after conquest; repeated trauma, brutal eradication of secular culture, distinctive heritages shattered social order. Hindu(?) era’s imposition of caste crippled social cohesion.
idealising a passivity, fatalism, social detachment to focus on ones soul infers an abdication of mature adulthood with its broad responsibilities.

I’d never questioned that duty was larger than to myself & family, that my fruits of adulthood are rightfully due to younger generations. It was shocking to explore a mindset so alien to my bedrock principles. To vacate stewardship! To not possess an instinctual commitment to contribute in securing a better future for ones community and homeland seems to my western eyes so self entered it is difficult to grasp.


India’s nationalism awoke after European.

Im American. believe me, I KNOW we have embedded corruption, career crooks who pose as politicians, etc, and my country was deeply damaged by the effete spoiled Boomer generation.

That said, I find Indian historians reluctance for intellectually rigorous critical self examination rather striking.

Many books available in English have an attitude of grievance, and project a disproportionate hostility onto Brits,

No country can thrive if resources and the environment is stripped by fast cycle reproduction. India’s overpopulation displaces burdens onto other countries, including my own.

Unsustainable reproduction and that nasty heritage of a caste system are crippling, seriously. I can’t see beauty in a country that normalises cruelty, to animals, people and depletes & deforests their homeland.

Younger people cannot afford the habits of older adults.


Also, seems quite clear that Indians have a duty to repudiate the caste system , now that you know it was imposed on Dravidian peoples.

I knew what I was in for before I started on this book. Naipaul carries the odious reputation of being an India baiter and a person who passionately and wholeheartedly abhors the Hindu religion and ideology. Despite this, I wanted to explore Naipaul’s psyche and the reasons for his disapproval of all things Indian. I listened to the audible version of the book and disappointingly the narration by Sam Dastur isn't anything much to write home about.

tNaipaul was born a Hindu and a Brahmin to boot. His forefathers moved to Trinidad as indentured labour in the sugar cane plantations of that country. Naipaul would have had limited exposure to Indian sensibilities in his childhood and as he grew up he concluded that India and Indians were no good at all. He says that India is a failed civilisation wounded by the repeated invasions that the hapless natives had to face over the centuries. And the cause for the capitulation by the Indians to their foreign invaders? According to Naipaul, the country and the people were doomed due to the philosophy of the Hindu religion. This seems to be too simplistic an explanation for all the ills that have plagued the country. It needs to be pointed out here that the book sounds dated because it was published in 1976. Naipaul visited India in 1975 soon after the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi had declared an Emergency on the country. Probably, Naipaul’s publishers smelt an opportunity and commissioned the writer to author the book at that juncture. A Wounded Civilisation is the second book of a trilogy that Naipaul has written on India.

tIt seems as though Naipaul intends to shock the Indian reader by espousing his candid disdain and hate for the country. The initial part of the book reads like a long critique on a couple of R K Narayan’s books, Mr Sampath and the Vendor of Sweets. Naipaul detects the defeated Indian psyche in the characters of Narayan’s books and I wonder whether Narayan himself would have thought so deeply about his protagonists and had meant to attribute them the qualities that Naipaul seems to identify in them. Subsequently, Naipaul zeroes in on Gandhiji. He talks extensively about Gandhi’s My Experiments with Truth. He analyses Gandhi's actions in depth. Finally, he concludes that Gandhi was too Hindu in outlook and the delay for the British to grant Independence to India was due to the timid nature and the fatalistic attitude which Gandhi nurtured in himself primarily on account of his Hindu faith.

tAs with most westerners, Naipaul attributes a large part of the supposed failure of India to the caste system prevalent in Hindu society. This would be music to the ears of the left-liberals of India, all of whom are currently uncomfortable with the Hindu revivalism that India is witnessing of late. Naipaul passed away in 2018 and I am happy that he was alive to witness the Right-wing ascendency to political power in India in the general elections of 2016. I only wish that he was alive to see the second coming of Mr Modi to the saddle of power in 2019 with an increased majority. Admittedly, the conditions that Naipaul witnessed when he toured India in 1975 is vastly different from what it is now.

tI think the mere fact that Naipaul could author such a work that is so critical about the country and thereafter still be accepted as a serious author is a testament to the fact that India is truly a civilisation that can soak in all the diverse influences, both good and bad that are thrown at it. Probably this quality exists in Indians because of that credo of Hindu religion which enables the people to accept both favourable and unfavourable events that happen in life as destiny and maintain equanimity in the face of all odds. Ironically, it is this particular facet of Hinduism that Naipaul seems to despise the most.

V. S. Naipul has chosen a plump moment to write about India. Extraordinary times have spawned extraordinary views.

While I disagree with several of his views - they seem too restrictive and localized - it cannot be denied that Naipul has grasped (his own particualar interpretation of) the essence of India.

I concede that I am far too young, far too ignorant, inadequately well-read to appreciate this book in its entirety. On occasion we cone across books we know we are not equal to.

What has shocked me is the gut feeling that somewhere, Naipaul's observations are spot-on, and that they are of profound significance to contemporary India.

Side point - loved the style of this narrative. I thrive on this particular fashion!

Often times, this reads like a good critique of a post colonial India that has recently gained autonomy and has been struggling within the mire of her own institutions. A lot of the times, it also feels under researched.

Naipaul criticises the 'nostalgia of a glowing past' that India gloats in. He consistently reminds how the intellectual and civic space in India have been diminishing, how most of post colonial Indian institutes are mere borrowings with no context based evaluation. He pinpoints our general lack of understanding of race, religion, caste and class. Renames our emphatic resilience as a mere carry forward of questionable values.

Criticises Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave with an impaling honesty which might be misread as bravado. The semi religiosity and the inertness of their politics. But I wonder how his narrative excludes the likes of Bhim Rao Ambedkar who have been pioneers of this critical thought, perhaps in a stricter sense, because Ambedkar's criticality rested on the very real invisiblisation of caste from the discourse. Naipaul, however, correctly criticises the purposeless theatricality in Gandhi's politics . Be it his marches or his fasts or his abstinence.

Further, the need of India to rise beyond a mere idea of nation state, the gradual decline of her intellectual space has also been addressed by many of his predecessors, which he does not acknowledge. Also, his way of addressing the 'Naxalbari movement' appears a bit callous.

Naipaul specifically writes about India in Emergency of the 70s with an unsparing tone. I think there always remains another picture which Naipaul completely drowns in his rhetoric which is the picture of possibilities.