This is the first book that I am reading by this author...

Finished reading and I thoroughly enjoyed the book - the narrative style, author's experiences in the country of his origin... Also understood the significance of the title... Will pick up his second in the series soon...

Why so negative? Did not finish.

“…But first the background, the obvious, must be ignored.” Naipaul’s semi-autobiographical travel diary capturing India is not for those who are easily offended and therefore, the caveat at the very beginning of the book- the obvious must be ignored- is his brief perception of India and Indians. I had to read this boom twice, in order to be able to capture and review something, which basically is a brutal, harsh and unapologetic critique of India and Indian (ness). The first part deals with the author’s unlearning of India from what he was raised to think was the idea of India in Trinidad. He writes he saw the Indian callousness and the Indian refusal to see: the degradation of laborer, atrocities of the caste system and the ‘open latrines’ across the country. He observes that the Class system, perpetrated by the Gita is a system of rewards and it imprisons a man in his function. The author states that he was raised a ‘Brahmin’ in Trinidad, but despite a ‘Hindu’ upbringing fails to relate to any aspect of the medieval-modern India and wished he never knew the caste system the way it existed, specially the Indian way. For someone novice to the topic, such as myself, I’ll admit I had limited understanding of the same and over the years have tried to unlearn a lot about the heroes of the past and my privileges. Maybe, I would have written with bravado about Gandhi, who according to the author was instrumental in implementing the colonial vision of India and unlike many Indians agreed to see the ‘filth’ and saw his as an Indian revolutionary. However, on a review of Ambedkar’s works (articles) I found the vision and narration of any topic of ‘caste’ by Gandhi, distasteful and problematic.

At the end of Part I, Naipaul issues another caveat, in case you were expecting his travelogue to agree with the delusional rhetoric of India I or you have; “Their romance was not mine, and it was impossible to separate them (Indian) from their romance.”

The remaining parts of the novel deal with myriad topics but my favorite ones have to be the topic of Kashmir and the chapter titled “Fantasy & Ruins” which captured India’s colonial slumber and a ‘not-so’ graceful coming of age story. Naipaul, blatantly finds India and the Indian-ness he encountered vulgar, lacking subtle, boisterous and a colony, despite ruled by the English, the least English of all. Naipaul contradicts and corresponds his findings about the country with Forster’s ‘A passage to India’, Somerset Maugham, Paul Scott and Kipling. His journey is a journey searching for the Indian-ness far away from India, and therefore tried hard to relate to the tradition and culture, so alien and so bizarre at times, that the significance of the same is lost on him. It painfully talks about a country that tried, sometimes too hard to speak and language and practice customs that were not theirs to begin with. The England of India was incongruous imposition; with the ugly monuments and architecture the British left behind now deceased and belonging to history of India, and the England of the Raj still breathing in the divisions of towns, sahib-memsahib club culture, the manicured hands of middle-class ladies, etc. The latter, claims Naipaul, was grander, more creative and more vulgar. But these relics of imperialism are too real to be ignored as ghosts and in India, as Naipaul rightly puts, everything is inherited, nothing is abolished; everything grows out of something else.

In the end, I feel the review is inadequate, so I will put up excerpts from the book, which in my opinion are cornerstone of good research, writing and observation. The books requires one to keep an open mind. It is obscure, and like the observer describes it, it is at times cruel. But without doubt, one of the best piece of literature and modern travel writing.

Offensive and Untrue

In "An Area of Darkness" Naipaul describes his first visit to India and reflects on the state of Indian society, identity and history. It refers to the breakdown of his imagined version of India through his largely unpleasant time spent in the nation. The commentary on India is biting and unsympathetic but proved an important read for me.

I have read two of Naipaul's works and have been most struck by the clarity of his thought. His view points are carefully articulated and insights unique. Some of the observations that stood out to me were his characterisation of the limbo, between British and Indian cultures, that the Indian elite existed in, the shared societal ignorance of the abject poverty that most Indians lived in and the caste-influenced perception of all things in society having their "rightful place". I was particularly struck by Naipaul's description of the bigoted London-return Sikh who continually abused Dravidians in South India. The description of the cognitive dissonance of the ideas that governed (and, to a certain extent, still govern) many Indians' thinking is a reflection that I have personally not seen in many works before reading this.

It is probably fair to criticise some of Naipaul's diagnoses as unscientific and missing the broader picture. Generalisations of an entire civilisation and its long history would benefit from some greater nuance. India has matured as a country and grown increasingly more confident in its national identity since independence. However, we cannot escape the past and many of the societal ills described in "An Area of Darkness" continue to plague the nation today. The book serves an important role in my goal of better developing my own thought processes regarding India and political identity.

In mijn zoektocht India beter te begrijpen heb ik dit verslag gelezen van Naipaul uit 1964. Het is de weergaloos goed geschreven maar zeer kritische beschouwing over het India uit die dagen. Cynisch soms over de godsdiensten (zowel Hindoe als islam), vlijmscherp over de viezigheid, het kastensysteem, de politiek. Maar ook kwetsbaar, want hoe vreemd is het om in Trinidad opgegroeid te zijn uit Indiase ouders die hun land van afkomst verheerlijkten zonder uitleg van wat echt speelde. Het boek heeft begrijpelijk veel kritiek gekregen vanuit India maar 60 jaar later zijn er nog vele confrontaties met het leven in India heel herkenbaar.

Reading the book took me longer than reading War and Peace.

At the end it surprised me with insightful comparisons, and all the pointlessness disappeared.

Not my cup of tea, but one can see a brilliant mind behind it.

I approach Naipaul with trepidation. A combination of misanthropy; sweeping observations about an entire people based on limited and selective exposure and negligible background study; a warped complexity and narrow-mindedness; unadulterated Islamophobia; and, a propensity at times to dully describe dull things in long, dull passages have to my mind characterized non-fiction produced in the later stages of his career. And yet we also have masses of anglophone Pakistanis and Indians who rave about his work, especially his earlier work. To the shock of many I was underwhelmed and even irritated by A Bend in the River which on which I have shared my two cents elsewhere https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5.... His politics in his advanced age as well as his, from several accounts, deeply unpleasant personality, also made me wary and disinclined. Much as it is proclaimed that the writer is to be separated from his writing, I often find the mark of unpleasant people to be indelible when it comes to judging their work.

An Area of Darkness is the first part of what is now regarded as a trilogy of Naipaul travelogues of India. It is really three books

Book 1 in turn has broadly three facets as Naipaul examines various manifestations of class and caste as he meets a wide variety of people. In many ways, his descriptions are brutally honest (something he is often given credit for but which is also converted into a defensive shield to deflect valid criticism of what he then contrives to say based on these honest observations) without any sheen of romanticization, as he dwells on debilitating and degrading poverty, unsanitary living conditions and poor hygiene standards, the rigid classification of society according to class and caste, and also the veneer of westernization which he feels covers essentially orthodox and obsolete attitudes and beliefs - 'mimicry' as he calls it of western attitudes and approaches; mere mimicry.

At the same time, it appears that poverty, squalor, decrepitness and discrimination to his eye are particularly and quintessentially Indian phenomenon. And that to be Indian is to be embracing and accepting of these. Much as it may be true that many locals develop an immunity in any milieu to getting shocked as compared to visitors, Naipaul's simplistic generalization ignores local diversity of attitudes to these phenomenon and their pushback against the same. He appears to be seduced by and descend into another kind of orientalism - one where the romantic and the exotic are replaced by the miserable and the wretched. Both varieties are of course equally misleading and intellectually debilitating. Finally, there is a also certain smugness, a palpable self-righteousness, and a sneering disdain that never appear to leave him even when he tries to come across as a neutral, unsentimental observer. Two of his mains preoccupations in the first part - in addition to his boundless amusement at how locals speak English (he barely speaks any Hindi) - are Indian hygiene (or lack thereof, as well as interminable descriptions of public defecation; and Gandhi's perpetually ignored exhortations on the same) and the Borgesian complexity and interminability of the Indian bureaucracy.

Book 2 presents a fairly different Naipaul - a Naipaul less cantankerous, judgmental, petty and mean-spirited. Seemingly designed and destined to be a curmudgeon, he is frequently swept off his feet by his picturesque surroundings in Kashmir - indeed this part is full of beautiful descriptive passages as he dwells on Srinagar's surrounding country and its many sights. Quite clearly his mood improves if he finds himself feted and fawned upon and an excessive portion of this part is dedicated to him describing and commenting upon a bunch of people whom economic necessity made dependent on his custom and largesse (most prominently Aziz the comical servant). He looks upon Srinagar itself as a medieval city, describing in painstaking details its squalor as well as its charms.

Tellingly it is also in this part of the book that we find a Naipaul constantly bemoaning his own tenuous links with India and its unknowability as well as feeling overwhelmed by its scale and complexity after having only observed emigrant Indian life in small town or rural Trinidad. Not that it prevents him from passing categorical statements on all things Indian (it would be justifiable if these were just personal impressions but his tone and conviction leave no doubt at least in his mind that they ought to be exalted as perceptive and definitive assessments). Tellingly also the tiny heart briefly melts as after roundly scorning all demonstrations of dogma, caste privilege and a pre-modern approach to life, he gets emotional and feels closest to a Brahmin family punctiliously dining while following age-old customs and caste rules that ordain strict segregation to prevent those of lower castes or the casteless from tainting the meal. All of a sudden the orthodoxy, ritual, superstition and stubborn changelessness appear charming and overawing to him - quite paradoxically V. S finds similar tradition-bound attitudes appear devoid of historical knowledge, ignorant and laughable in any other community.

Further, he minces no words in categorizing more recent faith systems as presumptuous and more or less phony; patinas over the older faith systems of the area - which to him by the way are strictly Aryan and very Brahmanic (any history earlier than that he conveniently glosses over and ignores). His descriptions of the Muslims of the valley portrays them as simpletons who know no history or contemporary politics and blindly cling on to symbols and rituals of their faith - the much admired Brahmin family he shared pooris, potatoes and chatni with of course did not. This attitude will of course fester and worsen by the time he writes Among the Believers and Beyond Belief and more openly announces his allegiance to Hindutva prejudices.

Book 3 puts forward new treasures of contradictions, paradoxes and ill-humor that to me define V.S. Elegant prose; evocative and faithful descriptions of poverty, discrimination, ugliness and squalor; these close and astute observations somehow leading to grand theorizing that reduces entire people, movements and civilizations to some simplistic, unnuanced and demeaning castigations; frequent self-contradictions; a palpable sense of low esteem as well as occasions of marked mean-mindedness, conceit, ego-mania and lack of charitableness; self-entitlement as well as a deep insecurity; and a talent for demonstrating great empathy while divulging an absence of it.

What was also particularly interesting in this section once again was his scorn for caste and yet a definitive sense of satisfaction in his Brahmanic roots; a clear disdain for Islamic civilization; a near-absent appreciation of post-colonialism and the role played by colonialism in creating it; and, a propensity to look upon Indians - barring few exceptions - as a lesser people civilizationally, temperamentally, socially, culturally, aesthetically and physically. There is much blaming of the victims as well. In one of the chapters he is more or less at ease and almost in awe of a rather uncharacteristically morose and openly racist Sikh; another focuses on what he finds a lame reaction to the Chinese invasion of 1962; yet another remarkably finds Indian ruins to be an embarrassment; and in yet another while he appears to be reluctantly touched by generosity on part of many he returns the favor by essentially recreating multiple Indian caricatures. He is singularly ungenerous while visiting his ancestral village.

What is amazing - or perhaps not so -is that this 29 year old was commissioned and then encouraged to comment like a novice on matters beyond his experience and comprehension and then published and extolled. It is not political correctness that I speak of or seek here but the fact that so much that he deduces and states by way of generalizations and sweeping statements is inaccurate and offensive - I speak here not of his direct observations but his ludicrous and banal theorizing and conclusions. There is much word play, closeness of observation and elegance of phrase and some beautifully wrought passages but one is still left wondering by so much that comes after that.

At one level it is hard to disagree with another reviewer on goodreads who concluded "In short, be forewarned, to read this book is to be reeled into a brilliant dew-dropped web in the centre of which lurks a quivering, poisonous, alienated spider."

This is an extraordinary dissection of India, and Indian society. Naipaul laments throughout as to how the Indians as a people are incapable of truly looking at themselves and society, as it exists in the here and now. And that is exactly what he masterfully succeeds at doing. He seems to possess an uncanny ability to dive deep into the collective impulses of a complex society, and emerge with insights that speak directly, forcefully.

Reading the book also made me realize exactly how little has changed over the past five decades since Naipaul first journeyed in India. Almost every modern refrain seems to have been, as it were, carried down unaltered from an earlier age. Even in the early 1960s, Naipaul talks about the growing irrelevance of Gandhi, the creation of a distance from the masses through his deification. Ordinary corruption is commonplace, as is a general disdain for public hygiene.

It is tragic that when the book was published, it was seen to portray India in an unsavory light, and therefore quickly banned. We, who could not learn to look at ourselves, flinched when we were shown a mirror.

What a grouch! But also: the man can craft such beautifully precise (and oft-times hilarious) sentences that I'm almost willing to forgive him his condescension and dismissiveness.

O my God, did V S Naipaul get out of bed the wrong side every single day of his life? His Mr Grumpy routine gets so tiring you wish you could visit a poor woodworker in Delhi with him just so you could grab him and force his head into a vice and leave him there. ("Not letting you out till you cheer up old boy!"). The next time VS Naipaul rings me up and suggests a swift half of Tetley's at The Gladstone I'm going to tell him to call round at my house first. Then when he turns up I'm going to chloroform him, drag him into a white van, drive him to an abandoned warehouse (these things always take place in abandoned warehouses), bind him to a chair, and when he wakes up compel him to watch all seven series of Curb Your Enthusiasm back to back without a break, then truss him up like a turkey again, drive to the nearest motorway services, wait for an open-topped lorry with any kind of vegetables in it and shove him in there with just one foot exposed. The last bit would be my homage to Hitchcock's Frenzy, which is his last great film.

If that doesn't cheer him up, nothing will.

"Which Indian would be able to look at the history of their country for the last thousand years without anger and pain?"

As a travel book, written on a visit to India in the early 60s, this is hardly a useful guide to today's India - even though that's kinda why I decided to read it, what with the elections coming up there this year. As a piece of anthropology exploring the post-colonial mindset, it remains fascinating.

As a Trinidadian of Indian descent, Naipaul's insider-outsider status initially seems to be being set up to show him as a useful guide to Indian culture for complete outsiders. Early on, his unconcealed frustration bordering on contempt for the disorganised bureaucracy, corruption and general squalor he encounters initially make this feel extremely dated - but probably a useful warning to prim middle class western tourists considering India as a getaway destination.

As the book progresses, though, it becomes clear this isn't really a book about India, it's a book about people - their sense of identity, self, place in society, and how this can change over time. The most interesting sections are not the expertly-told descriptions of places and people, it's Naipaul's self-reflection on his place in the world - his smugness based on his education and imperialist assumptions - and the lasting impact of history even on those unaware of it. This man with a gift for words finds himself unable to communicate across barriers of perception caused by all these layers of social difference and, in the end, runs away rather than work to resolve a conflict his own family has inadvertently caused.

It's very nearly a metaphor for the fall of the British Raj - only with far less bloodshed.