India: A Wounded Civilization by V.S.Naipaul

India: A Wounded Civilization is Naipaul's second book in his widely acclaimed Indian trilogy, the other two being, An Area of Darkness and India: A Million Mutinies Now. This book can make any Indian feel devastated through his incisive, unsympathetic and unpretentious portrayal of India, just what it is and why, just by sheer honesty in analysis. This book is not meant for Indians and NRIs who are foolishly sentimental, romantically heady about their esoteric country of million rituals, several religions, customs and its very many fall-outs, and it's perpetual suffering and for those who announce every now and then in an American hippie like proclamation, "I *love* India". And who come to India once in every year or two for cute elephant or manual rickshaw rides. He calls filth, dirt , degraded human life and squalor just what it is. He investigates the facts that despite the Britishers departure several years ago, India has not overcome the confusion, poverty and misery. He says:

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, parliaments and courts. The crisis of India is not only political or economic. The larger crisis is of wounded old civilization that has at last become aware of its inadequacies and is without the intellectual means to move ahead.

Through simplistic work of R.K. Narayan and Vijay Tendulkar, Naipaul points out how theater and literature of their time did more disservice by portraying placidity in themes and characters, like everything was going alright and "India will go on" with pride in its feudalistic garb and temperament. He points out:

India had depressed Tendulkar especially. He had seen things there that he had never believed existed. But he didn't speak more precisely: it was as though he still felt humiliated by what he had seen. He said only, 'The human relationships. They're so horrible because they are accepted by the victims.' New words, new concerns: and still even for writer like Tendulkar, the discovery of India could be like discovery of a foreign country. He said he had travelled about Bihar by boat, down the Ganges. And it was of serenity that came to him on this river, sacred to Hindus, that he spoke, rather than of the horrors on the bank.

He tries to explore the idea of Indian 'having his being' which is always in the background of other people and the chaos and blankness that is brought about by props of family, clan, caste, sub-castes, languages. He, through the work of Dr. Sudhir Kakar, a psychotherapist, points out that Indians have underdeveloped ego which is an outcome of complex social structure, a derivative of rules, regulations, rituals, taboos. He goes on to say that how religion and religious practices, magical aspirations and animistic though simplistic mode of thinking- institutionalizes a structure, albeit weak in the wake of need for individual observation and judgment and how it leads to purely instinctive life. Per Kakar:

At a time of change, the underdeveloped ego can be a dangerous luxury. Cities grow; people travel out of their ancestral districts; the ties of clan and family are loosened. The need for sharper perception increases; and perception has to become 'an individual rather than a social function'.

Such changes are bound to overthrow individuals from their comfort zone and more so if you are nestled in between security of unexplained rituals, unfounded social expectations. Reminds me of an example, a real while ago, a friend made a sweeping announcement that she would like to immediately move back to India and settle there. But that was not it, she went on to explain her reasoning, 'in US you have to do all the menial work, clean your own rest room, wash your own dishes and clothes. Back in India I can have all the hired help in the form of servants to do all that I don't want to do'. I was amused but mostly disturbed. And figured that sense of tyranny and abuse cannot be dispelled which runs so deep in her assumed superiority. Before I digress too far, want to wrap it up by the portrayal that ensues in this book by opening sentences of the book, India is for me a difficult country. It isn't my home; and yet I cannot reject it or be indifferent to it; I cannot travel for the sights. I am at once too close and too for.