India: A Wounded Civilization: A Wounded Civilization

By V. S. Naipaul

In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left one hundred years before. Out of that journey he produced this concise masterpiece of journalism and cultural analysis, a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental portrait of a society traumatized by repeated foreign invasions and immured in a mythic vision of its past. Drawing on novels, news reports, and political memoirs -- but most of all on his conversations with ordinary Indians, from princes to engineers and feudal village autocrats -- Naipaul captures India’s manifold complexities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9780307370624

V. S. Naipaul

V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He came to England on a scholarship in 1950. He spent four years at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954. He pursued no other profession. His novels include A House for Mr Biswas, The Mimic Men, Guerrillas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival. In 1971 he was awarded the Booker Prize for In a Free State. His works of nonfiction, equally acclaimed, include Among the Believers, Beyond Belief, The Masque of Africa, and a trio of books about India: An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now. In 1990, V.S. Naipaul received a knighthood for services to literature; in 1993, he was the first recipient of the David Cohen British Literature Prize. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He lived with his wife Nadira and cat Augustus in Wiltshire, and died in 2018.

Reviews for India

[devings · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have just finished chapter six of this book. Being somewhat interested in science and technology/research, I connect with this chapter the most. The author speaks about the lack of scientific inclination, the lack of humility that encourages learning and experimentation with due diligence (which is replaced by a nonchalant arrogance behind a veil of age or seniority) and of an "intellectual parasitism" that has hampered India's forays in research and development of new technology. I cannot stop myself making a connect between this and modern India's inclination to manufacturing rather than research and design, the poor management of intellectual property rights and aspects that relate to encouraging innovation and invention and the insecurity inventors and researchers face in India. The author rightly points out that most research and development in India is based, even today, on mimicry and/or a sluggish inertia that clings on to archaic design and hapless efforts to increase the functionality of old tools with minimal and/or impractical modifications which sometimes are no longer applicable to the productivity needs modern world. Rightly claimed, hypocrisy and arrogance are rampant in India (especially among the "intellectuals") along with a lack of civic sense and concern for society or collective development. A segmentation of society based on cast, religion and language, though disregarded by the constitution, is hard wired into the thought process of the masses. The book is an eye opener to the underlying psychology that has driven India for most of the past millennium; Naipaul captures its many facets without being stereotypical and provides a truly damning (as Time magazine puts it) account of contemporary India.

[jbreedlove_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The author, an Indian ex-patriot from Trinidad, travels through and critiques the nation of his grandparents origin.

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Naipaul on India . . . naturally this is full of interest, but it's also true about everybody's quality control being most absent when they're writing about what they most love. This book makes you want to sit down with him and ask "Why couldn't you see the signs of renewal? Was it some kind of insane racial Hindutva freakout against imagined decadence and decay all fascist-styles? Or is the rest of the world wrong, and seeming progress is merely an illusory structure growing out of the same old feudalism of the soul?" He's super good on Gandhi being all about personal purity, though, even if I don't know whether what's needed instead is really that racial sense. And spot on wi that fuckin Vinoba Bhave cunt. I'm watching "The Acid House."

[jonfaith · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.