V.S. Naipaul, the Nobel winner who attacked the British Empire for enslavement of India and blamed it on Indians, died on Saturday at his home in London. He was 85.
He wrote tacitly about how British conquered India when the Moghul empire was falling apart and Hindu kings were in total disarray. His famous quote is : “While dominating India they expressed their contempt for it, and projected England; and Indians (freedom fighters) were forced into a nationalism which in the beginning was like a mimicry of the British.”
Indian by ancestry, he was born in Trinidad, Naipaul attended Oxford and lived in London. Naipaul practiced yoga, born Hindu but not practicing it. He wrote two books about India (“An Area of Darkness,” and “India: A Wounded Civilization”)
A Wounded Civilization was a remarkable work on how India had suffered defeats and humiliation for which India itself was responsible. It touched many hearts in India and made better sense than many other history books of contemporary India. His description of old India is different from description of India by Nehru. His sympathy for modern India and its socio-economic problems won many Indian hearts. Nonetheless he was unforgiving about petty problems that are huge issue in India. Open defecating is one irritant about India he writes bitterly about. He was not very forgiving to problems of third world. African and many Indian intellectuals were annoyed by his terrible remarks about third world and called him a dark man representing the white colonial masters. But this was not true. Naipaul was tirelessly critical of British empire’s exploitation of its colonies and how they were deprived of basic human decency.
Naipaul was a prolific writer and a visionary, many compare him with Tolstoy, Conrad and Dickens.
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