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Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 16:52:42 -0000
To: agathiyar@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Naipaul becomes Nobel Laureate (fwd)
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From: naga ganesan@...
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>From: "Yvette C. Rosser"
>Subject: Naipaul wins Nobel Prize in Literature
>
> I was quite amazed when I heard early this morning that V.S.
>Naipaul has won the Nobel Prize in Literature. My first thought
>was that in the context of "9/11', Naipaul's work is very, very
>controversial. The Nobel Prize, especially the Literature and the
>Peace Prizes, though awarded for merit, always seem to be colored
>by some kind of political implications. Even when His Holiness the
>Dalai Lama won, I could not help but see it as a slap in the face of
>the People's Republic of China, who was courting the West,
>generating huge financial investments.... But the Nobel Committee,
>in that milieu, held up China's Tibetan atrocities for the world to
>see. In that way, I think that V.S. Naipaul's Nobel prize is also
>situated within a geo-political message of great contemporary
>concern, especially post 9/11. Much like it was a controversial
>moment to give the Peace Prize to His Holiness the Dalai Lama just
>when China was trying to show a "liberal" face to the world, so
>Naipaul's prize may just be intended to send a message to the world
>in the fall of 2001.
>
>Naipaul has involved himself willingly in many of India's recent
>controversies. He alienated any of his potential readership among
>the Indian Left when he came out in support of the demolition of the
>Babri Masjid in 1992; and he supported the nuclear tests in 1998.
>
>"An Area of Darkness" written in 1964 after his first trip to his
>father's ancestral land was more an expression of his delusion when
>he found in India, only dirt and disease. In "India: A Wounded
>Civilization," 1977, he wrote about India as a land of Hindus who
>had been injured by not only British colonialism but also by Islamic
>conquests, which he called India's "dark ages". Many travels and
>many years later, Naipaul's book "India: A Million Mutinies Now",
>1990, brought him back to India. He admitted that his earlier
>treatments of India, has been colored by the "neurosis" of a
>"fearful traveler" who saw "only the surface of things". His
>positive treatments of Hindu Revivalism and India's spiritual and
>intellectual regeneration, was alarming to some readers. When he was
>accused of being too optimistic about modern India, and losing his
>earlier bitter critique, he replied, "That assumes, 'Here is India
>being the same old India, and it's the writer who has changed. India
>itself has gone along on its own messy way, in sloth and ignorance,
>and the writer now adores sloth and ignorance...' It's not like
>that. The world changes."
>
>Though critics were negative about his praise of Hindu culture, his
>loss of his earlier biting critique, reactions to his books about
>Islamic fundamentalism criticized him for being to harsh on his
>subjects. "Among the Believers", 1981, and "Beyond Belief", 1998,
>are accounts of his travels through non-Arabic Muslim countries. A
>New York Times reviewer thought that "Among the Believers" was a
>"vitriolic tour [that] evinces an inherent antipathy to the religion
>of Islam so naked and severe that a book taking a comparable view of
>Christianity or Judaism would have been hard put to find a publisher
>in the United States". Edward Said says of "Beyond Belief" that it
>is an "intellectual catastrophe. He thinks Islam is the worst
>disaster that ever happened to India, and the book reveals a
>pathology. It's hard to believe any rational person would attack an
>entire culture on that scale."
>
>The question is, at this point in history, given the "War on
>Terrorism", why did the Nobel Committee award Mr. Naipaul the
>Literature Prize, given his controversial stand on this sensitive
>issue of Islamic fundamentalism? Fascinating.
>
>I see the political implications of the Nobel Committee's choice as
>two fold. First in the context of Naipaul's treatment of Islam. I
>can't but speculate that the Nobel Committee must have taken his
>work on Islam into consideration...bringing his critiques to a
>broader audience at this time reveals an underlying imperative to
>deconstruct some aspects of fundamentalist Islam. What many have
>called his anti-Muslim bias, makes his selection all the more
>surprising. Secondly, I see it in terms of India, and his positive
>treatment of Hindu-Revivalism and the sympathy he has for
>indigenization of historiography, or as the announcement from the
>Nobel Committee stated, his ability "to see the presence of
>suppressed histories." His recent treatments of India highlight the
>"collapse of the old colonial ruling culture" and he advocates the
>imperative that India must throw off vestiges of exploitation,
>whether it is economic and political colonialism or religious or
>cultural imperialism. So, given that India is often side-lined
>diplomatically, especially since 9/11 with the USA's re-embracement
>of Pakistan, and in light of the fact that any decisions made by the
>ruling BJP government are automatically criticized by most Western
>commentators and academics as being saffron (aka: "fascist"!) , his
>position vis-a-vis India and particularly Hindu Revivalism are also
>very controversial.
>
>Indeed, it is a very timely and controversial selection!
--
Yvette Claire Rosser
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
The University of Texas at Austin
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