Literary Occasions_ Essays Part 6

4.

I HAVE NOT attempted to change the idiosyncrasies of my father's English; I have corrected only one or two obvious errors. In the later stories (partly because he was writing for the radio) he wrote phonetic dialogue. Phonetic dialogue-apart from its inevitable absurdities: attempted to change the idiosyncrasies of my father's English; I have corrected only one or two obvious errors. In the later stories (partly because he was writing for the radio) he wrote phonetic dialogue. Phonetic dialogue-apart from its inevitable absurdities: eggszactly eggszactly for "exactly," for "exactly," w'at w'at for "what"-falsifies the pace of speech, sets up false a.s.sociations, is meaningless to people who don't know the idiom and unnecessary to those who do. The rhythm of broken language is sufficiently indicated by the construction of a sentence. I have toned down this phonetic dialogue, modelling myself on my father's more instinctive and subtle rendering of speech in for "what"-falsifies the pace of speech, sets up false a.s.sociations, is meaningless to people who don't know the idiom and unnecessary to those who do. The rhythm of broken language is sufficiently indicated by the construction of a sentence. I have toned down this phonetic dialogue, modelling myself on my father's more instinctive and subtle rendering of speech in Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales; Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales; like my father in that early booklet, I have not aimed at uniformity. like my father in that early booklet, I have not aimed at uniformity.

My father dedicated his stories to me. But the style of publication has changed; and I would like to extend this dedication to the two men who stand at the beginning and end of my father's writing career: to Gault MacGowan, to whom I know my father wanted to dedicate Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales in 1943; and to Henry Swanzy. in 1943; and to Henry Swanzy.

June 1975

Foreword to A House for Mr. Biswas A House for Mr. Biswas

(Knopf, 1983) OF ALL MY BOOKS this is the one that is closest to me. It is the most personal, created out of what I saw and felt as a child. It also contains, I believe, some of my funniest writing. I began as a comic writer and still consider myself one. In middle age now, I have no higher literary ambition than to write a piece of comedy that might complement or match this early book. this is the one that is closest to me. It is the most personal, created out of what I saw and felt as a child. It also contains, I believe, some of my funniest writing. I began as a comic writer and still consider myself one. In middle age now, I have no higher literary ambition than to write a piece of comedy that might complement or match this early book.

The book took three years to write. It felt like a career; and there was a short period, towards the end of the writing, when I do believe I knew all or much of the book by heart. The labour ended; the book began to recede. And I found that I was unwilling to re-enter the world I had created, unwilling to expose myself again to the emotions that lay below the comedy. I became nervous of the book. I haven't read it since I pa.s.sed the proofs in May 1961.

My first direct contact with the book since the proof-reading came two years ago, in 1981. I was in Cyprus, in the house of a friend. Late one evening the radio was turned on, to the BBC World Service. I was expecting a news bulletin. Instead, an instalment of my book was announced. The previous year the book had been serialized on the BBC in England as "A Book at Bedtime." The serialization was now being repeated on the World Service. I listened. And in no time, though the instalment was comic, though the book had inevitably been much abridged, and the linking words were not always mine, I was in tears, swamped by the emotions I had tried to shield myself from for twenty years. Lacrimae rerum, Lacrimae rerum, "the tears of things," the tears in things: to the feeling for the things written about-the pa.s.sions and nerves of my early life-there was added a feeling for the time of the writing-the ambition, the tenacity, the innocence. My literary ambition had grown out of my early life; the two were intertwined; the tears were for a double innocence. "the tears of things," the tears in things: to the feeling for the things written about-the pa.s.sions and nerves of my early life-there was added a feeling for the time of the writing-the ambition, the tenacity, the innocence. My literary ambition had grown out of my early life; the two were intertwined; the tears were for a double innocence.

When I was eleven, in 1943, in Trinidad, in a setting and family circ.u.mstances like those described in this book, I decided to be a writer. The ambition was given me by my father. In Trinidad, a small agricultural colony, where nearly everyone was poor and most people were uneducated, he had made himself into a journalist. At a certain stage-not for money or fame (there was no local market), but out of some private need-he had begun to write short stories. Not formally educated, a nibbler of books rather than a reader, my father worshipped writing and writers. He made the vocation of the writer seem the n.o.blest in the world; and I decided to be that n.o.ble thing.

I had no gift. At least, I was aware of none. I had no precocious way with words, no talent for fantasy or story-telling. But I began to build my life around the writing ambition. The gift, I thought, was going to come later, when I grew up. Purely from wishing to be a writer, I thought of myself as a writer. Since the age of sixteen or so I don't believe a day has pa.s.sed without my contemplating in some way this fact about myself. There were one or two boys at Queen's Royal College in Trinidad who wrote better than I. There was at least one boy (he committed suicide shortly after leaving school) who was far better read and had a more elegant mind. The literary superiority of this boy didn't make me doubt my vocation. I just thought it odd-after all, it was I who was going to be the writer.

In 1948, when I was sixteen, I won a Trinidad government scholarship. This scholarship could have taken me to any university or inst.i.tute of higher education in the British Commonwealth and given me any profession. I decided to go to Oxford and do a simple degree in English. I went in 1950. Really, I went to Oxford in order at last to write. Or more correctly, to allow writing to come to me. I had always thought that the writing gift would come to me of itself as a kind of illumination and blessing, a fair reward for the long ambition. It didn't come. My efforts, when I made them, were forced, unfelt. I didn't see how I could ever write a book. I was, of course, too young to write: hardly with adult judgement, and too close to childhood to see the completeness and value of that experience. But I couldn't know that at the time. And in my solitude in England, doubting my vocation and myself, I drifted into something like a mental illness. This lasted for much of my time at Oxford. Just when that depression was beginning to lift, my father died in Trinidad.

In Trinidad, as a child, I had been supported by the idea of the literary life that awaited me when I grew up. It had been a prospect of romance. I was in a state of psychological dest.i.tution when-having no money, besides-I went to London after leaving Oxford in 1954, to make my way as a writer. Thirty years later, I can easily make present to myself again the anxiety of that time: to have found no talent, to have written no book, to be null and unprotected in the busy world. It is that anxiety-the fear of dest.i.tution in all its forms, the vision of the abyss-that lies below the comedy of the present book.

A book with emotions so close to me did not immediately come. It came after I had spent three years in London and written three works of fiction. It had been necessary for me to develop some skill, and through practice to begin to see myself and get an idea of the nature of my talent. I had had an intimation-just an intimation, nothing formulated-that the years of ambition and thinking of myself as a writer had in fact prepared me for writing. I had been a looker; I had trained my memory and developed a faculty of recall.

Just as, because I was to be a writer, I had as a child fallen into the habit (though not at school) of speaking very fast and then immediately silently mouthing the words I had spoken, to check them, so I automatically-thinking of it as a newsreel-mentally replayed every meeting or adventure, to check and a.s.sess the meaning and purpose of people's words. I had done no writing as a child, had told no stories; but I had trained myself to an acute feeling for human character as expressed in words and faces, gestures and the shape of bodies. I had thought, when I began to write in London, that my life was a blank. Through the act of writing, and the need always to write more, I discovered I had processed and stored a great deal.

So the idea for this big book came to me when I was ready for it. The original idea was simple, even formal: to tell the story of a man like my father, and, for the sake of narrative shape, to tell the story of the life as the story of the acquiring of the simple possessions by which the man is surrounded at his death. In the writing the book changed. It became the story of a man's search for a house and all that the possession of one's own house implies. The first idea-personal, lodged in me since childhood, but also perhaps reinforced by an all but erased memory of a D. H. Lawrence story called "Things"-wasn't false. But it was too formal for a novel. The second idea, about the house, was larger, better. It also contained more of the truth. The novel, once it had ceased to be an idea and had begun to exist as a novel, called up its own truth.

For me to write the story of a man like my father was, in the beginning at any rate, to attempt pure fiction, if only because I was writing of things before my time. The transplanted Hindu-Muslim rural culture of Trinidad into which my father was born early in the century was still a whole culture, close to India. When I was of an age to observe, that culture had begun to weaken; and the time of wholeness had seemed to me as far away as India itself, and almost dateless. I knew little about the Trinidad Indian village way of life. I was a town boy; I had grown up in Port of Spain. I had memories of my father's conversation; I also had his short stories. These stories, not many, were mainly about old rituals. They were my father's own way of looking back, in his unhappy thirties and forties. This was what my fantasy had to work on.

So the present novel begins with events twice removed, in an antique, "pastoral" time, and almost in a land of the imagination. The real world gradually defines itself, but it is still for the writer an imagined world. The novel is well established, its tone set, when my own wide-awake memories take over. So the book is a work of the imagination. It is obviously not "made up," created out of nothing. But it does not tell a literal truth. The pattern in the narrative of widening vision and a widening world, though I believe it to be historically true of the people concerned, derives also from the child's way of experiencing. It was on the partial knowledge of a child-myself-and his intuitions and emotion that the writer's imagination went to work. There is more fantasy, and emotion, in this novel than in my later novels, where the intelligence is more in command.

The novel took some time to get going. I began it, or began writing towards it, in the latter half of 1957. I was living on the draughty attic floor of a big Edwardian house in Muswell Hill in north London. The sitting room was choked with my landlady's unwanted furniture. The furniture was from her first marriage; she had lived in Malaya before the war, had seen or glimpsed Somerset Maugham out there, and she told me, as though letting me into a secret, that he was "a nasty little man." When middle-cla.s.s Muswell Hill dinner parties were given downstairs (with the help of a very old uniformed maid, a relic, like her mistress, of a dead age), there was the modest smell of Dutch cigars. Upstairs, in my attic, the tattered old sitting-room carpet, its colours faded with old dust, rippled in the winter gales. There was also a mouse somewhere in the room.

Old furniture, "things," homelessness: they were more than ideas when I began writing. I had just, after ten weeks, left a well-paid but pointless and enervating job (my first and only full-time job). So, from having money, I had none again. I was also trying to do reviews for the New Statesman, New Statesman, which in 1957 was near the peak of its reputation. The which in 1957 was near the peak of its reputation. The New Statesman New Statesman tormented me more than the novel. I was trying too hard with the trial reviews, and making myself clouded and physically queasy day after day. But the tormented me more than the novel. I was trying too hard with the trial reviews, and making myself clouded and physically queasy day after day. But the New Statesman New Statesman gave me more than one chance; and at last, quite suddenly one day, I found my reviewer's voice. Two or three months later the novel came alive; as with the reviewing; it seemed to happen at a particular moment. Soon the excitement of the novel displaced the glamour of the gave me more than one chance; and at last, quite suddenly one day, I found my reviewer's voice. Two or three months later the novel came alive; as with the reviewing; it seemed to happen at a particular moment. Soon the excitement of the novel displaced the glamour of the New Statesman. New Statesman. And then for two years I wrote in perfect conditions. And then for two years I wrote in perfect conditions.

I left Muswell Hill and the attic flat and moved south of the river to Streatham Hill. For twenty-five pounds a month I had the whole of the upper floor of a semi-detached house, with my own entrance off the tiled downstairs hall. My landlady's daughter lived alone downstairs; and she did a job all day. I had more than changed flats: for the first time in my life I enjoyed solitude and freedom in a house. And just as, in the novel, I was able to let myself go, so in the solitude of the quiet, friendly house in Streatham Hill I could let myself go. There is a storm scene in the book, with black, biting ants. It was written (perhaps in its second draft) with the curtains drawn, and by candlelight. I wanted the atmosphere, and wanted to remind myself of the moving shadows thrown by the oil-lamps of part of my childhood.

My landlady's daughter read a lot and was a great buyer of books. I don't believe she cared for those I had published, but during all my time in her house I felt her as an understanding, encouraging presence, never obtrusive. She made me a gift one day of a little square wool rug she had made herself. It was some weeks before, turning the square rug another way, I saw that the pattern was not abstract, but made up of my initials. She subscribed to the New Statesman; New Statesman; and it was for her, as much as for the literary editor of the and it was for her, as much as for the literary editor of the New Statesman, New Statesman, that every four weeks I wrote my review of novels. that every four weeks I wrote my review of novels.

In that week I also did other journalism, mainly radio talks for the BBC Overseas Service. Then for three weeks at a stretch I worked on the novel. I wrote with joy. And as I wrote, my conviction grew. My childhood dream of writing had been a dream of fame and escape and an imagined elegant style of life. Nothing in my father's example or conversation had prepared me for the difficulties of narrative prose, of finding a voice, the difficulties of going on to the next book and the next, the searching of oneself for matter to write about. But, equally, nothing had prepared me for the liberation and absorption of this extended literary labour, the joy of allowing fantasy to play on stored experience, the joy of the comedy that so naturally offered itself, the joy of language. The right words seemed to dance above my head; I plucked them down at will. I took chances with language. Before this, out of my beginner's caution, I had been strict with myself.

In the last year mental and physical fatigue touched me. I had never before experienced that depth of fatigue. I became aware of how much I had given to the book, and I thought that I could never be adequately rewarded for the labour. And I believe it is true to say that the labour had burnt up thoughts of reward. Often, out in the Streatham Hill streets, momentarily away from the book, shopping perhaps, I thought: "If someone were to offer me a million pounds on condition that I leave the book unfinished, I would turn the money down." Though I didn't really need one, I bought a new typewriter to type out the precious finished ma.n.u.script. But I was too tired to type to the end; that had to be done professionally.

When the book was handed in, I went abroad for seven months. An opportunity for travel in the Caribbean and South America had been given me by the Trinidad government. Colonial Trinidad had sent me to Oxford in 1950, and I had made myself a writer. Self-governing Trinidad sent me on a colonial tour in 1960, and by this accident I became a traveller. It wasn't absolutely the end of the Streatham Hill house-I was to go back there for nine months, to write a book about my travels. But that was another kind of writing, another skill. It could be as taxing as fiction; it demanded in some ways an equivalent completeness of man and writer. But it engaged another part of the brain. No play of fantasy was required; the writer would never regard with wonder what he had drawn out of himself, the unsuspected truths turned up by the imagination.

The two years spent on this novel in Streatham Hill remain the most consuming, the most fulfilled, the happiest years of my life. They were my Eden. Hence, more than twenty years later, the tears in Cyprus.

March 1983

PART TWO.

Indian Autobiographies THE DERELICTION of India overwhelms the visitor; and it seems reasonable to imagine that the Indian who leaves his country, and all its a.s.sumptions, for the first time is likely to be unsettled. But in Indian autobiographies of India overwhelms the visitor; and it seems reasonable to imagine that the Indian who leaves his country, and all its a.s.sumptions, for the first time is likely to be unsettled. But in Indian autobiographies* there is no hint of unsettlement: people are their designations and functions, and places little more than their names. "We reached Southampton, as far as I can remember, on a Sat.u.r.day." This is Gandhi writing in 1925 of his arrival in England as a student in 1889. That it was a Sat.u.r.day was more important to him than that he had exchanged Bombay for Southampton. He had landed in a white flannel suit and couldn't get at his luggage until Monday. So Southampton is no more than an experience of embarra.s.sment and is never described; as later London, never described, is converted into a series of small spiritual experiences, the vows of vegetarianism and chast.i.ty being more important than the city of the 1890s. A place is its name. there is no hint of unsettlement: people are their designations and functions, and places little more than their names. "We reached Southampton, as far as I can remember, on a Sat.u.r.day." This is Gandhi writing in 1925 of his arrival in England as a student in 1889. That it was a Sat.u.r.day was more important to him than that he had exchanged Bombay for Southampton. He had landed in a white flannel suit and couldn't get at his luggage until Monday. So Southampton is no more than an experience of embarra.s.sment and is never described; as later London, never described, is converted into a series of small spiritual experiences, the vows of vegetarianism and chast.i.ty being more important than the city of the 1890s. A place is its name.

London was just too big for me and the two days I spent there so overwhelming that I was glad to leave for Manchester. My brother had arranged some digs in advance so that I settled in straight away.

We are forty years beyond Gandhi, but the tone in Punjabi Century, Punjabi Century, the memoirs of a high business executive, remains the same. India is one place, England another. There can be no contrast, no shock in reverse. It is only near the end of the memoirs of a high business executive, remains the same. India is one place, England another. There can be no contrast, no shock in reverse. It is only near the end of My Public Life My Public Life that Sir Mirza Ismail, after listing the recommendations he made to President Sukarno for the improvement of the Indonesian administration-he recommended four new colleges, five new stadiums and "publication of the President's speeches in book form"-it is only after this that he observes: that Sir Mirza Ismail, after listing the recommendations he made to President Sukarno for the improvement of the Indonesian administration-he recommended four new colleges, five new stadiums and "publication of the President's speeches in book form"-it is only after this that he observes: The standard of living is higher in Indonesia than in India. People are better clad and better fed, although cloth is much dearer. One hardly sees the miserable specimens of humanity that one comes across in the big cities in India, as well as in rural areas.

The effect is startling, for until that moment the talk had mostly been of parks and gardens and factories, and of benevolent and appreciative rulers. We have to wait until Nirad Chaudhuri's Pa.s.sage to England, Pa.s.sage to England, published in 1959, for something more explicit. published in 1959, for something more explicit.

I failed to see in England one great distinction which is basic in my country. When I was there I was always asking myself, "Where are the people?" I did so because I was missing the populace, the commonalty, the ma.s.ses ...

The att.i.tude might be interpreted as aristocratic; in no country is aristocracy as easy as in India. But we are in reality dealing with something more limiting and less comprehensible: the Indian habit of exclusion, denial, non-seeing. It is part of what Nirad Chaudhuri calls the "ign.o.ble privacy" of Indian social organization; it defines by negatives. It is a lack of wonder, the medieval attribute of a people who are still surrounded by wonders; and in autobiographies this lack of wonder is frequently converted into a hectic self-love.

For its first half Gandhi's autobiography reads like a fairytale. He is dealing with the acknowledged marvels of his early life; and his dry, compressed method, reducing people to their functions and simplified characteristics, reducing places to names and action to a few lines of narrative, turns everything to legend. When the action becomes more complex and political, the method fails; and the book declines more obviously into what it always was: an obsession with vows, food experiments, recurring illness, an obsession with the self. "Thoughts of self," Chaudhuri writes in The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, are encouraged by a religious view of life, because it emphasizes our lone coming into the world and our lone exit from it and induces us to judge values in their relation to the individual voyager, the individual voyage, and the ultimate individual destiny.

In Punjabi Century Punjabi Century Prakash Tandon seems to set out to tell the story of the transformation of the Punjab from 1857 to 1947. He barely attempts the theme. He minutely describes festivals, marriage customs, his father's engineering duties, the various family houses; and the book is transformed into a tribute to his province, his caste, his family and himself: it contains an embarra.s.sing account of his courtship in Sweden, to which is added an injured and recognizably Indian account of his difficulties in getting a job. "Friends not only in my own country but scattered on three continents have suggested I should write my memoirs," Sir Mirza Ismail says. Prakash Tandon seems to set out to tell the story of the transformation of the Punjab from 1857 to 1947. He barely attempts the theme. He minutely describes festivals, marriage customs, his father's engineering duties, the various family houses; and the book is transformed into a tribute to his province, his caste, his family and himself: it contains an embarra.s.sing account of his courtship in Sweden, to which is added an injured and recognizably Indian account of his difficulties in getting a job. "Friends not only in my own country but scattered on three continents have suggested I should write my memoirs," Sir Mirza Ismail says.

It is not easy, however, to write about oneself, and partly for this reason, and partly in order to make the memoirs more interesting, I have quoted from letters received.

Not a few of these letters are tributes to the writer. "You're a wonder!" writes Lord Willingdon. "I would like to name a road after you," writes the Maharaja of Jaipur.

An old-fashioned Muslim vizier, a modern Hindu businessman, the Mahatma: a.s.sorted personalities, but recognizably of the same culture. "Writing an autobiography is a practice peculiar to the West," a "G.o.d-fearing" friend said to Gandhi on the Mahatma's day of silence. "I know of n.o.body in the East having written one except amongst those who have come under western influence." And it is in this b.a.s.t.a.r.d form-in which a religious view of life, laudable in one culture, is converted steadily into self-love, disagreeable in another culture-that we can begin to see the misunderstandings and futility of the Indo-English encounter.

The civilizations were, and remain, opposed; and the use of English heightens the confusion. When Gandhi came to England for the Round Table Conference in 1931 he stayed for a night at a Quaker guest-house in the Ribble Valley. The garden was in bloom. In the evening Gandhi, in sandals, dhoti and shawl, walked among the flowers. He scarcely looked at them. The story is told by Tandon, who got it from the warden.

I consoled him that it was quite characteristic of Gandhiji that though he pa.s.sionately advocated a return to nature he completely lacked interest in its beauty.

But was it strictly a "return to nature" that Gandhi advocated? Wasn't it something more complex? Was Gandhi's aim to reawaken wonder, or was it rather an unconscious striving after a symbolism acceptable to the Indian ma.s.ses, a political exploitation, however unconscious, of the "ign.o.ble privacy" of Indian att.i.tudes? The Gandhian concept is not easily translated. A "return to nature" and "patriotism": in India the concepts are linked; and the Indian concept of patriotism is unique. Tandon tells how, in 1919, the Independence movement made its first impression on his district.

These visitors spoke about the freedom of India, and this intrigued us; but when they talked in familiar a.n.a.logies and idiom about the Kal Yug, we saw what they meant. Had it not been prophesied that there were seven eras in India's life and history: there had been a Sat Yug, the era of truth, justice and prosperity; and then there was to be a Kal Yug, an era of falsehood, of demoralization, of slavery and poverty ... These homely a.n.a.logies, ill.u.s.trated by legend and history, registered easily, but not so easily the conclusion to which they were linked, that it was all the fault of the Angrezi Sarkar.

We are in fact dealing with the type of society which Camus described in the opening chapter of The Rebel: The Rebel: a society which has not learned to see and is incapable of a.s.sessing itself, which asks no questions because ritual and myth have provided all the answers, a society which has not learned "rebellion." An unfortunate word perhaps, with its juvenile, romantic 1950s a.s.sociations; but it is the concept which divides, not the East from the West, but India from almost every other country. It explains why so much writing about India is unsatisfactory and one-sided, and it throws into relief the stupendous achievement of Nirad Chaudhuri's a society which has not learned to see and is incapable of a.s.sessing itself, which asks no questions because ritual and myth have provided all the answers, a society which has not learned "rebellion." An unfortunate word perhaps, with its juvenile, romantic 1950s a.s.sociations; but it is the concept which divides, not the East from the West, but India from almost every other country. It explains why so much writing about India is unsatisfactory and one-sided, and it throws into relief the stupendous achievement of Nirad Chaudhuri's Autobiography of an Unknown Indian Autobiography of an Unknown Indian which, containing within itself both India and the West, has had the misfortune of being taken for granted by both sides. which, containing within itself both India and the West, has had the misfortune of being taken for granted by both sides.

Chaudhuri's Autobiography Autobiography may be the one great book to have come out of the Indo-English encounter. No better account of the penetration of the Indian mind by the West-and, by extension, of the penetration of one culture by another-will be or can now be written. It was an encounter which ended in mutual recoil and futility. For Chaudhuri this futility is an almost personal tragedy. Yet we can now see that this futility was inevitable. To the static, minutely ordered Indian society, with its pressures ever towards the self, England came less as a political shock than as the source of a New Learning. Chaudhuri quotes from may be the one great book to have come out of the Indo-English encounter. No better account of the penetration of the Indian mind by the West-and, by extension, of the penetration of one culture by another-will be or can now be written. It was an encounter which ended in mutual recoil and futility. For Chaudhuri this futility is an almost personal tragedy. Yet we can now see that this futility was inevitable. To the static, minutely ordered Indian society, with its pressures ever towards the self, England came less as a political shock than as the source of a New Learning. Chaudhuri quotes from Rajani, Rajani, a Bengali novel by Bankim Chandra Chatterji: a Bengali novel by Bankim Chandra Chatterji: He did not disclose his business, nor could I ask him outright. So we discussed social reform and politics ... The discussion of ancient literature led in its turn to ancient historiography, out of which there emerged some incomparable exposition of the cla.s.sical historians, Tacitus, Plutarch, Thucydides, and others. From the philosophy of history of these writers Amarnath came down to Comte and his lois des trois etats, lois des trois etats, which he endorsed. Comte brought in his interpreter Mill and then Huxley; Huxley brought in Owen and Darwin; and Darwin Buchner and Schopenhauer. Amarnath poured the most entrancing scholarship into my ears, and I became too engrossed to remember our business. which he endorsed. Comte brought in his interpreter Mill and then Huxley; Huxley brought in Owen and Darwin; and Darwin Buchner and Schopenhauer. Amarnath poured the most entrancing scholarship into my ears, and I became too engrossed to remember our business.

The astonishing thing about this novel is its date, which is 1877. Kipling's Plain Tales Plain Tales were to appear in book form just eleven years later, to reveal the absurdity of this New Learning, nourished by books alone. Between the New Learning and its representatives in Simla there was a gap. Dead civilizations alone ought properly to provide a New Learning. This civilization survived; it had grown suburban and philistine, was soon to become proletarian; and it was fitting that from 1860 to 1910, which Chaudhuri fixes as the period of the Indian Renaissance, the educated Bengali should have been an object of especial ridicule to the English, to whom the unintellectual simplicities of the blue-eyed Pathan were more comprehensible. Chaudhuri, lamenting the death of the Indian Renaissance, and the corrupting, "elemental" Westernization that took its place, pays little attention to this aspect of the encounter. were to appear in book form just eleven years later, to reveal the absurdity of this New Learning, nourished by books alone. Between the New Learning and its representatives in Simla there was a gap. Dead civilizations alone ought properly to provide a New Learning. This civilization survived; it had grown suburban and philistine, was soon to become proletarian; and it was fitting that from 1860 to 1910, which Chaudhuri fixes as the period of the Indian Renaissance, the educated Bengali should have been an object of especial ridicule to the English, to whom the unintellectual simplicities of the blue-eyed Pathan were more comprehensible. Chaudhuri, lamenting the death of the Indian Renaissance, and the corrupting, "elemental" Westernization that took its place, pays little attention to this aspect of the encounter.

The elite Indo-English culture of Bengal was as removed from the Anglo-Indian culture of Simla as it was removed from the culture of the Indian ma.s.ses. It was a growth of fantasy; the political liberalism it bred could not last. It was to give way to the religious revivalism of a ma.s.s movement, to all the combative hocus-pocus of revived "Vedic" traditions such as the launching of ships with coconut-milk instead of champagne, and finally to that cultural confusion which some sentences of Tandon's ill.u.s.trate so well: Gandhi rechristened India Bharat Mata, a name that evoked nostalgic memories, and a.s.sociated with Gao Mata, the mother cow ... He ... spoke about the peace of the British as the peace of slavery. Gradually a new picture began to build in our minds, of India coming out of the Kal Yug into a new era of freedom and plenty, Ram Rajya.

Language has at last broken down. Gao Mata, Ram Rajya: for these there are no English equivalents. We can see "national pride" now as an applied phrase, with a special Indian meaning. In the definition of Ram Rajya the true stress falls on "plenty," while "freedom" is an intrusive English word. word. Here is the futility of the Indo-English encounter, the intellectual confusion of the "new" India. This is the great, tragic theme of Chaudhuri's book. Here is the futility of the Indo-English encounter, the intellectual confusion of the "new" India. This is the great, tragic theme of Chaudhuri's book.

1965.

*The Story of My Experiments with Truth, by M. K. Gandhi, translated by Mahadev Desai, 1966.

Punjabi Century, by Prakash Lal Tandon, 1963. by Prakash Lal Tandon, 1963.

My Public Life, by Mirza Ismail, 1954. by Mirza Ismail, 1954.

A Pa.s.sage to England, by Nirad Chaudhuri, 1959. by Nirad Chaudhuri, 1959.

The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, by Nirad Chaudhuri, 1951. by Nirad Chaudhuri, 1951.

The Last of the Aryans YOU DON'T have to wait long for the characteristic Nirad Chaudhuri note in have to wait long for the characteristic Nirad Chaudhuri note in The Continent of Circe. The Continent of Circe. It occurs, unmistakably, almost before the book begins; yet it has the effect of a climax. There is a frontispiece with two views from the author's verandah in Delhi: one looking up to clouds, one looking down to refugee tents. The t.i.tle page has a Latin device: It occurs, unmistakably, almost before the book begins; yet it has the effect of a climax. There is a frontispiece with two views from the author's verandah in Delhi: one looking up to clouds, one looking down to refugee tents. The t.i.tle page has a Latin device: "De rerum indicarum natura: Exempla gentium et seditionum." "De rerum indicarum natura: Exempla gentium et seditionum." The motto-"Know Thyself"-follows, in five Indo-European languages. Seven detailed contents pages come next. And then we come to text: six pages, a chapter almost, headed "In Grat.i.tude." Chaudhuri begins by thanking Khushwant Singh, "the well-known Sikh writer, good companion, and man-about-town, for the loan of his portable typewriter." This seems straightforward enough; but it soon becomes clear that we have to do with an incident. The motto-"Know Thyself"-follows, in five Indo-European languages. Seven detailed contents pages come next. And then we come to text: six pages, a chapter almost, headed "In Grat.i.tude." Chaudhuri begins by thanking Khushwant Singh, "the well-known Sikh writer, good companion, and man-about-town, for the loan of his portable typewriter." This seems straightforward enough; but it soon becomes clear that we have to do with an incident.

It is like this. Chaudhuri is tapping away on Khushwant's machine. He is nearing the end of one of the sections of his book and his grat.i.tude to Khushwant, as he says, is at its highest. A "public print" comes his way. It is "the official publication of the American Women's Club of Delhi." It contains "An Interview with Khushwant Singh": INTERVIEWER: Who is the best Indian writer today? Who is the best Indian writer today?

KHUSHWANT SINGH: In non-fiction? Without a doubt Nirad Chaudhuri ... A bitter man, a poor man. He doesn't even own a typewriter. He borrows mine a week at a time. In non-fiction? Without a doubt Nirad Chaudhuri ... A bitter man, a poor man. He doesn't even own a typewriter. He borrows mine a week at a time.

Chaudhuri is "struck all of a heap": My poverty is, of course, well known in New Delhi and much further afield, and therefore I was not prepared to see it bruited about by so august a body as the American Women's Club of Delhi.

Khushwant explains. His statement has been given the wrong emphasis. He thought he was only entertaining a lady to tea; he had no idea what her real intention was. He offers Chaudhuri a brand-new portable typewriter as a gift: I tried to show that I bore no grudge by again borrowing the machine after the publication of the article and by most gratefully accepting the present of the new typewriter.

And a footnote adds: Having read Pascal early in life I have always tried to profit by his wisdom: "Si tous les hommes savaient ce quils disaient les uns des autres, il n'y aurait pas quatre amis dans le monde." "Si tous les hommes savaient ce quils disaient les uns des autres, il n'y aurait pas quatre amis dans le monde."

So much about the typewriters on which the book was written; the Americans, though, continue to receive attention for a whole page.

IT IS impossible to take an interest in Nirad Chaudhuri's work without becoming involved with his situation and "personality." This has been his extra-literary creation since the publication in 1951 of his impossible to take an interest in Nirad Chaudhuri's work without becoming involved with his situation and "personality." This has been his extra-literary creation since the publication in 1951 of his Autobiography of an Unknown Indian. Autobiography of an Unknown Indian. The book made him known. But in India it also made him disliked. Cruelly, it did not lessen his poverty; this mighty work, which in a fairer world would have made its author's fortune and seen him through old age, is now out of print. So, persecuted where not neglected, as he with some reason feels, he sits in Delhi, ma.s.sively disapproving, more touchy than before, more out of touch with his fellows, never ceasing to attract either the slights of the high or the disagreeable attentions of the low. The book made him known. But in India it also made him disliked. Cruelly, it did not lessen his poverty; this mighty work, which in a fairer world would have made its author's fortune and seen him through old age, is now out of print. So, persecuted where not neglected, as he with some reason feels, he sits in Delhi, ma.s.sively disapproving, more touchy than before, more out of touch with his fellows, never ceasing to attract either the slights of the high or the disagreeable attentions of the low.

His fellow pa.s.sengers on the Delhi buses wish to know the time. Without inquiry they lift his wrist, consult his wrist-watch, and then without acknowledgement let his wrist drop. Sometimes he walks; and, in a land of "ma.s.sive staticity," where when men walk it is as if "rooted trees were waving in the wind," he walks "in the European manner, that is to say, quickly and with a sense of the goal towards which I am going." Elderly people shout after him, "Left! Right! Left! Right!" Boys call out, "Johnnie Walker!" Sometimes they come right up to him and jeer in Hindi: "Are Jahny." "Are Jahny." It is not even the Johnnie Walker of the whisky label they refer to, but "a caricature of him by an Indian film star": It is not even the Johnnie Walker of the whisky label they refer to, but "a caricature of him by an Indian film star": Friends ask me why I do not go for these impertinent young fellows. I reply that I retain my common sense at least to the point of forcing myself to bear all this philosophically. But being also a naturally irascible man, I sometimes breathe a wish that I possessed a flame-thrower and was free to use it. In my conduct and behaviour, however, I never betray this lack of charity.

Indoors it is hardly less dangerous. The London Philharmonic Orchestra comes to Delhi. Chaudhuri talks music to Sir Malcolm Sargent; an English lady whispers to Mrs. Chaudhuri, "What a bold man he is!" He goes to the concert the next day; the British Council has provided tickets. He finds that he is separated from his wife by the aisle. An upper-cla.s.s Indian lady claims that he is sitting on her chair. She is wrong; she objects then to his proximity; she calls the upper-cla.s.s usherettes to her aid. He yields; he takes his chair across the aisle to join his wife.

The extra-literary Chaudhuri "personality" is more than a creation of art; the suffering, however self-induced, is too real. Nearly seventy, he is a solitary, in hurtful conflict at every level with his environment.

FAILURE: it is Chaudhuri's obsession. There is the personal failure: twenty years of poverty and humiliation dismissed in a single, moving sentence in the it is Chaudhuri's obsession. There is the personal failure: twenty years of poverty and humiliation dismissed in a single, moving sentence in the Autobiography. Autobiography. There is the failure as a scholar, recorded in the There is the failure as a scholar, recorded in the Autobiography Autobiography and echoed in the present book. and echoed in the present book.

I shall mention the names of four men whom I regard as truly learned. They are Mommsen, Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Harnack, and Eduard Meyer. When young and immature I cherished the ambition of being the fifth in that series. So I could not have been very modest. But a standard is a standard.

There is the failure, or rather the futility, of the nineteenth-century Anglo-Bengali culture, Chaudhuri's own, set against the larger futility of British rule. These were the interwoven themes of the monumental Autobiography. Autobiography. Now Chaudhuri addresses himself to a more encompa.s.sing failure: the failure of his country, his race and the land itself, Now Chaudhuri addresses himself to a more encompa.s.sing failure: the failure of his country, his race and the land itself, Aryavarta, Aryavarta, the land of the Aryans. the land of the Aryans.

He has called The Continent of Circe The Continent of Circe an "Essay on the Peoples of India." But his subject is really the Hindus; and his starting-point is the incomprehension, rapidly giving way to rage, which the Hindus have immemorially aroused in non-Hindus. Even E. M. Forster, Chaudhuri says, is more drawn to Muslims; and for all his pro-Indian sentiment, "there are few delineations of the Indian character more insultingly condescending" than those in an "Essay on the Peoples of India." But his subject is really the Hindus; and his starting-point is the incomprehension, rapidly giving way to rage, which the Hindus have immemorially aroused in non-Hindus. Even E. M. Forster, Chaudhuri says, is more drawn to Muslims; and for all his pro-Indian sentiment, "there are few delineations of the Indian character more insultingly condescending" than those in A Pa.s.sage to India. A Pa.s.sage to India. Forster's plea for Indo-British friendship reminds Chaudhuri of the poem: Forster's plea for Indo-British friendship reminds Chaudhuri of the poem: Turn, turn thy hasty foot aside, Nor crush that helpless worm!

The frame thy wayward looks deride Required a G.o.d to form.

"This ma.s.sive, spontaneous, and uniform criticism by live minds ... cannot be cancelled by afterthoughts which have their source in the Untergang des Abendlandes. Untergang des Abendlandes." And Chaudhuri wishes to cancel nothing. He seeks only to explain. But the act of explaining frequently drives him him to rage. Where the to rage. Where the Autobiography Autobiography was a.n.a.lytic, detached and underplayed, the Essay is strident and tendentious. Chaudhuri's sense of failure and vulnerability, that personality, comes in the way; and it is as a display of personality that was a.n.a.lytic, detached and underplayed, the Essay is strident and tendentious. Chaudhuri's sense of failure and vulnerability, that personality, comes in the way; and it is as a display of personality that The Continent of Circe The Continent of Circe is best to be relished. It is at its most delicious when it is most pa.s.sionate; and it is most pa.s.sionate when, one suspects, it is most personal: in the account, for instance, of the "sob-chamber" of Hindu family life, where the only compet.i.tion is in gloom and people can legitimately consider themselves provoked if they are told they are looking well. So, in Chaudhuri's essay as much as in the work of any uncomprehending foreigner, "Hindu" ends by being almost a word of abuse. is best to be relished. It is at its most delicious when it is most pa.s.sionate; and it is most pa.s.sionate when, one suspects, it is most personal: in the account, for instance, of the "sob-chamber" of Hindu family life, where the only compet.i.tion is in gloom and people can legitimately consider themselves provoked if they are told they are looking well. So, in Chaudhuri's essay as much as in the work of any uncomprehending foreigner, "Hindu" ends by being almost a word of abuse.

Hindus pacifist? Rubbish, says Chaudhuri. Hindus are militarist, have always been; it is only their inefficiency that makes them less of a menace to the world. To prove this he gives selective historical examples and interprets the frontier conflict with China in a way that will not be faulted in Peking. Again: "The industrial revolution in India at its most disinterested is an expression of anti-European and anti-Western nationalism." This is possible; but it cannot be squared with what immediately follows: "a far stronger force, in actual fact the positive force, is the Hindu's insatiable greed for money." This, at first, seems too meaningless a statement even for simple denial. But he is making an important point; he is speaking of what some people in India call the "pigmy mentality" of the Indian capitalist: The American industrialist is the old European Conquistador in a new incarnation ... But the Hindu money-maker can never be anything but his paisa paisa-counting sordid self ... His spirit is best symbolized by the adulteration of food, medicine, and whatever else can be adulterated.

So that the Indian industrial revolution, so far from being an expression of anti-Western nationalism, turns out to be a very petty, private thing indeed. Its cynicism might appear to some to be an extension of caste att.i.tudes. And it might be expected that Chaudhuri would be critical of caste. Not at all. He asks us to keep off the caste question if we don't want to pound India to dust. Caste is the only thing that holds Indian society together. It is "a natural compensation for man's convergent zoological evolution and divergent psychological evolution." Caste did not suppress mobility; that came only with the Pax Britannica. Pax Britannica. And the Chaudhuri flourish is added: And the Chaudhuri flourish is added: If the system suppressed anything it was only ambition unrelated to ability, and watching the mischief from this kind of ambition in India today I would say that we could do with a little more of the caste system in order to put worthless adventurers in their place.

It might seem then that Chaudhuri, in an attempt to make a whole of Hindu att.i.tudes, has succ.u.mbed to any number of Hindu contradictions. But I also feel that Chaudhuri, living in Delhi, enduring slights and persecution, has at last succ.u.mbed to what we might call the enemy. He sees India as too big; he has lost his gift of detachment, his world view. He seeks to expose where exposure is not really necessary. He has been taken in by the glitter of "the diplomatic" at Delhi, the flurry of visitors, the cultural displays of competing governments. He exaggerates the importance of India and the interest taken in India. People in England, he says, "are still longing after [India] with the docility of cattle," and the words make sad reading in London in 1965.

BUT THIS is the theme of his polemic: that tropical India is the continent of Circe, drugging and destroying those whom it attracts, and that the Aryans, now Hindus, were the first to be lured from a temperate land, "denatured" and destroyed. Their philosophy is the philosophy of the devitalized. It is rooted in secular distress, the anguish of flesh on the Gangetic plain, where everything quickly decomposes and leads to is the theme of his polemic: that tropical India is the continent of Circe, drugging and destroying those whom it attracts, and that the Aryans, now Hindus, were the first to be lured from a temperate land, "denatured" and destroyed. Their philosophy is the philosophy of the devitalized. It is rooted in secular distress, the anguish of flesh on the Gangetic plain, where everything quickly decomposes and leads to tamas, tamas, a comprehensive squalor: a comprehensive squalor: The tragedy of all the systems of Hindu philosophy is that they confront men with only one choice: remain corruptible and corrupt flesh, or become incorruptible and incorrupt stone.

Be neurotically fussy about cleanliness; or-the greater spirituality-show your indifference to the extent of being able to eat excrement. Hindus are not philosophers; nor do they reverence philosophy. "What we respect are the sadhus, possessors of occult power."

In Chaudhuri's argument it follows without contradiction that a people obsessed with religion, really a "philosophy of sorrow," are obsessed with s.e.x. It is the great anodyne. "Defeat was on the fleshly plane ... Rehabilitation must also be in the flesh." The s.e.x act in Hindu sculpture is not symbolic of any sort of spiritual union, as is sometimes said: it is no more than what it appears to be. With a loss of vitality this celebration of the senses declines into the "s.e.x-obsessed chast.i.ty of the Hindu, which is perhaps the most despicable ethical notion ever created in the moral evolution of any people": Their admiration of the supposed superior s.e.xual knowledge and dexterity of the Hindus is putting ideas in the heads of a particularly depraved set of Occidentals, who are coming to India and working havoc with what s.e.xual sanity ... we still have.

Well said; but it is on the subject of s.e.x that Chaudhuri becomes most fanciful. Tracing the decline of vitality, he makes too much, one feels, of the emphasis in Sanskrit erotic writings on the pleasures of the purushayita purushayita or reversed position. Wasn't it in such a position, if one reads right, that Lucius and Fotis first came together in or reversed position. Wasn't it in such a position, if one reads right, that Lucius and Fotis first came together in The Golden a.s.s The Golden a.s.s?

Chaudhuri writes of India as though India has never been written about before. He pays little attention to received ideas; he mentions no authorities: I am old, and I cannot spend the few years that are left to me tilting at theories which I have taken a lifetime to outgrow ... I must therefore be resigned to being called a fool by those who believe in ghosts ... Historical conferences in India always remind me of seances.

He places the Aryan settlement of the Gangetic plain in the seventh century B.C. B.C. This will be offensive to those Indians who think of India as the Aryan heartland and, playing with millennia, like to think of Rome as a recent, and peripheral, disturbance. He allows no civilization worth the name to the indigenous Australoids, whom he calls the Darks. Rigid barriers were set up against them, and Chaudhuri-going back on some of his old views-claims that no significant intermingling of the races took place. The Darks, in their free or servile state, remain to this day genetically stable; and to this day, it might be added, the burning of a giant effigy of a Dark is the climax of an annual Hindu pageant-play. Hindu This will be offensive to those Indians who think of India as the Aryan heartland and, playing with millennia, like to think of Rome as a recent, and peripheral, disturbance. He allows no civilization worth the name to the indigenous Australoids, whom he calls the Darks. Rigid barriers were set up against them, and Chaudhuri-going back on some of his old views-claims that no significant intermingling of the races took place. The Darks, in their free or servile state, remain to this day genetically stable; and to this day, it might be added, the burning of a giant effigy of a Dark is the climax of an annual Hindu pageant-play. Hindu apartheid apartheid quickly gave the Darks the psychology of a subject race. Chaudhuri retells a story from the quickly gave the Darks the psychology of a subject race. Chaudhuri retells a story from the Ramayana, Ramayana, the Hindu epic. It is reported one day to Rama, the Aryan hero, that the son of a brahmin has died suddenly. There can be only one explanation: an act of impiety. Rama goes out to have a look and, sure enough, finds that a young Dark has been performing Aryan religious rites. The Dark is at once decapitated and the brahmin's son comes back to life. In later versions of the story the Dark dies happily: death at the hands of an Aryan is a sure way to heaven. Not even slavery created so complete a subjection. the Hindu epic. It is reported one day to Rama, the Aryan hero, that the son of a brahmin has died suddenly. There can be only one explanation: an act of impiety. Rama goes out to have a look and, sure enough, finds that a young Dark has been performing Aryan religious rites. The Dark is at once decapitated and the brahmin's son comes back to life. In later versions of the story the Dark dies happily: death at the hands of an Aryan is a sure way to heaven. Not even slavery created so complete a subjection.

So that, as Chaudhuri tells it, the continent of Circe has played a cruel joke on the Hindus. The first white people to come into contact with a black race, and the first and most persistent pract.i.tioners of apartheid, apartheid, they have themselves, over the centuries, under a punishing sun, grown dark. The snow-capped Himalayas have become objects of pilgrimage; and some Hindus, in their hysteria, look beyond that to the North Pole, of which modern map-makers have made them aware. There, someone will tell you in all the blaze of Madras, there at the North Pole lies the true home of the Hindus: they have themselves, over the centuries, under a punishing sun, grown dark. The snow-capped Himalayas have become objects of pilgrimage; and some Hindus, in their hysteria, look beyond that to the North Pole, of which modern map-makers have made them aware. There, someone will tell you in all the blaze of Madras, there at the North Pole lies the true home of the Hindus: The theme of paradise lost and regained is one of the major stories of Hindu mythology, and it must date from the Iranian sojourn of the Indian Aryans. In the stories the G.o.ds recover their heaven ... But in history paradise is lost for ever; and the curse begins to work: in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

This is the true Chaudhuri mood; and, for all Chaudhuri's fanciful flights and parenthetic rages, it must be respected: the Hindu sense of exile and loss is real. Yet the layman must ask certain questions. Chaudhuri places the Aryan settlement just two or three generations before the birth of the Buddha. Could the philosophy of sorrow and the devitalization of the Aryan have occurred so soon? Could the Aryan, even the settler in the South, have undertaken the colonization of South-east Asia a thousand years later? The reader of Chaudhuri's book, working from Chaudhuri's clues, might easily come to a different conclusion from Chaudhuri. He might feel that the Hindus, so far from being denatured Aryans, have continued, in their curious and self-willed isolation, to be close to their elemental Aryan origins. For the Aryan in India, Chaudhuri says, both sensibility and effort became parts of piety; and this surely makes many Hindu att.i.tudes less mysterious. The att.i.tudes remain; the gloss varies with historical circ.u.mstance. Chaudhuri writes with some sharpness of Hindus who now use European rationalism to excuse their "irrational urges and taboos." Yet we have seen how he himself uses a borrowed language to defend caste, a primitive inst.i.tution. Hindus can be found today to defend Gandhi's a.s.sa.s.sination on the grounds that the a.s.sa.s.sin was a brahmin. This is outrageous; but it becomes intelligible and logical if we see it as an extension of the old Aryan approval of Rama's slaying of the impious, and complaisant, Dark in the Ramayana Ramayana story. story.

And there is the erotic sculpture. It cannot be ignored. It cannot be talked away. It is too widespread, too casual. It is of a piece with the open sensuality of the Rig Veda, Rig Veda, the earliest Hindu sacred book. This has been called the first recorded speech of Aryan man. Chaudhuri translates a sample: the earliest Hindu sacred book. This has been called the first recorded speech of Aryan man. Chaudhuri translates a sample: He achieves not-he whose p.e.n.i.s hangs limp between his thighs; Achieves he alone whose hairy thing swells up when he lies.

It is Indrani, the Queen G.o.ddess, who speaks; and she is a match for her consort who, for his lechery, was punished by the appearance all over his body of a thousand pudenda muliebria. pudenda muliebria. This is a campfire, peasant lewdness. And when all is said and done this is what This is a campfire, peasant lewdness. And when all is said and done this is what aryan aryan means: he is one who tills the soil. means: he is one who tills the soil.

Chaudhuri's plea that Hindus should turn their backs on Asia and recover their Aryan or European personality is, if narrowly interpreted, meaningless. Part of the trouble is that Chaudhuri makes "Aryan" and "European" interchangeable. But "European" surely needs to be more closely defined, and dated. It is a developing concept; "Aryan" is fixed. And Chaudhuri's plea becomes very thin indeed when we find that for h.o.m.o europaeus h.o.m.o europaeus in his present predominant and proliferating variety Chaudhuri has no high regard: in his present predominant and proliferating variety Chaudhuri has no high regard: The most vapid and insignificant cla.s.s of human beings which so far has been evolved in history [is] the modern urban lower middle cla.s.s of the West.

The absurd thing is that in India Aryan racial pride still has point; in Europe it has little. Of this pride Chaudhuri's book might be seen as the latest expression. He is not European; with his poetic feeling for rivers and cattle, his insistence on caste, he remains Aryan.