In the last quarter of the twentieth century, there is a flourishing literature created by immigrants of Eastern origin, who after the collapse of the British Empire came to Great Britain from different countries of the world and write works in English. Vidyadhar Suryaprasad Naipol (b.1932) is considered the patriarch of this small group of novelists. In the fall of 2001, B. C. Naipaul-a descendant of Indian immigrants who settled on Trinidad Island, off the north coast of South America, and later an Oxford graduate who has lived in the UK since the early 1950s-became the 98th recipient of the Nobel Prize.

Traveling writers can be divided into three types. The first is cosmopolitans who feel at home in any country. They have a vagrancy instinct in their blood, and they don't want to sit still. The second type is the inhabitants of famous cities and prosperous countries, whose well-being gives their inhabitants a sense of some superiority over everyone else. Considering themselves absolutely invulnerable, they are "too careless... travel around the world "¹, looking at its sights with a "tourist" look. And, having received the desired share of new experiences and adventures, they hurry home, where they return with joy and from where they do not want to run.

Between these two groups there is a third - homeless wanderers, in whose destinies different cultures intersect. To the natural question, "where are you from?", they can not give a clear answer. They do not have that "warm, familiar land" ² where they can feel their unity with the world around them. In a sense, all their journeys are endless wanderings in a futile attempt to find their way to a home that is not there. B. C. Naipaul, a well-known English-language novelist who has a reputation as one of the most traveling writers of his generation, can be rightly attributed to this type of traveler.

B.C. Naipaul was born on the island of Trinidad and grew up in a community of immigrants contracted in India to work on the plantations of this small island. Trinidad was neither a second home nor a new homeland for the migrants: "It wasn't that they ignored Trinidad, they just didn't accept it." ³ Once in a foreign land, the Indians did not" integrate " into the new reality for them, but began to recreate around them, as it were, the scenery of the lost homeland, preserving the smallest conventions and details of its life. On the island, the Indian world emerged in miniature, with its "language, rituals, and social organization." ⁴ It was a closed, self-absorbed world, with little interest in what was happening outside of it.

Having survived emigration and foreign lands, the first-generation settlers especially valued the world that they took with them. They fought hard to settle in a new place without losing the values of the old one. Their grandsons, of whom B. C. Naipaul belongs, were of Indian descent, but, unlike de-

page 145

However, they did not have "their own" India. They did not know the country, did not understand its languages, and did not enjoy participating in religious rites that "dragged on too long, and food was given at the very end of the ceremony." ⁵ In addition, the grandchildren did not know either the past poverty of their grandfathers, or their harsh struggle for life. They did not understand the stubborn desire of the old people to preserve the habits and rituals of a country they had long since left. The older ones were sure that the children would understand everything intuitively, and therefore did not explain to them the meaning of prayers and the meaning of rituals.

The grandchildren were a different generation of Indians. They were surrounded by an unusually colorful tropical island that lay on the way from Africa to the American coast and once served as a transshipment base for slavers ' sailboats, as well as a slave market for the Americas. The grandchildren could no longer ignore this bizarre world that emerged at the intersection of cultures and formed from European, Asian, African and Caribbean elements. The generation of grandchildren belonged to two worlds at once, living as if in two dimensions. And this dual identity created in them, on the one hand, a sense of alienation from both the Indian community and Trinidad, and on the other, a desire to find a solid place in another civilization.

Trinidad has long been a British colony. A legacy of centuries of dependency was the island's ubiquitous sense of insignificance, abandonment, and unavoidable dependence on the stronger ones. "Every child knew that we were just a dot on the map of the world, and therefore it was important for us to feel like subjects of the British Empire." ⁶ This desire was greatly facilitated by a purposeful pro-British education at a school where graduates knew everything about the Battle of Hastings, about William the Conqueror and had no idea about the history of Trinidad. Grandchildren, like their grandfathers, also dreamed of leaving, but not to the East. They longed for the West, where everything they lacked was available, and which was infinitely closer to them than remote Trinidad or distant India...

The lifestyle and atmosphere of the Naipole house were imbued with the spirit of Indian culture. In this orthodox family, "there were many pundits" ⁷ and all religious practices were strictly observed. But Vido, as B.C. Naipaul's family called him, was, by his own admission, "born an unbeliever." ⁸ Thus, even then, perhaps the most important problem of the writer was outlined - falling out of the circle of domestic religiosity. After all, religion is a support, a kind of "supporting structure" that gives the feeling that a person is not abandoned in this world. In addition, it is "an absolute necessity... for spiritual self-identification " ⁹ . After a few years of growing up and maturing, Naipaul, seeing on the faces of pilgrims returning from the ice cave of Amarnath in the Himalayas, "this certainty: God exists", will keenly feel his "yawning failure". He will feel the bitterness of knowing that he is doomed to live under an empty sky, and will write: "I wish I could experience the same feeling. And that something of their joy might await me at the end of the pilgrimage. " ¹⁰ Meanwhile, Vido stubbornly rejected any attempts by his relatives to force him to participate in religious rituals: "It was funny to me... I knew we were living in Trinidad... " ¹¹ . However, what is learned in childhood, regardless of the desire of a person, remains in him, even if he does not realize it...

Yet outside influences penetrated the closed world of the community. Step by step, the process of assimilation "corroded" the way of life and traditional morals of Indian immigrants. Gradually, the specifics of world perception and self-consciousness were erased, the meaning of spells and ritual songs was lost, and the mystical understanding of things and events left. Even at the age of six or seven, Vido felt that the old way of life was coming to an end, and at the age of fourteen, he realized that the pure and clear world of the Indian community was going to be a thing of the past forever. And the ties of dependence on the family,

page 146

they became almost unbearably cramped for the young man, giving rise to "a taste for a different kind of life, secluded and at least not so crowded, where there would be space for himself alone" ¹².

Vido is leaving for England. But, having settled in the capital of the British Empire, the young man found himself in a world where everything was alien and, most importantly, elusive. Naipaul was not familiar with the origins and traditions of this life. Therefore, the world around them was unclear and therefore especially desolate. "I came to London... and I realized that I had failed. London didn't become the center of my world. I lost my way, but I had nowhere else to run... " ¹³ . Loneliness and spiritual restlessness became the main companions of Vido's London life. To illuminate and color the monotony of London's dreary everyday life, Naipaul decided to write about the city of childhood, which, despite the insults and hardships, lived easily and willingly; about a community "stuck" between the Indian past and the Caribbean present; about a father who lived life as if between these two worlds with a sense of failed destiny.

After writing four books on lost Shores - three novels: The Mystic Masseur (1957), Elvira Elections (1958), A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), and a collection of short stories, Miguel Street (1959)-B.C. Naipaul decided to take another look at the Lost Coast. Trinidad. After leaving the island as a 17-year - old boy, he returned there burdened with a significant "baggage" of experience, gains and losses, and most importantly-too much baggage of expectations. And he saw that the world to which he wanted to return did not exist, that it had disappeared, or rather that it had faded into something else entirely. And Vido's process of self-alienation from this land has already gone too far.

The young man returns to England, because it was on its soil that his talent as a writer flourished. This country gave him everything he seemed to be looking for: recognition, success, a stable financial situation. Outwardly, his life was quite prosperous, but inwardly everything felt different. Having received an excellent Oxford education, having become familiar with Western culture, Vido felt in England no more than an Anglicized foreigner. And after describing his trip to the West Indies and South America in The Middle Passage: A Caribbean Return (1962), Naipaul leaves for India.

B. C. Naipaul has written three books about India: The Zone of Darkness (1964), India - A Wounded Civilization (1977), and India: A Million Rebellions Now (1990). The first work is dedicated to the beginning of the 60s, the second concerns the mid-70s, and the third shows the country of the late 80s of the XX century. Moreover, each subsequent book was an addition or, more precisely, a development of how the writer's understanding of India was formed. These traveler's notes, which intertwine documentary, memoir and autobiographical, are very personal and subjective. But the greatest impression is left by those little things, details, details that formed this person with his constant search for the land where he would be "his own", where he could feel at home...

What was the India that beckoned to Naipaul? He "grew up with two ideas about India." ¹⁴ One was real: you could go there. The other was the" background "of Naipaul's childhood," so fully embodied in people and everyday objects. " ¹⁵ And between them, in childhood, for a boy, there was not a gap, but a huge space of darkness, a "zone of darkness". It conjured up the mysterious, magical world that Vido had created for people like his grandfather. Neither the difficult move nor life in Trinidad has left any impression on the older generation of immigrants. They remained Indians with similar mental and moral qualities, and their way of life and philosophical attitude to life and its problems remained unchanged. These old men seemed to Naipaul to have a special heritage, a very resilient one that allowed them to endure the hardships of others-

page 147

we are not cheating on ourselves. And Vido went to India in order to find in a historically specific time and place signs of the immutability that his grandfather was the bearer of.

When Naipaul arrived in India, he was looking for the country he thought he knew, because he had always imagined it. But everything in it turned out to be alien: both space-huge, unmeasured; and time-deeper antiquity, longer day; and people-subject to some of their own, unknown to Vido, conventions. "They were both smaller and more significant than I expected... All that was clear to me was that they were residents of a large country. " ¹⁶

For the first time in his life, Naipaul was accepted as a "friend." After all, he was no different from the native inhabitants of the country and "could disappear into this Indian crowd without a trace..." ¹⁷ . But that disappointed him rather than pleased him. In Trinidad and in England, as an Indian, he had become accustomed to his somewhat exceptional position, and a sense of his "otherness" had become necessary for him. And here, no one paid any attention to a native of a tiny Trinidad colony, born among the fragments of the great culture of Indian ancestors and raised on myths about the British Empire. The author writes: "I went to a store or restaurant and waited for some special attention. But nothing happened... I fell into the same trap again. I found myself without a face ... " ¹⁸

From the first day he arrived, Naipaul realized that in India, "racial similarity means nothing." ¹⁹ In Trinidad, all immigrants from India, regardless of religion and belonging to a particular caste, were members of a national minority. Feeling isolated from both their homeland and island life, they formed a community along ethnic lines and successfully preserved their Indian identity. Coming to the country with this sense of Indian unity, Naipaul made a discovery for himself. 15 years after independence, Indians did not feel like a single nation. They did not feel the need for national self-identification. For them, religious and class affiliation was more important: "In India... they were more important... religious, regional, clan and caste ties " ²⁰ .

It wasn't just India that seemed foreign to Naipaul. Having felt the isolation and isolation characteristic of Indian society, he also felt like an outsider: "In India, there is no place for outsiders who do not belong to any caste." ²¹ In the 60s of the XX century, the social system in the country still remained communal and was based mainly on the caste system. In this system, the individual was strictly subject to communal regulation, and his life and occupation were defined once and for all: "Submission is all that India demanded of people ..." ²² . For centuries, such a social system has given stability to the entire Indian society, and gave a person a sense of security and security. Over time, this system turned from a survival condition into a shackle, because, according to the writer, it had a very serious flaw: it taught a person duties, not rights. Thus, the caste system deprived the Indian of the opportunity to become a mature person and created a lack of individual responsibility and initiative in society. This, Naipaul believes, has led the country to a decline in the economy and degradation of all aspects of life.

What he saw in India in the 1960s had nothing to do with the dreamlike image that Naipaul had created with his "imagination and heart." ²³ Poverty everywhere made India seem to him the poorest country in the world. And Naipaul, separated from such poverty by two generations, was particularly oppressed and outraged by the spirit of submission in people and their acceptance of existing life. In the fact that "poverty causes neither anger nor the desire to change anything..." ²⁴, the writer sees the main drawback of the caste system, whose harmful influence "consisted not only in

page 148

the existence of the untouchable caste and the appalling filth, but also the poverty imposed on people and their willingness to always be satisfied with everything. " ²⁵

B. C. Naipaul gives a harsh assessment of Indian reality, which he writes about ruthlessly, acrimoniously, sometimes exaggerating, but never downplaying. Faced with the many anxieties and sorrows of India, he saw it through the eyes of a man "made by Trinidad and England" ²⁶ who was filled with shame, contempt, and disgust, not for the people, but for all that surrounded them. And that look was intelligent, sad, and completely unsentimental.

A keen and keen observer, B.C. Naipaul filled his books with traumatic truths about India in the 1960s and 1970s. And at the same time, the pages of his travel prose are imbued with tenderness and compassion for ordinary Indians who endured the trials and tribulations that fell to their lot, without losing their cheerfulness and presence of mind. The writer never ceases to wonder how, in the midst of such humiliation and chaos, "India was able to create so many elegant and beautiful people." ²⁷ He understands and is close to the trait of Indians - their ability to ignore trouble. Because, "if they saw this poverty, they would go crazy... It is better to hide in dreams, believe in the predestination of fate and trust the stars ... " ²⁸ .

The decline in the life of the country in these years gave rise to a peculiar complex of nostalgia for the great past and satisfaction with their own provincialism. But " the Indian past can no longer inspire the present," ²⁹ because, in Naipaul's view, this past does not so much nourish as suppress Indian life, giving rise to the illusion of intellectual and moral self-sufficiency. After a decade and a half of independence, the country, according to the novelist, was in a state of hopeless provincial vegetationism. India lived very separately, not interested in what was happening outside its borders. And as a result, the writer believes, Indian civilization was "the most unprepared for interaction with the outside world." ³⁰ Naipaul is convinced that India should stop living in a world of myths, because, clinging to its former greatness, "this old world... can't survive. " ³¹

The crisis of the 1970s in India, according to B. C. Naipaul, is not so much a political and economic crisis as a "crisis of a wounded old civilization" ³², which has lost the ability to continuously update and transform in accordance with the new requirements of the time. According to him, the tragedy of India is that for centuries the country had to survive, which it did, showing phenomenal examples of adaptability, and, in the end, "turned into an instrument of survival only" ³³ . And survival, according to Naipaul, is not the same as life, but as death.

After achieving political independence, the country was unable to start creating a decent life, because "for the first time in several centuries, it was left alone with the emptiness of a dying civilization" ³⁴ . India could not offer anything "of its own" in return for the social institutions and ideologies that it inherited from colonial rule. The collapse of the colonial system led to a complete collapse of Indian life, revealing "India's inability to create, its intellectual exhaustion and insecurity." ³⁵

Under conditions of extreme social disorganization and extreme weakness of State power, Indians experienced confusion, depression and devastation. Their lives were spent in a kind of neurotic anxiety, when utter apathy was replaced by extreme tension of nerves. This situation of chaos and uncertainty is typical not only of India, but also of all transitional societies. And the introduction of a state of emergency in the country in the summer of 1975 was, in the writer's opinion, just a catalyst for the problems and contradictions that had accumulated over the past decade.

page 149

this is an inevitable transition period. Naipaul's particular bitterness was that in India, this period of destroying the old and learning the difficult art of self-government was a series of incredible and often pointless sacrifices and "half-finished initiatives that always failed in the end." ³⁶

According to the writer's deep conviction, India has long been ripe for change. But to find its rightful place in the world, what was needed was not a transformation of the system inherited from colonialism, but a radical revision of the entire social organization of Indian society. And most importantly, it was necessary to change the consciousness and psychology of people who must accept responsibility for themselves and understand that only by their own efforts can they give meaning to their lives. But the country was so vast and the problems were so great that B. C. Naipaul did not believe in the possibility of a radical change in India in the foreseeable future: "No matter how much effort is made, it will still not be enough." ³⁷ He was almost convinced that India was heading for disaster, that it was very close to a precipice in which it might disappear. Hence his pessimism and sense of despair. He's writing: "I didn't want India to die. Just thinking about it hurt me. " ³⁸

B.C. It became clear to Naipaul that there was no need to travel through the ancestral land. Behind this feeling is a bitter recognition of the complete failure of his attempt to destroy the "darkness" that separated him from his grandfather's homeland. India did not help the writer to get rid of either the spiritual homelessness or spiritual homelessness from which he fled from Trinidad and England. Connected by birth, upbringing, and education to three different worlds, B.C. Naipaul felt like a guest, a foreigner, and an outsider in each of them. And after the trip to India, he returned to the same painful state of being unrooted on earth, left with the deep sadness of his childhood - Trinidad did not become his homeland, and could not become it because of the upbringing "poisoned" by India; with the sadness of youth - in England he did not find his home, because What made Naipaul an outsider was his father's blood, and his birth in a remote Trinidadian backwater: with the sadness of his mature years, as an Indian with a blood connection to Indian culture, he was infinitely removed from it. Naipaul no longer had any Trinidadian, English, or Indian land. He has only the fictional space of literature left. But the "hunger of memory" forced us to return again and again to an incomprehensible, but palpably present in the consciousness and worldview of the culture. After seeing and remembering the "real" India, he did not accept much, but wanted to...

After 27 years, B.C. Naipaul has taken a kind of comeback journey. And the India he saw in the late 1980s turned out to be a completely different country. In a relatively short period of time, having traveled the path that the West has spent centuries on, it has made a huge leap. India, having passed the test of an external course and passed "preparatory classes" on the march, proved its ability to meet the challenge of time. After paying a heavy price for Naipol's much-coveted democratic and economic achievements, the country "connected with the outside world." ³⁹

However, the relative prosperity that came to the country did not put an end to the social tension that existed in India in the 60-70s of the XX century. Under the surface of the stagnation and stillness of Indian life, such dense and explosive vapors of fear and rage accumulated that the awakening of self-consciousness that began with independence caused an outburst of aggressive nationalism and religious intolerance in Indians. Regions, clans, religious communities-all of them found themselves in constant confrontation. Indian society in the 1980s was divided into many separate groups, each of which defended and cultivated its own "otherness". India, in which, like "in a pie, one layer of suffering and

page 150

brutality is superimposed on another "⁴⁰, turned into a country of "a million little riots".

The institution of castes has ceased to play a decisive role in the life of the country politically and economically. This bloodless "social revolution" reawakened in Indians a sense of their own identity, "frozen by foreign rule, poverty, lack of opportunities, and humiliation." ⁴¹ In the life of India, a person who does not necessarily belong to the upper class of Brahmins, but is ambitious, assertive, and able to learn on the go, has become the main focus. According to B. C. Naipaul, the main thing happened - the mentality of people changed. And a whole generation of Indians has grown up who, realizing the necessity and inevitability of adapting to new living conditions, "will always struggle to survive." ⁴²

The inevitable attributes of "entering" the open world, such as pragmatism in relations between people, fierce competition, and a "rat race" for profit, have appeared in the life of India. The instability of the present and the uncertainty of the future traumatize the minds of Indians, many of whom "experience this as a drama" ⁴³ because "everything is so unreliable" and "now no one can be sure of anything" ⁴⁴ . The writer is convinced that you can survive in this world, relying only on your own strength. And in this confidence - the experience of the past years.

B.C. Naipaul's third book, "India: A Million Rebellions Now," which focuses on the India of the 1980s, is completely different from the previous two. In it, the world is understood, felt and evaluated no longer with youthful categoricality and exaggerated pessimism, but with the unhurried wisdom of a person who has reached the "solid shore" of psychological maturity, i.e., a sober acceptance of the complexity of this world, and of his own soul...

B. C. Naipaul's travels in India added to the writer's somewhat abstract view of the land of his ancestors a more realistic perception of the country that he created in his imagination. India appeared to him as a country inhabited by living people who had created a civilization that had a greater margin of safety than its confused tribesman had imagined. And perhaps the most important result of these wanderings was for Naipaul to realize that under the Anglo-Trinidadian "layer" there is a solid Indian "foundation" that helped the writer " survive the stresses of living in England for a long time, ... to remain true to himself, to learn to enjoy working and ...reconciled to the fact that everyone is an island ... " ⁴⁵ .

Unfortunately, the small volume of the essay does not allow us to review B. C. Naipaul's books on India in more depth and detail. However, the meaning of each individual work is as if supplemented and clarified by another, and together they reflect the difficult path of a third-generation Indian immigrant-starting with the rejection of the "real" India seen in daylight, and ending with reconciliation with this country with all its annoying shortcomings and undeniable advantages.

notes

^{Naipaul V.S.} 1 India - A Million Mutinies Now. N.Y., 1990. P. 393.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 2 An Area of Darkness. L., 1964. P. 41.

³ Ibid. P. 28.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 4 India - A Million Mutinies Now. P. 169.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 5 An Area of Darkness. P. 32.

⁶ Ibid. P. 188.

⁷ Ibid. P. 32.

⁸ Ibid.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 9 India - A Million Mutinies Now. P. 448.

page 151

^{Naipaul V.S.} 10 An Area of Darkness. P. 167.

¹¹ Ibid. P. 33.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 12 India - A Million Mutinies Now. P. 31.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 13 An Area of Darkness. P. 42.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 14 A Million Mutinies Now. P. 7.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 15 An Area of Darkness. P. 30.

¹⁶ Ibid. P. 141.

¹⁷ Ibid. P. 43.

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Ibid. P. 141.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 20 India: A Wounded Civilization. L., 1977. P. 154.

²¹ Ibid. P. 171.

²² Ibid. P. 172.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 23 India - A Million Mutinies Now. P. 491.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 24 India: A Wounded Civilization. P. 172.

²⁵ Ibid. P. 171.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 26 An Area of Darkness. P. 43.

²⁷ Ibid. P. 243.

²⁸ Ibid. P. 201.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 29 India: A Wounded Civilization. P. 129.

³⁰ Ibid. P. 7.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 31 An Area of Darkness. P. 212.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 32 India: A Wounded Civilization. P. 18.

³³ Ibid. P. 168.

³⁴ Ibid. P. 167.

³⁵ Ibid. P. 134.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 36 An Area of Darkness. P. 202.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 37 India: A Wounded Civilization. P. 27.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 38 An Area of Darkness. P. 243.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 39 India - A Million Mutinies Now. P. 423.

⁴⁰ Ibid. P. 517.

⁴¹ Ibid. P. 6.

⁴² Ibid. P. 267.

⁴³ Ibid. P. 149.

⁴⁴ Ibid. P. 9.

^{Naipaul V.S.} 45 An Area of Darkness. P. 188.

Permanent link to this publication: