“The Brown Parrot” – Guest Post by Pankaj Saksena
This review of “The White Tiger” by Pankaj is one of the finest I have come across and would have easily made it to any quality magazine/ news-paper…except that it will not…
Please read further to find out why.
*** “The Brown Parrot” by Pankaj Saksena ***
On 14th October 2008, the Booker Committee announced in London that Aravind Adiga will get the Man Booker Prize for his debut novel, “The White Tiger”. The writer, Aravind Adiga claims in an interview:
“At a time, when India is going through great changes and ,with China, is likely to inherit the world from the West, it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of society”, he said, adding that the criticism by writers like Flaubert, Balzac & Dickens in the 19th century helped England and France become better societies.[1]
In a single breath, Adiga takes upon his young self, the huge responsibility of highlighting all the “brutal injustices” of India, while feeling proud enough to compare himself with Flaubert, Balzac and Dickens.
One should be cautious while making self-comparisons with great personalities. Dickens wrote about London & the English society as it was, with no ideology to guide him. Almost all of his characters from David Copperfield to Oliver Twist have an autobiographical ring.
Adiga, on the other hand, is thrice removed from the society and the events he talks about in his book. Born in a metropolitan, Chennai, educated in Australia, the UK, and the US, he has nothing in common with his protagonist, Balram, who is a “low caste” driver from Bihar. But the un-authenticity of narration doesn’t bother Adiga. In fact, he thinks it is quite a duty of a writer to go beyond his own experience; to take a leap beyond reality; to plunge into pure fantasy. He believes in writing by remote-sensing.
I don’t think a novelist should just write about his own experience. Yes, I am the son of a doctor. Yes, I had a rigorous formal education, but for me the challenge as a novelist is to write about people who aren’t anything like me.[2]
Dickens’ works are not a judgment on the English society. His worldview evolves in his works. If we put them one over other, chronologically, we can see the intellectual development of Dickens, an observant mind becoming mature.
What we see in Adiga is not a natural evolution, but a sudden ideological revelation. He is not trying to learn anything. He knows it all. The ideas are preâ€arranged. In the absence of cultural roots he has an ideology to guide him. Secularism. Fantasy and remoteâ€sensing makes up for reality. Worn “out formula” writing makes up for creativity. Adiga has hitched his wagon to a star. And in Indian heavens, there is only one star. Secularism. It is the Ideology.
Flaubert, the other writer Adiga compares himself with, is as distant from him as possible. Madame Bovary is a psychological drama of an individual, and not a statement about the French society, while Salambo is a purely artistic venture of recapturing a remote event of history. If Adiga had read even a single work of Flaubert he wouldn’t have compared him with any writer with a social agenda. It appears that Adiga just threw some random names of writers while being interviewed, without probably having read them.
Balzac is a different story. Again, Adiga has nothing in common with Balzac in the style and the grasp of the subject matter. Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. So called progressive writers in India are fond of comparing themselves with great realistic writers like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, Dickens, Flaubert, Balzac etc as they think that Indian society is in an eternal need of a Bolshevik style revolution. Taking realism as the most abject form of selfâ€denigration, Indian writers harp on the “social injustices” of India and feel themselves to be in the proud company of great writers.
On the level of language too, Adiga falls far too short. The style of narration doesn’t match with the projected aim of the book to point out the “brutal injustices” of Indian society. His style takes him nearer to the post-modern writing, while his aim is as ambitious as of a Communist ideologue. For this purpose Adiga inserts some of the most famous secular slogans in Balram’s speeches but his style of narration being post-modern is personal and individualistic.
Adiga betrays his ignorance of rural Indian society – not that he knows urban India – at many points in the novel. For instance, he asserts that many water buffalos can be bought in seven thousand rupees. Let him purchase just one![3]
So according to Adiga, the salient features of India are: Every traditional Indian village has a blue-movie (pornographic) theatre.[4] No one can enter Indian malls without wearing shoes. Shoes are compulsory.[5] No low-caste man can ever enter an Indian mall. Even if he enters stealthily, he is then caught, beaten and publicly humiliated.[6] In India, if an owner runs over a man with his car, his driver has to go to jail instead.[7] If a servant steals anything, then his entire family, back home, is ritually lynched to death. (their women being repeatedly raped.[8] Every Indian book stall sells “rape magazines”.[9] There are separate markets for servants.[10] In Indian brothels, they take extra money from servants, called as “Working-class surcharge”.[11] Sadhus, are actually homosexual hookers, who get paid to be buggered by foreigners.[12] A common Hindu is worse than an Islamic terrorist.[13] Indian caste system is worse, or at least as bad as the secret police of a totalitarian state.[14]
The last claim is the central theme of the novel. The caste system of India is called the “Rooster Coop”. Adiga compares the caste system with the secret police of a totalitarian state. This comparison is preposterous. Communism accounted for more than twenty million deaths in USSR, sixty-five million in China, one million in Vietnam, two million in North Korea, two million in Cambodia, one million in Eastern Europe, 1.7 million in Africa, one and a half million in Afghanistan and millions of others.[15] And all this in less than seventy years! Does Indian caste system in its history of more than five thousand years, has anything even remotely comparable to equal this record?
The only place where he innovates is, in hurting the Hindu religious sentiment. Thus, the polytheism of Hindus is mocked as:
How quickly do you think you could kiss 36,000,004 arses?[16]
Balram is called as the “sidekick” of Krishna.[17] The hero goes on to murder his employers, who are earlier called as Ram & Sita! Lord Krishna is called as a “chauffeur”.[18] About, Kali, the Hindu goddess:
“I looked at the magnetic stickers of goddess Kali with her skulls and her long red tongue – I stuck my tongue out at the old witch. I yawned.[19]
Hanuman is called as the slave god of Hindus, an imposition which still makes the low-caste slaves of the upper-caste.
Do you know about Hanuman, sir? He was the faithful servant of the god Rama, and we worship him in our temples because he is a shining example of how to serve your masters with absolute fidelity, love and devotion. These are the kinds of gods they have foisted on us, Mr. Jiabao. Understand, now, how hard it is for a man to win his freedom in India. [20]
In 1994 Christian missionary, father Augustine Kanjamala of Pune wrote an article in Deccan Chronicle titled, “Replies to Arun Shourie”. In the article he wrote, “Harijans worship deities of lower rank, while caste Hindus worship deities of higher rank. For instance, Hanuman is worshipped by Harijans and Rama is worshipped by upper caste in the same village…. Hanuman was the servant of Rama; Harijans are servants of higher caste Hindus. A close affinity between their hierarchy of gods and the hierarchy of society.”[21]
Later, indefatigable Arun Shourie had a face-to-face debate with father Kanjamal at Hyderabad. Arun Shourie said, “This is insinuation, it is deliberate distortion…. I can assure you that Hanuman Ji is as dear to high caste Hindus, as to low caste Hindu. If after two hundred years of Christianity in India… this is your understanding of India, much needs to be done…. But there is a question… Does the servant and master relationship, high caste and low caste relationship also apply to other Hindu gods? If not, then, how does your thesis stand? Nandi is ridden by the Shiva. Is it that the low caste people are asked to worship Nandi? And high caste should not worship Nandi? What you have written in your article is a foolish thing to write.”[22]
So in 1994, Arun Shourie systematically showed during the face-to-face debate that this insinuation “..is a foolish thing to write”. But in 2008, we had another fool repeating the same missionary propaganda, of course recycled as literature this time.
Aravind Adiga is in the line of a new breed of writers like Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai who being Christian or having sympathy with Christianity, share a hatred of Hinduism and Hindu society. It is not a coincidence but a deliberate act of the Booker committee to award all the three. They have ignored really good novels from Pakistan. Why? Because by awarding Pakistani writers, like Mohammed Hanif and Mohsin Hamid, the Left will gain nothing in the bargain. You may call it the Booker Scandal. This is how the alliance of Marxists and the missionaries works against the Hindu society.
Writing a novel in India is neither an intellectual nor a spontaneous venture. It is organized on the lines of the formula set by the demands of secularism, seeded during the period of Independence struggle and developed and codified during the Nehruvian era.
The literary establishment in India expects from a writer: a complete submission to the Ideology, cramming all its popular slogans and cliches; choosing a story and then fit all the “facts” in it; invent facts to patch up the gaping holes; and put in as many features of the formula as possible.
A writer is expected to follow the secular formula, which is to show how Hinduism is inferior to other religions; how superstitious and stupid Hindus are; how evil cast-system is; how vile Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas are and how suppressed Shudras are. Show how violent Hindu mythology is, while the very word of Islam means peace. Show that just like Islam and Christianity, Hinduism is also an import in India, having no original claim. Make Hindu history in India as short as possible. At the same time, extend the Christian and Islamic claims on Indian soil as long back in history as possible.[23] Throw in some exotic stories of widow burning, caste discrimination, infanticide etc. to pepper this secular curry.
Do not, in any case, criticize Islam! Try to extol its virtues, and if not possible just keep mum about its atrocities. Show how they are extremely discriminated in every field such as education and employment. Also, do not criticize Christianity and their violent conversion activities.
Shift the focus of readers from primary problems like the Islamic destruction of India to secondary problems like corruption, poverty, population, unemployment etc.
This is the formula which guides every new book and every new writer in India. There is no new voice, no new question, nothing new under the sky. All has been discovered. Every question has been asked, every answer has been given by the Formula, and every problem has been solved by it. What remains to be done is to repeat the secular slogans again and again. For this no tigers are required. Parrots are more than enough for the job.
This formula has a history, which is very well portrayed by Dr. Ravi Shanker Kapoor in his book More Equal than Others: A Study of the Indian Left, 2000.24 The literary establishment of India is guided by the leftist intellectuals. All over the world, the Communists have always infiltrated the institutions in order to influence the public opinion. Giving these institutions a neutral veneer, they sell Communist propaganda without letting the masses know the truth behind it. They also fool some intellectuals in furthering their propaganda. So Bengal Friends of the Soviet Union (BFOTSU) was created by the blessings of Rabindranath Tagore.[25]
Most importantly the leftists have infiltrated all the literary, arts and fine arts institutions in India. Thus proâ€communist All India Progressive Writers’ Association (AIPWA) was formed in which eminent people like Mulk Raj Anand, Munshi Premchand, Sarojini Naidu, Kirshan Chander, KA Abbas, Shivdan Singh Chauhan, Ramananda Chatterjee and Ram Bilas Sharma participated.[26] In the field of theater too, the influence of the leftists was predominant. The Indian People’s Theater Association (IPTA) is still very influential in India and continues to shape the world-view of the youth.[27]
Novels in India, just like the Bollywood movies are produced according to the guidelines dictated by the establishment. If a new writer follows the secular formula, then his books will be bought by all the schools, colleges, universities and most importantly, all the libraries across the country. For a year or two he will be interviewed by the media, invited to speak on the “problems” of India and their “solutions” The “intellectual circles” of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata will throw some parties for them where these writers will fume and fret about the evils of Indian society. Pretty secure career.
Dr. Ravi Shanker Kapoor elaborates in another of his book How India’s Intellectuals Spread Lies, (2007) [28] that the motive of all this effort is to drill guilt into the hearts and minds of the Hindu majority. So all the ills of Indian society are blamed on Hindus. Adiga too indulges in guiltmongering against Hindus. The Leftists have been largely successful in their endeavors. Hindus have been defensive.
The guilt pervades further, permeating the public debate, infecting the body-politic, dominating the minds and hearts of those who matter[29] In India, more than half a century of guiltâ€mongering and other Leftist tricks have created a climate of opinion in which Marxist lies pass of as gospel truth.[30]
This is what Nobel Laureate, V S Naipaul resents when he comments about Indian writing.
Commenting on Nirad Chaudhari’s intellectual incompetence, Naipaul says:
Sixty years after Independence that problem is still there. India has no autonomous intellectual life.[31]
His words ring quite true in the context of Indian writers in general and Adiga in particular. There is no autonomous intellectual life in India. The literary concepts are dictated by the secular establishment.
“…no national literature has been created like this at such a remove, where the books are published by people outside, judged by people outside, and read to a large extent by people outside.[32]
Yes! No national literature has ever been created in a foreign language. In spite of tall claims and revolutionary agenda, the paradox of Indian English writing remains. The paradox of a literature divorced from its native language. Indian writers rarely speak and never read or write in any of the Indian languages.
Most of the Indian writers who have won awards like Booker, no longer live in India or have no connections with the rural India which they claim to write about. They are rootless and hence their works lack authenticity. More the rootlessness, more the arrogance. Thus Arundhati Roy writes about the sexual attraction between zygotic brother and sister; Kiran Desai talks about nonâ€existent “Garwhali Terrorism”, but not about the existent Islamic or Naxalite terrorism; and Adiga is worried about the pornographic theatre in Indian villages.
Comparing Indian literature with Russian, Naipaul comments:
In the nineteenth century, Dostoyevsky and Turgenev and Gogol and Herzen lived for some time outside their native Russia; but they wrote in Russian for Russian readers and (for all of them except Herzen) Russia was where they were published and had their readers. Russia was where their ideas fermented.
Nineteenth-century Russian writing created an idea of the Russian character and the Russian soul. There is no equivalent creation, or the beginning of one, in Indian writing. India remains hidden. Indian writers, to speak generally, seem to know only about their own families, and their places of work. It is the Indian way of living and consequently the Indian way of seeing. The rest of the country is taken for granted, and seen superficially, as it was even by the young Nehru [33]
So true and so fitting on a writer like Adiga. The establishment prefers imitation which is safe over innovation which can be dangerous, ideology over reality, slogans and cliche’s over facts and truth. An ideological world-view makes up for the ignorance of history. A concern for the “brutal injustices” of India, makes up for the lack of creative writing. Of course the “brutal injustices” exclude Islamic terrorism and missionary activities.
No writer is recognized by the secular establishment if he doesn’t confirm fully to the Formula. The mechanism which keeps the writer on track can be best described by Adiga’s own metaphor for the caste-system, the “Rooster Coop”. This Rooster Coop is maintained by the Formula, manned by their faithful “intellectuals”. The Coop is full of parrots who endlessly repeat the secular slogans. Once in a while if a parrot takes courage to break out of the coop and sing a different tune, he is immediately silenced by the intellectual community, Indian media and academia. His name is tarnished, his reputation destroyed, his positions in the Coop, lost. He is made to feel the fault of his heretic ways and finally he is brought back to the fold. Almost all of those who contribute to this mechanism are themselves the captives of the Coop. But as Adiga would have it, the Coop has a mechanism of its own.
The parrots imprisoned by this Coop help the Coop to remain intact. If one of their fellow parrot ever tries to do some unparroty acts, then his legs are pulled back by his own mates. Thus no one is ever allowed to
leave this Rooster Coop of Secularism. The system goes on. The Coop remains intact. There are ever new parrots in the Coop, but all of them keep parroting the old tune. Adiga is no different.
Poverty and corruption are made a fetish in Indian writing, as if they are not secondary problem having some primary cause, but the basic instinct of the Indian civilization. If a writer tries to probe the primary problems then he is immediately labeled as anti-poor, fascist and Hindu fundamentalist. The Coop is so strong that no insider is able to see the truth. Only an outsider like Naipaul is able to perceive the reality and express it courageously. Recognizing India as a wounded civilization he goes back to medieval times to search for the primary problems of India:
There is a new kind of coming and going in the world these days. Arabia, lucky again, has spread beyond its deserts. And India is again at the periphery of this new Arabian world, as much as it had been in the eight century, when the new religion of Islam spread in all directions and the Arabs, led, it is said, by a “seventeen year-old boy” overran the Indian kingdom of Sind. That was only an episode, the historians say. But Sind is not a part of India today; India has shrunk since that Arab incursion. No civilization was so little equipped to cope with the outside world; no country was so easily raided and plundered, and learned so little from its disasters.[34]
Naipaul goes beyond the immediate and the superficial. He goes beyond poverty, unemployment and other cliches and finds the root of the present Indian misery in its Islamic defeat during the middle ages.
…its [India’s] independence has meant more than the going away of the British; that the India to which Independence came was a land of far older defeat; that the purely Indian past died a long time ago.[35]
He thinks it is necessary to go beyond these secondary causes:
An inquiry about India, even an inquiry about the Emergency has quickly to go beyond the political. It has to be an inquiry about Indian attitudes: it has to be an inquiry about the civilization itself, as it is.[36]
But these are untouchable subjects in the Rooster Coop of India. With every new addition in the Secular Indian tradition, the writers become even more confident of their wornâ€out formula. Not surprisingly, Naipaul has this to say about Indian writers:
The education of the new Indian writers – and nowadays some of them have even been to writing schools – also gets in the way. It seems to them they have the most enormous choice when, in imitation of the successful people who have gone before, they settle down to do their own book. They are not bursting with a wish to say anything. Nothing is going to force itself out in its own way; they are guided in the main by imitation. …This is where India begins to get lost…[37]
Imitation is the hallmark of Indian formula-writing. Adiga is an imitation of his predecessors like Arundhati Roy, who were an imitation of writers like Mulk Raj Anand & Nirad Chaudhary, who in turn were an imitation of yet others – a tradition of imitation going back to the times of Lord Macaulay. In fact, he inaugurated this tradition in India in his famous note to Lord Bentinck, the then Governorâ€General of India “Minute of Education on India” in February 1835:
We must at present do our best to form a class who maybe interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; the class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.[38]
This defines Adiga’s intellectual ancestry. In many ways, Adiga’s book is not different from “Untouchable” of Mulk Raj Anand, as artificial, as superficial, as far from reality, as incapable of asking questions, as faithful in following the intellectually bankrupt tradition of Secularism.
Looking at the ruins of the Hindu kingdom Vijaynagar, at the hands of Muslims, Naipaul reflects over the origin of the current intellectual bankruptcy of India:
“I began to wonder about the intellectual depletion that must have come to India with the invasions and conquests of the last thousand years. What happened in Vijaynagar happened, in varying degrees, in other parts of the country. In the north, ruin lies on ruin: Moslem ruin on Hindu ruin… In the history books, in the accounts of wars and conquests and plunder, the intellectual depletion passes unnoticed…India absorbs and outlasts its conquerors, Indians say. But at Vijaynagar, among the pilgrims, I wondered whether intellectually for a thousand years India hadn’t always retreated before its conquerors and whether, in its periods of apparent revival, Indian hadn’t only been making itself archaic again, intellectually smaller, always vulnerable.
The crisis of India is not only political or economic. The larger crisis is of a wounded old civilization that has at last become aware of its inadequacies and is without the intellectual means to move ahead.[39]
The imitation has seeped into the sub-conscious of Indian psyche, and Indians are no longer aware of it. Thus Adiga thinks of himself as pioneer in bringing out the problems of India, but he is just parroting the secular slogans:
The middle classes think of themselves still as victims of colonial rule. But there is no point anymore in someone like me thinking of myself as a victim of a colonial oppressor.[40]
Commenting on India’s inability to judge, Naipaul says:
India has no means of judging. India is hard and materialist. What it knows best about Indian writers and books are their advances and their prizes. There is little discussion about the substance of a book or its literary quality or the point of view of the writer. Much keeps on being said in the Indian press about Indian writing as an aspect of the larger modern Indian success, but literary criticism is still hardly known as an art. The most important judgments of an Indian book continue to be imported.[41]
Nothing else can be more representative of the intellectual bankruptcy of rootless Indian writers, than the fact that they do not even realize it. India is full of parrots, green, red, white, black, brown… but none of them are conscious that they are actually parrots. Some even think that they are tigers…even white tigers!
References:
1 http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/oct/16adiga.htm October 16, 2008
2 Ibid.
3 Adiga, Aravid. 2008. The White Tiger, Harper Collins India, New Delhi, p.236
4 Ibid. p.23
5 Ibid. p.148
6 Ibid. p.152
7 Ibid. p.309
8 Ibid. p.176â€177
9 Ibid. p.149
10 Ibid. p.204
11 Ibid. p.232
12 Ibid. p.275
13 Ibid. p.293â€294, 311
14 Ibid. p.175
15 Courtois, Stephane. The Black Book of Communism, Harvard University Press, 1999, p.4
16 Adiga, Aravid. 2008. The White Tiger, Harper Collins India, New Delhi, p.9
17 Ibid. p.14
18 Ibid. p.187
19 Ibid. p.156â€157
20 Ibid. p.19
21 Arun Shourie and his Christian Critics, 1995, Voice of India, New Delhi, p.45-46
22 Arun Shourie and his Christian Critics, 1995, Voice of India, New Delhi, p.61-62
23 Adiga, Aravid. 2008. The White Tiger, Harper Collins India, New Delhi, p.272. The theory used here is Aryan Invasion Theory, a tool used by the British against Indians to keep them divided and to justify their presence on the Indian soil, as the theory claims that Aryans or the North Indians are also foreigners and came from Central Asia to India around 1500 BC.
24 Kapoor, Ravi Shanker More Equal than Others: A Study of the Indian Left, Vision Books, New Delhi, 2000
25 Ibid. p. 20
26 Ibid. p. 21
27 Ibid. p. 22
28 Kapoor, Ravi Shanker How India’s Intellectuals Spread Lies, Vision Books, New Delhi, 2007
29 Ibid. p. 158
30 Ibid. p. 159
31 Naipaul V S, A Writer’s People, Picador India, 2007, p. 191
32 Ibid. p. 192
33 Ibid. p. 192â€193
34 Naipaul V S, India: A Wounded Civilization, Penguin India, 1979, p. 7
35 Ibid. p. 8
36 Ibid. p. 9
37 Naipaul V S, A Writer’s People, Picador India, 2007, p. 193
38 Macaulay, T B Minute of Education on India 2nd February 1835
39 Naipaul V S, India: A Wounded Civilization, Penguin India, 1979, p. 17-18
40 http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/oct/16adiga.htm October 16, 2008
41 Naipaul V S, A Writer’s People, Picador India, 2007, p. 193-194
*** End ***
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W’end Links: White Tiger, Road Safety and the Loony Fringe
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“The Idea of India” – *must read*
“A Coffin for Dimitrios” by Eric Ambler has the following quote.
In a dying civilization, political diagnosis is done by strange bedside manners. Awards and rewards are decoration of mediocrity by ignorance.
This quote justifies the above article by Pankaj Saksena.
>>>>>”The literary establishment of India is guided by the leftist intellectuals. All over the world, the Communists have always infiltrated the institutions in order to influence the public opinion. Giving these institutions a neutral veneer, they sell Communist propaganda without letting the masses know the truth behind it. ”
“… Gramsci posits a strategic distinction, between a War of Position and a War of ManÅ“uvre; the war of position is intellectual, a culture war in which the anti-capitalist politicians (communist leaders) seek to have the dominant voice in the mass media, the mass organisations, and the schools, in order to increase class consciousness, teach revolutionary theory and analysis, and to inspire revolutionary organisation. On winning the intellectual war of position, communist leaders then would have, the political power, supported by the mass populace, to begin the war of manÅ“uvre — the armed insurrection against capitalism.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony)
Pity!! When Aravind Adiga got that booker, after a week or so, I visited Landmark in Bangalore to buy some books. I started reading white tiger too just out of curiosity to see if it is of any worth buying. First three pages was enough!! Insult after Insult!! I saw many young people who were actually buying the book for the sake of show off. They seem to feel proud to own the book and as a prestige to hold the book in their hands and show off to others!! One of my friends asked me one day “did you read white tiger? I read it. Its brilliant. No wonder, he won Booker!”. All I could do was drop a jaw with some kind of wierd awe at the blatant ignorance of the on-going superbly staged conspiracy and with a deep breath pray silently for a much needed awakening!!
When I asked my father to buy Arundhati Suzzanne Roy’s booker winner when I was in teens, he said “trust me it would be waste of time to read such worst books”. No wonder he said that. I never picked the book up forget reading it
In my view we are going to see more and more of Aravinds, Suzannes and god knows what kind of worser comments we are going to hear!! “Low caste hindus worship low caste gods” sounds ghastly!! Even after 100 years of struggle, the problems of dalits seem to have increased. Arun Shourie rightly said in his Speech in IISc in 2006 to a forum called Prasthutha, “country is moving forward. People want to be more backward!!”
God save my country and worser “God save Hindus and Hinduism”
Amitav Ghosh wrote the “Sea of Poppies” which was nominated along with Adigas novel. The literary content , the language etc was far superior to Adigas novel. Ghosh highlighted on the sins of the Raj about how Opium trade was used to make money and how India and even China ( Hong Kong) was exploited. This was precisely why this novel was turned down for a Booker as it exposed the cunningness of the Brits. Indians must start a rival to Booker awards in India or overseas and give prizes to novels like Amitav Ghosh , and Vikram Seth whose Suitable Boy was great in intellectual content.
Now Adigas novel is to be made a movie , another Slumdog Millionaire. Why not make a movie on “Sea of Poppies”. What has happened to W Bengal which produced men like Ray, Sen etc. Can’t they make a movie on ‘Sea of poppies”
This award giving strategy to people like Adiga and Oscars is for display and divide as they cannot rule directly now.
I read White Tiger and was appalled by the abysmal low standards of language and intellectual depth.
I would rather spend time cooking in my pressure cooker good food than write some rubbish to get a Booker.
I never realized this book had so much nonsense. This review has been a great source of information in exposing such left influenced hate mongers.
Thanks to Pankaj Saksena and Shantanu
A great review !!
Seems like the parrots in the Coop are in a competition – Who squawks the most and the loudest ?!!
@ gazanan
Yep! I would also love to spend time on cooking or even doin’ nothin’ instead of reading such a book.
@ Nanda and shadows
Thanks a lot! You opinion is much valued.
@ all
Please point out any mistakes or any fault you find with the review. I am barely a beginner and greatly need feedback.
Great review Pankaj. Interesting that you had to seek Naipaul’s help in buttressing your review – Naipaul, a foreigner of Indian origin educated at Oxford and who writes in a foreign language and knows nothing about Indian rural life? But then Naipaul is outspoken, a trenchant & petulant critic as well. What your review again highlights for the umpteenth time is the intellectual bankruptcy in the Hindu world.
Koenraad Elst captures this in his seminal book “Decolonising the Hindu mind” The absence of think-tanks & genuine research based scholarship are galling since it leaves the field open for “others” to frame the context of Hindu civilisation.
However, thanks to technology, am seeing quality writers like you emerge and be read. The question however really is, what is being done about the lack of intellectual capital? Rajiv Malhotra has written a fair bit on this issue of how “sepoys” in academia have hogged the limelight while bemoaning the lack of intellectual horsepower.
Didn’t Naipual spend some time in India, traveling its length and breadth, before writing his books?
Absolutely brilliant!
can someone please write a review on Wendy doniger’s latest mistresspiece-The Hindus.It is being touted by some Hindus in the Caribbean press as the best thing since sliced chapati!
@ Sheila
Thanks a lot! ’bout Wendy, I haven’t read her, but will take a shot at her if you say that she is a phenomenon in the Caribbean press.
@ Kaffir
You are right. Naipaul has spent considerable time in India, studying its history, its culture and its society.
@ all
If any of you come across a book or a writer who is in the line of Adiga, please draw my attention to it.
@ Sanjay Anandaram
Thanks for appreciating the review. I am lucky that people like you are commenting on my article.
‘bout Naipaul, yes he is a foreign born writer, who does not live in India and does not write in any Indian language. I don’t even think he knows any Indian language very well.
But it is not the point. Except his latest book, ‘Magic Seeds’ Naipaul hasn’t written fiction ‘bout India. His trilogy on India comprises three books of non-fiction, travel writing. You can write about another country and civilization while writing non-fiction. In Science it doesn’t matter at all what country you belong to and what place you are writing about. In humanities, it matters more but not that much. Many historians write about nations other than their own. And that is no handicap.
But it is completely different with literature. In fiction, drama and poetry if you don’t know the language very well, I would even say if the language in which you are writing isn’t your mother tongue, you will never succeed in creating something original. This is what Naipaul says. This is what the true story is. No great literature in the world was created in a borrowed language. Take the example of Russian. French was more popular in Russia than English is in India now. I mean, all the great Russian writers like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Turgenev, Chekhov had a great command over French and in the society in which they lived, it was more common to speak French than Russian. Yet they created the entire body of literature in Russian.
French literature is other great example, though the French never valued any other language more than their own, except perhaps Latin.
In India, in Hindi literature the wonders were all in Hindi like Amritlal Nagar, Chatursen Shastri and Vrindavan Lal Verma. Bankim Chandra and his contemporaries like Sharat Chandra knew fluent English and Hindi, yet they chose to write in Bangla.
Same is the case with any other great literature in the world and there is no exception to that rule, as far as I know. The rule applies to individual writers too. Take Naipaul. He never knew Hindi in his childhood. Pidgin Trinidadian English was his mother tongue. So it was natural that he wrote in English. But even here there is something remarkable. The entire body of Naipaul’s works consists of writings ‘bout countries and cultures other than England. So even when he adopted England as his home and adopted British English as his language, he never tried to write ‘bout England itself. In his own words, ‘No one after Dickens has explored London. London remains a Dickens’ city.’
Same is the case with the other great writer Joseph Conrad. Pole by birth, he adopted England as his home, but he never wrote ‘bout English society at great length. His subject of research and writing – just like Naipaul – was other third world countries which were struggling for identities, just like him.
There are many great historians like Will Durant, Arnold Toynbee and Winston Churchill who wrote ‘bout other nations than their own. In modern times, the ratio is increasing. So John Man writes ‘bout China. Tim Flannery writes ‘bout New Guinea and Americas. But there is no such parallel case in literature. [That, if you don’t count ‘Indian English literature’ as literature really.]
Literature and language are so intertwined in each other and so mutually fulfilling, that you cannot separate them. I used to be in literature a lot, until the classics were exhausted. I remember reading Tosltoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Flaubert, Dickens, Maupassant, Twain and many many more. While I accidently read some of the modern Indian novels, like the White Tiger, I cannot help noticing that they are not anchored in any place. I cannot help to feel that they lack horribly as compared to the great classics. They are free of geography! Just change the names and places and you could locate the novel bloody anywhere in the world! In a novel like the White Tiger, there is nothing indigenous. Where are the names of local trees? Local plants? And hell! Local grasses? Where is the description of local bugs? The chirpings of local birds? Where is the description of the flair of local dress? Where is the semi-tropical climate of India described? Where are the slangs which would be incomprehensible to anyone outside the culture about which the novel is about?
In literal sense, books like these are free of cultural moorings. They are floating free, anonymously in the free space.
And this is not entirely the fault of Indian writers. It cannot happen until it is done in the local language. Poetry especially, catches what science cannot, what is not reachable by the rational minds either in science or in humanities. It reads between words. It studies a local dialect and specializes in the unique combination of a thousand variables a language can offer and expresses its peculiar and unique features. If you switch the language, the only thing which is special in literature and makes it different from science and history, disappears.
If Adiga had attempted at pure history or journalism it would be entirely okay, but attempting literature is absurd for a person in his place.
Many in India are writing in English. Arun Shourie. Ravi Shanker Kapoor. Sita Ram Goel and Ram Swarup also wrote in English. But their discipline is pure history or journalism and so non-fiction. That’s why they are doing great. But please notice that none of them have ever attempted anything in fiction or literature except Sita Ram Goel and all the six books of fiction which Sita Ram Goel wrote, were in Hindi.
Regarding Naipaul, his subject is history and his observations are about its effect on the current society. For that, he is entirely eligible. What he comments upon is the sense of history, the impact of religion, and the search for identity. All of these fall into hardcore subjects which can be studied regardless of which language you study them in.
And yes, he has traveled in India for quite some time, and even more than that he has contemplated over India for long. India figures in every of his work, consciously or sub-consciously. India has been his journey and not only a destination.
Moreover, there is none like Naipaul when it comes to insights. His writing has matured for sure over the years, but you can see his insights, his hallmark, right from the very beginning of his career, in the Mystic Masseur, The Suffrage of Elvira and the Middle Passage. When he talks ‘bout India, he has a greater canvas in his mind to draw upon his insights and conclusions. He knows and feels the history of Islam and its impact on India. He feels the intellectual depravity, the Hindu society had to bear under Islam’s brunt. That doesn’t just come from having knowledge of India. That comes from an understanding of religion in general and Islam in particular. That comes from a detached and aloof view of world, which makes Naipaul special. In his own words again, ‘The World is what it is’. This is the guideline of Naipaul and that makes him eligible to comment upon India.
Adiga and others have nothing in common with him. Not even remotely.
At last I would like to quote something which will illustrate the point… again from Naipaul:
“Fiction works best in a confined moral and cultural are, where the rules are generally known; and in that confined area it deals best with things – emotions, impulses, moral anxieties – that would be unseizable or incomplete in other literary forms.
The experience I had had was particular to me. To do a novel about it, it would have been necessary to create someone like myself, someone of my ancestry and background, and to work out some business which would have taken this person to India. It would have been necessary more or less to duplicate the original experience, and it would have added nothing. Tolstoy used fiction to bring the siege of Sebastopol closer, to give it an added reality. I feel that if I had attempted a novel about India, and mounted all that apparatus of invention, I would have been falsifying precious experience. The value of the experience lay in its particularity. I had to render it as faithfully as I could.â€
This intellectual honesty is what makes Naipaul unique and one of his kind. Naipaul’s body of work consists of a different discipline of literature and he is the only student of that discipline on the globe.
Now is not the time to create fiction in India. First it is necessary to arouse the sense of history in its citizens. Literature will follow. So for now we need Arun Shouries, Sita Ram Goels, Ram Swarups, Shankar Sharans… and not Adigas or Roys.
———————————————————–
Sorry for being too verbose, but I guess that’s me. I guess this makes for another article 😉
There are two reasons for this phenomenon of Colonised minds to occur
http://tilak.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/08/bheemayanam-a-biography-of-dr-ambedkar-in-sanskrit.htm
1) India did not go with BR Ambedkar’s amendment in 1949 for Sanskrit in the language schedule. This was defeated in the constituent assmebly then. If the proposal of BRA had been accepted , the whole scenario would have been changed. Here is the abstract
“A dispatch of the Press Trust of India (PTI) dated September 10, 1949 states that Ambedkar was among those who sponsored an amendment making Sanskrit as the official language of the Indian Union in place of Hindi. Most newspapers carried the news the next day, i.e., on September 11, 1949 (see the issue of Sambhashan Sandeshah, a Sanskrit monthly published from Delhi , June 2003: 4-6).
Other dignitaries who supported Dr Ambedkar’s initiative included Dr B.V. Keskar, then the Deputy Minister for External Affairs and Professor Naziruddin Ahmed. The amendment dealt with Article 310 and read: 1.The official language of the Union shall be Sanskrit. 2. Notwithstanding anything contained in Clause 1 of this article, for a period of fifteen years from the commencement of this constitution, the English language shall continue to be used for the official purposes of the union for which it was being used at such commencement: provided that the President may, during the said period, by order authorise for any of the official purposes of the union the use of Sanskrit in addition to the English language . But the amendment was defeated in the Constituent Assembly due to the opposition of the ruling Congress Party and other lobbyists.
If Ambedkar had succeeded, the renewed interaction between Sanskrit as the national language and speakers of other languages would have initiated a sociological process of upward and downward mobility. While rulers, pilgrim centres, and temple complexes used to be the traditional agents of such interaction, the state operated broadcasting agencies, school textbooks, and the film and music industry would have emerged as new agents facilitating that interaction” .
Now it is 60 yrs since BRA introduced the bill. A lot of misinterpretations of Sanskrit could have been corrected by now and this ” Colonial mentality writers would not have surfaced.
2) Archeology in India , is done very badly. Just look at Egypt . Just type in Google about Archeology in Egypt , you will get excellent papers from Archeologists all over the world working on sites. The Egyptians themselves have their brilliant and diligent archeologists, who publish very good papers and many groundbreaking work.
India has done very little , except for Dr SR Rao work on Dwarka nothing great or even with semblance of scholarship has been done. There is scientific instrumentation being used to date the monuments which has been done in many parts of the world. India has so many monuments , each one can be dated studied and given due credit to whom it belongs to and what era ,date etc. This area also comes under the ” Colonial mentality mind”. No one is just interested.
Adiga seems to keep insisting (in his interview on bookbrowse.com) that it is pure fiction !
Dear Pankaj,
Thanks for the note on language, literature and civilisation. Two quick points:
– My intention in referring to Naipaul was to show the fact that there apparently isn’t an Indian writer who could be quoted in support of your thesis! Intellectual bankruptcy?
– Second, am not convinced that writing in English takes away from the local feel, sights, sounds, emotions et al. Writers like Amitava Ghosh (who spends most of his time in the US) write about “Indian” issues with great insight, understanding and clarity – perhaps his training as an anthropologist helps? There are many others – eg,RK Narayan, KR Usha & Shashi Deshpande who wr(o)ite in English, think in English but emote “Indian”. Language, like any other art form, is a form of expression of one’s experiences and emotions. What is important therefore is not the form of expression but the nature of the experience and the crucible in which the emotion is fashioned.
In the case of Adiga, his experiences are that of a tourist and his emotional experiences have been fired in a “foreign” crucible.
Balzac to Tolstoy to Dickens are not comparables since neither France, UK or Russia ever experienced colonialism and had a language imposed on them.
The real tragedy is that few people read in India – even in the local languages! How many, say, Assamese books are translated into say, Malayalam? How will experiences from one part of India get transplanted and experienced in another without this? A book that sells 10,000 copies is a best seller! How many publishing houses have the means and capabilities to overcome this? How many libraries exist? How many literary events are held in each state/city? How do we treat our writers and poets and painters? How many Indian children want to take up Indian literature for further studies? As a society, how many parents encourage children to (a) read and (b) read Indian writers and (c) understand Indian experiences.
The answer lies deep inside us.
A tiny ray of hope:There are some friends of mine who’ve launched an effort to source and publish books written by local writers across many states.
Sanjay
@ Sanjay
>>>>My intention in referring to Naipaul was to show the fact that there apparently isn’t an Indian writer who could be quoted in support of your thesis! Intellectual bankruptcy?<<<<<<
Oh, yes! I am sorry! I got it now! Generally Naipaul is blamed for being a foreigner and so I gave the explanation. But I am sorry, I couldn’t understand what did you mean here by intellectual bankruptcy?
’bout writing in English I do not say there is no feeling in Indian writing in English. I am not saying it is completely devoid of it. What I meant that it can never reach the heights of great literatures in the world. That particular amount of artificiality will always remain.
Haven’t read Amitav Ghosh deeply so can’t say anything ’bout him. R K Narayan never really dwelt upon serious issues. His works are sweet and innocent, day to day expression of life. They don’t go deep into history or religion or something like that, but its not the aim. But even in Narayan you can always feel that while writing, he is conscious that he is writing in a language other than his mother tongue. There is always a subconscious attempt to explain things which are local and maybe incomprehensible to foreigners. This is what makes it different from a literature written in mother tongue. In fact when Naipaul uses the phrase, ‘Indian writing is being created at such a remove’, he refers to the same writers you have mentioned, though I haven’t read all of them so can’t give a general statement. I would again quote Naipaul’s lines which are more relevant here:
“Fiction works best in a confined moral and cultural area, where the rules are generally known; and in that confined area it deals best with things – emotions, impulses, moral anxieties – that would be unseizable or incomplete in other literary forms.”
The moral and cultural area are not confined in Narayan. There is an effort to explain local things to foreigners, albeit subtle and subconscious.
Literature is a means to convey some feeling, some expression. It is not an end in itself and that’s why it cannot be separated from its vehicle, language.
Its true than UK or Russia never experienced colonialism like we did, but the 19th century Russian society was more French than we could ever be British. You can get that taste from the very writers which we are talking about here, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. So in a sense they experienced great foreign influence and even distortion.
I am not saying the condition is same, but there seems to be a similarity. Balzac of course is a different case.
And, yes its sad that reading is not a culture in India yet but as you say there is a ray of hope and that ray is expanding. I hope in future it becomes broad daylight.
P.S. Please gimme the links to the sites and publications which you say your friends have launched.
Dear Pankaj,
Lets agree to disagree on the issue of language and literature (& also on how French pre-revolution Czarist Russia was)!
Regarding my comment on intellectual bankruptcy what I meant was the lack of think-tanks, academic scholarship, etc relating to Indian heritage of which the arts form a crucial piece. That Sheldon Pollack, the well known Prof of South Asian studies from Columbia Univ, on a recent visit to India talked of the abysmal state of Indian humanities in Indian universities is eloquent in itself since no one in India seems bothered by it!
The name of the company is New Horizon Media and I think the URL is http://www.nhm.in
Best,
Sanjay
The conflict that seems to be a part of our modern writers –whether to see India through western perspectives or an Indian one–seems to reflect that larger conflict in Indian society with regard self-identity and development. Is the way forward merely an exercise in imitating western patterns of development and self-identity (i.e. falling into secular progressive and socialist categories) or do we have some indigenous knowledge of how better to do it.
We don’t have these discussions in India precisely because there is no place to have them. Most universities in India seem very focused on teaching subject specific courses. And even the humanities are taught with a focus of covering the subject and passing exams as opposed to getting students to pose interesting questions.
One of the most interesting statements made by Elst in his book “Decolonizing the Hindu Mind” was his statement that Hindus and even Hindu groups like the RSS regularly borrow the enemies’ glasses to view themselves. Instead of questioning the validity of the categories that western scholars regularly place Hindus in, we assume those categories are accurate and then try to defend those categories.
All: Thanks for a wonderful and thoroughly engaging discussion… I will respond with some thoughts over the weekend.
I almost entirely agree and have thoroughly enjoyed the analysis, including the quotes by Naipaul. The only point of contention is regarding your views on Nirad Chaudhari. I wanted to ask you if you are making these comments after thoroughly reading his works?
Yes, he was overly critical of Indians (especially the Bengali Hindus) but then most of us deserve to be criticized for our intellectual slavery and impotence as your post have pointed out. In fact, reading Nirad Chaudhuri truly makes your blood boil, but in a very different way. He was dangerously honest and incisive when it came to analyze the Hindu mind. Appeasement to anyone (yes, including the “minorities”) was never in his mind. Unless we carefully read and understand him, I do not think we can ever get out of this intellectual slavery.
PS – In case you think I’m just just another secular guy off the street, let me state beforehand that I’m appreciating Chaudhuri after having read books from Shourie to Sita Ram Goel, Frawley to Gautier. But, I think Nirad Chaudhuri is a cut above.
My God! What a wonderful intellectual feast it was! Hats off to Pankaj and three cheers to Shantanu! I think we shall have to launch another war of independence to see some intellectual revolution in India. We are after all only 60 years young democracy. It will take time to mature. Hindustan will wake and guide the world. It has that beacon light to show the right path.
” Kuchh baat hai ki hasti mitti nahin hamari
sadiyon raha hai dushman, daure jahan hamara.”
LK
Pankaj,
I’m an Indian Catholic with Leftist views and I haven’t read Adiga’s book (Please note) and I do appreciate and agree with the ‘essence’ of your well-written post.
But that said, I would like to point out certain pit-falls as I see it, of your post. If a writer is propagating Christian/Islamic ideologies, I really doubt whether s/he can also propagate the ‘secular’ ideologies with the same lines. S/he should align her/himself either with Religious (Christian/Islamic) views or with Secular (derived from Communism/Marxism/Socialism or any combination of them) views.
So, when you say Adiga is just arranging ‘facts’ to support so called ‘secularism’, and if you really have a case there (since I haven’t read the book, I can’t comment on it.) how can you say that he is supporting Christian/Islam cause as well? I would observe that you’ve diluted your case by bringing in unnecessary dimensions to the picture. There might be authors whose works were intended to do the latter and you might be angry against them. If the Indian literary world is penetrated by Secularists, how can they support any religious views – let it be Hinduism, Christianity or Islam?
I agree with you on one case, there is a renewed interest in downplaying certain belief system by certain authors. They give unnecessary focus to the wrong-doings of one system while turning a blind eye towards others. But when you’re analyzing them, I would say, you should have separated both the parties – authors supporting Religious views and authors supporting Secular views. When you combine them for scrutiny, it actually weakens your case against them.
Bhavananda, LK and Rick: Thanks for your thoughts…I am sure Pankaj will respond in a day or two…
I shall add my own thoughts too (shortly)…was caught up in trying to finalise the latest post
@Rick: Your comments have a lot of merit and I’m sure Pankaj will try to address them. As far my 2cents goes, it has to do with the concept of “asymmetric secularism”. Briefly it means that the laws only apply to some people.
Ideally, secular would mean not religious, but in reality of our country, they are used interchangeably to satisfy political goals. For example, you have religious leaders calling them “secular Hindus” (Agnivesh), “secular Christian” (John Dayal) or “secular Muslims” (Bollywood gangs of Javed Akhtar, etc). I hate to bring personal religion into this, but since you yourself said that you are a Catholic Christian, you may have heard of the Catholic Secular Forum (http://www.thecsf.org/home.html). Well, then let me ask you this – if a “Catholic forum” can be used to promote secular agenda, where is Pankaj wrong in saying that writers use “secularism” to promote their religious agenda? There are numerous examples like this.
But you don’t have to answer this because I’ve already answered it in the first line: certain laws are applicable to certain people only, not everyone.
PS – If you are hearing this for the first time, I can suggest that you read “A secular agenda” by Arun Shourie to know more.
Hare Krishna
Here I am. Reading with interest the meaning of word secular and the ismic dilemma it brings in. Being from pool of European genes , but now a Hare Krishna, I would like to give a brief write up of how the word secular came in the West ( if you like to call it like this. Actually , it is all in the Northern Hemisphere this happened. Anyway I would not like to go into geography, Let readers decide)
Secularism came after World War 11, when anti- Jewish feelings became the symptom , a partial cause , and power the powerful disease. Relgious wars were going on for many years in Europe, and World War 11 was the last straw.
It was group of great thinkers like Fabian socialists like Bernard Shaw , who brought in the middle path which was between capitalism and atheistic communism , called Fabian socialism. This avoided the extremes of right and left for as Shaw argued well that , it will be repeat of middle ages if we the extreme right and left would get at each other’s throat. Well done!!! . You must say, and so came the Socialism of Fabian type. Many ( almost) European countries practice this. This means that , social security by a secular govt will take the care of the unemployed and health care though suffering a lot now , still is taken care. The two main issues like food and health care is taken care ( Please do not bring the insurance issues of US here. US is different economy, compared to Europe). Now this has to some extent controlled religion in extreme form as only poverty raises religion as a hoary issue. A well fed and taken care homosapien , if religious , would not indulge in such violent and heathenistic bonhomies.
Now coming back to secularism , this means that the state cannot interfere in religion at all.
“Secularism is the assertion that governmental practices or institutions should exist separately from religion and/or religious beliefs” George Jacob Holyoake.
I served in India the prasad of Hare Krishna to many slums and even in semi rich localities. Indians are the most vibrant people I have come across. Very good people. I have worked in India in parts and one such part was for 3 years. Three yrs was good enough to observe secularism in India. One thing which struck me is the big difference secularism is practised in India and the West ( if you like to call it like this).
In India , why are the temples controlled by the state. In many states , I found that the state interferes only with temples and not with other institutions. Even Hare Krishna has tough time in India , sometimes more than even the West ( ?). In West, we expect resistance, so it becomes an assumption to our charter. If you go by Holyoakeian premise , then even temples should be left free of state control.
In the West ( ? or North) , the churches are separated from the govt. Even though they have an influence on the govt , but the overall effect is minimal. This is due to the social security aspects. If you see US, the usurping of social security and health care attachemnt to insurance issues has made religious groups more powerful. There is a move to do this in Europe which will turn the clock back and as Europe is as diverse as India in languages( not in sucb massiveness) , it will create more problems than solutions.
Unfortunately this has not happened. I would not like to go in details as to why this has not happened as it would take a thesis to do this. There is a geopolitical dimension to this. You can call it chutney of hangover of bad colonial habits of the West ( or North).
Only hope wisdom prevails and they do not revert back the social security. Please do not think it will make people lazy, but it will keep the problem doers away from the scene.
This is my view of secular and if India can implement social security, health care, which the govt can do easily or even the rich can do it very well as non-profit organisations. The glitzy Pollywood stars, who boast of their wealth with no holds barred can easily do this. ( P is equal to many from Bolly to so many). Then you have a solution to feed the 300 million very poor people.
Hare Rama, Hare Krishna.
Hare Krishna
Now this has to some extent controlled religion in extreme form as only poverty raises religion as a hoary issue. A well fed and taken care homosapien , if religious , would not indulge in such violent and heathenistic bonhomies.
Unfortunately this has not happened. I would not like to go in details as to why this has not happened as it would take a thesis to do this. There is a geopolitical dimension to this. You can call it chutney of hangover of bad colonial habits of the West ( or North).
This arranegment looks better to read than the previous post. I leave the decision to readers.
Hare Rama Hare Krishna
Adigss writing mauled in these citations
http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Nov82008/khushwant2008110799442.asp
An award for Aravind Adiga
By Khushwant singh
“I assumed that if the award went to an Indian, it would be to Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies because it was the best thing I had read in a long time. However, the prize went to Aravind Adiga’s novel”
“We, who belong to this city, have nothing to thank him for…. Also infinitely depressing; it is a dark, one-sided picture of India I have ever read. I don’t mind reading harsh criticism of my countrymen, but I find half-truths unpalatable”.
From the write up below
I have long been disillusioned by the literary quality of works which win prestigious literary awards like the Nobel, Booker, Pulitzer, Commonwealth etc. I have been even less impressed by books which make it to of booksellers lists and earn millions of dollars in royalties for their authors. When I heard that two Indians had made it to the last eight entrants for the Booker Prize one being Amitav Ghosh, I assumed that if the award went to an Indian, it would be to Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies because it was the best thing I had read in a long time. However, the prize went to Aravind Adiga’s novel The White Tiger. I had heard of the novel but not read it, nor heard the name of the author. I brought up the subject in my evening mehfil. In the assemblage only my neighbour Reeta Devi had read it: Later she sent me her copy. It took me two days to read it from cover to cover. I found it highly readable. Also infinitely depressing; it is a dark, one-sided picture of India I have ever read. I don’t mind reading harsh criticism of my countrymen, but I find half-truths unpalatable.
A tale of crime
The narrator of the story is one Balram Halwai, son of an improverished father who earns his living running a tea-stall by the bus stop of village in Bihar. He has to withdraw Balram from school so that he can earn some money as a rickshaw puller and dish-washer. Balram’s ambition in life is to be a chauffeur. His only chance of doing so is to get employment with the family who own most of the land round their village. They are in big business as the coal merchants in Dhanbad where they live in a large mansion. Balram manages to raise money to learn driving, get a licence and a job as a second driver in the landlord’s family. Balram gets to drive a Maruti Zen. A member of the landlord’s family Ashok goes to America and returns home with Pinkie They decide to settle in Delhi. Balram now in chauffeur’s uniform drives his master and mistress to Delhi in their Honda City.
Mr Ashok gets into big business bribing everyone who matters: ministers, politicians, middlemen, police, magistrates. Once a very drunk Pinkie madam driving the Honda runs over a child. Balram is made to take the blame. Ultimately the police and the magistrate are squared and nothing happens. Madam Pinkie gets fed up of India and returns to New York. Mr Ashok takes to whoring. Balram ‘dips his beak’ in brothels on GH road.
The master-servant relationship comes to an abrupt end one rainy night when the Honda City gets stuck in the mud, while a very drunk Mr Ashok is trying to lift the car out of the mud, Balram smashes his skull with a bottle of Scotch, dumps his body in a bush and decamps with a bagful of high demonation currency notes, and flees to Bangalore. His picture is all over public places among those being sought by the police. Nevertheless, Balram manages to set up a highly lucrative business running a fleet of taxis to take late night workers to their homes. Meanwhile Mr Ashok’s family way back in Dhanbad settle scores by having 17 members of Balram’s family eliminated. That’s how according to Aravind Adiga, things happen in the India of today. He narrates his tale of crime and corruption into his country in a series of seven long imaginary talks to President of the Communist Republic of China.
Adiga now says he wants to dedicate his prize winning novel to the people of Delhi. However, it is not the Delhi of which Dilliwalas are proud of — a city of marble palaces, mosques and temples, of ancient forts and mausolea, — all this escapes the author’s eyes. What draws him are slums, stench of drains filled with human concrete, pigs rummaging in garbage dumps, pimps and prostitutes. We, who belong to this city, have nothing to thank him for. But bless him. Though full of half-truths, he writes well. His black humour and biting satire persuades the reader to forgive him.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081116/jsp/7days/story_10117416.jsp
Khushwant Singh’s column in The Telegraph found it the “darkest, one-sided picture of Indiaâ€; author Manjula Padmanabhan savaged it in Outlook saying she found it a “tedious, unfunny slogâ€; historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam labelled it “another brick to the patronising edifice†in the London Review of Books; and US-based critic Amitava Kumar, who comes from Bihar, home to Adiga’s protagonist Balram Halwai, wrote in the Boston Review: “The novelist seems to know next to nothing about either the love or the despair of the people he writes about. I want to know if others, who might never have visited Bihar, read the passage above and recognise how wrong it is, how the appearance of verisimilitude belies the emotional truths of life in Bihar.†Verdict: Too dishonest, a corrupted ventriloquism.
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20081124&fname=Booksa&sid=1
Khushwant Singh
No sooner an Indian writer, hitherto unknown, wins a prestigious international literary award like the Nobel, Booker or Pulitzer, he or she soars skywards like the mythical flying horse Pegasus and is seen by earthlings as an astral phenomenon, an awesome manifestation of the divine. Every time it neighs, they construe it as a message from the divine. Even if it drops a turd, it is regarded as manna sent by the gods.
Comment
Yes , the White Tiger was a turd, but for the Booker committee it was sweet curd.
Manjula Padmanabhan in outlookindia.com
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080505&fname=Booksa&sid=1
“. Why does the protagonist choose the Chinese premier as the recipient of this letter? He tells us that it’s because “Only three nations have never let themselves be ruled by foreigners: China, Afghanistan and Abyssinia. These are the only three nations I admire.” This statement may seem at odds with the reference to the “erstwhile master” that occurs on the same page, but so what? There’s no accountability in the breezy-absurd school of literature! Everything goes! Nothing is real! Lie back and open wide”
Prof Sanjay Subramanyam , a Prof at UCLA (History)
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n21/subr01_.html
What of Balram Halwai? What does he sound like? Despite the odd namaste, daal, paan and ghat, his vocabulary is not sprinkled with North Indian vernacular terms. His sentences are mostly short and crudely constructed, apparently a reflection of the fact that we’re dealing with a member of the ‘subaltern’ classes. He doesn’t engage in Rushdian word-play. But he does use a series of expressions that simply don’t add up. He describes his office as a ‘hole in the wall’. He refers to ‘kissing some god’s arse’, an idiomatic expression that doesn’t exist in any North Indian language”.
Comment.
Now this term does not exist in North Indian Language. Prof Subramanyan is an expert. Probably Adiga’s training in western norms Down Under where “kiss my arse” an import from USA is used. This term KMA is used in many school fights in English speaking countries like USA, UK and others. His subconscious mind must have transcribed this in twisted way to North Indian lingua. This is a pure case of subconscious brain acting over in words in his novel. What a stupendous fall of intellect. Prof Subramanyan it is the subaltern of Adiga ( his Down Under schooling) which spoke and not Balram Halwai.
The Turd ( Adiga’s subaltern) surely becomes sweet curd for the Booker commitee.
I read your review of The White Tiger with great interest. I’m no admirer of the book myself. It’s crudely written, the narrator’s voice does not come through authentically and the structure is highly contrived. I agree with your review upto the point where you say that the author is so far removed from Indian realities that he’s not really qualified to make the judgemental statements that he does. But I do disagree with you on a number of other points.
I felt that you unnecessarily dragged in the whole secular/hindu/other religions debate. Adiga may have been criticizing a certain social structure – the caste system. But let’s face it, the caste system is peculiar to India and that makes it a ‘hindu’ concept. But that doesn’t make him a critic of Hinduism and neither does it make him a supporter of Islam or anything else. He’s quite justifiably angry about the caste system.
You also say “Communism accounted for more than twenty million deaths in USSR, sixtyâ€five million in China, one million in Vietnam, two million in North Korea, two million in Cambodia, one million in Eastern Europe, 1.7 million in Africa, one and a half million in Afghanistan and millions of others.15 And all this in less than seventy years! Does Indian caste system in its history of more than five thousand years, has anything even remotely comparable to equal this record?” I think that can answered quite simply – no records were kept. People continue to be killed because of their caste even today. So its easy to imagine that in the centuries long history of the caste system a sizeable number were killed. Of course, in the absence of any concrete figures, we can only speculate. So while that does not mean that millions were killed, it also doesn’t mean that they weren’t killed.
Also, you seem to feel that Indian history can be neatly divided into three phases – the purely Indian period, the Islamic period and the Colonial period. This is a highly simplistic and erroneous categorisation. Indian history is far more complex than that. For instance, unlike what Naipaul says there is no such thing as ‘purely Indian’. Or rather, all of India’s past is purely Indian. The reason for that is that India’s history has always beens shaped by groups of people who came from outside. India, we must remember, is not a simple cultural or religious construct. It’s a geographical construct, as we learnt in school, hemmed in my the Himalayas in the North and by the sea in the south. In fact, India was not even a single political entity before 1947. There were always a dozen or more kingdoms, each quite independent. They just happened to be a part of India, just like Albania and Macedonia are a part of the Balkans or Finland and Norway are part of Scandinavia. So it’s also wrong to talk about ‘India’ being subjugated by others throughout history, because India as a single country didn’t exist. Sindh was invaded, as was the Delhi Sultanate, but not India. ‘Hindustan’ and ‘Bharat’ were only convenient geographical nomenclatures.
I’m sorry to have gone off track. I had a lot more to say, but I don’t have much time.
@ Pooja: A quick comment re. your last paragraph. Please read: The Idea of India
We can carry over the discussion on this particular aspect to that thread.
“Of course, in the absence of any concrete figures, we can only speculate. So while that does not mean that millions were killed, it also doesn’t mean that they weren’t killed.”
And here I thought that it’s facts that are supposed to support opinions/viewpoints/theory, and not the other way round. *head-slap*
Reminds me of my Physics lab experiments in college where due to faulty equipment that gave incorrect readings, we drew the curves first according to theory and then modified the actual measurements to fit that curve, because, well, the measurements have to fit the theory. I forgot that those experiments in lab were a tutorial for life. Thanks Pooja, for correcting me.
@ Sanjay
Thanks a lot ’bout the link. It is a great source of knowing what is goin’ on in Indian Writing. Thanks again! And if there is something else which is worth knowing in this field, please let me know.
Yours
Pankaj
@ K. Harapriya
>>>>>One of the most interesting statements made by Elst in his book “Decolonizing the Hindu Mind†was his statement that Hindus and even Hindu groups like the RSS regularly borrow the enemies’ glasses to view themselves.<<<<<
Yes it is. This is why there is no debate in India ’bout the important issues. There is just hue and cry and a sham ’bout debates and discussions. Everyone has slogans, but nobody comes up with facts. And this is true of the entire political spectrum from left to right.
This point has been brilliantly elaborated and analyzed by Ravi Shanker Kapoor in his book “More Equal than Others: A Study of Indian Left”.
He says that in India there is no right. What we take as right in India is actually Leftist by thinking.
Yours
Pankaj
@ Bhavananda
I have not entirely read Nirad’s works. I have read only two of his books, but I guess they are his representative works: “An Autobiography of an Unknown Indian†and “The Continent of Circeâ€
My views regarding Chaudhari are not borrowed from Naipaul though certainly his books have contributed a lot to my understanding.
I have no problem with someone being overly critical of Indians or Hindus. An honest criticism is acceptable and even welcome, no matter how harsh it is. The problem with Chaudhari is that he was not qualified enough to make those judgments. By qualification I don’t mean degrees. But the subjects he talks about are simply too large for his reach. He talks about virtually everything from history, religion, culture, sociology etc. His area of research (if a book like An Autobiography can be called a research) is simply too wide for a single book. He makes wide sweeps while generalizing history, a luxury which historians only the stature of Will Durant and Bernard Lewis can afford, and even that after a lifetime of research and publishing history and not in the very first or second book.
He was a great artist and he wrote a book which has a great literary merit. But he was not a historian and when he digs into those areas he falters. An Autobiography, as Naipaul says is pleasant until he talks about his own experiences and his childhood in his village. And honestly, this is one of the few books on India in English which I quite enjoyed. If he had limited himself to that, that book would have been flawless. But sadly he didn’t. He had to give his universal theory of everything, he had to transgress and expand himself to cover up virtually subject.
If you have noticed it, this is the feature of immature writers who have just started writing. ( Pretty much like me 😉 , except that I try to confine myself in history and literature) As they mature their area of research narrows though their understanding increases. They get to understand the disciplines of research and writing. Chaudhari never reached that stage. It is in that sense that Naipaul calls him an intellectual pigmy.
Again, this is not to deny his literary genius. He sure was one of the best we had.
Yours
Pankaj
@ LK Kandpal
Oh please! Intellectual it may be a little bit, but feast? Seriously!!!
But thanks anyways! 🙂
@ Rick
Thanks for having the patience to read through the post and taking care to reply.
From your post I take that your objection is that while I say that Adiga and others are following ‘secularism’ how can they be furthering the agendas of Christianity or Islam.
It’s very simple. The meaning of secularism in India is not what you read in dictionaries or what it is understood in the West. In India, Secularism is a way to oppose everything Indian, everything native or Hindu. Indian Secularism is basically anti-Hinduism. If you find any way to oppose Hinduism, you got a ride in the secular bogey. Christianity and Islam had always a thing for the native polytheistic religions, so in India they are at clash with Hinduism. Those who want to further the aims of Islam and Christianity simultaneously want to denigrate Hinduism. Secularism is a just a way to do that. It is a masquerade which many anti-Hindu factions in India put up in order to fool the masses and make Hindus believe that they are actually working for everyone’s good, including Hindus. The perverted meaning of secularism is very well analyzed in “India’s Secularism: New Name for National Subversion†by Sita Ram Goel.
Your objections would be entirely true if I had been writing about genuine Secularism in the West, in the context of Christianity, but as we are surveying the scene of contemporary India, you have to understand that Indian secularism is basically anti-Hinduism.
@ Pooja
On your first objection, you allege that he is ‘justifiably angry ‘bout caste system’ but then you don’t explain it. It would good if you support your statement with some facts.
About the body count of caste system, I am afraid its not possible that some system commits horrible atrocities for a long period of time and it gets unnoticed entirely. So if caste system really resulted in a lot of casualties, where is the record?
One would argue that records were not kept and that Hinduism and Brahmins hid the record. If you care to analyze history a little bit, you will realize that it is not possible to hide genocides and crimes against humanity even when an all powerful and centralized organization like The Vatican is working to hide them. Christianity did a lot of crimes during the middle ages. It didn’t go unrecorded. So even if something had happened in India due to caste system, it wouldn’t have gone unrecorded. In India hiding a crime would have been harder as the polity was not so centralized. In fact, your own interpretation of India as a palimpsest and a conglomeration of many nationalities testifies against your claim that caste system accounted for a lot of atrocities.
Moreover, when crimes against humanities are committed, when genocides and holocausts are perpetrated on a segment of humanity they are not done randomly. There is an ideology which supports it; a law system which justifies the persecution of the dissenters; a manual which instructs how to kill the rebels without weighing your conscience. Hence, there was the Bible and the canons, the Quran and the Shariat, Das Capital and the writings of Lenin and Mao. Can you find any parallel system in Hinduism? A system which orders the persecution of the so-called ‘lower castes’? Again, a little more facts would do good.
Moving on to your next claim, ‘India is not a country’, it would be good if you read, David Frawley’s, ‘The Myth of Aryan Invasion of India’. It very well explains the theory which was made up by the British colonialists and is being carried over by their successors like Romila Thapar and R S Sharma. A theory which maintains the myth that India was never a country and Hinduism is also an import in India. The theory implies that what if Islam and Christianity came to India and conquered it, if Hinduism itself was an import. ‘Eminent Historians’ also explains how this view got entrenched in modern Indian psyche.
@ Pankaj Saksena
Very well said! Caste system is the only tool left for attacking Hinduism. And also for explaining the meaning of sickularism in India.
Big thanks!
@Pankaj: You practically gave it all away in your first line, that you’ve only read two of his works, and *guessed* that they could be representative. The autobiography was merely his first, and in someway a so-called hit – somewhat like a *hit* Bollywood movie- high on ishq-visq-pyar-wyaar, low on intellectuality. After reading it, most Indians started howling and stopped reading him, albeit praising his “literary genius” (no disrespect to you 🙂 E.g. some people after watching Devdas said something like the novel was Sarat Chandra’s “greatest” or representative works – but they were wrong. It was one of Sarat Chandra’s earliest and comparatively, mediocre. Same here.
A good starting point to understand Nirad Chaudhuri (NC) would be … say, Wiki. If you want to know the real NC, please read “Hinduism: A Religion to Live by” written 30 yrs later. He was one of the earliest proponents of modern Hindutva, earliest critic of Nehru-Gandhi, at a time when these words of “Hindutva” were unimaginable in the Indian intellectual realm. He was probably the only Indian of his time who could write in a *purely sanskritized language* devoid of any *foreign* words.
I won’t say much on his literary genius, so let me cut to the chase – the quality of a pudding lies in it’s taste. I was most impressed by his philosophical insight into “history, religion, culture, sociology” – areas you thought were beyond his reach. Scholars can argue to the end if Samuel Huntington is right or even if he had the authority to write “Clash of civilizations” but the *fact* is that whatever Huntington had predicted in ’91 came true today. Similarly, the current intellectual slavery that you see today was *literally* predicted by NC decades back, ignored by Indians then (and now) because they thought he had no qualification for that. So, in effect these slumdog effects or “brown parrot effects” that you see today is actually a prediction that came true. He was way ahead of his time, when he predicted the current intellectual bankruptcy of our “cultural capital” (Bengal) at a time when it was rumored “what Bengal thinks today, India will think tomorrow”. The rest are subjective shades of gray – great for endless arguments.
Bottomline – I think you’ve seriously misunderstood a genius on Indian history and society, partly misled by Naipaul’s view (whom I respect too). And when you mention Nirad Chaudhuri’s name along with someone like Arundhati, leaves me utterly confused.
@ Bhavananda
Well then, I guess I outta read more. Thanks for guiding me to the fact. Though I guess ‘The Continent of Circe’ was not from a very immature period as you think it is. It was published in 1965, fifteen years after the ‘immature’ one. However I don’t see any more maturity in it. On the other hand Chaudhary becomes more rigid in his convictions. The book argues for a full-blown Aryan Invasion Theory and the bottom line it gives is that all the problem we Indians have is because we have forgotten our true Aryan race, which is the Caucasian breed!!!
Chaudhary was right to recognize that we are intellectually bankrupt. He was right to criticize Gandhi and Nehru and of course he was right to point out the rift between Hindus and Muslims. Any sensible reader will give him that much of credit.
But then what?
The fault with Chaudhary was that he didn’t know where to stop in his analysis. He identified some problems of India but then he traced them to the racial cause!
It was great to recognize those problems, but was it really necessary to go further and make a Universal Theory ’bout it, right from the beginning?
That’s where I criticize him. That’s where I think he lacks.
Yes, its not fair to line him up along with Arundhati. I apologize to take the names in the single line. I will correct it in the future drafts.
There is not way they both are similar in every manner.
First of all, his intentions were entirely fair while no one can say this ’bout Arundhati Roy, even in the matters of finance.
Second, he had a literary genius, which is so not a strong point of Roy.
Third, he had the courage to state his convictions and suffer for them, like the issue of Babri Masjid demolition, while the characteristic feature of Roy is being politically correct.
The similarity between them is in making sweeping statements. The similarity between them is not recognizing and limiting their fields of study.
We shouldn’t get emotional ’bout someone who could see a wee bit of the shape of things to come. Every writer can make a mistake.
And I would differ on the ‘subjective shades of gray’. Gray they maybe, but the arguments won’t be endless.
But of course, you are right ’bout taking his name with Arundhati. I will correct the mistake.
P.S. One book of his which I read and forgot to mention is ‘A Passage to England’, where he argues for a union of the two lost tribes of a glorious race! I found E M Forster and his cultural rift theory much more convincing than Chaudhary’s.
Hare Krishna
The statistics of people killed in post 30 , refering to the statistics given by the author of Brown Parrot excludes major events like WW1 and WW2. 50-60 million people were killed by this “Vinasha Kale Viparithe Buddhi”
( When the mind runks amuck , destruction starts says the Gita).
Then the wars in Europe over the years has killed so many. Some records are kept in Europe. Extremely cruel killings, beheading etc right from Dark Ages to 1945, end of WW11.
Then indigenous races have been anhilated in many places. Red Indians in North America. The Aboriginals of Australia live in inferiority complex. Only recently they said sorry for this. About South America , I will have to give you a course work for 2 years as Masters degree for the liquidation of Mayas and Incas. The Romas are still fighting to get recognised in Europe. The list goes on.
Now coming to India. I was in a remote place in TamiNadu , where I was feeding Hare Krishna prasadam. I went to narrow street in a village called Adi Dravidar Sanga. I talked to the people there and most of the seniors said that their ancestors are more than 2000-3000 yrs old. They still maintain their customs and their progenies go to school singing all the rustic songs in Tamil, which was Greek to me. But I enjoyed it. Then I have travelled to many places in India and one thing which was striking is the tribal and indigenous population is quite significant in number and practice compared to South America and minsicule aboriginals in Australia. I do not have experience of Africa, which is great area to study.
Well if they had been anhilated as post 16 says , then why is their population so large in number. Then there are the tribals in Chattisgarh who are Ramnamis, which is tribal tradition going back to centuries.
Yes , my interpetations of India is as follows.
India had the maximum arable land in the world. Seven rivers plus the Saraswathi ,must have irrigated the land all over very well. The Indo gangetic plain is the most fertile plain in the world. Even now, with mismanagement , it is the very fertile. Agriculture , the first culture of homosapiens , the finest and best culture in the world must have been the greatest vocation in India. To distribute land and maintain harmony, this social order must have been introduced as the rule , ruled , proletariat, trading skills, and knowledge imparting skills. One thing one must remember , there was no industrial revolution. Of course , there were forge welding of Iron pillar a feat considered unique in those days , but must have been considered as equal to archery.
But the entire society of India revolved around agriculture. Even now India has the highest percentage of farmers . Almost 60% . Can any counrty beat this? Please do not bring mechanisation here and butress this statistics. Mechanisation is good if it is not in the hands of corporations , who have caused havoc to the cooperatives in India. Just see the statistics of suicide due to anhilation of the first and finest culture agriculture from simple fertile land loving homosapiens. All over the world fertile land is sinking due to soil salinity, global warming and in India , they want to build car factories on pristine fertile agricultural land. I am not against cars , but my stay in India has showed me that India has plenty of wasteland to locate such industries.
I am not joking, India if they manage the farms well and nurture them well can export food to the world and if 60% of Indias population get money thru exports of agricultural products, you will not have farm hands migrating to slums.
With all the problems, India still has the worlds highest indigenous population. Just maintain agriculture well for the farms hands and export, earn money for the 60% and then you see , how glorious India will be.
Bit busy for now. Have to work hard for prasadam, will post when I have time.
Hare Rama, Hare Krishna.
Pankaj, I appreciate your candid reply. You might have noticed my comments were limited to “An autobiography” and that’s because I didn’t read the continent of circe, so I didn’t comment. I also suggested you to read “Hinduism a religion to live by” by him. And, you are right that he was wrong on AIT stuff. I reconcile by thinking that he had no way of knowing “genetically” who came from where. In fact, with few exceptions, all academics actually took the AIT – just like we swallowed the fetus-gouging stories of Teesta. However, even though he made liberal use of AIT gobbledygook, his admiration of the Caucasian race was genuine and I too agree with him that there’s a lot to learn from the Caucasian race – after all they ruled the planet for centuries and by all means they are still “materially” and probably, intellectually, far ahead of us.
And no, I’m not getting emotional. Even though NC was not perfect, he truly did a great service to his motherland by showing us where we were weak and instead of understanding him, we took his criticisms for hatred.
PS – I didn’t read all his works, especially those in English. But, whatever I read completely spellbound me.
@Kaffir – The lessons learnt in classrooms do ready us for life, no? 🙂
Anyway, what I meant was that in the absence of any solid numbers, it’s difficult, and indeed foolish, to make absolute statements in either case. Sorry if THAT didn’t come through.
@ Pankaj – This is getting very interesting. I feel like I should first read all your entries on the subject and then come back here. But would love to carry this discussion forward.
*** Comment Moved Here ***
*** NOTE by MODERATOR ***
Kindly carry the discussion on this particular aspect (last para of comment #30; matters re. an Indian Identity) over to the other thread.
The subaltern of Adiga speaks in White Tiger.
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/Kiss+my+arse!
Kiss my arse! (British & Australian taboo!) also Kiss my ass! (American & Australian Taboo)
something that you say in order to tell someone that you will not do what they want you to He asked for money, and I told him he could kiss my arse.
“Thus spake Adiga’s subaltern”
Note the following words here and note Adigas words in the novel. It is all here he learnt these words.
‘Kiss my foot’
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1254898
An Indian student was beaten up and robbed by a group of teenagers in a moving train here, media report said on Monday.
Sourabh Sharma, 21, who came to Australia a year ago to study hospitality, was bashed up after six thugs confronted him on some trivial issues…………..
………………………………………………..
…………. ‘Kiss my foot’ and started kicking me and punching me,” he was quoted as saying in the report.
Fresh air.
http://www.richardcrasta.com/impressingthewhites.htm
In the novel †Impressing the Whites†Crasta gives tips “How to win a Bookerâ€
http://www.richardcrasta.com/impressingthewhites.htm
Thanks for the link gajanan…I was not aware of his work(s).
This is a great post.
An excellent review by Pankaj Saksena showing his scholarship.Truly, an intellectual feast,it is !
A K SAXENA (A retired civil servant)
Dear Sir,
It is a tragedy that we make something of nothing. Booker Prize winning books are a BIG “Y**********************N”. Remeber we won the Miss. World and the Miss. Universe Titles! Well the reson was the western cosmetic industry wanted to enter India. Make the Indians win it sponsor the program,keep the paid media well drunk/feted and you have it!!
It is only the rave party goers and the slobs who go to the Bar and the “Mallers” who read (I should say Talk) these books. Not the real readers who enjoy books.
The conversation will normally go like this:
Hi da whats happening. Have you read AA’s white tiger- it is so cool!
I do not know what cool is do with it? Yeah yaar yesterday I met “x” in the pub night and x was talking so much about this book which he bought yesterday. The way he spoke about the book excited me and I went and bought the book just before coming here. I can let you borrow it (Meaning- hey I am not going to read this rubbish I will dump it on you.
Booker winners especially Indian is for an agenda and one of the numbers of the agenda is “Running India and Hinduism down” and especially by an Indian.
Does anybody read Arundhathi now a days. Who remembers Kamala Das after her conversion to Islam.
This will also die out shortly. Let us not ignore it but make a spoof and ridicule everytime someone talks about Booker winners and you will see that it will die a natural death and nobody in their right minds will dare to talk about Booker winners in a short while.
It is because WE give importance that Booker gives prizes to third rate writers.
vck