India: A Million Mutinies [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

India, A Million Mutinies Now is like going to India with a friend who knows everybody, and takes you to meet everybody: holy men, politicians, authors, princes, revolutionaries, gangsters, women's magazine publishers... At first, the prospect of so many interviews and anecdotes seemed daunting, but as I read on I found that somehow Naipaul was able to drop one after a few pages and go on to the next almost seamlessly, just as a skilled conversationalist moves from one group to another at a party. It's a testament to Naipaul's considerable ability as a traveler and writer.

Although the interviews and mini-biographies are all about his subjects and their lives, there is ever a sense of his presence, at once gentle and piercing, the antithesis of the loud, gauche Western tourist. He is critical without being crass, intellectual without being dreary. When he's finished, a portrait of considerable depth and color has emerged.

I got exactly what I wanted from it: a lot of perspective and innumerable fascinating details. Like the U.S., India is a pluralistic nation limited by its bigotry. Like Israel, it is sitting on a powder keg of ethnic aspirations. Like China, it has way too many people.

How they cope (or do not cope) with that last problem is a recurrent topic. A family of ten can live together in a 10'X10' room by working and sleeping in shifts. A talented young professional must turn down a good job because it requires nine hours of daily commuting through Calcutta. People are loath to walk outside because their clothing and skin gets begrimed with dust and soot in a matter of minutes. Washing is difficult because the supply of water is intermittent, as is the supply of electricity.

Naipaul presents basic facts like these, which any journalist could provide, but then builds upon this framework vignettes and tableaux that are often surprising or ironic or astonishing. India has perhaps the largest collection of slums in the world. Yet, for legal reasons, their film industry (also the largest in the world) must build their own slum if they want to depict a slum in a film. The most cursory reading of Indian history will tell you that the priestly class of the Hindus (brahmins) must keep away from the latrine cleaning class (sweepers). But did you know that a brahmin could be "polluted" by a menstruating woman at a distance of up to fifteen feet? Or that brahmins should only drink water that comes directly from the earth (not from a pipe)? Or that some poorer brahmins, with the rising wages of sweepers, have been reduced to cleaning their own latrines?

There is much affection and empathy in Naipaul's account, as in the description of a family of five riding together on a motorcycle: "father on the main saddle, one child between his arms, another behind him holding on to his waist, mother on the carrier at the back, sitting sideways, with the baby." One sees in a glance the flirting with catastrophe that is necessarily a part of most Indians' daily struggle.

The author returns to the place from which he fled years before with a cultural shock. Now better prepared to face the Indian realities. This time his judgment about India and its people is not so stern, it is more kind - marginally: "With industrialization and economic growth people had forgotten old reverences. Men honoured only money now. The great investment in devolpement over three or four decades had led only to this: corruption, to the criminalization of politics. In seeking to rise, India had undone itself...Policeman, thief, politician: the roles had become interchangeable."
The disruptive, lesser loyalities, such of region, castes and clan now played more on the surface of Indian life.
Again the author travels across the country, travelling a country means to meet people, and he makes his points clear by telling many anecdotes and stories which elucidate the Indian character. India has changed, true. I have seen this over the years, starting in 1982 on my own sojourns. But I would have rather preferred a view the other way around: that the changes are superficial and under the surface still the Indian peculiarities have survived. To understand the book one has to understand the background of the Indian Naipaul who is in India just a visitor, educated as a British, raised in Britain and Trinidad in an anglo-india context which is totally different to any kind of life I proper India. Wherever he examines the life conditions in Asia, be it in the Muslim world, India or anywhere else there is much to be criticized, much irrationality. It is easy to fill books with stories of the follies - true or fancied- of the people.
Naipaul is sometimes really funny. The description of the Secretary`s tale could not have been better written from Mark Twain, only that it is true. Typical Indian is to do what the master wants and never ask whether it makes sense! Sweeping the broom from one end of the street to the other and vice versa just for the sake of it!
You will understand a lot about Indian society and how a chaos like this, a chaos of too many people, too many opinions, too many uninspired masters and too many useless regulations works orderly after you read this book. You will realize the criticism of Naipaul when he watches people performing their religious duties, such like puja. The corrupt politician will bring the same givings to the same God as does the victim of his politic. Since the Indian Gods have good and bad characteristics they encompass all principles and competences.
If this is not a good basis for chaos of notions and chaos of spiritual concepts in this wonderland of chaos - mostly friendly chaos! The author wonders with the reader how childlike minded the people are, people who let themselves be dictated by the astrologers. In general, which might be a contradiction, the author flees to idealism when he claims for India a development to more spiritual freedom. This idea is born out of the historic fact that the people have become more and more familiar to the independence of any foreign powers since the creation of the Indian Union. So there seems to be some sort of development which is more than only economic uplift.
The book is certainly an entertaining reading. Especially for those who are no novices as for India. In fact I doubt that you will get more than a certain feeling for India. The real India is only found - how could it else be - when you go by yourself, and please not on a guided tour! Manage to have a cake and eat it too!

India, A Million Mutinies Now was lent to me by a non-native English speaker who had found the book "heavy going" and could not get on with it. The start was also difficult for me but once I got going, it was fascinating.

Although I have been to India on a couple of business trips and have worked several years with many Indian people, I had no well founded idea about the country and its people.

Mr Naipaul, born in Trinidad of Indian origins, retails in this book, his experiences, and those of the people with whom he meets, in a detailed and enthralling way. His style is easy to read and transmitted to me the feeling that I was sometimes present at his "interviews". The enormous success that V.S. Naipaul has deservedly enjoyed over the years, enables him, during this India visit, to meet and speak with people whom the average visitor would not meet and to cover subjects which the average visitor would not consider. Mr Naipaul realises that and takes the time to give his reader the necessary insight.

This book can be strongly recommended as just a very good read but the information about India is an extra bonus.