File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2001/postcolonial.0110, message 382


From: "Ismail Talib" <i_talib-AT-email.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 21:05:54 +0800
Subject: Re: Naipaul calls Forster 'a nasty homosexual'


Hi Salil!

Sorry for not replying to your message earlier: my email system has been playing funny tricks on me. I thought I had sent the following message to you and the list a few days ago, but I now realised that it wasn't posted. It does seem to me that you are waiting and eager to get 'a piece of my mind' so to speak... so here goes...

> 
> What, then, is Ismail's point in reminding us of Naipaul's views on 
> homosexuality? Is Naipaul wrong for criticizing Islamic societies? Is 
> Naipaul wrong for criticizing homosexuality? Or is Naipaul wrong for being 
> Naipaul and holding his views?
> 

What, then, is your point, Salil, in asking me these questions?? That there is nothing 'wrong' in Naipaul being prejudiced against Islam? That there is nothing 'wrong' in his disgusting views on homosexuality?? (Well -- you see -- some Islamic and other countries are even more prejudiced against it -- so, what's wrong with my beloved Naipaul being prejudiced against, and making abhorrent remarks on, homosexuals?? -- some 'logic', Salil!!). May I add -- I not only find Naipaul's views on the above truly abominable, but also his biased and warped views on India, Indians still living in India, 'Negroes', the Third World in general, etc. (Naipaul's capacity to hate, especially when it comes to the black and brown peoples of the world, is simply inexhaustible!). 

As for your position on Naipaul, I am reminded here of the words on Naipaul and India by the fine English-language Indian poet Nissim Ezekiel, whom I had the great pleasure of meeting in the late eighties. With the appropriate substitutions of the word 'India', the following words of Ezekiel can fittingly be applied to you:

'How right Mr Naipaul. How wrong India. And that is what no doubt, he expects the reader to feel. It is a pity.'

As for the Nobel prize -- I have not commented on that, have I? -- I do not think, frankly speaking, that Naipaul is good enough a writer, even if one leaves his biased and abominable views aside (which to Mr Tripathi, are possible to separate from his 'literary' writings! -- I have been a student of literature long enough not to hold such a belief any longer!, especially when it comes to a writer like Naipaul, whose literary output also consists of pretentiously 'important' non-fictional works). Moreover, there are dozens of other writers who are better candidates: Achebe, Ngugi, Brathwaite, Rushdie, Farah, Coetzee, Wendt... to name just a few, and looking only at writers in English from the 'poco' world (although Ngugi has stopped writing creatively in English -- I hope this is not the reason why this great writer in an African language has never won it?). Indeed, if we go outside English, many more names emerge: Jorge Amado, Ismail Kadare, Hugo Claus, Pramudya Ananta Tur, Carlos Fuentes, Tahar ben Jelloun, amongst many others. Of course, I have not mentioned Janet Frame, and a good number of other fine writers from the white settler colonies and from the UK and US: native, immigrant, or white...

And talking of English writing in India itself, one of the biggest regrets of many in postcolonial literary circles, was that it was not awarded to the late Narayan -- or to one of the two other writers who form the great triumvirate of an earlier generation of Indian writing in English: Rao and Anand. You may think that these three writers are not as 'good' as Naipaul -- a view which I disagree -- but if one looks historically, and more comprehensively at their achievements, such as the establishment of English as virtually an Indian language for literary expression, their contribution is immense and more wholesome than anything Naipaul has given or can give. And I have not talked about fine English-language Indian poets such as, in addition to Ezekiel, A.K Ramanujan, Jayanta Mahapatra, Shiv Kumar and others...

Sticking to linguistic breakthroughs in literature which deserved the Nobel prize at the very least, let me pick one more example -- of a great experimental writer who is close to Naipaul -- so that the basis for comparison may be more clearly seen. I am talking here, of course, of the (almost forgotten?) writer called Sam Selvon -- like Naipaul, of Indian descent and from Trinidad, but who, sadly, could no longer win it, as he is no longer with us. One of Selvon's monumental achievements was the establishment of a creole-based English as the language of fiction. He did this in that marvelous first novel of his, *The Lonely Londoners* (1956). Of course, there had been experiments with creole earlier in fictional literature (or with non-creole-based dialects and pidgins). However, in the third-person novel in English, no one had used creole as consistently, with greater awareness of the audience, or with as much aesthetic success as Selvon. This was a revolutionary breakthrough in the language of the novel in English, and its reverberations are still being felt throughout Caribbean literature in English, and indeed, throughout world literature in English.

Salaam

Ismail

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