Writer Patrick French talks about India and Bollywood

He first came to Mumbai in 1996. That was also his first visit to India. He wanted to write about India.

But celebrated British writer and historian Patrick French did not expect the call for ban on his book Liberty or Death — India’s Journey to Independence and Division.

His take on Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s role in the Independence Movement wasn’t taken too kindly. The fear of being looked at as an outsider crossed his mind when he started out, but being married to an Indian woman has given him a different perspective.

“Back then, there was a feeling that people were obliged to be more respectable to the father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi and they felt that I was too sympathetic to Jinnah. But today if somebody wrote a book on 26/11 nobody would be bothered in the slightest bit. I think it is to do with what is acceptable at a particular time,” says French.

The author, whose latest book India: A Portrait grabbed attention worldwide, feels that after 25 years of spending time in India, he’s able to write about the country’s social structures relatively accurately.

His new book charts personal stories to tell a larger truth. Talking about an evolving India, French says, “There is a great sense of self assurance and national confidence. Crucially, despite the inequalities that you see today, hundreds of people have been taken out of extreme poverty since the economic reforms in the early ’90s. That is a very important change because with economic progress comes social progress.”

French, who has written biographies earlier, says that you have to have an idea of what the person represents, where they stand historically and why they’re important.

His authorised biography of VS Naipaul was tagged ‘confessional biography’. But aren’t all biographies confessional? “No. VS Naipaul had been extraordinarily honest about his past misbehaviour and what surprised people was that he could talk so openly about his mistakes and failings,” points out French, who was in town to attend a literary evening organised by Literature Live.

The writer had interviewed actor Shreyas Talpade about how he got started, but in the end it didn’t fit in with the structure of his new book, so he had to leave it out.

Ask him if he’d ever write a Bollywood star’s biography and French pauses before he adds, “I think the problem with writing a Bollywood biography is that there’s too much of a promotion of a sympathetic idea of that person. If I were to write a book on Amitabh Bachchan it has to be the complete picture at every level in the way that Naipaul’s biography was. To me, a biography which is a PR for a person has very little value.”

French has his reason for saying so, as he explains, “A fan would want to know the intimate, underlying story. If you’re writing about a film person, it’s very unlikely that you’d be able to do that. Also, the Indian tradition of biography is very different from that of the British one; it is mostly a hagiography here.”

French admits that he experiences ‘writer’s procrastination’. “It’s different from writer’s block. I need to make a cup of tea, answer emails, check Twitter, do my washing before I start writing,” he smiles.