VS Naipaul is tone deaf: Girish Karnad

There’s nothing like a literary feud to make a literature festival buzz. It was supposed to be an hour-long “masterclass” by playwright Girish Karnad and ended up being 45 minutes of fireworks at Tata Literature Live!. Instead of speaking about his plays, Karnad attacked Nobel laureate VS Naipaul for being anti-Muslim, tone deaf and an unreliable writer of non-fiction as far as India is concerned.

Karnad asserted that Naipaul “has no idea of how Muslims contributed to Indian history.” He questioned the authenticity of Naipaul’s non-fiction writing and said, “He really doesn’t pay much attention to the details of the texts he studies.”

Much of what Karnad said has been said before by Naipaul’s critics, like William Dalrymple who wrote a long piece outlining the flaws in Naipaul’s arguments about Indian history in 2004. Like Dalrymple, Karnad spoke at length about Naipaul’s problematic retelling of the fall of Vijaynagar (in 1565) in A Wounded Civilization.

Naipaul was awarded the Landmark Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award earlier this week. Karnad questioned the festival’s decision to do so and asked how the festival justified valorising him despite Naipaul’s leaning towards the right-wing in the matter of the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992. “My question is to organisers who keep giving him lifetime awards as though what he has to say about a large section of the Indian population, about a whole rich period of Indian history which was our glory, doesn’t matter.”

When festival director Anil Dharker told Karnad it wasn’t polite of him to use the platform the festival had provided him like this, Karnad replied, “I don’t have to be polite. I’m following in the footsteps of Naipaul.”