‘I tried to take Naipaul on his own terms’

Award-winning British writer Patrick French is the author of Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer, Liberty Or Death: India’s Journey To Independence And Division, Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History Of A Lost Land, and most recently, an authorised biography of VS Naipaul, The World Is What It Is. In Mumbai to promote his new book, he talks to G Sampath about Naipaul, Tibet, and the subject of his next book, India. 

First Younghusband, then India’s freedom movement, Tibet, a Nobel-winning author — how do you select the subject for your books?
For me, all of these subjects link up together because I think the most interesting thing that happened in the 20th century was the end of the colonial era, which happened in many different ways in different countries. In Tibet, it was the product of the Chinese civil war. In India, you have all the consequences of Partition. In Naipaul’s case, the end of the colonial period in Trinidad, as India moved towards Independence, meant that the old structures that had made that society work, all fell apart. And so in a way, he is the ultimate, deracinated post-colonial writer. He was somebody who tried to throw off the circumstances of history — he is triangulated between the Caribbean, Britain and India. He is inside and outside all of these cultures. And for me, this made Naipaul a uniquely interesting biographical subject. If you are writing about a typical person who is Indian or British or American, you would have a simple narrative thread. But in Naipaul’s case, every thread is broken; you have to construct something totally fresh. 

Were you at any point intimidated by your subject?
I was never intimidated by Naipaul though a lot of people are afraid of him. But yes, he often responds to people being nervous of him by using that as an opportunity to push them around in some way.

Naipaul’s politics have been controversial, to say the least. How did you reconcile the differences between your politics as a writer, with that of Naipaul’s?
I tried to put my own political views and prejudices aside. Liberalism or idealism, which marks aspects of my political life, can themselves be forms of prejudice. With Naipaul, I tried to take him on his own terms. I didn’t approach him ideologically at all. I sought to represent his point of view, but even more importantly, I tried to discover the origins of particular positions that he had taken. For example, if you look at his attitude towards Africa, or his attitude towards the Muslim world, a lot of that has roots in the kind of society that he grew up in, in Trinidad, where each ethnic group was competing to assert itself. So his views on race and ethnicity are coming from an origin very different from those of somebody who grew up in India, or Britain.

The way India handled the Olympic torch relay in Delhi, with excessive security, do you think we have been fair to the Tibetans?
If you look at India’s position, they’ve given hospitality to 100,000 Tibetan refugees, they’ve given the Dalai Lama a home in exile. I think it is completely unrealistic to imagine that India’s foreign policy in relation to China would be governed by a concern for the Tibetan people. I think India has a very difficult line to tread, and it’s understandable that they take the approach that they do. 

Of late, there’s been a resurgence of interest in Gandhi, Subhas Chandra Bose and other leaders of the freedom movement. How would you explain this sudden interest?
When a country establishes itself as an independent nation, you go through a period of grand ambition. You had Nehru’s dream, and he tried to implement that in the 1950s, and early 1960s, and when half a century has gone by, you go through a process of putting the founding fathers aside, and concentrating on the present. Inevitably, when you begin to feel disillusioned with your current crop of leaders, you turn back and say, well, what was Gandhi’s dream for India, what did Bose want for India, and you go back to these figures. A lot of it also has to do with the films being made on these leaders, that too spurs the research and the interest that you see at the moment. 

What is your next book on?
It is about the changes in India in the last 20 years. It will be told through individual stories, a kind of social history. I feel quite optimistic about India at the moment. The idea of a country being able to push itself forward so rapidly, and cope with all the kinds of fractures and spin-offs that this creates, is really remarkable. One of the things you notice now is that there’s no longer that touchiness about the colonial period. Instead, you just have a new form of identity where India is in many ways envied around the world.

Like your Tibet book?
A bit lighter than the book on Tibet. I feel quite optimistic about India at the moment, whereas I feel deeply pessimistic about Tibet.

What's behind your optimism?
Extraordinary things have happened in India since I first came here in 1986, the difference is monumental. The idea of a country being able to push itself forward so rapidly, and cope with all the kinds of fractures and spin-offs that this creates, is really remarkable. One of the things you notice now is that there's no longer that touchiness about the colonial period, or the immediate post-colonial period. Instead, you just have a new form of identity where India is in many ways envied around the world. I think there has been a generational shift now. Compared to the 1970s and 80s, the sensitivities related to the colonial period simply become irrelevant. 

Many in India, especially the Left, wouldn't agree with you.
If you are a farmer who is so badly in debt that your livelihood is destroyed, or if you are from an industrial sector that has been made over-competitive by the opening up of the Indian market, then India Shining wouldn't mean much to you. One of the things that is neglected by the people on the Left, who oppose many of the consequences of globalisation and economic reforms, is that, though there is a substantial chunk of the Indian population that is in as bad an economic situation as they were 30 years ago, there are about 150 million people who have been lifted out of extreme poverty. That is a remarkable statistic. Just because some people are still doing badly, it is wrong to neglect the importance of this social and economic shift.

Getting back to Naipaul, setting aside your professional interest as a biographer, how would you characterise your personal relationship with Naipaul?
Naipaul had the tendency to reject people, to withdraw his friendship. There are several instances of people being 'disappeared' from his life. Therefore I was always careful not to presume on that friendship. I always maintained some degree of distance, because I knew that when I came to write the book, I would only be able to do that properly if I had some distance from him. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to be as objective as I have been. I am sure you've noticed that I very rarely sit in judgment on him, I simply present the facts as they are.

So you'd say you are in no danger of being 'disappeared' from his life.
Well, there is always a possibility. If you look at his life, you'll find many examples, such as Theroux and several others. Let me put it this way: Naipaul is someone who can't be second-guessed. He's an unpredictable person, and so I am always aware of his unpredictability.

Before you started working on this book, you would have had a certain idea in your head about the man. Did your view of Naipaul change during the course of writing this biography?
Before I took on this project, I knew him only slightly, had met him only a couple of times. He has a reputation as a villain, and so when I discovered the ways in which he'd behaved badly I wasn't particularly surprised. But having said that, when you consider the early period of his life, I found a lot of reasons to feel sympathetic towards him. The one thing that was a shock, was how tough his life had been in 1950s London. When he tried to get a job, he was told he had the wrong sort of face. Or when he tried to get accommodation, he couldn't get it. He didn't have enough money for food. The extent of that struggle, in 1950s London, was something he had never spoken about before, even though it was an experience similar to what millions of others went through. He's always separated himself from that and made out as of he won the scholarship to Oxford and thereafter made himself into a great writer. That struggle was quite a surprise to me.

sampath@dnaindia.net