Read Online The Writer and the World by V.S. Naipaul - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: V.S. Naipaul
Ads: Link
deals for food with the United States—comes as a punishing lesson in the ways of the real world. It is as if successive invasions, by the reaction they provoked, that special Indian psychology of dependence, preserved an old world which should have been allowed to decay centuries ago; and that now, with independence, the old world has at last begun to disintegrate.
The crisis of India is not political: this is only the view from Delhi. Dictatorship or rule by the army will change nothing. Nor is the crisisonly economic. These are only aspects of the larger crisis, which is that of a decaying civilization, where the only hope lies in further swift decay. The present frenzy cannot be interpreted simply as a decline from stability. That was the stability of a country ruled by magic, by slogans, gestures and potent names. It was the stability of a deficient civilization that thought it had made its peace with the world and had to do no more. The present mood of rejection has dangers. But it alone holds the possibility of life. The rejection is not religious, even when its aims are avowedly the protection of a religion. It does not attempt reform through self-perfection. The
mode
is new, and of the new world.
It may be that I exaggerate; that I forget the holy man putting his thumb in his mouth and pulling out a prick, to applause; that I forget the pious who, in a time of famine, pour hundreds of gallons of milk over a monumental idol while an Air Force helicopter drops flowers. But magic endures only when it appears to work. And it has been proved that man, even in India, can no longer walk on water.
1967
The Election in Ajmer
I
W HOM TO VOTE FOR?
the English-language poster in New Delhi asked. And when, in mid-February, a fortnight before the first polling day, I went south to Ajmer in Rajasthan, it seemed that the half a million voters of this Indian parliamentary constituency, part urban, part rural, part desert, had a problem. The Congress had won freedom for India, and for more than twenty years, through four election victories, it had ruled. Now the Congress had split. The split had led to this mid-term election. But both sides continued to use the name.
Kangrace ko wote do
, the posters of both sides said: Vote Congress. And the same saffron, white and green flag flew from rival campaign jeeps: the jeep the favoured campaign vehicle, authoritative and urgent in the dusty streets of Ajmer, among the two-wheeled tonga carriages, the battered buses, bicycles by the hundred, handcarts and bullockcarts.
Both sides would have liked to use the old election-winning Congress symbol of the pair of yoked bullocks. But the courts had decided that the yoked bullocks shouldn’t be used at all; and both sides had devised complicated and naturalistic symbols of their own. A cow licking a sucking calf: that was the Congress that was with Mrs. Gandhi, the Prime Minister. A full-breasted woman at a spinning-wheel (the fullness of the breasts always noticeable, even in stencilled reproductions): that was the old or Organization Congress, that had gone into opposition. Both symbols, in India, were of equal weight. The spinning-wheel was Gandhian, the cow was sacred. Both symbols proclaimed a correct, Congress ancestry.
It was in some ways like a family quarrel, then. And, as it happened, for this Ajmer seat the candidates of the two Congresses were related. There were five candidates in all. Three were independents and of no great consequence. “They are only contesting by way of their hobby,” a man from the Election Department said. “They will put down their securityof five hundred rupees. They will get a few thousand votes and forfeit their deposit and sit quietly, that is all. It is only their hobby.”
The main candidates were Mr. Mukut Bharvaga and Mr. Bishweshwar Bhargava. Mr. Mukut was standing for the old Congress and all its opposition associates. He was the uncle of Mr. Bishweshwar, who was defending his seat for the
The crisis of India is not political: this is only the view from Delhi. Dictatorship or rule by the army will change nothing. Nor is the crisisonly economic. These are only aspects of the larger crisis, which is that of a decaying civilization, where the only hope lies in further swift decay. The present frenzy cannot be interpreted simply as a decline from stability. That was the stability of a country ruled by magic, by slogans, gestures and potent names. It was the stability of a deficient civilization that thought it had made its peace with the world and had to do no more. The present mood of rejection has dangers. But it alone holds the possibility of life. The rejection is not religious, even when its aims are avowedly the protection of a religion. It does not attempt reform through self-perfection. The
mode
is new, and of the new world.
It may be that I exaggerate; that I forget the holy man putting his thumb in his mouth and pulling out a prick, to applause; that I forget the pious who, in a time of famine, pour hundreds of gallons of milk over a monumental idol while an Air Force helicopter drops flowers. But magic endures only when it appears to work. And it has been proved that man, even in India, can no longer walk on water.
1967
The Election in Ajmer
I
W HOM TO VOTE FOR?
the English-language poster in New Delhi asked. And when, in mid-February, a fortnight before the first polling day, I went south to Ajmer in Rajasthan, it seemed that the half a million voters of this Indian parliamentary constituency, part urban, part rural, part desert, had a problem. The Congress had won freedom for India, and for more than twenty years, through four election victories, it had ruled. Now the Congress had split. The split had led to this mid-term election. But both sides continued to use the name.
Kangrace ko wote do
, the posters of both sides said: Vote Congress. And the same saffron, white and green flag flew from rival campaign jeeps: the jeep the favoured campaign vehicle, authoritative and urgent in the dusty streets of Ajmer, among the two-wheeled tonga carriages, the battered buses, bicycles by the hundred, handcarts and bullockcarts.
Both sides would have liked to use the old election-winning Congress symbol of the pair of yoked bullocks. But the courts had decided that the yoked bullocks shouldn’t be used at all; and both sides had devised complicated and naturalistic symbols of their own. A cow licking a sucking calf: that was the Congress that was with Mrs. Gandhi, the Prime Minister. A full-breasted woman at a spinning-wheel (the fullness of the breasts always noticeable, even in stencilled reproductions): that was the old or Organization Congress, that had gone into opposition. Both symbols, in India, were of equal weight. The spinning-wheel was Gandhian, the cow was sacred. Both symbols proclaimed a correct, Congress ancestry.
It was in some ways like a family quarrel, then. And, as it happened, for this Ajmer seat the candidates of the two Congresses were related. There were five candidates in all. Three were independents and of no great consequence. “They are only contesting by way of their hobby,” a man from the Election Department said. “They will put down their securityof five hundred rupees. They will get a few thousand votes and forfeit their deposit and sit quietly, that is all. It is only their hobby.”
The main candidates were Mr. Mukut Bharvaga and Mr. Bishweshwar Bhargava. Mr. Mukut was standing for the old Congress and all its opposition associates. He was the uncle of Mr. Bishweshwar, who was defending his seat for the
Similar Books
