Girish Karnad criticizes V S Naipaul for being Anti-Muslim

Girish Karnad, a Kanadda writer and winner of Kanadda Jnanapith Award created a storm at Mumbai Literature Festival on Friday when he directly attacked Indian origin Nobel Laureate V S Naipaul.

He was invited to speak about his journey of Literature and Plays, but surprisingly 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.

V S Naipaul was not among the audience during the incident. 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.”

Karnad said the organisers had conveniently failed to mention that Naipaul, in fact, was not an Indian. While he admitted that “Naipaul is certainly among the great English writers of our generation”, Karnad said Naipaul had painted even the Taj Mahal in poor light.

“Of the Taj, probably the most beloved of the monuments in India, Naipaul writes, ‘The Taj is so wasteful, so decadent and in the end, so cruel that it is painful to be there for very long. This is an extravagance that speaks of the blood of the people’,” Karnad said.

In a recent book, Naipaul takes up for examination the autobiography of Munshi Rahman Khan, who emigrated to Suriname at the end of the 19th century, and contrasts it with Gandhi’s.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, the historian, has reviewed the essay, and it doesn’t take him much effort to establish that Naipaul could only have read a third-hand translation of the text.

“It is as if a reader in Gorakhpur was reading Naipaul in Maithili after the text had passed through a Japanese translation.” That doesn’t prevent Naipaul from commenting even on the style and linguistic usage of Rahman Khan.

The question surely is, by giving him the Lifetime Achievement Award, what statement is being made by the Award-givers. As a journalist, what he writes about India is his business. No one can question his right to be ignorant or to prevaricate.

One of the first things Naipaul did on receiving the Nobel Prize was to visit the office of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) in Delhi. He who had earlier declared that he was not political, “that to have a political view is to be programmed”, now declared that he was happy to be politically “appropriated”

It was then that he made his most infamous remark: “Ayodhya,” he said, “is a sort of passion. Any passion is creative. Passion leads to creativity.”

Salman Rushdie’s response was that Naipaul was behaving like “a fellow-traveller of Fascism and (that he) disgraces the Nobel Prize.’

“Naipaul is a foreigner and he is entitled to his opinion. But why give an award to a man who calls Indian Muslims ‘raiders’ and ‘marauders’? I have Muslim friends and I feel strongly about this,” he said.

Not everyone in the gathering, however, was willing to buy Karnad’s arguments. When the session was thrown open to the audience, Naipaul’s friend, writer Farrokh Dhondy, rose to ask a question. But Karnad refused to entertain any queries from him.

“This is like a court where the prosecution has been presenting its case without giving any opportunity to the defence,” Dhondy remarked in anger.

Festival director Anil Dharker was disappointed by the way the session had turned out. “We gave you the chance to speak about your life in theatre, but you never spoke about it. Instead, you chose to go on about a writer who has won the Nobel Prize for literature,” Dharker said, addressing Karnad from the audience. “When we gave him the award, it was because of his entire body of work and not any one particular book. To have taken this up here was not polite.”

But Karnad was unapologetic. “But I am only following Naipaul. Besides, I came here to conduct a master class and I would have anyway spoken about this,” he retorted.

Soon after, the session was brought to an abrupt end. Speaking about the incident later, Dhondy said Naipaul never made the remarks about Ayodhya Karnad had attributed to him. “In fact, his wife, Nadira, is a Muslim and so is his adopted son. By not letting me quiz him, Karnad imposed censorship, something that he himself vehemently opposes,” Dhondy said.

Meanwhile, V.S. Naipaul has flatly declared he would no longer write about India or its people.

The Trinidadian-British Naipaul, of Indian origin, also broke down when asked a question about his significant literary creation “A House For Mr. Biswas”, penned over five decades ago.

As author Farrukh Dhondy asked him about the “big novel” published way back in 1961, and how he started his literary career, Naipaul, 80, first did not reply and then broke down.

“I have told this story so many times, but it is very moving…,” he trailed off on the query about the book based on the life of father.

Intervening, his wife Nadira, who was present in the audience, requested Dhondy to proceed to the next question, at the well-attended Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest, where he (Naipaul) was conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award late Wednesday night.

After that, Naipaul engaged in a moving discussion on the challenges of travel writing, his early struggle as a budding author, his experiences and exploration of India, and the death of his pet cat Augustus, presented by Dhondy last year.

“My background is Indian and I have always been interested in it (India),” he said on his decision to travel in India in 1962 for his next book “An Area of Darkness”.

“When I started writing, I wanted my experiences to stay with me… I didn’t want the time to pass… the book was based on my internal discovery of India,” he said.

Naipul then shocked and saddened the audience with his next remark. Saying he has written three books on India – two novels and one essay “as thick as a book”, he declared he would not write on it any longer.

“I have written enough,” he said.

The Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LifFest with master classes, literary sessions, workshops and performances opened Wednesday and will go on till Nov 4.

Top Indian writers and literary figures and experts from different fields will be speaking on variety of topics, while there will also be performances on plays or dramas by leading literary figures.