V.S. Naipaul on India, and Islam in India -
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question - "How do you ignore history?
------------>> But the nationalist movement, Independence movement ignored it. You read the Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru, it talks about the mythical past and then it jumps the difficult period of the invasions and conquests. So you have Chinese pilgrims coming to Bihar, Nalanda and places like that. Then somehow they don't tell you what happens, why these places are in ruin. They never tell you why Elephanta island is in ruins or why Bhubaneswar was desecrated."
"People in India have only known tyranny. The very idea of liberty is a new idea.
Particularly pathetic is the harking back to the Mughals as a time of glory. In fact, the Mughals were tyrants, every one of them. They were foreign tyrants and they were proud of being foreign."
"India has been a wounded civilisation because of Islamic violence. Pakistanis know this; indeed they revel in it. It is only Indian Nehruvians like Romila Thapar who pretend that Islamic rule was benevolent. We should face facts: Islamic rule in India was at least as catastrophic as the later Christian rule. The Christians created massive poverty in what was a most prosperous country; the Muslims created a terrorised civilization out of what was the most creative culture that ever existed."
"India was wrecked and looted, not once but repeatedly by invaders with strong religious ideas, with a hatred for the religion of the people they were conquering. People read these accounts but they do not imaginatively understand the effects of conquest by an iconoclastic religion."
"India became the great land for Muslim adventurers and the peasantry bore this on their back. They were enslaved quite literally. It just went on like this from the 11th century onwards." (source: Economic Times;
www.economictimes.com).
"India became the great land for Muslim adventurers and the peasantry bore this on their back. They were enslaved quite literally. It just went on like this from the 11th century onwards."
On demolition of Babri structure
"Not as badly as the others did, I am afraid. The people who saythat there was no temple are missing the point. Babar, you must understand, had contempt for the country he had conquered. And his building of that mosque was an act of contempt. In Ayodhya, the construction of a mosque on a spot regarded as sacred by the conquered population was meant as an insult to an ancient idea, the idea of Ram, which was two or three thousand years old." (The Times of India, July 18, 1993).
On the attire of the people who demolished Babri structure
"One needs to understand the passion that took them on top of the domes. The jeans and the T-shirts are superficial. The passion alone is real. You can't dismiss it. You have to try to harness it. Hitherto in India, the thinking has come from the top. What is happening now is different. The movement is from below." (The Times of India, July 18, 1993).
On the Taj Mahal
"The Taj is so wasteful, so decadent and in the end so cruel that it is painful to be there for very long." (Outlook, 15 November 1999).
"You see, I am less interested in the Taj Mahal which is a vulgar, crude building, a display of power built on blood and bones. Everything exaggerated, everything overdone, which suggests a complete slave population. I would like to find out what was there before the Taj Mahal." (economictimes.indiatimes.com, 13 January 03)
On Islam
On non-fundamentalist Islam
"I think it is a contradiction. It can always be called up to drown and overwhelm every movement. The idea in Islam, the most important thing, is paradise. No one can be a moderate in wishing to go to paradise. The idea of a moderate state is something cooked up by politicians looking to get a few loans here and there." (The New York Times Magazine, 28.10.01)
On formation of Pakistan
Naipaul considers Pakistan's founding "extremely fortunate" for India as the "religious question would otherwise have paralysed and consumed the state".
"The Iqbal idea that religion wasn't a matter of conscience, that it needed a separate community and society, was a wicked and rather foolish idea."
Naipaul calls Pakistan a "criminal" enterprise. "Here is a Muslim country which after its creation in 1947 promptly became a state of manpower exports. Lots of people came to Britain. The idea of a state for the Muslims began to undo itself very quickly."
Naipaul's advice to every Indian
Naipaul has advised every Indian to make a "pilgrimage" to Vijaynagar (HAMPI) "just to see what the Muslim invasion of India led to. They will see a totally destroyed town."
