Sunday, April 20, 2003		Lead Article

V.S. Naipaul and Pico Iyer’s engagement with the religion and its people

by Rajnish Wattas
THE writer and the world have a symbiotic relationship. While the former gives us his world-view; he in turn is also a creation of the world. It’s thus interesting to compare the common literary engagement of two prominent writers of the West of Indian origin: Pico Iyer and V. S. Naipaul, with Islam. Both are travel writers, essayists and novelists of great repute. And, interestingly, both are of Indian parentage and are pedigreed Brahmins! While Naipaul is a literary colossus, a Nobel laureate, nearing 70, Iyer is a younger person creating lighter tremors on the ‘literary Richter scale.’ However, he enjoys worldwide fame. The commonalties end here for their writing styles and personas are distinctly apart. While the older writer is perceived as an intense, acerbic personality; often holding centre-stage with controversial, wounding remarks and ruffling social feathers; the other is known as a gentle, pacific, and a reclusive person immersed in philosophical and spiritual quests. Is it any wonder that their respective personalities extend to their varying hues of concerns and writings also? Iyer’s literary excursion through Islam— Abandon— comes at the momentous time of Iraq war – preceded by America’s Afghanistan action and the 9/11 trauma. Naipaul is a writer whom most writers love to hate for his ‘I-told- you-so’ attitude. But none can challenge the significance of his sour views and bitter truths. His are the concerns of a global interpreter of human maladies and the struggles of both the individual and societies to come to terms with their unsettled destinies. His is not the voice that soothes but sears. But he is always honest — brutally honest.

Sir Vidia Naipaul

His formidable reputation as a masterful observer, a ‘finder-out of stories,’ as well as a magnificent teller of them was confirmed by his two major works on Islam: Among the Believers and Beyond Belief, in which he attempted to interpret the ethos of the Islamic diaspora.

The central message of Beyond Belief, an intricate weave of stories told to Naipaul by Muslims living in Indonesia, Iran and Pakistan, is "‘Islam is in its origins an Arab religion. Everyone not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert ... A convert’s worldview alters. His holy places are in Arab lands; his sacred language is Arabic. His idea of history alters." This is certainly a very limited and debatable inference. Although to be fair, Naipaul in a disclaimer clearly clarifies his role as merely a ‘manager of the narrative’ and not giver of an opinion.

"Perhaps too much politics is read into Naipaul’s travel narratives," says Geoffrey Wheatcroft in an attempt to dispel the alleged bias in Naipaul’s scathing and disturbing accounts of India and Islam especially. "By recognizing truths that the rest of us would prefer to avoid, Naipaul has put himself at an angle to the civilized society."

On the other hand, Iyer’s fascination with Sufism – the mystic Islam; gives you a healing touch; a badly needed reassurance in the present strife-ridden world that the quintessence of all faiths and religions is the same: evolution of the human soul and its surrender to the Supreme.

The difference of writing styles of Iyer and Naipaul are akin to the former looking at the world with an impressionist painter’s eye: aesthetically anew, fresh; but always with a feel-good factor – like Claude Monet’s works. And Naipaul has the gravitas and disturbing intensity of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica.

Iyer has written five books besides Abandon. The favourites are two collections of essays and articles, Falling off the Map and Tropical Classical. His wizardry lies in the fact that he can introspect on small matter of fact subjects like the humble comma or meditate on a topic like silence and carry them with equal ease, joy and cause enormous delight of reading.

And all of them delight and inform, because the perceptions are dew-fresh and innocent. "One loves the precision and music of his prose and his witty, insight-compacting turns of phrase. With extraordinary empathy and insight, he limns how cultures collide, carom and cohabit on the road — how a dance of dreams, desires and preconceptions ensues every time a visitor and a local meet," says Don George.

As a stylist, Naipaul’s writings have an, "architecture to the prose that, in its simplicity and design is classical. The words stacking, the sentences stacking up, the paragraphs stacking up, have an air of profound inevitability. Good readers could spend years unlocking their peculiar wisdoms and secrets."

Iyer is a compulsively romantic and sensual – he even finds some romance in banana republics (Cuba and the Night). Naipaul’s oeuvre has hardly ever had a love story; but for in his belated and latest novel Half A Life. While a democratic, civilised world order, certainly needs free speech and plain-speaking conscience keepers; we could do with a greater and wider understanding of other cultures, faiths and beliefs. And writers can create those literatures of truth and peace. We need both our Iyers and Naipauls to tell their stories.