• Trashing common truths
• Appreciations
• Pressing on
• Call me Amare, says maestro
• Open up to the future
• A silent killer lurks amongst us
• Essential guide
• A joint problem
• Menopause - it's only a pause
• Dump the mumps
• Medical news and events
• Tragic lessons
• Letters to the editor

Trashing common truths

I was reading a review of your most recent book, Glass Palace, which said that it was one of the most devastating attacks on colonialism in recent times, or words to that effect. First, do you agree with this assessment?

Well my feeling is that considering that all that colonialism did, it is remarkable how little of it is written about. The view that we get of colonialism is given by Paul Scott and all that, but of the damage that it did, very little has been written… Especially in a country like Burma where you really feel the country was profoundly damaged by colonialism…

It's one thing to write in a historical novel a devastating attack on colonialism, but is there any intellectual ferment then, in your mind about the extension of this colonialism today? How far are you intellectually excited by the contemporary manifestation of "colonialism, in the guise of the neo-liberal economy'' and so forth?

First, I would say that my book is not an attack on colonialism. My book is about Indian and Burmese lives under colonialism. Some of the people in my book are for colonialism, and some are very much against it, which I think is the reality. But, my book is not a rosy portrait of anything. It's not a rosy portrait of nationalism or colonialism or any of these things. I think my only effort when I'm writing is to be truthful. Inasmuch as that involves presenting as I see it, a truthful picture of that history, it can be seen as an attack on colonialism, but I for myself I'm not interested in writing an ideological book as such. But yes, for me, one of the reasons why it was important also for me, to be truthful about that colonial past is because I think, the India that I grew up in (… and also the Sri Lanka that you grew up in) also inherited that colonial past. You can see that many of the people who have been influential in India also have in their own way a colonial ambition; so my critique of that would be prior to my critique of British colonialism. 

You are saying emphatically that India does have colonial ambitions? 

India began as a successor state to a colonial empire. Lot of the people were absolutely straight carry-overs from the colonial regime. Everybody notices this you know; you can see some aspects of a colonial ideology remain and I feel very critical of those things….and I feel that they should be critiqued. As much as they are inheritances of the wider idea of colonialism, I think those should also be critiqued. I think what you were talking about is this globalization thing, though?

More or less. I mean, do you have in some way an ideological underpinning to what you write? 

I think one of the lessons that you learn when you grow older is that power has its own dynamics. In one way or the other power does its work. So it is true that today we do not have a colonial empire ruling us, but it is a fact that the power of the West over us is perhaps even greater than it was. 

That's about exactly what I was talking about ….. But, if I may put it rather brutally, in your mind do you let things rest at that, or is there any sort of acute intellectual excitement or rebellion in your mind about that reality?

It seems to me that what has happened and what is happening is real, that you can't turn the clock back. If we look forward to changing the situation of the world as it exists now, it mustn't be from the point of view of regionalism or from the point of view of isolating ourselves. It must be in some sense addressing the question of how we create a common cause with people everywhere else. I think when I see these new protests against globalization and so on, I find it very hopeful, you know. I think there are many young people in the West and elsewhere who have been equally uneasy about this kind of domination. I think one of the things that people realize, as a fact is that people like us who are in the Third World are relatively powerless. Inasmuch as change is going to come, it has to come from inside them, you know, inside powerful countries. 

I'm sure you would have been asked this many times, but in the context we have been talking, tangentially at least, what is it that really motivated your retraction of the nomination of your book for the Commonwealth writers prize? Is it a statement of protest or do you feel uncomfortable being a recipient of a Commonwealth award?

It's all those things. I don't see myself as a Commonwealth writer, that has no meaning to me. I do write in English but I am an Indian or a South Asian or whatever you choose to call it. But I don't see that my work should be appropriated to a project of glorifying the Commonwealth. I have no interest in that. I feel that this whole business of promoting English, is a project that makes no sense to me because English is already dominant. It is completely dominant. It has absolute hegemony. What more can you want for English? I think as a writer it is so important to recognize what is happening outside English.

You don't also feel the patronizing element in the Commonwealth writers prize/project?

It is completely patronizing. Would a British writer like Martin Amis for instance, be considered a Commonwealth writer? We are somehow Commonwealth, you know and it just makes no sense. The whole thing is completely incoherent. Why should the Commonwealth which is a political entity give a literary prize? Is there a NATO prize? Is there a SAARC prize? The whole thing makes no sense to me. 

We were talking of cricket before the conversation began, so to use the cricket idiom, I don't like to be seen as bowling full tosses to you. But, even though it might be the obvious question, it should have been very clear to a lot of people that this sort of prize is very patronizing, but how come these things exist? People take these things for granted also, and nobody questions these things….

You see, this is the thing. People don't realize. When I did retract, many of my friends have (on the other hand) accepted the Commonwealth prize, allowed their books to be entered for the Commonwealth prize and I don't blame them. One of my friends who won one of the Commonwealth prizes, said, "You know, it gets my book noticed, it gets my book read.'' The fact is that there are so few people who are actually promoting books from our part of the world, that you can't afford to turn your back on it. I can't condemn them. I've been there in their position, so they have to judge what is right for them…. One of the real issues in retracting the nomination for my book, is the common sense acceptance of the world as it is. Everyone just accepts it, "Well it's there, why make such a fuss about it.''

Thinking aloud, if this was your seminal work and you were just going to be recognized as a writer, would you have acted differently?

You know, I can't answer that, because very likely I would have. Maybe I would have maybe I wouldn't have. I don't know. To me the Commonwealth prize has always been a bit silly. I think at some point in my life I would have just ignored it. Sometimes it made me confront the anti-colonial struggles that people undertook and the struggle they went through. In a way this book was not just my book. I talked to these people, I travelled around. As I met them, and I saw the pain they live through, I felt that I would be betraying them, you know.

On that subject, there are layers and layers of characters and plot in your novels, and how is the research all done? Is it mostly done on the move, in situ, or mostly gleaned from books…

It's a bit of both, but in the last one The Glass Palace, I did do a lot of reading and thinking, but also, …….you know, one of the things about Asians who were dominated by empires, is that they themselves write very little. Actually most of the history is preserved in memory, so you do actually have to meet the people. That's what I did. I travelled around villages meeting people, in Thailand, in Burma, so I literally met thousands of people , and it was a lot of work…

Having said what you said, do you at anytime feel that you are almost uncomfortable writing in English? 

I feel a deep ambiguity about it. Again language is an element and an aspect of power. I didn't for example choose to got to Royal College when I was in Sri Lanka for two years, but my parents put me there. Then I had no option of learning Bengali which was my mother tongue. In that sense I do feel a deep ambiguity about it, but I feel that there are two ways in which you can respond to that ambiguity. One is that you can be silent, and the other is that you can explore those ambiguities as best as you can. That's what I do you know. I don't feel that silence would be a good position; that's the option that most have opted for, and it's not been a good option. I do it in full recognition of myself as an Indian, as a Bengali, as a bi-lingual person, I recognize that a large part of my work is influenced by writing in Bengali. 

On the other hand do you feel that language is just a vehicle, and to put it plainly that it doesn't matter which language you write in. Speaking for myself, at times I think language is just a vehicle for communication, but do you thing language is something somehow more that that? 

I think it is a complex question you know, I think there is a sense in which language is a vehicle, but I think language does carry with it certain ways of seeing the world. I think this became very clear to me when I was writing the Glass Palace. Just to give you one example, in all the books that you read about the conquest of Burma, it is never called a "conquest.'' It is called a pacification. (Laughs). Whenever you hear of, say, the British, you never hear of an occupation, you hear of a Raj. It is as though it was a legitimately constituted government. In those ways you know language does serve this political function of legitimizing the past. When I was writing this book, I found therefore that it's a struggle. I had to rename things for myself as it were, and it is a necessary struggle that we engage in all the time. To some degree you make language into your own vehicle, but you have to be intensely aware of what you are doing.

So in this context of imperialism and all that, when I was in India last year, I saw India differently than from the vista that obtains here. One thought that struck me was about the so called heroes of Indian independence, Gandhi, Nehru and all these people. To me they also seemed, especially in the time I spent there, as part of this whole colonial project in one way. Though they secured independence for India , they for instance, did it in a certain way. For instance, why did they elect to remain in the Commonwealth after all that struggle against the dominant power?

So far as belonging to the Commonwealth is concerned, I think that was a political decision they took. Especially when you are a very poor and weak country, you need all the forums that are available in the world, and as a diplomatic forum, perhaps it was useful to them. But my problem is when a diplomatic forum also wants to become a literary forum. I find a real unease with that. But what you are saying in a very broader sense is true. There was a very direct continuity between the colonial regime and these people, I mean Nehru is seen in many ways almost as an Indian Englishman. There was no doubt about the fact that India was shaped and moulded in that way… there was, you know, that direct continuity…. I think as time passes it begins to change.

Well, Nehru is always identified in that way I suppose, but even Gandhi who was identified to be different, was also very casteist and hierarchical in his advocacy of Hindu dominance etc., as opposed to Ambedkhar. Compared to Ambedkhar, Gandhi was very retrogressive, but he was at the forefront of the movement. I don't say you have to condemn the man, but his flaws don't seem to be seen even today in India?

I think his flaws are very much seen. Today in India people are very critical of him. I personally think that Gandhi's contribution was the process of, you know, the non-violent struggle rather than the content of his ideas as such. 

I think again you do also have to remember that in a particular historical circumstance, there are only so many alternatives that are available. Gandhi's ideas may not seem perfect, but in a very important way, he was also attacking upper class prejudices . 

For example, the temple entry. He did undertake all those things. From today's perspective he seems so retrogressive, but in the perspective of the times he was in many ways quite radical and that was why it was Hindu conservatives who killed him. 

It is unfair to pit one writer against the other, but, in many ways do you think for instance that on a broad canvas, Naipaul will be still considered the greater writer, say, compared to you or Rushdie, in spite of the fact that he wrote by way of a certain colonial hangover, almost? Tariq Ali had said that "Naipaul wrote about the dung heaps of India.'' 

I think writing is not like athletics, you know, where one persons runs faster than the other and you can judge it…in that sense there is no objective gold medal….

No, of course not, it's not to reduce it to that absurd level. It's not a case of prowess, but there is some human reference point, register or call it whatever you will, that you can refer writing to. If the ideological underpinning of someone's writing is almost distorted, if it is in some ways projecting a certain retrogressive or colonial point of view, doesn't that writing compare disfavourably?

I personally have to say that I think Naipaul is a very great writer. I mean I disagree with his viewpoints entirely, but …. .for one thing he writes beautiful prose. I also think that there is an aspect of him where he is struggling to tell some kind of truth. It's something that he hasn't left behind. You have to remember that Naipaul of the Buddhist civiliization has triumphed, is today the Naipaul who spends nights in the forest with the Naxalites. I respect that. I think the man is in some way trying to tell the truth about what he sees and what he feels. That's never easy for a writer. But, I respect the fact that he is struggling with it, and I think in his own way Naipaul is a very important writer . Do I think he is the most important writer to come out of South Asia? I don't necessarily think so. But I think this is the wonderful thing about the world of literature as opposed to say sport or athletics. You see, it's like you see a thousand flowers bloom and you can't really compare one flower with another. Each has its own particularity, each has its own specificity, you may like one and you may not like one …. I personally feel I can't be invested in making judgements on other people's work; all I can do is to do what I do, as best as I can……

Would it be different if you were a critic as opposed to a writer?

Of course it would be different of course. If I were a critic I can see why I would want to say this one is this one, or not this …. But that's why I'm not a critic.

Do you think critics are important? Or do you think they are subversive, almost, in some way?

You know, I can't say that I am influenced by any critic, that the criticism I read has had any influence on my writing, it really hasn't….but I think one thing we have to recognize. And I recognize it as a South Asian writer, that the respect that Indian writing gets in the world today and the respect that South Asian writing gets in the world today, has also been won for it by critics. Because I think there are certain critics who have been able to create a position for our work as important as post colonial writing or whatever. They've created a space for our own work, whether it's taken seriously, whether it's judged seriously. If you remember Naipaul's work in the 60s, he always said he never sold over 200 or 300 copies. He is taken seriously now. Nobody can ignore me because I'm an Indian and that wasn't the case 20 years ago. The fact that this thing reversed is not only the work of writers it is also the work of critics, and also the work of other people who are involved in the world of ideas. I acknowledge that, and I accept it, and we all have to accept it. 

Is there some kind of symbiosis between your original discipline as an anthropologist and your current situation as a writer? 

Yes, I think there is. I feel for one thing that anthropology and having studied it made it easier for me to do research. It also gave me a wider set of interests that many writers wouldn't have….that I wouldn't have had otherwise. So in those ways it certainly had an influence on me, but what exactly it was I couldn't tell you. I don't even know myself.

When you go to India, or when you go back to India, you may find that your world may be different to the real India? So how do you find that? Do you feel almost 'rarefied', as compared to the real India or the real Indian? 

No I don't feel that at all. I feel to the contrary, unlike a lot of other writers of my generation who write about cities and who write about city life, that's never really drawn me that much . To some degree the village life of India has always really attracted me. I feel no interest in the popular life of modern India, the World of Coca Cola and Bollywood. You feel the same way about Sri Lanka as I do about India. When you go back to a place that's your own you won't always sit by passing judgement. You won't be saying I'm this; to some degree you have the pleasure of being where you belong as it were. 

What I said was entirely opposite to passing judgment… it's not a question of passing judgement. When you go to India, do you feel "why did I get so detached from this place, isn't this where I belong?'' or something like that? 

I don't feel detached from India at all. I'm there a lot, I don't feel at all detached. On the contrary I feel very much at ease and very much at home. That is not an anxiety for me. 

The reason I asked, is that though it is not as if "you have to be'', you are perhaps uninvolved in the struggles of India, the people's struggles, the economic struggles and all that sort of thing. I am not saying it's mandatory that you have to be involved in these, but that's more the way I was thinking of it….You don't feel that you are, in some way cut away from that brutal reality of India? 

Certainly I feel an aspect of that struggle, the struggle of everyday life if you like, I don't experience in that way. But I think it will be the same if I were living in Calcutta all the time. Or if I were living in Delhi all the time. I mean I don't feel as if my situation is different all the time from people I know in Delhi and Calcutta …. But certainly I have always felt that when they raise a major issue, that you have to respond to it. For example when this nuclear business occurred, I wrote a book about it, really. So when crucial issues arise, I feel I have to respond to them. But at the same time I'm not primarily a political writer.

I don't feel the politics behind my writing. I feel that there comes a time in a writer's life in which they have to understand that the most important thing that you can do for India or for anywhere is to do what you do as well as you can . For me the best example in many ways is Satyajit Ray the film maker, who again worked with a profound dedication to his work. It was not as if he was not responsive to his surroundings, not as if he was always a carrying a banner or joining this march or that march. I think a writer does need to have some distance upon these things. You know the ability to somehow stand outside these things…..

No, I wasn't saying that you should be involved in the political aspect of the struggle, but even in relation to literature as it were, are you involved in Indian life in that way, in the same way that an Indian living there does? But anyway, on the nuclear issue, I'm ignorant on your stand on it. What stand did you take on that?

I think it is a catastrophe. I said it was an absolutely catastrophic development and I feel very opposed to it. Even in 1975 I was still in College but I was opposed to it, and I feel opposed to it now.

Of course I see your point, but in some ways, in some basic and rudimentary ways, isn't this also in variance with what you said earlier about globalization and the dominance of the Western powers. Should it always be that the West can have nuclear weapons, but whenever India acquires it somehow it's wrong? 

This is the whole interesting aspect of the argument on nuclearism in India, which is that it is actually presented as anti nuclear. That's one of the curious things about the Indian nuclear issue, that it is presented as disarmament. My problem with it is this. I don't think the West should have nuclear weapons either. I am absolutely against nuclear weapons anywhere, whether it be in America or England or wherever. In that sense the hypocrisy of the West is completely to be condemned. I have no time for it at all. But it does also seem to me that the idea that there is somehow a magic bullet by which you can become a contender for power with the West, is a complete illusion. 

I think somehow that's one of the dangers of nuclearism, which is that it gives you the impression that because you have this, you are a power in the same way. It seems to be a real delusion because you don't have that power until you can transform your society. That is here that power really lies; it doesn't really lie in setting off a 16 kilo bomb or whatever. If India feels that it is somehow a contender for power with America or China, then it must also include Pakistan, which is the real fallacy of it. 

In terms of a a being regional power, at least, what if India has its own nuclear armoury?

It's not just India which has the nuclear weapons it's also Pakistan, isn't it? So what you are saying is that there should be two regional powers and so what's to prevent Bangladesh or Nepal… or anyone (from acquiring it…)

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