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India: A Wounded Civilization
by V. S. Naipaul
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf (1977-01)
ISBN: 039440291X
EAN: 9780394402918
Binding/Media: Hardcover - 191 pages
Edition: 1st
SKU: 4AB1-123-7-1008
Condition: G
Comments: EX-LIBRARY with typical stickers and markings; Protective mylar cover attached by yellowing tape; Minimal pencil markings passim; Dust jacket shows very slight shelfwear; Pages toning slightly with age. Corners and ends of spine lightly bumped; Tight copy. *International Buyers Welcome!* (except for prohibitively heavy items, as noted) - Satisfied customers in over 40 countries! We ship quickly and guarantee satisfaction. Your purchase helps support a U. Chicago student
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
In 1964 the author Naipaul wrote "An Area of Darkness", his semi-autobiographical account of a year in India. Two visits later he came to write "India: A Wounded Civilization" in which he recapitulates the feelings that the vast, mysterious and agonized continent aroused in him.
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Customer Reviews
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for a true understanding of India
Rating  (5)
Date: 2010-02-25
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I have made 2 trips to India and never really understood the country until I read this book. Naipaul is as much a philosopher as a writer, and gives the reader the cultural background of Indians which is completely different from the western outlook. A must for anyone who wants to know the effect of the caste system and Hinduism on the world view (or lack of it) of Indians. Naipaul doesn't white-wash anything. He describes the problems of this troubled country without the rose-colored glasses that so many western people look through when they talk about India.
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India will go on
Rating (5)
Date: 2009-12-10
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
In 1975, India was not finished, it was wounded. It would recover and go on, as it had gone on for thousands of years. This sentence, India will go on, must have impressed Naipaul. In fact he opens not one but two chapters with this quote from a novel by R.K. Narayan.
This is typical of Naipaul's prose. Starting with someone else's words, he superimposes his own voice on theirs and creates what, to my mind, must be the finest contemporary English prose around. Through it, we experience not one person after another, but a whole cast of characters all in layers. Naipaul interviews an engineer who takes him to a village where he is introduced to a money lending landlord and his tenants. In one paragraph we are exposed to many relationships. Naipaul's and the engineer's, then the engineer's relationship with the powerful landlord who could forbid his tenants to talk to the him thus making him unable to carry out his land improvement projects. There's the relationship between the tenants and the landlord, between Naipaul and the tenants, and so on. It is almost like an opera which, unlike theater, remains coherent even if everyone is talking all at once.
Economy is a mark of great art. The title makes this point too. India was wounded, not dead. But during Indira Ghandi's Emergency, it was in critical condition. And the point is made in four words.
India has a long history of art and culture but their natural development was largely interrupted during the British Raj. The forms have remained but the conscious sense of continuity was lost. What remains is the here and the now. The people no longer remember their past but at any moment they feel its presence around them.
I've never been to India so cannot say if Naipaul's picture of it is true or faithful. I suspect it is, but that is immaterial. It is certainly an accurate presentation of what he himself thought and felt as a foreign-born Indian returning to the land of his ancestors, and that is how we ought to measure an artist's achievement, by his ability to make us feel precisely what he wishes us to feel.
Vincent Poirier, Tokyo
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Naipaul sucks !! but made some good points..
Rating  (3)
Date: 2009-11-14
3 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
Could it be that Mr Naipaul who got a scholarship to do BA in English from Oxford always writes to please a country which has given him shelter, hope and recognition. We can only speculate on that. After all Mr Naipaul is not a technologist, scientist or Engineer who was badly needed by the country he finally settled in.
The book is quite outdated. World has moved on. Reading, a lot of things he described in the book is a total waste of time. Casteism has declined to a large extent. Ms Mayawati rules and puts her own statues in the state of Uttar Pradesh. I have seen lot of so called upper castes touching her feet.
See, India is a country of diverse set of people and is always in a flux. Things are constantly changing. What was our strength once (vegetarianism, non violence etc), became weakness later and is now our strength again. True that middle ages were brutal for India, in the sense that coming from the Age of Buddha and Ashoka and Jains etc, Indian society became very passive and it was ill prepared for the attacks and looting from desert religions of middle east. But look what those places in the mid east are going through now in the information age. In the information age it is not your muscles, but mind that will count.
If India has castism, the west has racism. So just when I was all set to denounce Indian caste system, I am reminded of sad and sorry racism in the western countries. When a moronic Berlusconi comments about Obama being a tanned president of USA, it reminds you of how proud and full of vanity the whites of western countries have been. World was different when whites lived among whites and browns lived among browns and blacks lived among blacks. Now whites, blacks and browns all live together. And any stupid focus and self love of one's skin color would be lethal. Only true meritocracy will rule, whether it is India or USA.
So why I give this book 3 stars instead of 1 star. Because as Kabir Das, the great Indian philosopher poet and saint once said: We should always keep a critic with ourselves who always keeps reminding you of your shortcomings and that gives you a chance to improve and I do think Naipaul made some very good points in the book. I have seen these problems in Indian society myself. There is too much focus on conformity and less on individualism which stifles creativity and original thought.
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Ravings of a demented mind
Rating  (1)
Date: 2009-08-04
1 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
The second book in his Trilogy about India. This book is set in the mid to late 70s that is in when the country is in the throes of Emergency.
In terms of writing style it is Vintage Naipaul, no doubts there. But when it comes to his observations, I must say that they are superficial and skin deep. He forms his opinions about the entire civilization and religion through a visit to a Bombay Slum. He even goes to the extent of discrediting an entire empire, the mighty Vijayanagar empire.
Some of his quotes, Hindu civilization has been in a state of decay, through repeated conquests, the people have become docile and are glad to be subjects of someone, the concept of leadership and original thought was lost long ago. Some of the points he makes to discredit the empire, the empire is a manifestation of this decline and decay. The empire was started in the mid 14th century by a prince who was sent to Delhi, converted to Islam and sent back to the South. He however decided to reassert himself and declared himself Hindu.
The rulers believed and indulged in human sacrifices. So pretty much in every page, there is a negative connotation and aspect that is highlighted. The positive aspects, of which there are plenty, are not mentioned at all. It is as if he arrived in India with a pre-determined agenda, to bad mouth and discredit anything and everything about the land of his ancestors. Was his intention to shake the people and make them see reality? To make them live and perform to a higher standard, the western standards that he grew up and is living with?
Nothing and Nobody escapes his scathing criticism, not even the Mahatma. He cuts no corners here in his attempt to put him down (I must say he failed miserably there). His observations after having read the autobiography. No mention is made or details given of his stay in the UK or South Africa. So he expected him to glorify or speak glowingly about that greedy imperialist power that lorded over even his native Trinidad.
Coming to think of it, I believe they handed him the Nobel just to shut him up. Here is a living and breathing example of identity crisis. A guy straddling two boats and knows not what his true personality is. Drunk on western thoughts (which he mistakes for Philosophy as there is not such thing as western philosophy). There is only one word that can be attributed to the west and that is Materialism and that is one word that defines everything that flows thereafter even religion. There is not Philosophy here.
The author conveniently forgets that the same Indian Ancestral Genes flows in his veins and make him the personality that he is (inherited from another vitriol spewing forefather perhaps) having migrated as Indentured Laborers, the same coolie genes have been passed on to him and that shows abundantly in the negative prose, always seeing the glass as half empty, brimming with pessimism and nitpicking on all the small flaws that are inherent in every human being. Not all the the accoutrements, the three piece suit, the pipe, the pseudo-western intellectualism do not a westerner make.
All in all a shallow minded imbecile and awarded a Nobel by some like minded imbeciles at the Academy. Takes one to recognize one I guess.
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Will not recommend
Rating  (2)
Date: 2009-05-06
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I am Indian and could not agree with Lukas Jackson's comments more. I would only like to add one other comment though. I personally do not believe in any organized religion and would love to hear an objective criticism of Hinduism and Islam. But this book did not do anything for me. In fact, what bothers me the most is Naipaul's language. It is very condescending and imperialistic. I would not recommend this book to anyone.
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