In India, the Ayodhya judgement has reinvigorated a debate over whether historical scars are atrophying the present. There are those who can see nothing but festering sores, and one can’t help question their psychological health. The Masque of Africa… stirs up such questions too. Of course, it also provides rich fodder for all those who have been calling VS Naipaul a misanthrope and an Orientalist (again a psychologically intriguing mix) for years. His project is to discover and delineate traditional African beliefs; all he picks up are traumatised signs of an Africa incapable of ?neutralising? bad history. Some may see beauty in ?keeping the past and all the gods close?, not Naipaul. His gaze only latches on to fear and misery.
For example, consider South Africa. This year, the country hosted the football World Cup to booming cheers, with around half a million foreign visitors. In one of its most expensive acquisitions ever, Wal-Mart has agreed to buy South African retailer Massmart Holdings for $4.6 billion. India’s biggest mobile-phone operator made a sustained bid to take over South Africa?s MTN. HSBC is in talks to buy Nedbank. The country’s president happens to be a polygamy enthusiast. Now consider, what would you make of a man who thought that the ‘truth’ of polygamy subsumed all else? When he sees the straight lines of industrial buildings around the capital, Naipaul dismisses these as ?the style of another continent, another civilisation?. When he visits the slums, performing the magic-chase that brands Masque like a two-bit road film, he finds these a great disappointment too.
?The people of South Africa had had a big struggle. I expected that a big struggle would have created bigger people, people whose magical practises might point the way ahead to something profounder… Here was only the simplest kind of magic which ended with itself, and from which nothing could grow.? Amidst all the brickbats that Masque has attracted, a few accolades really stand out. One concerns Naipaul?s truth-telling, the honesty that often sets an exceptional author apart. This one has offended Indians, Pakistanis and so many others with a regularity that has become almost endearing in certain quarters. And, after all, world knowledge would be so much poorer if every social scientist and travel writer was confined to saying just good things about his or her subject.
To make the obvious comparison, no matter how many people Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has offended over the years, few can contest its significance convincingly. But this is too flattering a comparison. As Chinua Achebe (whose literary star has ironically waned in tandem with Naipaul’s) famously wrote, ?While Conrad gives us an Africa of malignant mystery and incomprehensibility, Naipaul’s method is to ridicule claims to any human achievement in Africa.? Where Conrad had projected a kind of majestic grandeur, Naipaul could only see something pathetic. Again, sympathisers say wait, how about the value of Naipaul implicating himself in the said pathos?
He confesses how his age makes travel hard for him, how he fears being overcharged and often admits to getting royal treatment. But it’s silly to claim that any of these autobiographical insertions can balance the ruthless sweeps with which he damns an entire continent. In Ghana, he meets someone who declares, ?Being born in Africa is like being born in ignorance.? Naipaul encouragingly notes that this African seemed to have a gift of analytical thought, which had come down to him from a Danish ancestor. Talk about black skins, white masks.
In Arunachal Pradesh, researchers have recently discovered a new language. It’s called Koro. This discovery matters. It wouldn’t have taken place without conscientious, empirical data collection. This, too, is a flattering comparison. Naipaul doesn’t deserve it. Not because he didn’t discover a new language or religion during his African journey, but because he treats those that he does encounter with such ennui and sometimes outright, premeditated contempt. When he meets the pygmies in Gabon, he declares that it was very hard to arrive at a human understanding of their ways, to see them as individuals. Perhaps they weren’t individuals! Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay must have known a friendlier gaze.
Naipaul’s fine observation, his gift for noticing all that others miss, is often cited as a saving grace. In Nigeria, he finds himself in the middle of a street market. Hawkers are selling colour pictures, fake designer sunglasses and fake designer watches, clothing et al in clear plastic bags. This could be Connaught Place. Or Times Square. There are no Nobelworthy details here.
Only clich?s.
But this critic has saved the worst of Naipaul’s clich?s for the last. Walking among the poor of Lagos, he finds people who would send their children to hawk or trade rather to school, as happens at slums across the world. This can be frustrating. But as always with Naipaul, frustration immediately translates into an obnoxious, outmoded judgment: ?You couldn’t talk to them about poverty alleviation. You couldn’t do anything for them; and they bred and bred.?