India: A Wounded Civilization

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India: A Wounded Civilization, by V. S. Naipaul, is the second book of his "India" trilogy, after An Area of Darkness, and before India: A Million Mutinies Now.

It was on his third visit to India, prompted by the Emergency of 1975, that Naipaul came to write this book. In this work he casts a more analytical eye than before on Indian attitudes while recapititualting and probing the feelings previously aroused in him by this vast, mysterious and agonized continent. What he saw and heard on this visit – evoked so superbly and vividly in this work reinforced in him a conviction that India, wounded by many centuries of foreign rule, has not yet found an ideology of regeneration.Many reviewers have described it as a work of fierce candour and precision.

Mr Naipaul, though born in Trinidad (an island in West Indies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela), has Hindu ancestors who belonged to India. Hence at a personal level the book is a generous description of one man’s complicated relationship with the country of his ancestors, which has withdrawn into itself as a result of long years of foreign rule. Mr Naipaul wishes that his ancient homeland would come to terms with the past and move on towards the future.

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