What do you think?
Rate this book
India Essays
Between 1962 and 2006, V. S. Naipaul wrote six essays about his travels in India, some of his finest pieces of reflection and reportage. Approaching India through the residue of Indian culture and the scattered memories of nineteenth-century immigrants, eventually leading to a special understanding of Mahatma Gandhi, Naipaul offers an exceptional and sustained meditation on the country that was never his.
These are essays, full of gentleness, humour and feeling, that take us into the mind of one of our greatest writers.
These are essays, full of gentleness, humour and feeling, that take us into the mind of one of our greatest writers.
- GenresNonfiction
141 pages, Paperback
Published January 20, 2018
About the author
V.S. Naipaul
116 books1,843 followersV. S. Naipaul was a British writer of Indo-Trinidadian descent known for his sharp, often controversial explorations of postcolonial societies, identity, and displacement. His works, which include both fiction and nonfiction, often depict themes of exile, cultural alienation, and the lingering effects of colonialism.
He gained early recognition with A House for Mr Biswas, a novel inspired by his father’s struggles in Trinidad. His later works, such as The Mimic Men, In a Free State, and A Bend in the River, cemented his reputation as a masterful and incisive writer. Beyond fiction, his travelogues and essays, including Among the Believers and India: A Million Mutinies Now, reflected his critical perspective on societies in transition.
Naipaul received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded for his ability to blend deep observation with literary artistry. While praised for his prose, his often unsparing portrayals of postcolonial nations and controversial statements sparked both admiration and criticism.
He gained early recognition with A House for Mr Biswas, a novel inspired by his father’s struggles in Trinidad. His later works, such as The Mimic Men, In a Free State, and A Bend in the River, cemented his reputation as a masterful and incisive writer. Beyond fiction, his travelogues and essays, including Among the Believers and India: A Million Mutinies Now, reflected his critical perspective on societies in transition.
Naipaul received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded for his ability to blend deep observation with literary artistry. While praised for his prose, his often unsparing portrayals of postcolonial nations and controversial statements sparked both admiration and criticism.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 9, 2023
If you are an Indian, reading Naipaul can be like opening wounds that you never knew existed. Naipaul shatters all illusions that an Indian might harbor about himself. He lays it all bare. For many, this might be painful. This could be one reason why Naipaul is not that widely read anymore (his most famous novel A House for Mr. Biswas has a little less than 16,000 ratings on Goodreads, a bit low for a Nobel prize winner). Naipaul's dedication to telling the bitter truth through chastening commentary may have compelled the well-known book recommenders to deliberately obscure him. One Indian journalist made the following remark about Naipaul after his death: "There are writers who pushed the world a little bit more towards its evil side. Nietzsche is one. Naipaul is another." But for some, the bitter truth told in Naipaul’s sharp and crystalline prose can be enlightening and even entertaining. This collection of six essays is a bit of both.
Like a great filmmaker who wants to capture the attention of his audience with the very first frame of his movie, Naipaul comes up with this carefully observed and vivid portrait of India in the first page of the book’s first essay In the Middle of the Journey:
“…. after six months in India my fascination with the big is tinged with disquiet. For here is a vastness beyond imagination, a sky so wide and deep that sunsets cannot be taken in at a glance but have to be studied section by section, a landscape made monotonous by its size and frightening by its very simplicity and its special quality of exhaustion: poor choked crops in small crooked fields, under-sized people, under-nourished animals, crumbling villages and towns which, even while they develop, have an air of decay. Dawn comes, night falls; railway stations, undistinguishable one from the other, their name-boards cunningly concealed, are arrived at and departed from, abrupt and puzzling interludes of populousness and noise; and still the journey goes on, until the vastness, ceasing to have a meaning, becomes insupportable, and from this endless repetition of exhaustion and decay one wishes to escape.”
The accuracy of these lines in describing the Indian experience and the feeling of desolation that these powerful lines invoke is enough to give the lie to the hundreds of feel good small-town movies churned out by various film industries across India. There is no respite from this country, wherever Naipaul goes:
“In this vast land of India it is necessary to explain yourself, to define your function and status in the universe. It is very difficult.”
I know many frustrated urban Indians, irritated to the point of hysteria due to nosy questions from their relatives and acquaintances, who would identify with this quote.
I am sure the Indians who got on a plane and escaped India forever but still longs for it while they experience the comfort, safety and loneliness of the West can identify with lines like this:
“India is an ache for which one had great tenderness, but from which at length one always wishes to separate oneself”
Not just those Indians. But also, the Indians who can retreat into their gated communities or posh neighborhoods within India.
The Election in Ajmer is about the election campaign battle between two factions of the Congress party that pits uncle against nephew. A new fundamentalist Hindu party - the Jan Sangh is eager to get into bed with one of the factions. Naipaul lends a respectability to the two main election candidates by addressing them with the title Mr. Mr. Mukut. Mr. Bishweshwar and so on. The candidates are almost certainly total scumbags in their political lives. But the easy and callous derision that educated middle-class Indians express towards Indian politics is not for Naipaul. Like he did in A Million Mutinies Now Naipaul carefully observes the lives and campaigns of the two candidates and bestows them with a respectability as if suggesting that they are the creaking engines that is necessary to keep this wounded and wretched land going.
He occasionally pulls them down with caustic remarks like this one about the Jan Sangh leader Mr.Sharda – “….. his party was now committed to the protection of the sacred cow, as it was committed to the creation of an Indian nuclear armory. There was no inconsistency”. These lines made me recall the beginning of Beyond Belief, a book about Naipaul's travels across Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia - “Imaduddin was a lecturer in electrical engineering at the Bandung Institute of Technology. He was also an Islamic preacher.”
In the last two essays Looking and Not Seeing: the Indian Way and India Again: the Mahatma and After, Naipaul analyzes the literary output and lives of Gandhi, Nehru, Nirad.C.Chaudhuri and Rahman Khan (a contracted laborer in Surinam). Naipaul had already analyzed Gandhi and Nehru in depth in An Area of Darkness. He chastises them for not really describing their lives and surroundings as students in England. Naipaul feels that there is no evidence that these great Indian leaders were observant people based on their autobiographies. He connects this to a wider Indian problem of not really seeing things around them and being ignorant about their own history and present state of their country. This is mostly true. As a middle class Indian, I have often seen demonstrations and protests on Indian roads and not been able to deduce what they are about or what is really going on. I have often felt that a tourist or an outsider might know more about what is going on in my own country.
I have not read the work of either Chaudhuri or Khan so I will not comment on them. But some of Naipaul’s commentary seemed to be a bit far-fetched. The writer Roberto Bolano did an appreciatory take down of Naipaul's far-fetched commentary after Naipaul wrote that the reason Argentinian men brag about “taking women up the ass” was due to their ancestors who fornicated with sheep.
I will end this review with this quote from the essay The Second Visit:
“Manners deteriorate. Each Indian wishes to be the only one of his sort recognized abroad.”
Hahaha! This quote tears into many wannabe Indians (me included) who try to undermine each other by bragging about reading long lost American novels or listening to obscure rock bands. Maybe that is why many of them stopped reading Naipaul.
Like a great filmmaker who wants to capture the attention of his audience with the very first frame of his movie, Naipaul comes up with this carefully observed and vivid portrait of India in the first page of the book’s first essay In the Middle of the Journey:
“…. after six months in India my fascination with the big is tinged with disquiet. For here is a vastness beyond imagination, a sky so wide and deep that sunsets cannot be taken in at a glance but have to be studied section by section, a landscape made monotonous by its size and frightening by its very simplicity and its special quality of exhaustion: poor choked crops in small crooked fields, under-sized people, under-nourished animals, crumbling villages and towns which, even while they develop, have an air of decay. Dawn comes, night falls; railway stations, undistinguishable one from the other, their name-boards cunningly concealed, are arrived at and departed from, abrupt and puzzling interludes of populousness and noise; and still the journey goes on, until the vastness, ceasing to have a meaning, becomes insupportable, and from this endless repetition of exhaustion and decay one wishes to escape.”
The accuracy of these lines in describing the Indian experience and the feeling of desolation that these powerful lines invoke is enough to give the lie to the hundreds of feel good small-town movies churned out by various film industries across India. There is no respite from this country, wherever Naipaul goes:
“In this vast land of India it is necessary to explain yourself, to define your function and status in the universe. It is very difficult.”
I know many frustrated urban Indians, irritated to the point of hysteria due to nosy questions from their relatives and acquaintances, who would identify with this quote.
I am sure the Indians who got on a plane and escaped India forever but still longs for it while they experience the comfort, safety and loneliness of the West can identify with lines like this:
“India is an ache for which one had great tenderness, but from which at length one always wishes to separate oneself”
Not just those Indians. But also, the Indians who can retreat into their gated communities or posh neighborhoods within India.
The Election in Ajmer is about the election campaign battle between two factions of the Congress party that pits uncle against nephew. A new fundamentalist Hindu party - the Jan Sangh is eager to get into bed with one of the factions. Naipaul lends a respectability to the two main election candidates by addressing them with the title Mr. Mr. Mukut. Mr. Bishweshwar and so on. The candidates are almost certainly total scumbags in their political lives. But the easy and callous derision that educated middle-class Indians express towards Indian politics is not for Naipaul. Like he did in A Million Mutinies Now Naipaul carefully observes the lives and campaigns of the two candidates and bestows them with a respectability as if suggesting that they are the creaking engines that is necessary to keep this wounded and wretched land going.
He occasionally pulls them down with caustic remarks like this one about the Jan Sangh leader Mr.Sharda – “….. his party was now committed to the protection of the sacred cow, as it was committed to the creation of an Indian nuclear armory. There was no inconsistency”. These lines made me recall the beginning of Beyond Belief, a book about Naipaul's travels across Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia - “Imaduddin was a lecturer in electrical engineering at the Bandung Institute of Technology. He was also an Islamic preacher.”
In the last two essays Looking and Not Seeing: the Indian Way and India Again: the Mahatma and After, Naipaul analyzes the literary output and lives of Gandhi, Nehru, Nirad.C.Chaudhuri and Rahman Khan (a contracted laborer in Surinam). Naipaul had already analyzed Gandhi and Nehru in depth in An Area of Darkness. He chastises them for not really describing their lives and surroundings as students in England. Naipaul feels that there is no evidence that these great Indian leaders were observant people based on their autobiographies. He connects this to a wider Indian problem of not really seeing things around them and being ignorant about their own history and present state of their country. This is mostly true. As a middle class Indian, I have often seen demonstrations and protests on Indian roads and not been able to deduce what they are about or what is really going on. I have often felt that a tourist or an outsider might know more about what is going on in my own country.
I have not read the work of either Chaudhuri or Khan so I will not comment on them. But some of Naipaul’s commentary seemed to be a bit far-fetched. The writer Roberto Bolano did an appreciatory take down of Naipaul's far-fetched commentary after Naipaul wrote that the reason Argentinian men brag about “taking women up the ass” was due to their ancestors who fornicated with sheep.
I will end this review with this quote from the essay The Second Visit:
“Manners deteriorate. Each Indian wishes to be the only one of his sort recognized abroad.”
Hahaha! This quote tears into many wannabe Indians (me included) who try to undermine each other by bragging about reading long lost American novels or listening to obscure rock bands. Maybe that is why many of them stopped reading Naipaul.
July 7, 2018
A delightful set of six essays written between 1962-2005 by Naipaul. If you have read Naipaul's India Trilogy, one or two essays might seem very similar. But there are a few new gems in this one. "Election in Ajmer" is a stand-out. Naipaul follows the monumental 1971 National elections (When Indira Gandhi split Congress into two and called for early elections) in Ajmer constituency. True to his style, he captures the essence of the entire election in just one constituency - A family drama where the two factions of Congress are fielding an Uncle against his nephew, the old order Vs the new order, the established order Vs Indira Gandhi!
The rest of the essays are about his observation of the various phases of the post-independent Indian narrative. They are scathing and empathetic in equal measures.
The rest of the essays are about his observation of the various phases of the post-independent Indian narrative. They are scathing and empathetic in equal measures.
January 26, 2020
Whenever I finish a Naipaul I have this urge to reread it. There was so much in there. Each paragraph offering insights and epiphanies. This is a slim little volume of essays. A lot to unpack and hopefully revisit in the future. I specially liked the Jamshed into jimmy essay and how he describes the westernized Indians. It’s painfully truthful even today. Some things don’t change do they.
October 28, 2025
writer was hugely disappointed when he visited India first time in 1960s. his grand parentes had migrated to Surinam. i dont know what his reaction had been if he visited today's India.. i guess he would still be unhappy. his analysis of Gandhi was interesting.
May 26, 2026
Some essays are good like the one about Election in Ajmer. But some essays have wayward structure and flow.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews