Brief Account of V.S.Naipaul’s Description of India in His...

V.S.Naipaul’s â€Å"An Area of Darkness† is a semi-autobiographical account of a year he spent in India in 1964 in which he describes the country from his outlook. The book is written in the first person narrative voice and Naipaul uses descriptive passages very well to outline his themes. The title ‘’An Area of Darkness’’ refers to India and many of the negative aspects of the Indian culture is highlighted and Naipaul seems to see the whole bleakness of the culture at every stage. Naipaul gives the reader a vivid insight into the various sects and cultural systems dominating India. Naipaul analyses the whole colonial process and there is a copious references to the Hinduism and Muslims and Buddhism and he paints some vivid pictures of the†¦show more content†¦Naipaul described of many squatters he saw in India. He wrote of people squatting and defecating beside railway tracks, along river banks, on the streets, never looking for cove r, rarely with any sense of embarrassment. Naipaul says that even the Indians when presented with public lavatories were as likely to use the floor as anything else. He says that Indians do not see these squatters, and certainly do not see the problem. He adds that the interest in sanitation are the concern of latrine-cleaners, not the concern of other castes, and to clean up after oneself would be unseemly, that unnecessary labour outside the required actions of one’s caste was degrading. Though obviously not something Naipaul saw personally he did spent time discussing Gandhi, relating to it the issues of public sanitation and caste. Naipaul speaks about Mahatma Gandhi and how he was able to look at India squarely and see its problem in a totally objective manner. Gandhi, having spent twenty years in South Africa, saw India through an outsider’s eye. He saw sanitation linked to caste and that caste was linked to a disregard for others as well as inefficiency and a n eedlessly and hopelessly divided country, all of which lead to weakness and the rule of India by foreigners. Naipaul says that Gandhi tried repeatedly to attack the psychology of caste, to show that