Write On Target

Naipaul, Nobel laureate from Indian origin speaks about world writer. He is concerned about emerging situation where people are not writing on target. He abuses all literary greats starting from Jane Austen to Charles Dickens. He goes to extent even telling that they do not know to compose a paragraph. He did almost similar things few years back when he accused E M Forster of being sexual predator and described Irish author James Joyce as incomprehensible.

Naipaul speaks his brilliant mind when he is in England. What happens to his brilliance when he comes to his origin. He has never spoken like that on Indian soil about Indian author. Unfortunately, Indians are forced to read the books written by all rich and mighty. There is a specific section of people who have taken the responsibility to write in India. We have Khushwant Singh and Shobhaa De. Khushwant had been writing from his childhood days. He passed with third division in all his college education but it did not stop him from writing extensively for Indians. He spread his views all across this country. He could do this because he had power to spread his words. Even today when he writes book like ‘The company of Women’, he is able to achieve his popularity. Ravi of penguin India does editing for him even if he may not have time for other creative skills. Similarly, Shobhaa de has taken responsibility to write for us Indian even if she is poor in selecting topics, subjects, contents and mediums. She may go to any extent to prove herself a success in this materialistic world. She gets all the help from her Penguin friends.

India is a country of Khandan and Gharanas. Every successful person belongs to some big Khandan or famous Gharanas. The person may belong to any field. The few famous names could be Kapoor Khandan and Khans’ in Bollywood, Gandhi and Nehru in politics, Tata and Birlas in business, Jaipur Khandan and Lucknow Gharanas in dance and music, south Indian as scientists, Bengalis as diplomats, Gujaratis as merchants, Sardars as hard workers and so on and so forth. After independence, especially the change of initial Congress Government after Emergency during 1979, things started changing fast. The biggest turning point in India took place in the year 1991 when the country economy was quietly transferred from government controlled economy to open economy. Within 5-6 years, changes occurred and they were magnificent. The changes during these times surpassed the changes taking place across the world in positive direction. The common people started emerging from mud like a lotus. Deve Gowda became the Prime Minister. Dhirubhai Ambani and Narayana Murthy made billions in one generation. India could produce Miss Universe and Miss world. That was a time; I was at the brink of my capability crossing my 30s. The changes taking place in India and across the world, America or Europe, gave me hope that a person could provide some input to humanity without belonging to Khandans or Gharanas. Can we think and write on target? Can we concentrate on the issues which affect large section of humanity? Are we not little more selfish writer? Selfish to self pains, self appraisals, self developments and self growth and so on…. How self is selfish? The result of selfishness is what happening in India.

But in literary sense, it is still being predominantly dominated by few selected people of specific origin as far as ideas and writings are concerned. How far these can go? Indian publishers still believe that no other Indians can write something good. There is hardly any solid ground to have this belief. This may vanish in hardly few years time now. Why should we have few struggling writers like Arundhati Rai or Jhumpa Lahiri or Chetan Bhagat? If India has to become a develop nation by 2020, ideas have to emerge from common man like Raina or Munaf of cricket. We have to give a chance to the common thinker to write on specific issues. A common man should not struggle hard to get one article published forget about getting a book published. The situation has to improve. Indian publishers have to come of this feudal mentality. They have to generate confidence of free India. They have to search and give chance to new emerging writers. We have to have many writers, authors and thinkers on Indian soil. Why not Naipaul comments on this? If he at thinks something about origin, he must comments on Indian writers and publishers too!