“THE GRAND SOLITARY” NIRAD C. CHAUDHURI*
Dr. B. Parvathi
“This very small man, who ... was jeered by
street urchins ... towers above his contemporaries as one of the intellectual
giants India has produced in recent years”, writes Khushwant Singh about the
‘scholar extraordinary’ Nirad C. Choudhuri. ‘He is gifted with a phenomenal
memory. His knowledge of just about everything worth knowing is encyclopaedic.
His analysis of historical events is dispassionate and at times cruelly
objective”, he also adds. Nirad Choudhuri was born on November 23, 1897 at
Kishorganj in East Bengal. His father was a lawyer and his mother was an
uncompromising puritan. He grew up in
an intellectual environment. The family moved to Calcutta in 1910. He topped
the University in his B.A. examinations. His ambition of becoming an academic
was not fulfilled due to his loss of nerve during the M.A. examinations. For
the following sixteen years he suffered “poverty, want and humiliation”. He
took up clerical job he hated and was fired for not doing well. He worked as a
clerk in the Military Accounts Department and also served as Secretary to Sarat
Chandra Bose. He migrated to Delhi to pursue his ambition as a writer and
journalist. He worked for the AIR as a military and political commentator. In
1951 the publication of The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian in
England brought him recognition and fame. He made England his home in 1970 where he continues to live with his son.
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian which declared him as a literary tour de
force took him to the notice of the Director General of All India Radio. The
Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting B. V. Keskar, Khushwant
Singh writes, who did not read the book beyond its dedication, issued a blanket
order to all publicity departments of the government forbidding them from
accepting articles by Nirad C. Chaudhuri. Later when the Finance Minister T.T.
Krishnamachari wanted a tract written on the plight of Hindus fleeing from East
Bengal, Nirad C. Chaudhuri was the right man to choose. The ban on him was
lifted. When Khushwant Singh related to him what transpired between himself and
the Finance Minister Nirad C.
Chaudhuri reacted typically.
Nirad did not look pleased. “So the
government has decided to lift its ban on me”? he asked. ... But I have not
decided to lift my ban against the government”, he said. The very same man
responded very differently to Khushwant Singh reportedly stating that the best
Indian writer in nonfiction was “Without a doubt Nirad C. Chaudhuri….A bitter
man, a poor man. He doesn’t even own a typewriter. He borrows mine a week at a
time”. Nirad C. Chaudhuri in the opening pages of The Continent of Circe
writes: “Khushwant Singh told me that he had never made the statement in the
form and spirit in which it was reported .... Of course, I took his word for it”. He not only borrowed the machine
again but also gratefully accepted the present of a new typewriter. In The
Continent of Circe he refers to himself as a man without social position and
money. For being a writer, with his tongue in cheek, laments:
Why did I write? What sin to me unknown
Dip me in ink, my parents’ or my own? These
are two examples which show the unusual and unpredictable response of the
writer in almost similar situations. In all his books The Autobiography of
an Unknown Indian (1951), A Passage to England (1959), The
Continent of Circe (1965), The Indian Intellectual (1968), To
Live or Not to Live (1970), Hinduism Culture in a Vanity Bag, Clive of
India, Max Muller Scholar Extraordinary and the recent book The Three
Horsemen of the Apocalypase Nirad Chaudhuri continues to be a provocative
writer.
The prime theme and subject matter of Nirad
Chaudhuri’s writing is without a trace of doubt India and Indians in the
cultural, religious and social ethos. There is an overpowering quest - one
might like to call it obsession - for India. India an ancient land, India the
enigma, India the colony and India in its present context of diversity and
unity has never failed to attract attention. Jawaharlal Nehru sees the glory
that is India in his Discovery of India. The almost poetic
reconstruction of Indian culture has no resemblance whatsoever to Nirad C.
Chaudhuri’s estimate of the country. Raja Rao, the writer declares that ‘India
is not a country’ ... ‘it is a perspective’. E.M. Forster’s A Passage to
India, in fictional terms, tries to show the land and its people from the
Westerner’s understanding. It has also attracted the Nobel Laureate Octario Paz
to write In Light of India recently.
Of all these writers the two expatriates
Nirad C. Chaudhuri and V.S. Naipaul have responded in very strong terms to the
Indian reality as perceived by them. Naipaul in India - A Wounded
Civilization stands as a very severe critic of the country. To Nirad
Chaudhuri Indian reality, past and present, in all its aspects is a running
theme with which his mind is in constant conflict. It is not difficult to
analyse what is at the root of his preoccupation. He suffered much in his
personal life and observes that there is nothing ennobling in suffering. His
scholarship, learning and historical bent of mind prompted him to analyse the
Indian social scene past and present in which effort he is at his provocative
and outrageous best.
Nirad C. Chaudhuri kept no notes of his
invitation trip to England. But his phenomenal memory enabled him to record his
impressions and opinions in the book A Passage to England. Like many men
of his generation who went to England in pursuit of higher education, Nirad
Chaudhuri did not go to England. Visiting the country about which he read so
much must have been to him an impossibility and a dream. This long cherished
desire was fulfilled by an invitation from the B.B.C. Therefore, when he set
foot in England Nirad Chaudhuri was thrilled like a school boy. The book makes
this very apparent.
The climate, landscape and the country of
England seemed to him like a dream. He writes that people from the tropics in a
cold country are amazed by the coolness and soft colours. They tend to become
less observant. But the tropics have the opposite effect on the Westerner
because of which he becomes irritable, arrogant and impatient. Impressed by the
English landscape, he writes: “English landscape, cultivated green pastures
over centuries while in India men wage a relentless fight against nature”.
Although the book is about England, Nirad Chaudhuri unconsciously draws up
comparison between England and India at every stage in all aspects.
As a person used to the variety and range of
dresses in India Nirad Chaudhuri found the English people’s dress to be unusual
because it made all the people look alike. In India the working class, middle
class, the rich and officials are made distinct by their dress. Perhaps it is
the cold climate of England that created an impression of uniformity. In the
West, he says, people have to brace themselves against cold while in the
tropics the heat makes people indolent. He states that Venus of Cyrene and
Venus de Milo evoke feelings of a mother than mate, burning all desire in
contrast to Hindu erotic sculpture. He compares the silence of the crowds to
the eternal babble and noise in India where talking is as common as sunlight.
He observes that we Indians talk because we cannot work much and self-advertisement
is forced on us by the urge for survival. He admires the English habit of not
speaking about themselves and their position, for keeping their work and social
life apart; he admires their polished politicians. Poverty, in our sense of the
term does not exist in England because their poor man’s flats are almost akin
to the luxury flats in Delhi.
Regarding religion Nirad Chaudhuri remarks
that Christianity is not involved in financial transactions while our
religiosity covers every aspect of money making including the dishonest and the
violent. The only aspect of English life which did not appeal to him was its
attitude and flexibility in love and marriage. The English people’s increasing
loss of touch with religion due to industrialism and democracy and their priggishness
about sport also caused him concern.
It becomes clear on reading A Passage to
England that Nirad Chaudhuri’s unreserved appreciation of England and its
people stands in contrast with the shame that accompanies Indian noise,
incessant talk, dishonesty, indolence, wild rivers, starved cows and religion;
yet at the root of this strong criticism of India lies a deep love of the
country. Prof. Iyenger is right when he says: “The truth about him seems to be
that he is at once more Indian than most Indians and more English than many
English men”.
Nirad Chaudhuri wrote The Continent of
Circe, An Essay on the Peoples of India neither as a traditional
Hindu nor as an Anglicized Indian, but as a person with insight, an insight
which comes with unpleasant experiences. Westerners - observers, experts and
economists have made an El Dorado of India while novelists also failed in
having accurate knowledge about it. India to him is a land of extremes. He
writes: “I would say that no man can be regarded as a fit citizen of India
until he has conquered squeamishness to the point of being indifferent to the
presence of fifty lepers in various stages of decomposition within a hundred
yards or not minding the ubiquitous human excreta everywhere, even in a big
city”. To him shielding oneself against filth is the first condition of
understanding one’s life.
Nirad Chaudhuri objects to the use of
‘Indian’ and prefers the term ‘Hindu’ for the people of India. ‘Hindu’ to him
is a term like American or European. The Hindus or Aryans came from Europe, the
fair men became brown Indians to become the ‘victims’ of the Continent of Circe
- the Indian subcontinent. He says that colour prejudice in India can be
traced back to the settlers of European origin. It is to him their original
sin. ‘Varna’ means colour and the ancient Hindus were greatly afraid of
‘Varnasamkara’, a change of colour, which has come to be understood as
degeneration of caste.
Regarding Hinduism Nirad Chaudhuri says that
it is a term coined by the ‘Orientalists’ for a way of life known as ‘sanatana
dharma’. He comments that the Hindu world is “not less bizarre than the
Freudian nor is it less dogmatic and fanatical than the Marxist”. He says that
Indologists and other interpreters invested Hinduism, which is essentially
materialistic and mundane, with mysticism.
He traces the worship of sacred rivers by
Indians to the Aryan love for water courses in a hot country where water is
both a necessity and a pleasure.
He says that modern Hindus try to combine
materialistic with the mystical aspects of life.
He opposes the occidental’s plan for
industrialization as a remedy for under development, as the Hindus will cease
to be Hindus and become passable as Americans. He claims it would be
Americanization of India while what is needed is a Hinduization of
industrialism. He also finds that America’s claim to leadership of anti-colonial
movement is hypocrisy and empty talk.
“The resignation of Partition was both
foolish and cowardly but at the moment it seemed to be the height of wisdom”.
He calls Pakistan ‘the notorious millstone round the neck of foreign policy’.
It is rather difficult to sum up the contents
of a mind-boggling work like The Continent of Circe which alternates
between objectivity, concern, intense personal observation, historical and
current perspectives. He sounds outrageous because he is trying to do the
impossible - of understanding, analysing and interpreting the history and
psychology of a nation over the past 3000 years. He is also trying to establish
a relation and find the rationale between the course of events, behaviour of
people and their response to those events down the course of centuries.
Nirad Chaudhuri can never be guilty of
ambiguity. He expresses his views and opinions in the most unambiguous terms.
His criticism of India and its people cannot be dismissed as prejudice because
of its proximity to truth. Yet, his writing reveals the predominant ambivalence
that encircles his feeling and thought. It is not right to call him an
anglophile because in his latest book The Three Horsemen of the
Apocalypse published in March, 1997 Nirad Chaudhuri is as critical of
Englishmen and Americans as he is about Indians. He remains un-reconciled to
reality and unsympathetic to human weakness, ignorance and force of habit.
Another very peculiar feature of his writing is that it is impossible - impossible to pick up
lines which would rise to the independent status of general truths. This is a
very surprising feature which I have not come across in any writer of renown.
Nirad Chaudhuri has the unique distinction of
being a writer who has seen the passing of a hundred years. One can only say
Congratulations! Mr. Nirad Chaudhuri, For a successful century!
* 70 years old TRIVENI salutes Nirad C. Choudhuri, one of the greatest prose writers of our time who wrote with clarity, conviction and vigour of viewpoint.