“The Grand Solitary” Nirad C. Chaudhuri

“THE GRAND SOLITARY” NIRAD C. CHAUDHURI*

“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 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.