Reimagining India: Narratives of nationalism in V. S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie (Trinidad and Tobago)

This dissertation studies the treatments of India by V. S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie, two prominent British authors of Indian extraction; in particular, it examines their views on Indian nationalism. The project demonstrates that both Naipaul and Rushdie are heavily influenced by western discourses on history, nationalism, and modernity. While Naipaul often participates in Orientalist Indology, depicting India as a caste-ridden nation of unequal opportunities, Rushdie critiques India's lawless capitalism and suggests an India that, in its nexus of power, wealth, and violence, bears a strong resemblance to decolonized African countries. For Rushdie, the ideal India is also a hybrid India. This multiplicity, however, derives from his postmodernity in spite of the huge claim he lays to his "Indian roots."; Of course, Naipaul and Rushdie do not delineate an identical India; indeed, it is possible to detect two Indias in them. This study shows accords and differences in the two views the two authors offer and indicates some of the inconsistencies in each. It also engages the two authors in a dialogue with each other, for they are well aware that India is a well-traversed territory---that most of all, it is a territory traversed by the other author. A curious consequence of this awareness is that each author is keen on proving the "accuracy" of his India, making singular claims of authenticity and rejecting the other's account. Both authors, on the other hand, speak in unison when they berate India for not being modern enough and would like for India to put on---in Nehru's words---"the garb of modernity." But this is the India of dream, existing in the mind of emigre Indians who displace it while modernizing it. Despite hard attempts, both Naipaul and Rushdie fail to resolve the issues they raise---that is, the complex of imbricating forces formed by imperialism, third-world nationalism, hybridity, and the diasporic condition.