Ever A Stranger: Shiva Naipaul In Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia & Sri Lanka

By Charles Ponnuthurai Sarvan –September 2, 2016 

Prof. Charles Sarvan

PREFACE: “Whether the description of marriage as a double solitude is applicable in all instances, it indicates that each individual carries a consciousness of himself as a solitary being, a consciousness of which he cannot completely and permanently rid himself. We all feel un-comprehended and uncomprehending, though to varying degrees and at various times. This awareness of separateness and consequent loneliness, an awareness which is part of our human condition, is sometimes heightened by a negative group-identity. In such instances, the individual suffers not only from the loneliness common to all but also from the added consciousness that the group with which he is identified is looked at askance, perhaps with suspicion, even with contempt and hostility.” (Charles Sarvan,’Ethnicity and Alienation: the African Asian and His Response to Africa’, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Vol 20, No. 1, 1985.) End of Preface.

There are some who are unable, or are not allowed, to feel fully at home in their home-country: see Sarvan,Sri Lanka: Literary Essays & Sketches, pp. 194-200, and also the Sinhala expression Para Dhemmala. Shiva Naipaul never fully belonged anywhere. He was born in Trinidad (1945) where, admittedly generalising, the Africans and the Asians lived separate lives. With slavery abolished, Britain turned to British-ruled India, and sent out hundreds of thousands of workers as indentured labourers: see my ‘Indian Plantation Experiences Overseas’, Kunapipi, Australia, Vol X11, No 2, 2000. In Sri Lanka, indentured Tamil workers were confined to the estate and kept separate from the local Sinhalese population. In Trinidad, the Asians were kept apart from the earlier black slave-population. In this way, ethnic animosity was deliberately (and in Sri Lanka’s case, successfully) fostered, to the advantage of the imperial capitalist owners. Group consciousness and feeling, not class solidarity, came to be dominant. Of the two main political parties in Trinidad; one is supported by Africans, and the other by Asians.

England today, particularly London and the big cities, has changed significantly but the England to which Naipaul came as a very young man was quite a different country. The term of abuse for Asians was “Paki” or, less often, “Wog”, an acronym from ‘Wily Oriental Gentleman’. This may be met with incredulity by some readers but when I came to London in 1963, it was not against the law to display signs which read: “No coloureds. No dogs.” With the IRA setting off bombs, sometimes “No Irish” was added to the list. An Irish friend told me he was glad I’d come to England. When I asked why, he answered: “Now when talking with me, sometimes the English say, we!” It had become a case of “we” whites in contrast to those of colour, African or Asian. Difference and exclusion may lead to a new inclusion; to a recognition of commonality (though not, it seems, in the case of some Sri Lankans living outside the blessed ‘Paradise Isle’).

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