Indo-Caribbean community mourns the death of Nobel laureate Naipaul

The death of Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, the 2001 Trinidadian Nobel Laureate in literature, has “greatly saddened” the Indo-Caribbean community of New York, including Trinidadians of both Indian and non-Indian descent. Naipaul died Aug. 11 at his home in London.

“Sir Naipaul was an icon for our community, not just for people of Indian descent but others like blacks as well, and all of us deeply feel the loss at the passing away of Naipaul,” Suzanne Mahadeo, executive director of Richmond Hill, Queens-based Indo-Caribbean Alliance, told India Abroad. “The overall reaction has been one of sorrow and sadness, not only in New York but also in Canada and across the world.”

Born in Trinidad into a family with Indian roots, Naipaul left for Britain in 1950 to attend Oxford University and settled there for decades.

Sorrow over his death was palpable among the Indo-Caribbean community which has a large concentration in Queens, New York with the combined total number of Guyanese and Trinidadian immigrants estimated at close to 300,000. It is considered the fifth highest foreign-born population, after immigrants from the Dominican Republic, China, Mexico and India, according to a 2013 New York City Department of City Planning report.

“Naipaul is a legend to the Indo-Caribbean community – though a controversial one — but he is already sorely missed,” Mahadeo said. “No matter his personal ideologies or choices, as Indo-Caribbeans, we have a shared history of indentureship and understand him through Naipaul’s words: ‘I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred,’ ” Mahadeo said.

Others like Vishnu Bisram, a New York City teacher from Trinidad, and Satnarine Balkaransingh, a Trinidad-based artist and author who often visits New York and other U.S. cities to deliver lectures and read research papers, said while Naipaul may have died, the books of this “modern day philosopher” will live on. “One hopes that some more of his books will be used in the school curriculum, not only for their excellent language and literary content, but for purposes of identity formation of our young people," Balkaransingh said in a phone interview from Trinidad.

Balkaransingh was in New York most recently in December 2017 to address a conference organized by the Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies (FIIDS-USA) at Columbia University.

Bisram said Naipaul is widely regarded as the great writer in the English language. He recalled how around 1979 at a lecture that was followed by a question-and-answer session at Queens College in Flushing, New York, his audience was in awe of his English fluency. “He spoke brilliantly on writing style and the use of language to describe events and societies,” Bisram recalled in an email to India Abroad.

Glowing tributes were paid to Naipaul in Trinidad. President Paula-Mae Weekes, Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Keith Rowley and the leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Kamla Persad-Bissessar called him unparalleled as a writer.

Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories.”

Patrick French in his 2008 book “The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul” traced the course of Naipaul’s gift to produce acclaimed novels and nonfiction even when his critics slammed him as a racist and later, as a Hindu bigot after Naipaul embraced rightwing Hindu politicians in India.

Balkaransingh noted Naipaul has been disliked at times, including by Trinidadians of both Indian, African and Creole ancestry because of some controversial observations in his writings and interviews. Nonetheless, Trinidadians and other Indo-Caribbeans regard him as a litterateur par excellence who put Trinidad on the world map in terms of literature.

“I recall that during my early years in India as a young Trinidad student, a descendent of Indian indentured laborers, many Indian nationals would be visibly angry with Naipaul’s early writing on India in ‘An Area of Darkness.’ It had reached beneath their thin skin, touched a raw nerve,” Balkaransingh said, alluding to Naipaul’s sometimes “negative impact” on people.

“Even a close relative of his, whom I met in India at the Maidens Hotel in Old Delhi, in the early 1970s confided to me that she was ‘pained’ at the ‘nastiness’ he had written about in that book.”

With his fame also came plenty of criticism. The blacks in Trinidad were once incensed that he had shown contempt for them in his writings and leftists reportedly denounced him as a tool of the white imperialists. West Indian Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott, who spent more than 20 years in Trinidad, once commented that Naipaul’s prose was tainted by his “repulsion towards Negroes.”

Naipaul always stood his ground and offered no apology for his writings and thinking.

Lomarsh Roopnarine, professor of Caribbean Studies at Jackson State University in Mississippi, said while Naipaul has been very critical of the former colonies because of their politics and political culture since they misused their positions, Naipaul did not have any dislike or hatred for any particular community. “I don't think he was a racist or nurtured any hatred or dislike for any community,” Roopnarine who is from Guyana, said. “He used to get on people's skin because he always called a spade a spade,” he added.

After Naipaul’s death, Salman Rushdie, one of the many writers he argued with, mourned his passing. “We disagreed all our lives, about politics, about literature, and I feel as sad as if I just lost a beloved older brother. RIP Vidia," Rushdie tweeted.