“A slow culture of reflection” … that phrase fills me with an overwhelming sense of loss. Over the years we have come to feel that we don’t matter, that what we write and publish doesn’t matter. This is a new feeling. With intellectual endeavor there is now a sense of futility about what we do—the sense that we are not likely to contribute through our kind of writing and publishing to an intellectual or a cultural stream that will shape or influence attitudes.
In my college years in Calcutta we were certain revolution would come from the left—who could have foretold that the Indian version of the Bolshevik would be a religious majoritarian intent on wiping out everything that stands in his way?
the Stalinist method of imposing a new era through architecture is mirrored by our government, which is transforming the heart of Delhi through demolitions of historic buildings and landscapes
Formally there is no censorship of written work, but the atmosphere of constant anxiety within a whole community of reading and writing people, a sense of there being violence in the air we breathe, is equally undermining.
social media chats between well-known writers of Indian origin who live abroad in which they condemn the so-called silence of Indian intellectuals about what is going on here. I want to ask them if they have any idea what unbelievable risks journalists and writers in India are taking
Like Ray in The Kingdom of Diamonds, I try to write what I want and ensure the book won’t be burned
but it certainly has something to do with the obligation they want to heap on every writer from a non-Western country—to be a kind of artistically articulate native informant.
People read what they want to read, however, and nowadays readers do seem to respond to the most glaringly political aspects of my work, though the obligation to do so is in their head, not mine. I notice this particularly when I meet Western journalists—very few of them ask me about the craft of fiction. Their questions are almost invariably about caste, religion, women, and contemporary Indian politics. This may be because they haven’t read the books, or haven’t read them as I myself intended them to be read, but it certainly has something to do with the obligation they want to heap on every writer from a non-Western country—to be a kind of artistically articulate native informant.
What sustains me, I think, is that I have a sense of mountains hidden by clouds. When I say that, I am thinking of the view from my window at home in the Himalayas: you can see the lower green hills every day, close-up, but on some days the farther-off blue ones reveal themselves, and on clear winter days the white peaks appear, floating in the sky. There are still—despite the political sickness—things for us in India to rejoice in.