151

Gothenburg University Commonwealth Studies

John Thieme

AN INTRODUCTION TO
A House for Mr Bisuias!
I: Two Influences

A Sense of Place On one level V.S. Naipaul's A Housefor Mr Bistoas (1961) may be read as a
reworking of a familiar twentieth-century stereotype, that of the "little man -
Essays in Post-Colonial Literatures the Pooter, Leopold Bloom, Charlie Chaplin, Walter Mitty figure that has
been commonplace since the late Victorian period. The "little man" to whom
Mr Bistuas is most indebted is H.G. Wells Mr. Polly: both are humorously
accorded the title 'Mr.' from infancy onwards; both indulge in daydreams of
Edited by Britta Olinder romantic escape and see themselves, in almost identical words, as being
"trapped" in a "hole";2 both suffer from chronic indigestion; both paint signs,
Biswas as the occupation which first takes him to Hanuman House and Polly
at the Potwell Inn; both act the role of clown among relatives; both are more
or less trapped into marriage; both have a period as a shop-keeper and escape
from this occupation through an act of arson, though Biswas is not directly
involved in the burning of his shop; both are fascinated by language and coin
nicknames for those around them.P
Naipaul's indebtedness to Wells is clearly acknowledged by the use of the
allusive 'Mr.' in the very title of the novel. But what is his purpose in taking
6'\7~rso many details from The History of Mr. Polly? The main effect is, in fact,
less to draw attention to the similarities between the two protagonists than to
hig;hlight their differences. Mr Biswas is a Trinidadian "little man" for whom a
happy ending seems impossible. Wells, working within the tradition of the
English comic novel, allows a benevolent Providence to preside over the fate
of his hero. Despite all Polly's misfortunes along the way, the mood is
underpinned by a sense that all complications will be satisfactorily resolved
and at the end Polly duly finds a niche for himself at the Potwell Inn, which,as
a recent mythic reading of the novel has shown.t is a type of the Earthly
Paradise. Naipaul undermines this comic pattern, by letting his reader know
from the outset that Biswas's story has ended in an early death in ajerry-built
and "irretrievably mortgaged" (p. 8) house. True, the five hundred-plus
pages of the novel do much to make the reader feel that Biswas's life has not
h.'I'f} a complete failure - indeed, once it has been put in context, the final
.wq~.i~ition of the house seems a tremendous achievement, despite all its faults
hut nevertheless Nai'P~~)'s narrative is of a fundamentally different kind
1.01)1 WflUS'S (inc! fllo. (.~Ilhb·l~tion for this would appear to lie in the social
Goteborg 1984
 JOHN THlEME
152
milieu. While tbe "little man" fights an uphill battle in Western society, in
colonial Trinidad, he seems doubly disadvantaged, to a point where any real
and lasting success proves to be beyond his grasp.
Like The History of Mr. Polly, A House for Mr Bisuias also lends itself to a
mythic reading, which shows that the two novels have even more in common
tban critics have hitherto realised. Specifically, both works are pervaded by
the myth of the Fall. Mr. Polly has been viewed'' as an ironic version of what
Joseph Campbell refers to as the "monomyth", in which "the standard path
of the mythological adventure of the hero" is that of "separation-initiation-
returri't.'' Polly eventually overcomes his sense of separation through attain-
ment of the Paradise which he feels he has lost, reconstituted in the' rather
unlikely form of the Potwell Inn. The myth ofthe Fall is equally important in
A House for Mr. Bisioas. Biswas's sense of dispossession is associated in his
mind with the image of his mother working in a garden which is said to be
"like a garden he had known a dark time ages ago (p. 427). Initially, this
appears to involve a memory of early childhood, when, after his fater's death,
a neighbour dug up the family's garden in the hope of finding the secret
wealth which his father was reputed to have buried there. However, in
Biswas's recollection, this memory is blurred and he recalls only an arche-
typal lost garden, a prelapsarian Eden. Though the Hindu world into which
he is born is shown to be in a state of decay from the very outset, it still remains
a kind of Paradise (the opening chapter is called "Pastoral"), for it is the one
place where Biswas has a sense of belonging. His subsequent history is a
history of displacement and an accompanying sense of psychic fragmenta-
tion, but here in this first house he is mentally "whole", because of his un-
questioning acceptance of his physical situation. Virtually all of his later life
takes place in landscapes which he finds inimical and the image of the garden
recurs periodically as a reminder of his sense of deracination. However, for
Naipaul, the "monomyth" pattern remains incomplete: "separation" and
"initiation" are not complemented by "return". In Naipaul's distinctly
unoptimistic view of the New World predicament, the hero remains in a
postlapsarian situation, even though he acquires his own house and is allowed
to plant a single romantic laburnum tree. As in all Naipaul's work, the
underlying mythology is that of Paradise irrevocably lost.
So the West Indian "little man" undergoes a very different experience from
his European counterpart. As if to underline this, Naipaul also draws on
another source, the life and writing of the Trinidadian "little man" best
known to him, his own father, Seepersad Naipaul. Seepersad Naipaul (1906-
53) was for many years a journalist on the Trinidad Guardian, the island's
leading newspaper.' He was also a writer of fiction and in 1943 published a
volume of short stories entitled Gurudeoaand otherIndian Tales.B Several of these
stories and another separately published story by Seepersad, "They Named
llim Mo hun " ,9 which Naipaul admits to having "cannibalized'V'' for the
oJ)('lIing of Mr Bisioas, provided the basis for sections of J1 Housefor Mr Bisuias.
A HOUSE FOR MR. BISWAS 153
In his early novels Naipaul seems to have experienced some difficulty in
finding a subject suited to his talents, but now his father's inspiration enabled
him to produce the first of his major works. The debt to Seepersad is hard to
overestimate, since Naipaul not only reworks passages from his father's
fiction, but, following his advice to take him as a subject, II writes a novel
which, in several respects, is a fictionalised version of his father's forty six-
year life-history. The result is one of the fullest fictional portraits of a man
living in a colonial society to have appeared anywhere. Yet A House for Mr
Biswas is far more thanjust a very successful naturalistic novel. The accretion
of surface detail transcends contingency to provide a novel which can be read
on a number of allegorical levels.
II: The Image of the House
Reference to the novel's house imagery helps to illustrate this. The various
houses in which Biswas lives relate closely to his state of mind during the
period of occupancy. Taken together these houses constitute a pattern of
symbolism which enable one to read the novel as an allegory: of the predi-
cament of the Trinidadian East Indian or, more generally, of the colonial
psychology or of the situation of New World man.
Biswas's quest for his own house represents an attempt to claim "his own
portion of the earth" (p. 8). The sense of deracination he feels is ultimately
more psychological than physical. As in Jungian theory, the house functions
as a symbol of "wholeness"8, of the integrated self. Biswas seeks to eman-
cipate himselffrom dependence on others through the ideal of owning his own
house which represents both physical independence and a balanced state of
mind which makes taking responsibility for oneself possible. Significantly, his
first two attempts at house-building - at Green Vale and on the Shorthills
Estate - are failures. The houses collapse, an index of the fact that Biswas is
not yet the whole person he aspires to be. The links between the physical
condition of the houses and Biswas's mental state are often quite precise.
Thus the collapse of the Green Vale house is parallelled by Biswas's mental
breakdown.
For much of his life Biswas's endeavours to stand on his own feet take the
form of his struggle to free himself from Hanuman House, the home of his
in-laws, the Tulsis. Hanuman House is fairly clearly a symbol of the old
India: it has a backyard called Ceylon and an arcade where every evening old
India-born men congregate to reminisce about the mother country. It proves
to be an extremely ambiguous symbol. At first it seems to serve mainly as an
image of the attenuation of Hindu culture in the Caribbean: the Tulsis are
ironically portrayed as good Roman Catholic Hindus and Naipaul finds
many opportunities for satirising Hindu rites and beliefs in much the same
manner as he had in his two previous novels, The Mystic Masseur (1957) and
154 JOHN THIEME
The Suffrage of Elvira (1958). Thus, when Biswas's brother-in-law Hari offi-
ciates as a pundit to perform a house-blessing ceremony at the shop at the
Chase, where the Tulsis have installed Biswas, the scene is a satirical set-piece
of much the same kind as Naipaul's portrayal of a brahmin initiation cere-
mony and a Hindu funeral and wedding in The Mystic Masseur. It culminates
with Tulsi children destroying and looting goods from the shop and the sequel
to the episode is a decline in business which justifies Biswas's scepticism
about the value ofHari's blessing. At this point it would seem reasonable to
assume that the decaying forms of Hinduism which live on in the Caribbean
are a bligh ton house- holding and, more generally, self-fulfilmen t. This would
be in accordance with the Hindu belief that those who cross seas are irre-
vocably polluted, an idea which is voiced in Mr. Biswas in the comment that
the Tulsis "had crossed the black water from India and had thereby lost all
caste" (p. 349). However, the treatment of Hinduism in the novel as a whole
proves to be more complex than such satirical set-pieces suggest.
The Tulsis and Hanuman House also have a positive side, since they pro-
vide Biswas with security as he regresses back to the house after each of his
abortive attempts at escape in the first half of the novel. If dependence on a
family who personify an atrophying culture is hardly an ideal situation for the
independent-minded hero, it nevertheless provides a welcome respite from
the only social alternative, the larger Creole world of Trinidad, with which
Biswas never fully comes to terms. Though Hanuman House is a "white
fortress" (p. 80) and represents the stultifying force of the old Hindu culture,
it functions as a defence against the outside world as well as a prison for
Biswas and, when he is nursed back to health there after his breakdown at
Green Vale, it assumes the symbolic role of a hospital.
In the second half of the novel after the Tulsis have left Hanuman House,
which is located in the fictional town of Arwacas 12 in the central plain of
Trinidad,the extent to which the whole family are victims of acculturation
becomes increasingly clear and this expands the possibilities for allegorical
interpretation. Basically the movement follows the familiar pattern of urban-
isation, with the complex, hierarchical structure of Hanuman House being
replaced by the chaotic clutter of a house in Port of Spain (Trinidad's capital),
which Mrs Tulsi, Biswas's mother-in-law takes over. As long as they have
stayed in Hanuman House, the Tulsis have been able to some extent to
insulate themselves against the encroachments of the larger Creole society.
But now such country innocence is eroded by city experience and the process
of decay is accelerated.
The episode in the second half of the novel which illustrates this most
strikingly does not, however, take place in Port of Spain, but in the hills to the
north of Trinidad's capital. Here the Tulsis take over a former French estate
house, Shorthills, and endeavour to step into the shoes of the plantocracy.
They dream of making themselves self-sufficient by living off the land and
thus establishing a new kind of autonomous community, Such dreams are,
A HOUSE FOR :viR. B1SWAS 155
however, short-lived, as they show themselves singularly ill-equipped to pur-
sue this agricultural ideal. Traditionally Trinidad's East Indians, who ori-
ginally came to the island to work as indentured labourers on the sugar
plantations, feel, as the Tulsis do here, that they "have a way with land"
(p. 392) but nonetheless the Tulsis' attempts at cultivating the Shorthills
estate are a complete failure: 13 All their farming schemes end in disaster and
finally they resort to plundering the estate, with two of Biswas's brothers-
in-law selling off first the trees and then the land itself. So any hope that a
purer "pastoral" world, like that of the opening section of the novel, may be
recreated at Shorthills swiftly evaporates.
It is against such a failure that Biswas's final acquisition of his own house
should be measured. Compared with the conclusion of The History of Mr. Polly,
the ending of A House for Mr. Bisioas seems decidedly pessimistic, but once one
appreciates the full extent ofthe obstacles which Biswas has to overcome, his
struggle begins to assume heroic proportions and his jerry-built house seems
to represent a qualified success. On the psychological level, the acquisition of
the house suggests that he has succeeded in achieving what has earlier
appeared to be a virtual impossibility in his society: he has arrived at a con-
dition of wholeness which, even though it is far from secure, allows him to face
the world as a free individual and assume responsibility for his family.
In an article published in 197514 I discussed A Housefor Nfr Bistoas in re-
lation to remarks which Naipaul has made about the colonial mentality. For
Naipaul the essence of this mentality is a quietism which causes the individual
to surrender his capacity to exercise choice:
... to be a colonial is, in a way, to know a total kind of security, It is to have
all decisions about major issues taken out of one's hands. It is to feel that
one's political status has been settled so finally that there is very little 'one
can do in the world.!"
Clearly Biswas's dependence on the Tulsis at Hanuman House makes him an
apt representation of colonial man according to this definition and it is
possible to see the novel as an allegory about the individual's attempt to
'" liberate himselffrom the not altogether unappealing quietism of the colonial
psychology. Relating this line of thought to the novel's house imagery, I
concluded in the 1975 article:
A complete portrait of Hindu life in colonial Trinidad has been realized
through the description of Mr Biswas's experiences in each of the novel's
many houses which represent: the passive dependent life of the child (his
mother's house); the Hindu's dependent status as a member of the ex-
tended family (Hanuman House); an abortive attempt at escape through
small-time capitalism (the Chase); the constrictions of the plantation
system (the Barracks); the impossibility of complete emancipation (the
houses he builds at Green Vale and near Shorthills); unsuccessful parody
of the plantocracy (Shorthills); and, finally, the partial freedom possible
156 JOHN THIEME
once one has realized one's limitations (the St. James house). The picture
of colonial/determinist man is not totally pessimistic. 16
Over the years I have come to regret these words, partly because they
describe the novel in rather stark contours, but, more seriously, because the
suggestion that the novel is an allegory about the colonial psychology now
seems to me at best a half-truth. On a more fundamental level, it can be seen
to be about Biswas's struggle with Hindu aspects of his psyche. Clearly the
two interpretations are not incompatible, but much of A Housefor Mr Biswas
assumes a richer meaning, once one recognises that the hero's wrestling-
match with his ancestral culture is of central importance.
III. A House for Mr Biswas as Hindu Fable
Towards the end of the novel Biswas re-visits Hanuman House. It now seems
dead: the store at the front has been taken over by a Port of Spain firm and is
deserted outside business hours; the wooden house at the back has a single
occupant, one of the Tulsi widows. Beneath the statue of the monkey-god
Hanuman hangs an advert for Bata shoes, 17 an apt sym bol of the house's loss
of its former Hindu identity. As Biswas reflects on past incidents which have
taken place there, the mood becomes elegiac.
Nostalgia comes easily enough now. While Biswas has actually been living
there, it has been for him a central symbol of the traditional Hindu world of
the Tulsis, against which he rebels through clowning, speaking English
instead of Hindi and espousing the cause of reformist Aryan missionaries who
come to Trinidad from India. Though at first it may seem as ifBiswas's revolt
is against Hinduism itself, this is not the case. His rebellion is directed against
traditional Sanatanist Hinduism, 18 not Hinduism itself. The early sections of
the novel depict the struggle between two kinds of Hinduism and Biswas is,
lika his real-life original, Seepersad Naipaul, a modern Hindu who believes in
reformist doctrines.
The Tulsis follow the older ways and Naipaul gives them a name which
connotes traditionalism: tulsi, or basil, leaves are used in the puja. Biswas in
contrast believes in reformed Hinduism: he has the Aryan aversion to ritual
and idol-worshipl? and distrusts pundits. Though Biswas rebels against the
Tulsis, he is left indelibly marked by his early Hindu upbringing, particularly
an abortive attempt to make him a pundit. Despite his iconoclasm while amid
the Tulsis, he repeatedly falls back on Hinduism in moments of crisis. He
chants "Rama" as the Green Vale house collapses; he refers to Mrs Tulsi's
brother-in-law Seth as "a member of the leather-worker caste" (p. 117)/° a
jibe delivered from the confidence of his status as a brahmin; he calls the black
labourers who assist Seth in the destruction of his Port of Spain rose garden
"rakshas" (p. 337,)21 an insult which implies that he sees himsclf'as a Rarna-
A HOUSE FOR MR. BISWAS 157
like preserver of the Hindu moral order; and he ironically likens the Christian
doctor who has certified his mother's death to "an angry hero of a Bindu
epic" (p. 483). In each case he adopts a Hindu position. Similarly, he is
pleased when his son Anand appears to be showing a serious interest in
Hinduism by saying prayers to Lakshmi, despite his own "Aryan aversion to
Sanatanist, Tulsi-like idol worship" (p. 383). In short, although it is some-
times much clearer than it is at others, Biswas's life is, from first to last, a
Hindu story. Hence it is appropriate that his marriage to Shama, initially a
grotesque travesty ofa Hindu arranged marriage, should work injust the way
that such marriages are supposed to work, as affection grows with the passing
of the years. And it is equally fitting that he should be allowed a funeral
performed in accordance with Hindu rites, as his body is cremated on the
banks of a stream. Most significantly of all, however, the novel can be read as
an allegory which explores a central issue for contemporary Hinduism, the
opposition between Western-style action and the quietism encouraged by the
doctrineii of karma.
In India: A Wounded Civilization (1977) Naipaul describes how a recent re-
reading ofR.K. Narayan's novel, Mr. Sampath, has made him realise that "for
all their delight in human oddity, Narayan's novels are less the purely social
comedies I had once taken them to be than religious books, at times religious
fables, and intensely Hindu" .22Much the same can be said of A HouseJor Mr
Biswas. While it also succeeds brilliantly on other levels, Mr Biswas is very
much a Hindu fable.
Naipaul's account of Mr. Sampath tells how the hero Srinivas, a "con-
templative idler",23 is drawn into the worldly concerns of newspaper pub-
lishing and film-making, but eventually withdraws from the confusion of
active life after "a vision of the millenia oflndian history" .24Naipaul's view is
that Srinivas turns his back on personal responsibility for a form of nonvio-
lence which is a travesty of Gandhianism:
... For Srinivas nonviolence isn't a form of action, a quickener of social
conscience. It is only a means of securing an undisturbed calm; it is non-
doing, noninterference, social indifference. It merges with the ideal of self-
\
realization, truth to one's identity. These modern-sounding words ...
disguise an acceptance of karma, the Hindu killer, the Hindu calm, which
tells us that we pay in this life for what we have done in past lives: so that
everything we see is just and balanced, and the distress we see is to be
relished as religious theatre, a reminder of our duty to ourselves, our future
lives.25
For Naipaul resignation to karma is the central Hindu failing, 26 an attitude
of mind which precludes any form of social action. Consequently he finds
Narayan both incisive and exasperating: incisive because he penetrates to the
heart of the Indian dilemma; exasperating because finally he denies the
"Wcsl("rn concern with the condition of men, a response to the here and
158 JOHN THIEME
now",27 which Naipaul sees as the essence of the novel form.
The plot-formula which Narayan repeats again and again in his novels is
that of a small-town Hindu with traditional values encountering a disruption
of his peaceful life, often in the shape of forces which embody Western ideas.
Initially he is shaken, but ultimately he renounces the world and regains his
"Hindu calm". Only in Narayan's more recent novels is the pattern varied
slightly, as Naipaul has again noted in a discussion of The Vendor of Sweets,28
with the final withdrawal beginning to seem inadequate. No longer is it a
renunciation in keeping with the ideal Hindu life, in which the transition from
the second to third asrama, or stage, is a movement from the role of house-
holder and man of affairs to that of hermit and recluse. Now it seems to be
more of a flight from the world, brought on by despair.
Clearly, as Naipaul sees it, Hindu acculturation is not confined to the
Indian overseas. Even on the sub-continent itself he finds erosion of the cul-
ture's traditional values and the novel form, with its emphasis on social con-
ditions, represents a threat to the static, mythic Hinduism of which Naipaul
writes. Hence, in his view, Narayan's transformation of the genre into a
vehicle for fable - by no means unparalleUed in the West, of course - comes to
be seen as being every bit as much an act of Hindu conservatism as the
behaviour of his heroes. He concludes on Mr. Sam path by saying that the novel
has rendered identity "an aspect of karma"29 and viewing it as "a fable, a
classic exposition of the Hindu equilibrium, surviving the shock of an alien
culture, an alien literary form, an alien language, and making harmless even
those new concepts it appeared to welcome.t'P? His own position is clear
enough. He is on the side of "Western concern with the condition of men"
which may help alleviate the sufferings oflndia and against karma which he
sees as inducing a form of mental atrophy that finds its external correlative in
the decay of an ossifying society. Whether N aipa ul' s interpretation of karma is
correct is a moot point: more than one Indian critic has suggested that it is
fundamentally erroneous.P! However, for the purposes of this discussion it is
enough to note the psychological state which he sees it as encouraging, a
quietistic acceptance which is the enemy of social progress.
Returning to Mr Biswas, one finds Biswas born into a world where beliefin
karma is still strong. His grandfather remarks about "Fate" at the opening of
the novel, remarks which are delivered in an English which Naipaul uses to
render Hindi, are presumably remarks about karma. He sees it as a force to
which the individual can only submit himself: "'Fate. There is nothing we can
do about it'" (p. 15). Such acceptance reads like a crude version of the quie-
tism for which Naipaul takes Narayan's Srinivas to task. And, though no
attention is paid to the old man here, the novel is subsequently full of refer-
ences to "fate", references which are particularly associated with the Hindu
woman's role.32The effect of these allusions to karma is to place Biswas's quest
in a Hindu context where there is a strong sense that the individual, is deter-
mined by forces beyond his control.
A HOUSE FOR MR. BISWAS 159
This is especially clear in the account of his birth where, because he is "six-
fingered, and born in the wrong way" (p. 15), the midwife predicts an
Oedipus-like fate for him in saying that he will "eat up his own mother and
father" (p. 16). The next day the pundit provides a more detailed horoscope.
He says that Biswas will be a lecher and spendthrift and possibly a liar as well,
will have an unlucky sneeze, must be kept away from water and have especial
care taken over his father's first sight of him. It remains for him to be named
and, though Naipaul satirises the pundit, he has him behave perfectly
properly in suggesting an appropriate two-letter prefix. The name which is
chosen is, however, highly ironic, for Mohun is, as the text makes clear, "the
name given by the milkmaids to Lord Krishna" (pp. 17-18). From the outset,
then, the mock-heroic nature of the novel is established through the use of a
specific Hindu allusion. By giving Biswas a name accorded to one of the
avatars of Vishnu, Naipaul ensures that his reworking of the mock-heroic
"little man" figure is placed in a Hindu context.
Biswas's struggle against Fate looks initially as ifit will be a battle against
the version of his karma provided by his horoscope and, when he brings about
the drowning first ofDhari's calf (the young of an animal sacred to Hindus)
and then of his father as a result of having disobeyed the order not to go near
water, he appears to be incapable of averting his predetermined destiny.
However, as he gets older and becomes more self-aware, he begins to rebel
against the constraints imposed on him by his immediate environment. Only
occasionally now is there any suggestion that the horoscope has foretold the
course of his life, but the theme of a struggle against a Hindu fate is drama-
tised on a more secular level, as Biswas's quest for self-realisation takes the
form of his attempt to free himselffrom the old Hindu world of the Tulsis. His
alternation between dependence on and rebellion against the Tulsis makes
the novel as much a Hindu fable as Mr. Sampath and, like Srinivas, Biswas is
caught between two opposed ways of life. His ultimate success in freeing
himselffrom the Tulsis may appear to suggest a conclusion which is the very
opposite of Narayan's, but since Biswas's rebellion is less a revolt against
Hinduism in favour of Western individualism than a revolt against
\Sanatanist Hinduism in favour of the reformed Hinduism of the Arya Samaj
sect, this is not really the case.
Moreover, Biswas finally comes to fulfil the duties of the second asrama of
the ideal Hindu life, the stage of the householder. This point is never made
explicitly in the novel. as it is in The Mimic Men (1967), where the narrator/
protagonist Ralph Singh reflects that he has lived through "the fourfold
division oflife prescribed by our Aryan ancestors't.P In Singh's case it is hard
not to see authorial irony lying behind this self-estimate, since he seems to be
as much a poseur as ever as he writes these words and he cannot seriously be
regarded as having fulfilled the duties of arry of the four asramas, but in Biswas's
Case there can be DO doubt that he has finally become a successful house-
holder, albeit temporarily.
160 JOHN THIEME
A HOUSE FOR MR. BISWAS 161

A House for Mr Biswas is, then, a brilliant fictional biography on a purely

16. "V.S. Naipaul's Third World", p. 15.
naturalistic level. But it is more than just this. It is as surely a "mythic" novel
17. When I visited the real-life original ofHanuman House, the Lion House, Chaguanas, now
as either Well's Mr. Polly or Narayan's Mr. Sampath. The novel which most
Green's Drug Store, in July 1980, there was an Andrews Liver Sal ts advertisemen t bcnea th
closely parallels its specific theme is perhaps Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's almost one of the lions (the equivalents of Han urn an House's monkeys). The house at the back no
contemporary work The Householder (1960), in which householding assumes a longer exists.
similar central importance, but as an allegory about the individual's attempts 18. On the beliefs of the orthodox Sana tan Dharma sect and its importance in Trinidad, see
to emancipate himselffrom the crippling legacy of a quietistic philosophical Yogendra K. Malik, East Indians in Trinidad, London: Institute of Race Relations/O. U .P.,
system, its implications reach out beyond their specific Hindu origins and 1971, pp. 30-3.

relate to similar dilemmas in other cultures. 19. On the beliefs of the Arya Samaj, see Malik, p. 32.
20. Cf. An Area of Darkness (1964), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968, p. 54: "The worker in
leather is among the lowest of the low, the most tainted of the tainted." The Hindi word,
chamar, originally referred to a particular kind of untouchable, but came to be used in
Trinidad of any kind of untouchable,J .C ..Jha, "The Indian Heritage in Trinidad", Calcutta
to Caroni: TIle East Indians of Trinidad, ed. John La Guerre, London: Longman, 1974,
p.12.
Notes
21. Like other details in Mr Biswas, suggestive of the Ramayana, where the followers ofRavana,
King of Lanka, are the rakshasas or demons.
I. This paper summarises ideas presented in a Congress workshop session on Naipaul, The 22. India, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979, p. 22.
third section, on "A House for Mr Biswas as Hindu Fable", is slightly extended. 23. Ibid.
2. Cf. A Housefor Mr. Biswas, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969, pp. 223, 377,437 and 528 with 24. Ibid., p. 24.
the opening words of The History of Mr. Polly, where the hero is found sitting on a stile 25. Ibid., p. 25.
exclaiming: "'Hole!"'. Subsequent references to Mr Biswas are to this edition and are in- 26. Naipaul's treatment of karma in his two Indian travel books is more fully discussed in my
cluded in the text. artiele, "V.S. Naipaul and the Hindu Killer", Joumal of Indian Writing in English, 9,2 (july
3. On the parallels between the two works see Martin Fido, "Mr. Biswas and Mr. Polly", 1981), 70-86.
Ariel, 5,4 (October 1974),30-7; Margaret Shenfield, "Ms. Biswas and Mr. Polly", Englis/t, 27. An Area of Darkness, p. 14.
23 (Autumn 1974),95-100; and Anthony Boxill, "Mr. Biswas, Mr. Polly and the Problem 28. India, pp. 38-43.
ofV.S. Naipaul's Sources" Ariel, 8, 3 (july 1977), 129-41. 29. Ibid., p. 27.
4. Christopher Rolfe, '''A Blaze and New Beginnings': The Ironic Use ofMyth in The History 30. Ibid.
of Mr. Polly", The Weltsian,4 (Summer 1981),24-35. 31. E.g. H.H. Anniah Gowda, Ariel, 10, I (january 1979),99; and Vijay Mishra, 'Mythic
5. Ibid. Fabulation: Naipaul's India', New Literature Review, 4 (n.d., 1978?), 64.
6. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1956, p. 30. 32. See pp. 31, 48, 65, 104, 200, 202 and 332.
7. For biographical information on Seepersad Naipaul, see Landeg White, V.S. Naipaul: A 33. The Mimic Men, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969, p. 251.
Critical Introduction, London: Macmillan, 197-5, particularly pp. 27-8.
8. Port of Spain: Trinidad Publications, 1943. The stories, edited and with a foreword by V.S.
Naipaul, were reissued as The Adventures of Gurudeva and other stories, London: Andre Deutsch,
1976. The Deutsch edition includes five previously uncollected stories. \
9. This originally appeared in Papa Bois, Port of Spain: Port of Spain Gazette, n.d. (194·7?). A
fuller version is included in the Deutsch edition of The Adventures of Curudeua.
10. The Adventures of Gurudeua, Foreword, p. 19.
II. In a 1952 letter, quoted in The Adventures of Gurudeoa, Foreword, p. l7.
l2. Based on Chaguanas in the County ofCaroni.
13. Part of the explanation appears to stem from the very different nature of the landscape: the
terrain north of Port of Spain is a wooded, hilly region where cocoa and coffee grow; Caroni
is a plain, largely given over to the cultivation of sugar-cane.
14. 'V.S. Naipaul's Third World: A Not so Free State',Joumal of Commonwealth Literature, X, J
(August 1975), 10-22.
15. Naipaul in conversation with Ian Hamilton, 'Without a Place', Times LiterarySll/Jplnment, 30
.lilly 1971, IJ. 897.