7 - One way

Summary

There was no ship of antique shape now to take us back. We had come out of the nightmare; and there was nowhere else to go.

(V.S. Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival)

Just prior to the publication of India: A Million Mutinies Now, Naipaul spoke at the Manhattan Institute in New York. The talk, entitled “Our Universal Civilization,” partially diluted the response that the longer publication was to enjoy: acknowledgment of Naipaul's more receptive view of a world and a country hitherto criticized for its failure with modernity. The title of Naipaul's address, we are told, issued from the questions posed to him by a fellow of the Institute: “Are we – are communities – as strong only as our beliefs? Is it enough for beliefs or an ethical view to be passionately held? Does the passion give validity to the ethics? Are beliefs or ethical views arbitrary, or do they represent something essential in the cultures where they flourish?” (“Our Universal Civilization,” p. 22). Understanding the rhetorical inflection in how these issues were offered, Naipaul states that he “couldn't share the pessimism implied by the questions … that the very pessimism of the questions, and their philosophical diffidence, defined the strength of the civilization out of which it issued” (“Our Universal Civilization,” p. 22). Hence, Naipaul goes on to explain, the civilization which can accommodate the boundaries of another's intransigence is the one that can claim universality.