India: A Million Mutinies Now by V.S. Naipaul

As part of my "consume" aim of this blog, I am writing reviews of the books I am reading.  Here is my latest one:

India: A Million Mutinies Now by V.S. Naipaul

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was the first book I read upon arriving in India. It was recommended to me by my friend, Jay, who said that this was a great representation of his first experience being in India, so I had it added to my directed readings course contract.


It is hard to sum up 500 pages worth of words, but I’ll try my best. This is about modern India, but a slightly dated version at that. While it is interesting (most of the time), thorough, and great at painting a sort of portrait for the reader of the complexity of this country, it is also very dark. It has a very negative tone to it and appears to be Naipaul’s trip to explore his own Indian heritage but at the same time note the “million mutinies” and overwhelming problems the country faces. I wonder sometimes if his commentary on Calcutta, about it being a dying city, and recognizing that because everyone is suffering is actually his opinion on the whole country (325). In general I would have liked to see if he had any positive experiences that were just not recorded here.

A question I would ask Naipaul is how he came up with enough notes to get these extremely detailed scenes. Every word and every line and every wall color is noted. Yet, towards the end of this book we get a confession that the first book he wrote about India he did without keeping any kind of field journal (367). Being on a field experience myself and trying to do some creative writing about India I cannot imagine not keeping a journal. For this book he says he also took no tape-recorder (14). It makes me seriously question how much of these stories he includes are fiction. How exactly did he get the “Ideas” and abstracts to “become books…clothed with people and narrative” (13). In general, as a field student, I would have liked to see more of what his experience was getting this informants and what the field work part of this traveling looked like. One thing is for sure though, as I am quickly starting to realize, “in order to write about India…you had to spend a lot of time in India” (297). Sometimes I wonder how I am going to be able to really write what I would like to write based on just over three months of experiences here.


I did enjoy his images, especially of the crowds. While my experience in India might not be as similar to my friend Jay’s, many of these scenes have played out before me. The traffic. The modern India, the one that has Gandhi’s face all over rupee notes but no more homespun cloth or trace of his seemingly archaic politics. It is just all very fascinating what has happened since India’s independence, and I appreciated Naipaul’s commentary. I would like to know more about where India is now, especially given the GPD that is supposed to pass China. It does not seem to be in such a negative position as this book would lend us to believe, though the country clearly faces serious problems in the near future—population, food, fuel, jobs, etc.

Would I recommend this book? Probably. But would I read it again? Definitely not. It was a great history lesson, but it was a difficult read.



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