V.S. Naipaul and the 1946 Trinidad General Election

Abstract

Precisely because history as verbal representation by man of his own past is by its very nature so full of hazard, so replete indeed with verisimilitude of sharply differentiated choices, ... it never ceases to excite. The historical discourse is world's oldest thriller. --Ranajit Guha (Prose 55) On 1 July 1946 first election featuring universal adult suffrage was held in Trinidad. As reported in island's leading newspaper of day, Trinidad Guardian, privilege of a lowered franchise expanded electorate nearly tenfold, from approximately 30,000 to 259,000 eligible voters (Momentous). This was a precipitous change, especially in a colony voting even on a limited scale had only been instituted a couple of decades before (1925), in an era when lingering doubts about qualifications of nonwhites and women had motivated institution of property, literacy, and age requirements that disenfranchised all but about 6 percent of population (Caton 628, Malik 69-70, 73, 75). (1) In 1946 these restrictions were lifted all at once. This election becomes a historical touchstone in early and journalism of Trinidad-born author V. S. Naipaul. Beginning in his first novel, The Mystic Masseur (1957), Naipaul focuses considerable attention on it, a focus that returns in a key section of his first work of journalistic or travel writing, The Middle (1962). (2) As readers of The Mystic Masseur may recall, it is 1946 election in which Naipaul's enterprising protagonist, Ganesh Ramsumair, transforms himself from a Hindu faith healer into a politician, initiating a personal metamorphosis that culminates in his becoming G. Ramsay Muir, M. B. E., a West Indian envoy operating in England and a shameless British mimic man (220).Nineteen forty-six is heralded in final paragraph of novel's opening chapter as the turning point of Ganesh's (18), and election and its aftermath constitute major focus of book's final three chapters. Even more notably, in a brief but pivotal (and now famous) section of The Middle Passage, Naipaul invokes 1946 election to showcase his vision of individualism of late colonial-era Trinidadians--the vision of his compatriots as opportunistic survivors in a social environment where it is felt that all eminence is arrived at by crookedness (72). The journalistic analysis of The Middle suggests authenticity of a Ganesh-type character, while in fictitious Ganesh Trinidadian picaroon finds a most personable and credible incarnation. This is an important recognition, for notion that Naipaul's journalistic works represent a decisive break from previous fictional work is something of a commonplace in Naipaul studies--one contributed to even by such a careful critic as Rob Nixon, who contrasts fierceness of The Middle Passage with bounteous comedy of early fiction (12). The relationship between these texts is not just a literary curiosity, nor are events of 1946 in Trinidad merely minutiae of West Indian history. For precisely because Naipaul introduces coherent interpretive paradigms from authoritative subject position of a societal insider, and because most of his readers are not in a position to bring any significant degree of parallel local knowledge to bear on his representations of places like West Indies, his perspectives have attained a level of influence seldom achieved by modern literary discourse. What began at inception of his career with representations of Trinidad has multiplied in a sweeping array of articles and book-length studies Naipaul articulates defining characteristics--as he sees them--of literally dozens of other societies, mostly in so-called Third World. Factor into this equation that Naipaul's predominantly hostile assertions are delivered in crisp, unsparing terms, and it is little wonder that he has emerged as a polarizing figure. …