V.S.Naipaul and His Trilogy on India

Creative writers in a colonial society face some peculiar challenges. They are caught in a situation which demands from them to establish a personal identity and also a sense of belonging to a language medium primarily that of the colonizer. Tragedy of a colonial society over which an alien culture and language superimposes itself is that, the natives face conceptually the problem of existentialist situation to define and authenticate themselves on their own terms. There comes to light not only the difference between the oppressor and the oppressed but also the tremendous cultural impact this kind of situation has on the minds of sensitive writers. I have chosen V.S. Naipaul's travelogues on India for special study because he, by general consent, is one of the most significant contemporary writers of English prose. Added to that his writing reflect the dilemmas and tensions of societies which have been uprooted by the western civilizations' onslaught and are as yet not in a position to come to terms with it.