India: A Million Mutinies Now is the subtlest book in the trilogy. Here you can read cynicism or hope into each keenly observed situation or character. India just might be on the verge of a full-blown civilisational efflorescence. It could be as if you were visiting England in the first year of the reign of Elizabeth I. Alternately, if you are not the sanguine type, maybe India resembles the France of Louis XVI just before the fall of the Bastille. Take your pick. Suddenly, all of us RIs are happy as we are doubtless convinced that our country verily is “shining”! This writer who got a knighthood from the Queen of England and a special prize from the King of Sweden is now one of us. He is not a mean foreign critic; he is very much an Indian worthy of being honoured by our government and feted in elegant (and hopefully clean!) hotels around the country.

In a seminal speech Naipaul warned Indians of today not to pursue strategies of mere economic success or military accomplishment. We need to build a “civilisation” with all its soft penumbras. We cannot but agree. While we owe you much for sensitising us to our own country if nothing else, and that too in impressive prose, we too may have a message for you Sir Vidia. When you write the fourth volume of the tetralogy which we are all looking forward to, we might just surprise you. We might just continue to trundle along “almost shining” in parts and “definitely in darkness” in other parts. The land of your ancestors might just retain the maddening trait of avoiding the binary descriptors so appropriate for Wiltshire and so completely ignored by Periyar/Shiv Sena/Dalit/ Hazratbal-relic /forgotten-Hampi/ garbage-choked cities and emerging positive energy, all of which you have so expertly described.

... contd.