V. S. Naipaul

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What is the central idea of India: A Wounded Civilization by V. S. Naipaul?

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The central idea of India: A Wounded Civilization is that India has been deeply wounded by a millennium of colonization, leaving it without its own identity. V. S. Naipaul argues that this historical trauma, exacerbated by events like the Emergency (1975-1977), has created lasting societal and political issues, particularly due to the long absence of Hindu rule in a predominantly Hindu country.

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India: A Wounded Civilization is a personal account of V. S. Naipaul's time in India, together with a meditation on and analysis of the nature of Indian history, society, and politics. The central idea of the book is that India has been so deeply wounded by a millennium of colonization that it has no identity of its own.

Naipaul's account was strongly influenced by the state of emergency that was declared in India between 1975 and 1977. There were various reasons or pretexts for what came to be known simply as "the Emergency," but the most proximate course was sectarian civil unrest in the wake of India's war with Pakistan. This prompted Naipaul to reflect on the roots of the disturbances he saw around him, and particularly on India's colonial past. A country in which the majority of people were Hindu, particularly since partition had created two separate states for Muslims, had not been ruled by Hindus for many centuries, creating a wound which, in Naipaul's view, is almost impossible to heal.

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