Naipaul and Rushdie Are The Same? That's News

Roli Books has just published 'The Silent Life', Chaman Nahal's memoirs. According to this PTI report, he says: "The ethos of a writer is reflected not in the language alone but also in the design he gives to a work and a reader is bound to be moved by it if he is open minded enough. More than words it is the structure of a work that brings out its force." Um....ok.

The report continues: "Nahal says...Indian English writers who have been readily accepted by the British audiences are essentially colonial writers.'This applies as much to V S Naipaul as to Salman Rushdie. Naipaul's novels glorify more the water-tight colonial mode of living than the loose but inconclusive harmony prevailing in Indian homes, so do the works of Salman Rushdie.' "

Sorry, Mr Nahal, that comparison makes no sense.

(Meanwhile, do read this op-ed piece by Rushdie in yesterday's New York Times on the subject of rape: "...any country that claims to be a modern, secular democracy must secularize and unify its legal system, and take power over women's lives away, once and for all, from medievalist institutions like Darul-Uloom." Link via Amit.)