194 But even before the questioning began, a temperamental advantage was already secure Mr. Naipaul "was born an unbeliever" and in addition "remained almost totally ignorant of Hinduism," Examining himself with that peculiar honesty of his, he writes that what survived of Hinduism in him was a "sense of the difference of people , . a vaguer sense of caste, and a horror of the unclean." Turning these Hindu weapons against Hindus, he wins his spectacular victories, metaphorically speaking^ against the Hindu way of life. He speaks with the virulent sharpness of one who has "contracted out." The attenuation of his childhood culture began in the family when he was six or seven, was complete when he was fourteen A few ambivalent attitudes of course remained, and Mr Naipaul acknowledges them freelyo But essentially the older, Hindu-traditional, Brahmin side of him was dead or existed in a new wayo The newer and truer side of his nature kicked against what he noticed in India, a multitude of evils flowing from "the smugness o o , the imperviousness to criticism, the refusal to see, the doub^-talk and double-think c . o " That was the monstrous realty compared to the India which was an area of his imaginations compared again to the India of the newspapers and books, the political speeches and the cultural exchanges The apprenticeship for rejecting this Monstrous India, as it may be called, was long and radical. If the Indian community in the West Indies seemed self-defeatingty static, the Gujarati and Sindhi merchants who came out to settle there appeared "foreigno11 From Mro Naipaul, the word does not sound chauvinistic because his cultural base is not national but humanist, not a territory or even a culture but a complex of values which cuts a they seldom went out; their pallid women were secluded; and all day their houses screeched with morbid Indian film songs They contributed nothing to the society, nothing even to the Indian commun^ty^ They were reputed among us to be sharp businessmen " Moreover, they maintained their static relations with India, but1! up none with their new environmento The pKutre is a clear one and its justice cannot be denied, except that it would be equa^ y true of most other Indian communi'tieSe Considered as a whole, and allowing always fo^ ""ndividual exceptions (a small percentage, but running into huge numbers*) the communal way of life in India 1s hidebound, inimical to personal development, fantastically ignorant and prejudiced about the world outside the community, and hopelessly uncreative in every conceivable a^ea of lifec My quarrel with Mrc Naipaul, which I hope to conduct in a way that win be understandable to him, is not because of these condemnatory judgements o^ his, so fiercely, so b^azingly expressed My quarrel is that Mro Naipaul is so often unmvolved and unconcerned He writes exclusively from the point of view of his own dilemma, his temperamental alienation from his mixed back-ground^ his choice and his escapee That temperament is not universal, not even *"In a country like IndiBy so vast and so populous, the individuals who form the exceptions may wet1 run into minions," Nirad Co Chaudhuri, T'h^ Autobiography ^ f an ^nk^^w Indoor