Naipaul’s Travelogues and His Inscription of “Other” of the Muslim World

Abstract

This paper analyses Islamophobia from the perspective Naipaul as writer who is at the crossroad of both worlds and a real representative of mestiza The West is rife with islamophobia where Muslim are treated aptly as others; still foreign and strange in the west. There is a little change in the western perception regarding Muslim since their initial interaction with later in Levant, Middle East and beyond provided a raw material to construct whole façade of Orientalism that helped in the formulation of colonial discourse. The research conceptualizes how Muslim identity as “other” is archetypical that has influenced latent development in the relation between West and the rest. V.S. Naipaul is one among the writers who progressed with such a formulation and framework in his travelogues i.e. Among the Believers and Beyond Belief, where he ascribed Muslim, in a pedantic style, primitive and uncivilized. The study is descriptive and qualitative in nature where the text of Naipaul with reference to Muslim and the west has been analyzed. Naipaul is being criticized for one sided monologic views leaving no space for any counter argument. Seen in this context, both Colonial and postcolonial theory and legacy in terms of intellectual and artistic output represent a persistent mode of reciprocal “othering”. It would be suggested in the end that it is not only the Colonial legacy that insists upon the secondary status of the colonized polities and culture; postcolonial itself thrives on constructing the West as a superior “other” through persistent mode of either resistance or its glorification.