A House for Mr. Biswas 823In the Domain Africans—the young men at the
polytechnic—were romantics.” Salim realizes how
the spirit of nationalism, which had originally led to
emancipation from colonial fetters, is now becom-
ing a divisive force in the newly independent nation.
He sees this in people like Indar, who hangs on the
fringes of the Domain’s new society and gives lip
service to its ideas, finding “his perfect setting” in
“the artificiality of the Domain.”
In Salim’s encounters with Raymond, a Belgian
historian who has been engaged to rewrite the
nation’s history as propaganda for the Big Man’s
administration, Naipaul raises questions about the
validity of historical documents and sources in the
construction of a nationalist ideology, and he reveals
the link between power, nationalism and the repre-
sentation of history from prejudiced points of view.
From the beginning, Salim has doubts about the
authenticity of Raymond’s rhetoric, doubts that are
reinforced every time he returns from “the exaltation
of the Domain” to the ramshackle town “to grasp
reality again.” Raymond interprets and analyzes
events from the perspectives of his European iden-
tity, but he records them in language that pleases the
Big Man. Salim realizes that even if Raymond has
“made Africa his subject,” “he had less true knowl-
edge of Africa, less feel for it, than Indar or Nazrud-
din or even Mahesh.”
Naipaul makes Salim cast doubt on the authen-
ticity and legitimacy of nationalist discourses and
historical sources. Ironically, Raymond himself ques-
tions the probability of producing an entirely faith-
ful account of the African past. During Yvette’s
reception, Raymond comments on all the events
that have gone unrecorded: “Do you think we will
ever get to know the truth about what has hap-
pened in Africa in the last hundred or even fifty
years? All the wars, all the rebellions, all the leaders,
all the defeats?” Naipaul notes the impossibility of
covering the totality of national events and also
reveals Raymond as an untrustworthy historian who
distorts selected events to suit those in power and
to reinforce their ideology. Salim begins to wonder
if anybody, including those in the Domain like
Indar, really “believe in the Africa of words.” The
high nationalist rhetoric of the Domain, “the glory
and the social excitements of the life there,” call to
him, but he is always glad to escape, to “get away
from that Africa of words and ideas as it existed on
the Domain (and from which, often, Africans were
physically absent).” Indeed, he observes throughout
the novel that perhaps the most visible presence of
an African is that of the president, whose portrait,
alongside the national flag, dominates the landscape
in the town, in the Domain, and wherever the army
operates: “The flag and the President’s portrait were
only like their fetishes, the sources of their author-
ity.” Salim is left wondering at the power of hypoc-
risy and fake nationalist rhetoric to change people
like Indar as they change history and truth. Sadly,
he concludes that he is beginning to understand,
but not endorse, the new kind of nationalism and
its dangers, the “anxieties about imported doctrines,
the danger to Africa of its very newness . . . some
dishonesty, or just an omission, some blank, around
which we both had to walk carefully.”
Divya SaksenaNaiPauL, v. S. A House for Mr. Biswas
(1961)
Born under inauspicious circumstances, Mohun
Biswas (later simply Mr. Biswas) is fated for a life of
hardship and disappointment. Though he dreams of
escaping Trinidad for a life of continental adventure,
a misplaced love letter leads to a full-blown offer
of marriage into the prosperous Tulsi family. Here
he is expected to become a good “citizen” in the
bustling Tulsi household, obeying every whim of its
demanding matriarch and her overseer, Seth. His
true aspiration, however, is simply to find a space for
himself and his family—a space with a door that can
be shut against the relentless train of Tulsi relatives.
Mr. Biswas’s quest to become a homeowner is beset
with failed business ventures, poverty, and marital
strife, though he has a successful career as a provin-
cial journalist. He never escapes Trinidad, nor writes
the great novel that makes his fame international,
but he can finally call himself a homeowner. Like
the man himself, the house is flawed and in various
stages of disrepair, though it becomes the sanctuary
where he can fill his days with reading, family, and
the solitude he has sorely lacked in life.
Joshua Grasso