The St Augustine campus recently launched celebrations in honour of Sir V.S. Naipaul, who will be visiting Trinidad and Tobago in April on the invitation of the campus. During the opening ceremony to launch the series of Naipaul related events, campus Principal Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie, himself a Naipaul scholar, sought to explain why the time had come for the entire nation, and indeed the region, to celebrate the controversial genius. In fact, he gave 21 reasons why Naipaul should be celebrated.

Yet, it is no secret that the country remains uncertain in its support for the 2001 Lieterature Nobel Laureate. It is in this context that Dr Tewarie opened the conference by saying, “the world has acknowledged V.S. Naipaul as a great writer, England has adopted him as a British writer, India has welcomed him as a writer of Indian ancestry who offers valuable insights worth taking seriously, Trinidad and Tobago needs to embrace V.S. Naipaul as its own just as Naipaul perhaps needs to have a reconciliation with Trinidad and Tobago.”

“A celebration of Naipaul’s life and work in Trinidad and Tobago is a good opportunity for such a happening. The University of the West Indies is well positioned to play such a constructive role”.

Since being awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize, Naipaul has never been celebrated in this country. And there are many who feel that Naipaul should not be celebrated at all because of the seeming distance he has put between Trinidad and himself. Some feel that he has been hard and insensitive in dealing with the Caribbean and the developing world generally. Referring to this, the campus principal told the audience, “Naipaul has avoided provincialism, political partisanship and ethnic assertiveness but his fearlessness in depicting the world as he sees it has made him a controversial writer. This is what he has said about ethnic chauvinism, for instance: ‘I don’t think that there is magic in any racial inheritance…the last thing self knowledge should do is make us provincial or narrow … the self knowledge of which I speak is not meant as a kind of political assertion.’ The Pro Vice-Chancellor pointed out that in A Bend in the River Naipaul is harsh on his Indian protagonists, hostile to his European characters and brutal in his assessment of African leadership and politics. Naipaul is tough on everyone,” he said.

Referring specifically to the 74 year old author’s thoughts on the region, Dr Tewarie advised that it be taken in stride. “It is true that Naipaul is sometimes harsh on West Indian society and other societies in the developing world,” he said. “Writers of fiction often rebel against their society and the world as it is. Think of James Joyce and William Faulkner or John Steinbeck or even Jean-Paul Sartre or Mario Vargas Llosa or Saul Bellow. V.S. Naipaul is no different – except as a satirical novelist and essayist who explores the same or similar themes through both forms he can be especially biting. Mature societies do not take such criticism negatively. They seek to understand, to learn and to grow. As a society we must seek to attain the maturity that will allow us to rise to the challenge of locating Naipaul in context and examining him in perspective.

“V.S. Naipaul has been a controversial writer everywhere. Naipaul’s controversial nature is due to his brutal honesty and his unwillingness to be diplomatic or give politically correct answers. Such a writer is to be celebrated and embraced if we truly believe that the quest of an artist is to discover and reveal truth and that one of the roles of an artist is to provoke and to cause us to think and rethink,” continued Dr Tewarie.

Whatever the reservations about Naipaul’s fidelity to the region, Dr Tewarie made it clear that this prolific writer cleared a path which has benefited many West Indians. “A House for Mr. Biswas is a significant contribution by V.S. Naipaul to twentieth Century fiction. It is one of the great novels of the century – a masterpiece. CLR James described A House for Mr. Biswas as ‘the first study ever produced in the West Indies (or anywhere that I know) of a minority and the Herculean obstacles in the way of its achieving a room in the national building.’

Dr Tewarie acknowledged one of Naipaul’s contributions as the legitimization of the spoken language of the people of Trinidad and Tobago and the West Indies. The early novels in particular – Miguel Street, The Mystic Masseur, The Suffrage of Elvira and House of Mr. Biswas are all strong in the use of the vernacular and when one considers that all of these books were written before 1961, Naipaul’s’ unapologetic use of the Trinidadian creole which forces the non-West Indian reader to make sense of the spoken language in context, is truly remarkable and was a bold initiative.”

Professor Jonas Addae, Chairman of the Open Lectures Committee, also spoke at the event and heralded the Principal’s concept of a learning society and saw the Naipaul celebrations as part of the continuous effort to build and strengthen the Learning Society. “The vision of a Learning Society is one that resonated with my own sense of what a campus should be,” said Prof Addae. “We are currently in a competitive global environment that is driven by a knowledge-based economy. Hence, a university experience for our students should be much more than obtaining a degree in order to get a job.”

He also spoke about the function of the Open Lectures Committee. “To achieve his vision of promoting a learning society, the Principal, through the Academic Board, reconstituted the Campus Open Lectures committee and charged it to organize the Distinguished Open Lecture Series and the Professorial Inaugural Lecture series”.

Among the “distinguished speakers of international repute” hosted by the campus in the past 5 years, are: Derek Walcott, the 1992 Nobel laureate in Literature , Douglas Osheroff, the 1996 Nobel laureate in Physics, Harold Kroto, the 1996 Nobel laureate in Chemistry, C.N.R. Rao, President of the Third World Academy of Science, an expert in nanotechnology, Raymond Gosling, one of the contributors to the discovery of the DNA and Donald Horowitz, an expert on constitutional design for multi ethnic societies. These were outlined by Prof Addae.

“These examples,” said Prof Addae, “are not only to illustrate the quality of the speakers but also the diversity of the topics that the staff and students of the campus, and indeed the national community, have been privileged to listen to and share ideas with. Our committee is happy to be associated with this major event in which over the next three years we would be hosting speakers on V.S. Naipaul, Arthur Lewis and Derek Walcott.” A series of public lectures on Naipaul is planned during 2007.

Meanwhile, Dr Jennifer Rahim, a lecturer in the Liberal Arts Department, U.W.I., St Augustine told the audience that “it is indeed a rare and precious gift when a society as small as that of Trinidad and Tobago can lay claim to an artist who has attained the standard of international excellence as has V. S. Naipaul. He is among our most accomplished achievers”.

Senior Librarian Reginald Clarke also brought greetings at the opening ceremony and mounted a small exhibition for the occasion. A full scale V.S. Naipaul Exhibition will begin on April 14, 2007 at the Campus Library.