The Return of the Native: Diasporic Anxiety in, V.S. Naipaul’s India Trilogy

Abstract

The India Trilogy by V. S. Naipaul, An Area of Darkness (1964), India: A Wounded Civilisation (1977), and India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990) is examined in this article as a prolonged literary and psychoanalytic engagement with diasporic concern. By examining these works by means of the theoretical frameworks of Paul Gilroy‘s idea of routes versus roots, Stuart Hall‘s definition of diasporic identity, and Homi K. Bhabha‘s concept of the unhomely, the study contends that Naipaul‘s fragmented, frequently antagonistic reactions to India represent a symptomatic expression of the postcolonial diasporic subject caught between an adopted colonial metropolis and an inherited homeland. This article reframes Naipaul‘s infamous negativity as a complex performance of belonging and estrangement, shaped by the epistemological violence of indenture, the nostalgic legacy of a twice-displaced community, and the impossibility of a stable return, rather than dismissing it as simple Eurocentrism or self-hatred. The paper also examines how Naipaul‘s narrative voice alternates between the longing of the exile and the detachment of the ethnographer, creating a literary space that is both critical and elegiac. The study finds a slow, although incomplete, transition from worry to qualified acceptance by following the

development over all three volumes. This transition reflects both Naipaul‘s personal changing autobiographical consciousness and larger changes in postcolonial discourse. The results add to current discussions on postcolonial identity, diaspora literature, and representation ethics.