AN INDIAN SURVEYS ENGLAND

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29004, 19 September 1959, Page 3

AN INDIAN SURVEYS ENGLAND

A Passage to England. By Nirad C. Chandhuri. Macmillan. 229 pp.

The author of this book is clearly the most amiable of men. All his life he has been devoted to literature and the arts; and although he is a Hindu, his knowledge of the culture of the West is both detailed and extensive. However, Mr Chandhuri had never travelled outside India. He says himself, “After living all my life iff my own country, India, andbeing very much of a home-keep-ing person even there, 1 went abroad for the first time at the ?ge of 57.” This experience seems to have followed the extremely favourable reception given in the British press to Mr Chandhuri’s first book, “The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian.” The 8.8. C. invited him to England to prepare some talks for the Overseas Service, and the British Council duly co-operated. Not to be outdone, the French Foreign Office organised a trip to Paris. As a result, Mr Chandhuri spent five weeks in England, two in Paris, and one in Rome. He wrote several enthusiastic articles; but when these appeared in the Indian press, they evoked “some bad-tempered comment, not too elegantly put, on my performance. I was even called pro-British, which is one of the worst terms of abuse in contemporary India.” However, Mr Chandhuri would not dissemble his friendly feelings. He decided to wait until he could “recall the sensations in tranquillity,” and then write at some length. “A Passage to England” is the result. In a chapter called, “Plea for the Book,” he gives his purpose

specifically. “What my senses were dealing with and striving hard to grasp was the reality I would call Timeless England, which I was seeing for the first time, and which I was inevitably led to set against the Timeless India in which I had been steeped all my life." Mr Chandhuri’s pensive gaze has rested upon English rivers, upon towns like London and Canterbury, on the colleges of Oxford, and on the Mother of Parliaments. He takes a keen interest in the outward appearance of the English people and even tries to say something favourable about the weather.

He is quite critical from time to time; but the criticism never gives offence. It comes from a man who is deeply interested in what he is studying and concerned about its future well-being. He disclaims irony, for instance, when he says, “If the English people are no longer able to get excited over politics, it is because they have solved all their political problems or got rid of them, and so there is nothing left for them to do.” He explains that the welfare State has abolished social and economic injustice. “All competition for political power has been eliminated by distributing it among all, and making it diffuse to the point of ineffectiveness." Nevertheless, he was greatly reassured when an English friend asserted that British people “are not really thoughtless about the future.”

Mr Chandhuri’s final judgment is that although the English have never risen wholly above their present troubles—they do grumble a great deal —it is a most delightful surprise to see them as happy, careless and gay as they generally are. ,It will be obvious that there are many pleasant pages to read in “A Passage to England."