Conversations in Bloomsbury (Oxford India Paperbacks) by Mulk Raj Anand

Conversations in Bloomsbury (Oxford India Paperbacks) Reviews

• 
  Alwynne

  ”…[D. H.] Lawrence began. “What I admire about the Hindus is their sense of mystery.” And he twisted his face as though he wished to escape from the room and us all…
  
  I felt I had come here looking for something I could not define, to end my remoteness, to become part of the intimate circle of creative men. Instead I had entered a world of conflicting personalities, involved in various ways of transcending the everyday mundanity. I was distressed that there were lurking prejudices in all of them about the East.
  
  “I understand Indians have written very few novels,” said Lawrence confirming my prognostications. “Only fables with moral lessons.” “
  
  In the 1920s, after imprisonment in India for his part in protesting British rule, writer Mulk Raj Anand went into self-imposed exile in England where he studied philosophy. He found a boarding-house that would accept him in a remote London suburb but spent most of his time in central London, where he came into contact with leading members of London’s artistic and literary scene. Anand recounts meetings with, among others, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, E.M. Forster, Eric Gill, Nancy Cunard, D.H. Lawrence, Catherine Carswell, Clive Bell, Leonard and Virginia Woolf - some of which arose out of Anand’s visits to cultural hubs like Harold Munro’s Bloomsbury bookshop. Unsurprisingly many of the discussions recorded here focus on contemporary literature, Anand was an avid reader and an admirer of novels like Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as well as E. M. Forster’s approach in A Passage to India, but equally central are unexpectedly detailed exchanges on Indian art and culture including religious and philosophical material. Although the majority of the London circle’s opinions on these are frequently intellectually arrogant and more than a little politically dubious - despite Anand’s frustration at what seems to be an unspoken ban on any explicit political references.
  
  Repeated racial slurs, even Leonard Woolf - someone Anand liked and worked with at the Hogarth Press - happily refers to Anand as a “wog,” and less overt forms of prejudice ensure that Anand’s continually reminded of his outsider status. The outcome's a form of endless self-policing, that’s painful to witness, tied to his anxiety not to play into English stereotypes of India and Indians; but these same experiences increase Anand's resolve to fight for his country’s freedom,
  
  ”…I realised that I had taken umbrage about wrong words said about India, and for being considered ‘lesser breeds without the law’. The humiliation for being inferior seemed like a wound in my soul which would never heal. The more I licked it the more tender it became. And I decided in my mind that I would fight for the freedom of my country forever, though I may admire these English writers for their skill.”
  
  Anand’s recollections highlight the impact of colonialism on an individual, caught between competing, often irreconcilable cultures. His brief memoir’s a unique portrait of the times and, significantly, of a direct encounter between colonial and anti-colonial ways of interpreting the world, written from the point of view of someone all too aware of the consequences of being subjected to Britain’s imperial rule. Although some of the philosophical debates are fairly dry, it's ultimately a fascinating slice of cultural history and a tantalising glimpse into the complex relations between modernist ideas and practices and concepts of race and empire.
• 
  Anil Swarup

  Mulk Raj Anand has his own inimitable style of conveying his thoughts. This book belongs to that genre. He is, for change, not telling a story. It comprises a set of conversations that he had with some litterateurs in London over a period of time when a "war"was being waged against the British Empire in India. For him "the humiliation of being inferior seemed like a wound in his (my) soul which would never heal. The more he (I) licked it the more tender it became". He is pretty candid in his assertions: "I decided in my mind that I would fight for the freedom of my country forever, though I may admire these English writers for their literary skills". Indeed, he did fight with his mighty pen. He did, however, accept that he was being a hypocrite in "hating the British rule in India and living on its dole".
  Some of the comments of the luminaries, like Leonard Woolf, could be true of India as well, even now : "Our politicians want to run everything as a private joke. Polite enough on the surface! Vicious underneath!"
• 
  John

  A really bizarre book in a great way. Anand met (it seems) a bunch of the Bloomsbury people in the 20s, and in the 80s he decided to write about it. The result is somewhere between memoir and autobiography and history. Eliot is the biggest prig ever, and V. Woolf is a goddess for Anand, who recreates Bloomsbury from the perspective of a colonial outsider in a weird but captivating way.
• 
  Nihar Mukund

  The chapters, despite rarely exceeding ten pages each, manage to capture multiple threads of conversations surrounding modernist thought, giving them good space even as the focus is kept on Anand's impressions of the multiple key literary figures he meets, and the ideological conflicts between them, all boiling down to the politics of the empire, despite none being too willing to admit to it. However, it's greatest achievement is not the portrayal of realistic figures, but the fleshing out of it's narrator and his complex relationship with Imperial India and it's religions.
• 
  Jade

  '"It is difficult," I said, "to say something new. Almost everything has been said by someone or the other"'.
• 
  Jenni

  I loved reading about Anand's interactions with Eliot and Joyce.