How every writer is a writer in politics, but...

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who died aged 87 in the US on May 28, was much more than an African writer. He was a giant who straddled the world literary stage for over 50 years. Overlooked for a Nobel, to me he was a far greater writer than Salman Rushdie and VS Naipaul, both of whom ran down the freedom struggles of the society of their origin — India. Ngugi, on the other hand, glorified the freedom struggle of his motherland — Kenya — in his third and most well-known novel, ‘A Grain of Wheat’. It was published when he was still a student of Masters in English Literature at Leeds University in England and was a regular at the literary circle of Arnold Kettle, who, as Ngugi put it, “systematised my thinking”.

The novel was a powerful indictment of the British colonisers, who used ruthless violence to deprive all ethnic groups, particularly the largest one — Gikuyu — of their land and set up an inhuman system of governance. Ngugi belonged to the same ethnic group.

Born in 1938 to a poor Christian landless farmer family, he was christened James Thiong’o Ngugi, a name he carried until 1977. It was then that he was reminded that he had no business criticising Christianity while carrying a Christian name. He shifted to his Gikuyu name: Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

Ngugi once reminisced as to how his teacher in a missionary school at Limuru punished them for using their mother tongue, Gikuyu, even in situations outside the classroom by forcing students to spy on one another.

After his schooling, Ngugi joined Makarere University College in Kampala, Uganda, the only institution of higher learning in East Africa, affiliated to the University of London. It was here that his literary brilliance came to the fore. Not only did he write a play, ‘Black Hermit’, on the eve of Uganda’s Independence but also became the editor of Pen Point East Africa, a literary journal.

Before completing his degree, he published two novels — ‘Weep Not Child’ and ‘The River Between’ — both of which chronicled the colonisation of Kenya by the British, depriving the ethnic groups of not only their land and livelihoods but also of their cultural identities. ‘The River Between’ was modelled on Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’, the only difference being that in Ngugi’s novel, the accusations against the British were more direct and stronger.

Ngugi was 14 when in 1952, the British declared a state of emergency to combat the freedom struggle launched by the Land and Freedom Army, which the colonialists nicknamed as Mau Mau to disparage its significance. From that year until 1963, when Kenya gained its Independence, a reign of extreme terror and violence was let loose against Kenyans, which forced most of its youth to join the Land and Freedom Army.

Ngugi did not do that, preferring to continue with his education. This left him with a feeling of guilt which did not leave him for long and is reflected in his repeated engagement with that struggle in his writings.

Returning from Leeds in 1967, Ngugi became a Lecturer in the English Department at Nairobi University. A couple of years into his job, he suggested some changes in the syllabus which were not accepted and he resigned. He had also supported a students’ agitation against the government’s policies.

He took up writing as a full-time career. The period between 1971 and 1977 proved to be the most productive of his career, wherein he wrote ‘Homecoming and other Essays’, a collection of stories called ‘Secret Lives’, a play in collaboration with Micere Mugo titled ‘The Trial of Dedan Kimathi’ and a novel, ‘Petals of Blood’. To date, some of these remain his most powerful narratives.

Focusing on post-Independence Kenya, Ngugi blasted the nexus between politicians and corruption, vilification and the victimisation of freedom fighters immediately after Independence and the souring of the dream of the ordinary Kenyans to get their land titles back. ‘Petals of Blood’, together with a play, ‘Ngaahika Ndeenda’, that he wrote with Ngugi waMiiri changed the course of his life. Enraged, Prime Minister — later President — Jomo Kenyatta had the theatre for staging the play razed to the ground and also had him incarcerated in a maximum-security prison for a year without proffering any formal charges.

Ngugi used his imprisonment to his creative advantage after taking a momentous decision to shift from writing in English to writing in Gikuyu. Denied the luxury of access to notebooks, he wrote the manuscript of his prison diary — ‘Detained’ — on toilet paper and the manuscript of his first novel in Gikuyu, ‘Caitaani Mutharabaaini’ (Devil on the Cross), between the lines of various copies of the Bible that he got issued from the prison library.

Released, Ngugi went in exile first to the UK and later to USA, where he taught at various institutions and where his later books like ‘Matigari, Birth of a Dream Weaver’ were written. Books of non-fiction like ‘Writers in Politics’, ‘Moving the Centre’, ‘Barrel of a Pen’ and, above all, ‘Decolonising the Mind’, established Ngugi wa Thiong’o as not only among the foremost theorists of literature, but also as a societal thinker.

On a personal note, in 1978, I was given a copy of ‘Petals of Blood’ by a Professor of African Studies at JNU. That changed the course of my career. Abandoning my research on a topic relating to socio-linguistics midway, I shifted my focus to exploring the writings of Ngugi, which resulted in a doctoral degree and a book based on it, ‘Politics as Fiction’, and the teaching of several courses on African literatures at JNU.

I also translated the works of several African writers, including those of Ngugi and Achebe, into Hindi, published by the Sahitya Akademi.

It is from him that I learnt the ‘gurumantra’ about the nature of literary discourse and the inherent ethical element in it: ‘Every writer is a writer in politics — the only question is what and whose politics’!

— The writer is a former Professor at Centre for English Studies, JNU