Naipaul in India

I have been reading a lot of V.S. Naipaul's travel books on India. He seems perpetually frustrated and horrified by India and Indians. I think that the titles of his books give you a good idea of his opinion: A Wounded Civilization, A Million Mutinies Now and An Area of Darkness. It seems as if he is horrified but cannot bring himself to look away. He kept coming back for more.

An Area of Darkness is hilarious. He is horrified that it takes five low caste people to wash the hotel steps (one to pour water, one to scrub, one to dry etc etc) and yet the steps end up dirtier than before. He is horrified that people of all types go to the bathroom everywhere. Outside the train station in Madras, on the street, into the lake. And yet Indians are obsessed with purity. In the book he concludes that everything about the Indian personality hinges on symbolism. The five low caste cleaners' role is not to actually clean the hotel steps. It is to humiliate themselves because they are low caste. The obsession with purity doesn't involve actually, for example, keeping the Ganges clean, it is to be seen to be obsessed with purity.

When I read one of his books in Montreal my first thought was that he was a grumpy westerner who was really overreacting and probably just hated Indians. But since I got to asia I have reread the Ramayana and the Bhagavad Gita more slowly and I am starting to think that the main message in both those books really is to focus on your role (caste, job duty, family duty etc) regardless of result (idiot on the throne, you killing half your family on the battlefield etc). And making sure that everyone sees you fulfilling your role is also incredibly important regardless of your own feelings (turning away Sita, your devoted wife, because others would gossip about you because she had lived in another man's house - even though she was kidnapped and didn't let him touch her).

So duty above all, regardless of result or personal opinion. I am curious to know if I will find that to be true in India.