Skip to main content

The Futility of Revolution



One of the shortest but classical works of fiction on the futility of revolution is George Orwell’s Animal Farm [1945]. The animals on the farm revolt against the oppressive human master and seek to establish an egalitarian society where all animals are equal. The revolution is driven by very noble ideals which have the potential to create a paradise on the farm. But sooner than later, the ideals give way to venality and the new rulers among the animals become far worse than the erstwhile human master. The human master only exploited the animals for labour. Now the animal masters are utterly vicious. They enjoy the highest forms of luxury at the cost of the other animals which are treated as worse than slaves. There is not only inequality but also injustice, cruelty, violence, government’s surveillance on the citizens, and plain butchery.

It was the aftermath of the Russian Revolution that inspired Animal Farm. The Russian Revolution sought to replace the dictatorial Tsar with a people’s government founded on socialist ideals. What Russia got, however, was a government far more inhuman than the Tsarist one. Something very similar happened with the French Revolution too which began in the name of the noble ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Revolutions are too idealistic to be practical. That is why the great thinker and writer, Albert Camus, said that revolutions culminate inevitably in police or in folly. The kind of perfection quested after by revolutions is impossible in the human world. The humankind has not evolved yet to that level of sophistication (emotional, intellectual and spiritual) required to create such paradises on earth. The human is far too fallible for that. Too frail. Too guilt-ridden.

The human fallibility, frailty and guilt require gods. To fear and worship. To forgive and give a pat on the back. To take revenge on the enemies, whole races of them if possible.

It is not Ram Rajya that the bhakt quests after. It is Ram – with all his might and hate and vengeance. Let us build glorious temples for him. Let us sacrifice fellow beings for him.

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal.” That is how one of the ideals in the revolutionised Animal Farm of Orwell had metamorphosed under the new leaders.  

PS 1. This post is provoked by a Facebook visitor to my space who told me bluntly that I, being a non-Hindu, am “only an unwanted guest” in his country which was destined to become Ram Rajya under the present political leadership.

PS 2. Thank you Blogchatter for the following award.


 

Comments

  1. Brilliant. I really enjoyed this piece. It triggered another thought in my mind, something similar that I shall soon share. Sometimes I think we are all in a spiral, and there's no one better than the other. I am so sorry about the Facebook trolling. It's become some sort of culture. Congratulations for the award.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Sonia. Don't worry about the FB thing, I've got used to that sort of things. I look forward to your post on "something similar".

      Delete
  2. Hari OM
    Interesting you should use Animal Farm (and appropriately, I may add)... have you seen the news that in some of the [dis]United States, there is a move to ban books because they are perceived as having potential to 'misguide our youth'? (An article on this...) Driven by fear of the mighty word, requiring the censorship sword???

    Congrats on being recognised for your contribution at Blogchatter! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's rather odd that the US is seeking to ban books. They're supposed to be liberal, aren't they?

      Delete
  3. Interesting post. I don't think bhakts quest after Ram too. In fact i think they don't even know Ram because what they are doing is directly opposite to what Ram stood for. Facebook trolls are funny things. I have lost count how many times i have been called a Vampanthi (communist). Congratulations on winning top blogger award.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Those who really know their god and religion won't indulge in hatred and violence.

      I take trolls in my stride, no problems. 😊

      Thanks.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation