Benjamin the donkey

Benjamin is an old donkey in George Orwell’s classic fable, Animal Farm. Life has made him a cynic. He doesn’t believe anything good will happen to the ordinary folk because he has learnt through experience that “life will go on as it always has gone on – that is, badly.” He has seen many changes of leadership on the farm. He has seen revolutions. He has seen enough, in other words, to know that the changes mean nothing for the ordinary creatures. The benefits all go to some select few whatever changes happen, in spite of all great promises, in spite of all nice-sounding slogans.

The conflagration that broke out on the Brahmapuram dump-yard in Kochi has been in news for the last ten days in Kerala. Those who have watched the evening ‘news hour debates’ on TV channels will remember Orwell’s Benjamin again and again. Politicians belonging to the ruling party come and go supporting the government’s inaction and irresponsibility by shifting the blame for the fire and the accumulated waste to somebody else. Keep shifting the blame. That’s all what ruling parties seem to do nowadays. Even Jawaharlal Nehru who died more than half a century ago keeps being blamed in this country day after day. Nobody of Kerala’s ruling left party has put the blame for Brahmapuram catastrophe on Nehru yet. They all put it on the previous government – at the Corporation level or even state level – and that was Nehru’s party, you see.

The BJP has been ruling the country at the centre for nine years now. The CPI(M) has been ruling Kerala for seven years. They cannot keep passing blames anymore. They have had enough and more time to set the wrongs right. But Benjamin is right, you see. Nothing changes whoever comes to power. Only the persons who steal from the public coffers change. Instead of the corrupt Congressmen in Kerala, the corrupt Marxists stole for the last seven years. The colour of the party is slightly different in the Centre. But the colour of corruption is quite the same. Maybe a little deeper hue since IT, ED, CBI and many other agencies are also involved now for a change in the Centre.

People of Kerala have started reacting openly against the corruption of their political leaders. That is a good sign. What we need are not more Benjamins. We need people who react, who are not hardcore cynics, who can visualise better alternatives. It is very sad that most intellectuals of Kerala are now silent like Benjamin. They all want to be politically correct. Otherwise they stand to lose much. We live in a time when the governments imprison the intellectuals without actually throwing them in prisons.  

So we have a lot of Benjamins now. Cynics who don’t care to speak up. Or pretend that everything is going to be good soon. We are on the way to Utopia.

Orwell’s Benjamin realised his mistake too late when his best friend, Boxer the horse, was taken to the slaughterhouse. Boxer was the most hardworking and sincere animal on the farm. Boxer is a representative of the common person who keeps slogging day in and day out and paying ever-rising taxes believing that the Leader is always right and that the farm will soon be Utopia.