Nineteen Eighty-Four

The title of George Orwell’s celebrated novel could have been 2024 and its setting India.

Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the ruling party. Like anyone else in the country, he is also under the constant surveillance of Big Brother, the omniscient ruler of the country. Big Brother’s Party controls everything including the people’s history and language and even their thoughts. Certain words are banned from Newspeak, the official language. Even nurturing rebellious thoughts is criminal and ‘thought-crime’ is the worst. Winston works in the Ministry of Truth which is rewriting the history of the country. Even love is a crime and so Winston has to keep his love for Julia secret. Winston is trapped eventually by the spying police and is subjected to severe brainwashing. Finally he begins to love Big Brother and to have no feelings whatever for Julia whom he has betrayed.

My summary doesn’t do justice to Orwell’s great work. Frankly, I had never considered 1984 a great work until recently when my country began to resemble the country in the novel. I had never thought that there would ever be a country like the one Orwell had imagined in the novel. But alas!

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” That is from the novel. Any right-wing authority in my country today could have said it as well with slight modifications.

“’Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’” I hope you are aware of what our present government is doing to the history textbooks in schools and colleges.

The rewriting and manipulations and brainwashing are so effective in Orwell’s country that within 20 years people forget what was promised to them and what they had hoped for. Was life better before the Revolution? They can’t even remember the time before the Revolution!

Comrade Ogilvy is a hero in Big Brother’s country. He had died in battle, in heroic circumstances. Only, there never was any Comrade Ogilvy. “A few lines of print and a couple of faked photographs brought him into existence.”

The Mahatma will go as a villain and his killer will come as the hero. And a lot of new heroes will enter the textbooks. 

PS. This post is part of #BlogchatterA2Z 2023

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