Skip to main content

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

Previous Post: Mona Lisa

Coming up on Monday: Octlantis

Labels:

Comments

  1. JaiApril 15, 2023 at 8:11 AM

    Absolutely on the dot Tom. Agree with every word. Goebbels used to say if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth. That is what is happening right now. History textbooks are being changed to brainwash young minds is meant for erasing historical figures of relevance.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yamini MacLeanApril 15, 2023 at 8:14 AM

    Hari OM
    Oh yes, there is much to compare from that prescient work... YAM xx
    (ta for asking - am fine, just some big decisions in process which will be revealed along the way.)

    ReplyDelete
  3. CareenaApril 15, 2023 at 10:42 AM

    I often wonder if the present government will end up banning 1984 because it revels their MO and serves as caution to the citizens but then i shake my head because they've been able to take over so blatantly. Clearly they have no fear of cautionary tales. Maybe because they know low literacy in India can be used as a weapon...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 15, 2023 at 10:40 PM

      Low literacy is the real secret. Low thinking. No thinking, rather.

      Delete
  4. docdivatravellerApril 15, 2023 at 2:24 PM

    Changu textbooks won't change history. The next generation needs to know the truth.
    www.docdivatraveller.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. vanderloostApril 15, 2023 at 9:31 PM

    What we think our history is may be another rewrite. Who knows?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 15, 2023 at 10:13 PM

      Palimpsest. My post on letter P is on the way - about rewriting.

      Delete
  6. DeepikaApril 17, 2023 at 12:06 PM

    1984 had made a good read. But i will not comment on the political situation as i realise your and my views are different

    ReplyDelete
  7. Chinmayee Gayatree SahuApril 18, 2023 at 12:17 AM

    A great narration and I feel equally sad too

    ReplyDelete
  8. जितेन्द्र माथुरApril 18, 2023 at 1:23 PM

    I have read only the summary of 1984 and not the complete text of the book. All the same, your comparison of the same with the present situation and happenings in India is spot on. I have read Animal Farm penned by George Orwell only and after reading it completely the thought that came to my mind was that its plot also could be compared to certain developments in India post-independence.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 18, 2023 at 5:09 PM

      Yes, Animal Farm can remind us of India. 1984 is more like India of the present time.

      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
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...
6 comments
Read more

The RSS does not exist

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...
12 comments
Read more

No Problems Only Opportunities

You’ve probably heard this joke. A young man walked into his office one morning and found a beautiful young lady sitting in his chair. He called the MD and said, “Sir, I have a problem.” The MD replied, “Don’t you know our company’s motto, young man? No Problems, Only Opportunities .” When Suchita of The Blogchatter sent me a mail with the topic of this week’s blog hop –  - the first thing that came to my mind was the above joke. I know many people – too many, in fact – who went through terrible problems. My own life was a series of problems in none of which was there the consolation of any beautiful woman. One essential lesson I learnt from life is that life is a series of problems. You solve one and then arises the next one. Now I have reached an age when problems are no more problems: they are life itself. If you ask me what was the biggest problem I ever dealt with, it was my last years in Shillong. I was a lecturer in a college drawing a fat salary stipulated by the U...
13 comments
Read more