NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

J UNE 8, 2019 marked the 70th anniversary of the publication of 1984, George Orwell’s famous novel of life in the future. The novel was written in 1948 and became an instant success. Since then it has sold more than 30 million copies and has also been translated into many languages. The year 1984 had also become, in the words of Peter Jenkins of The Guardian, “an almost mythical date in human history”. When the year 1984 arrived, people took to comparing the situation postulated by Orwell, with that which existed in the real world. Mrs. Thatcher, for instance, was reported as saying that “Orwell was wrong”. We do not, she asserted, have a totalitarian state of the kind that Orwell predicted. But the picture that Orwell depicted for 1984 was not meant to be taken literally. It is a symbolic expression of the course that evil in the world of man might take. George Orwell saw ominous trends in the political system of 1948; he projected those trends to 1984, and described the society that might result. 70 years later the novel still resonates with modern society and political consciousness and human freedom. 1984, the novel has become an essential part of the modern consciousness. Orwell saw that man is in the middle of a perfect world. Everything in nature is exactly as it ought to be. There is no exploitation, prejudice, tyranny or corruption in the world around man. His own world, however, is fraught with evil. The world of nature, in all its beauty, proclaims that there is a path to perfection that man too can follow. The world of man, in all its corruption, cries out that man has failed to follow that path. The purpose of 1984 is to warn man off from cultivating his potential for evil, and cultivate instead the good that is latent in him. But the pessimistic tone of 1984 shows that Orwell did not see human society reaching a state of perfection in this world. “It is quite possible that man’s major problems will never be solved,” he wrote in 1944, “but it is also unthinkable who is there who dares to look at the world of today and say to himself, ‘It will always be like this’.” NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR A Case for the Life Hereafter The world of nature, in all its beauty, proclaims that there is a path to perfection that man too can follow.