A review on George Orwell's "Burmese Days"

The most unflattering account of India and its people is there in 'Burmese Days'. The authenticity of the book is stunning. George Orwell saw things far more clearly than even Forster, who totally ignored Hindus for they appeared mysterious to him, besides noting passingly Dr. Godse in A Passage to India.

On the reverse side, this Gorge Orwell's book presents the colonials in even poorer light. The true nature of colonialism and its soul-sapping decadence and corrupting influence on both parties is pityprovoking.

You simply cannot detest the British underclass, representing the face of colonials in India. They are capable of inflicting the severest violence on the natives to prove their loyalty to the Raj and win promotions, while they are distressed by their financial worries, children's education or their future, once they complete their tenure in India.

For the ones not married yet, finding a suitable English match is almost out of question. At best they will find a woman who is considered too low in Britain and fit to be a servant only, or fit to marry a British man serving in India.

Then you have orphaned and destitute English young women coming to India looking for a husband.

(Such was the tyranny at home--Towards which he was drawn "Like a moth to a flame" in the words of BBC--and Orwell went out looking for it all over the places to begin his revolution.)

The prospects of joining the retirees' ghetto of British-Indian servicemen in England is another loathsome inevitability at the end of such a career. That is if an uprising of natives does not annihilate them before that.

They drink and indulge excessively to keep their minds off the dirty work they are doing here in most cases. Then there is the fear of tropical diseases. From the first sentence, it holds you by your neck and hits you with brilliance almost relentlessly.

Orwell was disillusioned with his job and despaired as a writer to almost killing himself by smoking while writing 1984. He had weak lungs and TB and lived a life of exile mostly. For his writing rendered him an alien in Britain.

To this day few writers dare to follow his legacy and Britain reads and produces occult-fiction or mommy porn mostly if it does not regale in foreign cultures.

The concept of the home guard he suggested and the government adopted during WWII gave him hope that a revolt will take place in Britain itself, with millions of armed civilians. But he failed to see that British people were incapable of it, being very tribal by nature. Before that, he joined the Spanish civil war to fight tyranny and got nearly killed. His personal life says that he was a born revolutionary with no true comrade. So writing was the last resort to him though it earned him very little to ever get settled in life. Today his works earn millions of pound in royalties.

What is most appealing about "Burmese Days" is the intimate scenes between Flory and his Burmese mistress in the earlier part of the book. The hostility and mutual distrust among them are total. Flory needs her to relieve his carnal desires and she needs Flory to extort money. They hate each other as much as possible otherwise.

Once this relationship fails the woman turns vindictive, prompted by the villain and finally destroys Flory. The villain is a Burmese in the British civil service who is against Flory because Flory supports a South Indian doctor for the membership of the club, where only one Indian will be entered to make it look more egalitarian, as per orders from higher commands. It divides the members of the hitherto all-white club, who sulk at the prospects of having an Indian now in an all-white club. Now they want the one closest to them to join. It makes Flory an enemy of the rest of the whites and the other wannabe for the membership: the Burmese villain, for he clearly supports his friend the South Indian doctor for the membership.

It is the most forthcoming narrative of the writer where he doesn't hide behind too many symbols or allusions, save the birthmark of Flory, which a reader will never forget in his life; which was the case with earlier writers of his ilk, like Kipling, who almost completely forgot to see the colonial subjects among who he was born in and spent all his life. Kipling even wrote a story about the nuts and a bolt talking to each other on a ship beside his Jungle book and collected his Nobel prize for such kind of work. Even Orwell’s later work is far more obscure by the standard of Burmese Days, though it is more celebrated than his first. Though it is about Burma rather than India, Burmese Days almost is about every country ever colonised. The nauseating way colonialism operated in league with the lackeys it created among the natives is appalling, to say the least. Also, it gets uglier when someone amongst the colonials suggests that the German imperials were far crueller than the British ones, to make things look tolerable.

To this day, as the things stand, it makes one wonder if colonialism has not really ended but operates remotely in this age of information, where the lackeys operate as if they have substituted the masters.

The ending disappointed me a bit. For neither Flory is that sensitive a soul to commit suicide after killing his pet dog when he was rejected by Elizabeth for the second time after his disposed of Burmese mistress creates a scene in a church gathering. He was never that proud of his Englishness that the rejection of an English woman, who is an orphan and a destitute and is desperate to find a husband in India after finding none at home.

On the part of Elizabeth too, the second rejection of Flory is too much overdone. More so since she already rejected Flory for the same reason earlier and then accepted back after she was rejected by the military officer Varrell, who she and her aunt were prospecting for her husband. Flory was rejected first time as soon Varell arrives in the town and is accepted back as soon Varrell leaves without saying goodbye to anyone after his month-long stay in the town, during which he took out Elizabeth almost every evening but never proposed the marriage Elizabeth wanted from him so badly.

In the meanwhile, the uncle who gives her shelter in Burma has repeatedly tried to rape her.

All British characters are too practical in the book for they are from the underclass at home and are out there to make a career in British Raj in India. When they appeared inordinately principled at the end of the book, it looked disingenuous, to say the least.

If it was created to make the end dramatic it has failed completely. If it was done to uphold the uprightness and pride of British colonials it again fails miserably. For the book gave away a great deal earlier on that count. (A doubt is: they were added to attenuate the venom of the book when it was finally published in England after its first edition published in the USA was taken off the shelf briskly, though the book has already sold a few thousand copies in a little time after publication.)

For the readers who consider the first novel of an author his best, for it has a lyrical quality which wanes latterly, and also that it has a certain innocence and an intuitive, unadulterated genius, which is unsustainable as age corrupts one and all, this book vindicates them. The intensity, with which the author says things in utter desperation as if he is breathing to save his life, which was so unprecedented and unexpected for his time and milieu, breaks the heart utterly. He was risking everything to write his thoughts.

No wonder George Orwell is the best known Englishman till seventy years after his death. And his books become bestsellers once again when a figure like Donald Trump emerges in a powerful country like the USA, who threatens to take away the hard-won freedom of the people. Orwell has done the most to give a soft image to an imperial power like Great Britain, which plundered most of the world ruthlessly for nearly two centuries.