Delhi
The Indian bungalow where George Orwell was born is under threat from an unlikely showdown between literary enthusiasts, government developers and Gandhi supporters. Orwell — real name Eric Blair — spent the first year of his life more than a century ago in a small compound in Motihari, Bihar, where his father worked as an opium agent for the British colonial government, overseeing poppy growers and preparing the drug for export to China. The same town 14 years later became the crucible for Mahatma Gandhi’s resistance to British rule, as the freedom fighter launched his first “satyagraha” movement to support local farmers forced to grow opium for the factory that employed Orwell’s father.
Competing bids to honour each of the town’s claims to fame have clashed over the years, but were thought to have been settled in 2010 when the state government earmarked half of the writer’s compound as an “Orwell Park” and the neighbouring plot to commemorate the independence movement. However, a society for protecting Orwell’s legacy claims government-backed developers are trying to expand the rival Gandhian plot — straight on to the birthplace of one of the last century’s greatest anti-imperialist writers. “I don’t think they have read anything Orwell wrote or are aware of who he is,” said Debapriya Mookherjee, of the town’s Orwell society. The row was triggered as Mookherjee and the George Orwell Commemorative Committee gathered at the site to mark the writer’s 113th birthday at the weekend. They noticed that construction for a parking lot and a new boundary wall had begun on the 12,000sq ft area set aside to conserve Orwell’s legacy and notified authorities. The district magistrate stepped in to halt the expansion of the Gandhi park and ordered an inquiry into the matter.
The latest disagreement follows protests in 2014 when construction of Satyagraha Park was temporarily halted to prioritise the Orwell renovation. “Gandhian sites should be developed first. Discrimination with Gandhi would not be tolerated,” protester Braj Kishore Singh told reporters at the time. Another demonstrator claimed that Orwell had “made no contribution to India”. Orwell’s family returned to England a year after his birth in Motihari and he never returned to live in India. The writer did later serve in the Indian Imperial Police, in colonial Burma, and retained a keen interest in the subcontinent throughout his career. But the Motihari house lay neglected for decades until a visit in 1983 by Scottish journalist Ian Jack, who was tracing Orwell’s roots for an article to be published in the following, symbolically significant year of 1984. In the article, Jack claimed not a single person in the town had been aware of the great writer’s local roots.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2016
