Burmese Days - George Orwell

"and it is one of the tragedies of the half-educated that they develop late, when they are already committed to some wrong way of life”

This quote is attributed to one John Flory, the main character of this novel by Orwell, first published in 1934. He is a man battling his demons, his looks, his excesses, but deep down someone more enlightened in his thinking than all the others of the small white party present. Flory is our tragic hero in this novel.

 Having read Animal Farm and 1984 a few years back, it is a little different to find Orwell writing in the time of the Britsh Raj in Burma, He had served in the Police service back in  Burma, and his experience and close observations have made the novel, a captivating one. At times, reminiscent someone of Passage to India, this book attempts to explore collective dark mindsets of another time - just less than a hundred years to Orwell's first hand experience of his stay in Burma. The bigotry and corruption of the British Raj, and worse still - natives who have benefited from the British Raj who don't hesitate to subject their own people to much suffering for financial  benefits and prestige. Here, reading now, in this era, one cannot but note that we are possibly living in the best of times so far, as the number of people suffering in the world unfairly  - albeit a large figure still - becomes lesser and lesser.

The other subject that is explored here is the role of the British citizen who goes to the colonies, and how he or she, for better or worse gets his or her expectations changed drastically. Flory, has started appreciating certain ways of the natives having spent more than fifteen years in Burma. However when he meets Elizabeth, he seeks an escape route from the life style that has bogged him down. Elizabeth, still young and pretentious, is on a husband finding mission, and is at odds with Flory for she sees nothing worthy of the native ways.  But Flory has spent such a long time in Burma, that his feelings run akin to;
"The time comes when you burn with hatred of your own countrymen, when you long for a native rising to drown their Empire in blood. And in this there is nothing honourable, hardly even any sincerity. For, au fond, what do you care if the Indian Empire is a despotism, if Indians are bullied and exploited? You only care because the right of free speech is denied you. You are a creature of the despotism, a pukka sahib, tied tighter than a monk or a savage by an unbreakable system of taboos."

Another interesting observation was Orwell's reading of Buddhism. The most corrupt and oppressive native characters here, is said to believe that as long as they construct sufficient pagodas before their death, in spite of how they lived and how they earned, they can go to a better realm after death. While I think, it can safely be assumed this is due to Orwell's own misunderstanding, it reflects the overall stance the author had towards religion. Yet, he seems to be having a firmer grasp on the the Buddhist thinking behind consumption of meat. Note:
"The fisherman catches fish, and he is damned for it. But are we damned for eating the fish? Certainly not. Why not eat the fish, once it is dead? You should study the Scriptures more carefully, my dear Kin Kin" ; the speaker of these words is probably the most corrupt character we meet in this book, and he is native dreaming of rebirth in a good realm in his next birth,

In essence, this novel written with the experiences from Burmese policing still fresh in his mind,  captures the condition of the British citizen, logically stranded as an alien and trying to make a life from what is available to him or her - a club, having a remote semblance to one back in the home country. Orwell, or rather Blair, matured to a more complete author in the next decade and came to publish such classics as Animal Farm (1945) and  1984 (1956), where he made classics out of his opposition for totalitarianism and social injustice. If one imagines Blair to have some characteristics of Flory, it can then be second guessed as to how as he matured, he created that brilliant dystopian world for 1984 to live and breath ( although big brother watched you).

( a note on the book covers - Left, internet copy of the book cover ; Right, much used Colombo Municipal Council Library copy which I read )