Projections of the Future World: Chapter II

 

Chapter-II

Introduction to Authors

As stated in the last chapter the basic objectives of the study are to trace out elements of Utopia and Dystopia and elements of science fiction in the works of Rahul Sanskritayan Baeeswi Sadi, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. Besides it another major objective is to ascertain how much the future projected by these authors in the works selected for the study have been transformed into reality and have seen the light of the day and how much it is likely to become true in future and how much it remains hidden in the mysterious dark cave of future. Barring a few isolated articles on these authors and the theme taken up in the book there is no full length comparative work on these authors and works that justifies the composition of this work. After seeing the political and social environment of twentieth century in which these authors lived and worked it is essential to throw some light on the life and works of these authors before proceeding to their works taken up for this study. To take these authors in the chronological order let us first begin with Rahul Sankritayan, then Aldous Huxley and then his pupil George Orwell or Eric Blaire.

Rahul Sankritayan born on 9 April, 1893 was n Indian independence activist, writer and a polyglot who wrote in Hindi. His original name given at the time of his birth was Kedarnath Pandey . Basically he is known for playing a pivotal role in giving travelogue a literary form. He spent nearly forty five years of his life in travelling and is termed as father of Indian travelogue. He was one of the most widely travelled scholars of India remaining away from his home for nearly four decades. He is known for his authentic descriptions about his travel experiences for instance in his work Meri Ladakh Yatra ( My Laddakh Journey) he covers regional, historical and culture aspects of that region quite judiciously. He became a Buddhist monk ( a Bhikkhu) and eventually a marxist. As an activist for Indian independence he was arrested and jailed for three years for his anti British writings and speeches. He was born in Pandaha village in Uttar Pradesh while his ancestral village was Kanila Chakrapanpura in Azamgarh district also in Uttar Pradesh or more specifically in Eastern Uttar Pradesh. He began his education in a local primary school but later on he studied and mastered numerous languages independently besides learning the art of photography. Initially he was a keen follower of Arya Samaj founded by Swami Dayanand Saraswati. Then he was fascinated by Buddhism that changed his life as after taking Diksha in Sri Lanka he took the name Rahul( son of Buddha) and also used his gotra Sankritya and thus Kedarnath Pandey was transformed into Rahul Sankritayan. He later lost faith in God’s existence but still retained faith in reincarnation. Lateron he became a socialist and rejected the concepts of reincarnation and afterlife also.

Sanskritayan’s travels took him to different parts of the country like Ladakh, Kinnaur and Kashmir. He even travelled to various countries like Nepal, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Iran, China and Russia that was the then Soviet Union or USSR. He spent several years in the Parsa Gadh village in Saran district in Bihar. This village’s entry gate has been named as Rahul Gate. He mostly used surface transport while travelling and entered Tibet as a Buddhist monk and brought valuable paintings and Pali and Sanskrit manuscripts back to India. These objects have been taken from libraries of Vikramshila and Nalanda universities by Buddhist monks during twelfth century and after that when invading muslim armies were destroying universities in India. It is also believed that Rahul Sankritayan employed 22 mules to bring these material from Tibet to India. Patna museum has dedicated an entire section of the museum in the honour of Rahul Sankritayan exhibiting these paintings and manuscripts brought by him from Tibet. Sankritayan was a polyglot who was well versed in languages like Hindi, Sanskrit, Pali, Bhojpuri, Magahi Urdu,Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Kannada, Tibetan, Sinhelese, French and Russian and of course English. He was also an Indologist, a Marxist Theoretician and a creative writer. He began writing during his twenties and his works numbering over 100 cover a variety of subjects like sociology, history, philosophy, Buddhism, Tibetology, lexicography, grammar, textual editing, folklore, science, drama and politics. Many of his works remained unpublished. He even translated a work Majjhima from Prakrit to Hindi. His one of the most popular work is Volga se Ganga ( A Journey from Volga to Ganga) which was a work of historical fiction concerning the migration of Aryans from the steppes of the Eurasia to regions around the Volga river and then their movements to the plains of Ganga through the Hindukush and the Himalaya mountains. The book begins in 6000 B.C and ends in 1942 when Mahatama Gandhi launched Quit India movement. It was translated into a number of languages like English, Tamil and Kannada. He worked as Professor of Indology in 1937-38 and again in 1947-48 at University of Leningrad.

Rahul was married when very young and never came to know anything of his child wife named Santoshi. As per his autobiography Meri Jivan Yatra he saw her only once in his life in the fourth decade of his life. During his stay in Soviet Russia a second time on invitation to teach Buddhism at University of Leningrad he came in contact with a Mongolian scholar Lola (Elena Naveertovna Kozerovskaya). She could speak French, English and Russian and write Sanskrit. She helped him in working on Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionary. Their attachment ended in marriage and birth of a child named Igor Rahulovich. However, mother and son were not allowed to accompany him after the completion of teaching assignment due to restrictions imposed by Stalin regime. Later in life he married Kamala, who was an Indian writer, editor, and scholar in Hindi and Nepali. The had a daughter named Jaya Sankritayan Parhawk and a son Jeta who became Professor of Economics at North Bengal University. Rahul Sankritayan accepted a teaching job at a Sri Lankan university, where he fell seriously ill. Diabetes, hypertension and a mild stroke struck him as a result of which he lost his memory. He passed away in Darjeeling in 1963.

During his creative career he has written novels, short stories, biographies and autobiographies. Some of his popular and famous novels are Baaeesween Sadi (Twenty Second Century written in 1923), Jeene ke Liye( What to do to live) Simha Senapati ( Simha Commander), Jai Yaudheya ( Victory to Warrior) Bhago Nahi, Duniya ko Badlo( Don’t Flee, Change the World), Madhur Swapna ( Sweet Dream) Rajasthani Raniwas( Queen Palace of Rajasthan), Vismrit Yatri ( Forgotten Traveller), and Divodas. Among his famous short stories are Satmi ke Bacche ( Children of Satmi) Voga se Ganga ( From Volga to Ganga0 Bahurangi Madhupuri (Multicoloured Madhupuri) and Kanaila ki Katha ( Tale of Kanaila). Besides his autobiography Meri Jivan Yatra in fivd volumes Rahul has also written biographies of many leading personalities of his age like Lenin, Karl Marx, Stalin, Mao-Tse-Tung, Sardar Prithvi Singh and the like.

Next author under study is Aldous Huxley, teacher of the next author under consideration George Orwell or Eric Blaire. Aldous Huxley was an English writer and philosopher who wrote nearly 50 books both fiction and non-fiction works as well as wide ranging essays, narratives and poems. He was born on 26^th July 1894 at Godalming, Surrey, England, nearly one year after the birth of Rahul Sankritayan. He graduated from Balliol College Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire and screen plays. This bring out another similarity between Rahul Sankritayan and Aldous Huxley that both of them have written travel literature though in different languages. He spent the later part of his life in Los Angeles, United States of America from 1937 till his death. One of the reason to include Aldous Huxley in this study was that he represented a new corner part of the world atleast for some part of his life. All these authors have been interrelated in some sense as George Orwell was born and lived his early life in India and then went to Britain where he was taught by Aldous Huxley who both represented the two parts of the world – England and America- quite distant from each other not only physically but in culture and environment as well as Huxley spent the later part of his life in Los Angeles in America. Huxley was acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated nine times for the Noble Prize in Literature and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962. Huxley was a pacifist and he got interested in philosophical mysticism and universalism addressing these subjects with works like The Perennial Philosophy, written in 1945 which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism. His other work is The Doors of Perception, written in 1954 which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novel Brave New World, written in 1932 and his last novel Island, written in 1962 he presented his vision of dystopia and utopia respectively.

Huxley was third son of the writer and school master Leonard Huxley, who edited The Cornhill Magazine, and his first wife, Julia Arnold who set up Prior’s Field School. Julia was niece of famous nineteenth century poet and critic Matthew Arnold and the sister of Mrs. Humphry Ward. Julia named him Aldous after a character in one of her sister Mrs Humphry Ward’s novel. Aldous was grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley the zoologist, agnostic and controversialist. His brother Julian Huxley and half-brother Andrew Huxley were also outstanding biologists. As a child Huxley ‘s nickname was Ogie short for Ogre. He was described by his mother Julian as someone who frequently contemplated the strangeness of things. Huxley’s education began in his father’s well equipped botanical laboratory, after which he enrolled at Hillside School near Godalming. Here he was taught by his own mother for several years till she became terminally ill. After Hillside he went to Eton College. His mother passed away when Aldous was only 14 years old. He contracted an eye disease Keratitis punctata that left him practically blind for two to three years and that ended his dreams of becoming a doctor. In 1913 he entered Balliol College Oxford where he studied English Literature. He volunteered for the British Army in 1916 to take part in Great War, that later on cqme to be known as World War I but he was rejected on health grounds as he was half blind in one eye. Later his eye sight was partly recovered. He edited Oxford Poetry in 1916 and in the same year he graduated with first class honours. His brother Julian wrote; “ I believe his blindness was a blessing in disguise. For one thing, it put paid to his idea of taking up medicine as a career...His unquietness lay in his universalism. He was able to take all knowledge for his province”. After graduating he sought employment as he was financially indebted to his father for his studies at Balliol College Oxford. He taught for an year at Eton College. Here he came into contact with George Orwell or Eric Balire who was one of his pupil. He was mainly remembered as being an incompetent school master unable to keep order in class. But still Eric Blaire and others like Steven Runciman spoke highly of his excellent command over language. Huxley also worked for some time at Brunner and Mond, which an advanced chemical plant in Billingham in County Durhan, north-east England. The experience he had there of “ an ordered universe in a world of planless incoherence” was an important source of his science fiction Brave New World.

Huxley completed his first (unpublished) novel at the age of 17 and began writing seriously in his early twenties establishing himself as a successful writer and social satirist. His first published novels were Crome Yellow, published in 1921, Antic Hay in 1923 and Point Counter Point in 1928. His work under study Brave New World was his fifth novel and hailed as his first dystopian work. In 1920’s he also contributed to Vanity Fair and British Vogue magazines. During the Great War ( WWI) Huxley spent much of his time at Garsington Manor near Oxford which was home of Lady Ottoline Morrell. Here working as a farm labourer he met several Bloomsbury Group figures like Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead and Clive Bell. Later in Crome Yellow he caricatured the Garsington lifestyle. Jobs were quite scarce, but in 1919 John Middleton Murry was reorganizing the Athenaeum and invited Huxley to join the staff. He accepted the offer immediately and married the Belgian refugee Maria Nys also at Garsington. Here during his stay in Italy in 1920’s he would visit another great novelist of 20^th century D.H. Lawrrence. After Lawrence’s death Huxley edited Lawrence’s Letters, published in 1932. In early 1929 he met Gerald Heard, a brilliant writer and broadcaster, philosopher and interpreter of contemporary science. Works of this period were important novels on the dehumanising aspects of scientific progress, most famously Brave New World and on pacifist theme like Eyeless in Gaza. Huxley was strongly influenced by F. Matthias Alexander and portrayed him as a character in Eyeless in Gaza. During this period, Huxley began to write and edit non-fiction works on pacifist issues, including Ends and Means , An Encyclopaedia of Pacifism, and Pacifism and Philosophy. He was also an active member of organization Peace Pledge Union.

In 1937 Huxley moved to Holywood with his wife Maria,son Matthew and friend Gerald Heard. He lived in the U.S mainly in California until his death but he spent also some time in Taos, Mexico that is a tract on war, religion, nationalism and ethics. It was published in 1937. Heard introduced Huxley to Vedanta (Upanishad-centred philosophy), meditation, and vegetarianism through the principle of ahimsa. In 1938, Huxley befriended Jiddu Krishnamurti, whose teachings he greatly admired. Huxley and Krishnamurti entered into an enduring exchange, sometimes edging on debate over many years, with Krishnamurti representing the more rarefied detached, ivory tower perspective and Huxley, with his pragmatic concerns, the more socially and historically informed position. He provided an introduction to Krishnamurti’s quintessential statement The First and Last Freedom.

Huxley also became a Vedantist in the circle of Hindu Swami Prabhavananda and introduced Christopher Isherwood to this circle. Not long, afterwards he wrote his book on widely held spiritual values and ideas titled The Perennial Philosophy in which he discusses the teachings of renowned mystics of the world. Huxley’s book affirmed a sensibility that insists there are realities beyond the generally accepted ‘five senses’ and that there is genuine meaning of for humans beyond both sensual satisfactions and sentimentalities. Huxley became a close friend of Remesen Bird, President of Occidental College. He spent mush of his time in the college, which is in the Eagle Rock neighbourhood of Los Angeles. This college appears as “Tarzana College” in his fictional work After Many a Summer, written in 1939. Huxley was awarded James Tait Black Memorial Prize for this novel in which he had incorporated Mr.Bird too. During this period Huxley worked as a screen writer for Hollywood and earned quite a substantial income from it. On 21 October 1949 Huxley wrote to George Orwell congratulating him on how fine and how profoundly important the book is. In this letter to Orwell he predicted

Within the next few generations

I believe that the world’s

leaders will discover that

infant conditioning and

narco hyponosis are more

efficient, as instruments of

government, than clubs and

prisons, and that the lust for

power can be just as

completely satisfied by

suggesting people into

loving their servitude as by

flogging them and kicking

them into obedience ( Ed. Grover Smith: Letters of Aldous Huxley)

In 1953 Huxley and Maria applied for US citizenship and presented themselves for examination. When Huxley refused to bear arms for the U.S and would not state that his objections were based on religious ideals, the only excuse allowed under the McCarran Act, the judge had to adjourn the proceedings. He withdrew his application but however he remained in U.S. In 1959 he turned down the offer of Macmillan government to be given the tile of Knight Bachelor without any reason. In the fall semester in 1960 he was invited by Professor Huston Smith to be the Carnegie Visiting Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As part of the MIT centennial program of events organized by Department of Humanities, Huxley presented as series of lectures titled, “ What a Piece of Work is a Man” which concerned history, language and art.

Beginning in 1939 and continuing till his last breath Huxley had an extensive association with the Vedanta Society of Southern California, founded and headed by Swami Prabhavananda. Together with Gerald Heard, Christopher Isherwood and other followers, he was initiated by the Swami and was taught meditation and spiritual practices. In 1944 , Huxlwy wrote the Introduction to the translation of Bhagavad Gita : The Song of God translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, which was published by the Vedanta Society of Southern California. From 1941 to 1960 Huxley contributed 48 articles to Vedanta and the West, published by the society. He also served on the editorial board with Isherwood, Heard and playwright John Van Druten from 1951 to 1962. Huxley also occasionally lectured at the Hollywood and Santa Barbara Vedanta Temples. Two of his lectures Knowledge and Understanding and Who are We ? Have been released on CD. However, Huxley’s agnosticism, together with his speculative propensity, made it difficult for him to fully embrace any form of institutionalised religion.

The third author under consideration in this work is Eric Arthur Blair, popularly known by his pen name George Orwell. He was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism. Orwell was born in 1903 in Motihari, Bihar, India in a lower-upper middle class family. His great grandfather Charles Blair was a wealthy country gentleman and absentee owner of Jamaican plantations from Dorset who entered into marital alliance with Lady Mary Fane, daughter of the 8^th Earl of Westmorland. Orwell’s grandfather Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was an Anglican clergyman, and his father Richard Walmesley Blair worked as a Sub-Deputy agent in the Opium Department of Indian Civil Service overseeing the production and storage of opium for sale in China. Orwell’s mother Ida Mabel Blair (nee Limouzin) grew up in Moulmein Burma where her father was involved in speculative ventures. Eric had two sisters- Marjorie who was five years older to him and Avril who was five years younger to him. When he was one year old his mother took him and Marjorie to England. In 1904 Ida Blair settled with her children at Oxfordshire. So he was being brought up in the company of his mother and sister and apart from a brief visit in 1907 he did not see his father till 1912. At the age of five years Eric was sent as a day boy to a convent school in Henley-on -Thomas, which his elder sister Marjorie also attended. It was a Roman catholic convent run by French Ursuline nuns. His mother wanted that he should get public school education but their family could not afford the fees. Through the social connections of Ida Blair’s brother Charles Limouzin Blaire generated the scholarship to St. Cyprian School Eastbourne, East Sussex. Arriving in the school in 1911, he boarded at the school for the next five years, returning home only during school vacations. Although he knew nothing about the reduced fees but he came to know that he was from a poor home, so he hated the school and many years expressed in his essay written years later under the title “ Such,Such were the Joys’, published posthumously. At this school he met Cyril Connolly who became a writer and who as an editor of Horizon, published several of his essays. Before the First World War the family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire, where Orwell became friendly with Buddicom family especially their daughter Jacintha. They read and wrote poetry and dreamed of becoming famous writers by writing a book like H.G. Well’s A Modern Utopia. During this period he enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching with Jacaintha and her brother. While at St. Cyprian’s Blair wrote two poems that were published by Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard. He came second to Connolly in the Harrow History Prize ane earned scholarships to Wellington and Eton. But inclusion on the Eton scholarship roll did not guarantee a place, and none was immediately available for him. So he took up the place at Wellington where he spent the spring term. In May 1917 a place became available at Eton as King’s Scholar. He told Jacintha that Wellington was beastly but he was interested and happy at Eton. His principal tutor was A.S.F. Grow, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge who also gave him advise later in his career. Here he was taught French for a very brief period by Aldous Huxley. Steven Runciman who was with Blaire at Eton noted that he and his contemporaries appreciated Huxley’s linguistic flair. Though Cyril Connolly also followed him to Eton but as they were in separate years so they did not associate much with each other. His academic performance indicated that he neglected studies but during his stay he worked with Roger Mynors to bring out a college magazine, The Election Times and other publications like College Days and Bubble and Squeak. He also participated in Eton Wall Game. His parents could not send him to another university without another scholarship and they were convinced from his poor academic result that he will not be able to bag another scholarship.

Runciman noticed that he had romantic ideas about the East and the family decided that Blair should join the Imperial Police, the precursor of Indian Police Service. For this he had to pass an entrance exam and he cleared it by coming 7^th out of 25 examinees. His maternal grandmother lived at Moulmein Burma, so he chose a posting in Burma which was a province of India at that time. In 1922 he boarded SS Herefordshire to come to Burma via Suez Canal and Ceylon. A month later he reached Rangoon and travelled to the Police Training School Mandalay where he was appointed Assistant District Superintendent with the pay of Rs. 525/- per month at Burma’s main hill station Maymyo. After a brief tenure here he was posted to the frontier outpost of Myaungmya in Irrawaddy Delta in 1924.

Working as an imperial police officer gave him considerable responsibility while most of his contemporaries were still studying at universities. When he was posted farther east in the delta of Twante as a sub-divisional officer, he was responsible for the security of nearly 2 lac people. At th end of 1924 he was transferred to Syriam, closer to Rangoon that had a refinery of Burmah Oil Company with the surrounding land a barren waste, all vegetation killed by the fumes of Sulphur di oxide but as the town was near Rangoon, a cosmopolitan seaport so Blair went into the city often to browse in a bookshop and eat well cooked food and to be away from the dreary routine of police life. In September 1925 he was sent to Insein, that had second largest prison in Burma. Here he had a long conversation on a number of subjects with Elisa Maria Langford Rae who later married Kazi Lhendup Dorjee of Sikkim. Now Blair had completed his training and was getting the salary of Rs. 750/- per month, including all allowances. In Burma he acquired the reputation of an outsider though he had learnt Burmese before he left the country and conversed fluently with Burmese priests. He spent much of his time alone reading or pursuing non-pukka activities,such as attending the churches of the Karen ethnic group. In April 1926 he moved to Moulmein where his maternal grandmother lived. At the end of 1926 he was shifted to Katha in Upper Burma where he contracted dengue fever in 1927, so he had to return to England on sickness leave. He was living with his family in Cornwall where he decided to resign from Indian Imperial Police Service to become a writer. In England he settled back in the family home at Southwold, renewing acquaintances with local friends and attending an Old Etonian Dinner. He visited his old tutor Gow at Cambridge to seek his advise on becoming a writer and in 1927 he moved to London. With the help of a family acquaintance Ruth Pitter he was able to find lodgings. Pitter had a sympathetic interest in Blair’s writings and pointing out weaknesses in his poetry advised him to write about what he knew. So he decided to write of certain aspects of the present that he set out to know and ventured into the East of London. In imitation of Jack London whose writings particularly The People of the Abyss he admired Blair started to explore the poorer parts of London. On his first outing he set out to Limehouse Causeway, spending his first night in a common lodging house, possibly George Levy’s Kip. For a while he went native in his own country and dressing like a tramp and adopting the name of P.S. Burton he recorded his experiences of the low life in The Spike, his first published essay in English, and in the second half of his first book Down and Out in Paris and London, published in 1933. In early 1928 he moved to Paris and lived in a working class district where his aunt Nellie Limouzin also lived and gave him social and financial support. He began to write novels, including an early version of Burmese Days, but nothing else of that period is surviving. He was more successful as a journalist and published articles in Monde, a political, literary journal edited by Barbusse and G.K.’s Weekly. Blaire fell seriously ill in 1929 and was taken to Hopital Cochin which was a free hospital where medical students were trained. His experiences there were the basis of his essay How the Poor Die published in 1946. Shortly afterwards his money was stolen from his lodging house so he had to do menial jobs of even dishwashing in a fashionable hotel of Paris .In August 1929 he sent his article The Spike to John Middleton Murry’s New Adelphi magazine in London which was accepted for publication by the editors Max Plowman and Sir Richard Rees.

In December 1929 Blair returned to England and went to his parent’s house in Southwold,a coastal town in Suffolk where his sister Avril was running a tea house successfully. He became acquainted with a number of local people like Brenda Salkeld, the clergyman’s daughter who worked as a gym teacher at St. Felix’s Girl’s School. Though she rejected his offer of marriage but she remained a life long friend. He also renewed friendship with his old friends like Dennis Collings whose girl friend Eleanor Jacques was also to play a part in his life. In early 1930 he stayed with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey Dakin who was as unappreciative of Blair as when they knew each other as children. At this time Blair was writing reviews for Adelphi and acting as a private tutor to a disabled child at Southwold. He also tutored three young brothers , one of whom, Richard Peters later became a distinguished academic. He now regularly contributed to Adelphi , with “ A Hanging” appearing in August 1931. From August to September 1931 his explorations of poverty continued, and, like a protagonist of A Clergyman’s Daughter, he followed the East End tradition of working in the Kent hop fields. He kept a dairy about his experiences there. Afterwards he lodged in the Tooley Street Kip, but could not stand it for long, and with financial aid from his parents moved to Windsor Street where he stayed until Christmas. “Hop Picking” by Eric Blair appeared in October 1931 issue of New Statesman, whose editorial staff included his old friend Cyril Connolly. Mabel Fierz put him in contact with Leonard Moore, who became his literary agent in April 1932. At this time Jonathan Cape rejected A Scullion’s Diary, the first version of Down and Out. On the advise of Richard Rees, he offered it to Faber and Faber , but their editorial director, T.S. Eliot also rejected it. He ended the year by deliberately getting himself arrested so that he could experience Christmas in prison but after he was taken to Bethnal Green Police Station in the East End of London the authorities did not regard his drunk and disorderly behaviour as imprisonable, and after two days in a cell he returned home to Southwold.

In April 1932 Blair became a teacher at The Hawthorns High School, a school for boys, in Hayes, West London. This was a small school offering private schooling for children of local tradesmen and shopkeepers , and had only 14 or 16 boys aged between ten and sixteen and one other master. While at the school he became friendly with the curate of the local parish church and became involved with activities there. Mabel Fierz had pursued matters with Moore, and at the end of June 1932 Moore told Blair that Victor Gollancz was ready to publish a Scullion’s Dairy for 40 pounds in advance though his publishing house was an outlet for radical and socialist works. At the end of the Summer term in 1932 he returned to Southwold where his parents used a legacy to buy their own home. Blair and his sister Avril spent the holidays making the house habitable while he also worked on Burmese Days. His essay “Clink” describing his failed attempt to get sent to prison, appeared in Adelphi in its 1932 issue. He returned to teaching at Hayes and prepared for the publication of his book, now known as Down and Out in Paris and London. He wished to publish it under a different name to avoid any embarrassment to his family over his time as a tramp. And he finally adopted the nom de plume of George Orwell as it was a good round English name out of other options like P.S. Burton ( a name he used when tramping), Kenneth Miles and H Leewis Allways. The name George was inspired by the patron saint of England and Orwell after the River Orwell in Suffolk which was one of George’s favourite locations. Down and Out in Paris and London was published by Victor Gollancz in London on 9 January 1933 and received favourable views from papers like The Times Literary Supplement. It was a modestly successful and was next published by Harper and Brothers in New York. In mid 1933 he left Hawthorns to become a teacher at Frays College in Uxbridge, West London. It was a much larger establishment with 200 pupils and a full complement of staff. He acquired a motorbike and took trips through the surrounding countryside. On one of these expeditions he got soaked and caught a chill that developed into pneumonia. He was taken to Cottage Hospital in Uxbridge where for a time his life was believed to be in danger. When he was discharged in January 1934 he returned to Southwold to his parents house to convalesce. After that he never returned to reaching.

He was disappointed when Gollancz turned down Burmese Days, mainly on the grounds of potential suits for libel, but Harper were prepared to publish it in America. Meanwhile Blair started working on the novel A Clergyman’s Daughter, drawing upon his life as a teacher and on life in Southwold. As Eleanor Jacques was now married and living in Singapore and Brenda Salkeld had gone to Ireland so Blair was relatively isolated in Southwold- working on his allotments, walking alone and spending time with his father. So in October after sending A Clergyman’s Daughter to Moore he left for London to take job that had been found by his aunt Nellie Limouzin. This job was a part-time assistant in Booklover’s Corner, a second-hand bookshop in Hampstead run by Francis and Myfanwy Westrope, who were friends of Nellie Limouzin in the Esperanto movement. The Westropes friendly with him and provided him with comfortable accommodation at Warwick Mansions. He was sharing the job with Jon Kimche who also lived with Westropes. Blair worked at the shop in the afternoons and had his mornings free to write and his evenings free to socialise. These experiences provided background for the novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936). Like other guests at of the Westropes, he was able to enjoy company of Richard Rees and the Adelphi writers and Mabel Fierz. Though Westropes and Kimche were members of Independent Labour Party but Blair was not politically active at this time as he was writing for the Adelphi and preparing A Clergyman’s Daughter and Burmese Days for publication. In 1935 Clergyman’s Daughter was published and Blair met his future wife Eileen O’ Shaughnessy when his Landlady Rosalind Obermeyer, who was pursuing a degree in Psychology from University College London invited her classfellows for a party. In the month of June in the same year that is 1935 Burmese Days were published. Prompted by positive review of the book by Cyril Connolly in the New Statesman he moved to 50, Lawford Road, Kentish town. Here he remained till the end of January 1936. At this time, Victor Gollancz suggested Orwell to spend some time in investigating social conditions in economically depressed Northern England. On January 31, 1936 Orwell set out by public transport and on foot reaching Manchester at a time when banks had closed so he had to spend the night in a common lodging house. Next day he was suggested by one of the trade union official Frank Meade to go to Wigan. Here he visited many homes to see how people lived, took detailed notes of housing conditions and wages earned, went down to Bryn Hall coal mine and used the local public library to consult public health records and reports on working conditions in mines. While observing social conditions in the mines like Grimethorpe he also attended meetings of Communist Party. He also made visits to his sister at Headingley, during which he visited Bronte Parsonage at Haworth where he was impressed by a pair of Charlotte Broonte’s cloth tipped boots, very small, with square toes and lacing up at the sides. Orwell needed some place where he could concentrate on writing his book and again the aid came from Aunt Nellie, who was living at Wallington, Hertfordshire in a small cottage with almost no modern facilities. He moved in this place in April 1936 and started working on The Road to Wigan Pier. Keep the Aspidistra was published in this year by Gollancz and next year The Road to Wigan Pier, which was the result of his journeys through the north was also published by Victor Golancz for the Left Book Club. In the month of June in 1937 Blair married Eileen but shortly he decided to join Spanish Civil War from the Republican side after Franco’s military uprising that was supported by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and local groups such as Falange. He used his Independent Labour Party contacts to get a letter of introduction to John McNair in Barceloa.

Orwell started for Spain on 23 December 1936 and dined with famous writer Henry Miller on his way at Paris. He met John McNair of Independent Labour Party at Barcelona. He stepped into the complex political situation at Catalonia. The Republican government was supported by a number of factions with conflicting aims. He was exasperated by this Kaleidoscope of political parties and trade unions with their tiresome names. As Independent Labour Party was affiliated to POUM ( Partido Obrero de Unification Marxista or Worker’s Party of of Marxist Unification) so he joined it. After a time at Lenin Barracks in Barcelona he was sent to a comparatively quieter place Aragon Fort under Georges Kopp. In January 1937 he was at Alcubierre 1500 feet above sea level in the height of winters. There was little military action and he was shocked by the shortage of munitions, food and fuel and other extreme deprivations. With his cadet corps and police training he was quickly promoted to the rank of Corporal. Along with British ILP contingent he was sent to Oscuro and then to Huesca.

Meanwhile back in England Eileen had been handling the issues related to the publication of The Road to Wigan. The she too decided to leave for Spain leaving the matters Neillie Limouzin. She volunteered for a job in McNair’s office and with the help of George Kopp paid visits to her husband bringing him English tea, chocolate and cigars. Orwell had to spend a few days in hospital due to poisoned hand and had most of his possessions stolen by the staff. He returned to the front and saw some action in a night assault on the Nationalist trenches where he chased an enemy soldier with a bayonet and bombed an enemy rifle position.

In April, Orwell returned to Barcelona. Wanting to be sent to Madrid front, that implied that he must join the International Column, he approached a communist friend attached to the Spanish Medical Aid and explained his case. Although he did not think much of the Communists, Orwell was still ready to treat them as allies and friends. This was the time of the Barcelona May Days and he was caught up in factional fighting. Orwell spent much of his time on a roof, with a stack of novels, but encountered Jon Kimche from his Hampstead days. The following campaign lies and distortion carried out by the Communist Press, in which the POUM was accused of collaborating with the fascists, had a dramatic effect on him. Instead of joining International Column, as he had intended Orwell decided to return to the Aragon Front. Once the My fighting was over, he was approached by a communist friend who asked if he sill intended to join International Brigades. Orwell expressed surprise that they should still need him because according to the Communist Press he was a fascist. After his return to the front he was wounded in the throat by a sniper’s bullet. He recovered sufficiently at a hospital in Lleida. On 27 May 1937 Orwell was sent to Tarragona and two days later to a POUM sanatorium in the suburbs of Barcelona. The bullet had missed his main artery by the barest margin as a result of which his voice was barely audible. Though he received electrotherapy but he was declared unfit for active service.

By the middle of June POUM was painted by Trotskyist organisation as objectively Fascist and hence outlawed and utter attack so Orwell and his wife had to lie low as their life was under threat though a number of members like Kopp were arrested. Finally they escaped with their passport ready from Spain by train, diverting to Banyuls-sur-Meir for a short stay before returning to England in June 1937 and stayed at O’ Shaughnessy home at Greenwich. Here he found his views on the Spanish Civil War out of favour as a result of which Kinglsley Martin rejected two of his works and Gollancz was also equally cautious. Orwell was able to find a more sympathetic publisher in for his views in Fredric Warburg of Secker and Warburg. He acquired goats, a cockerel whom he called Henry Ford and a Poddle Puppy named Marx and settled down to animal husbandry and writing Homage to Catalonia. There were thoughts of going to India to work on a Lucknow newspaper named The Pioneer in March 1938 but his health deteriorated and was admitted to Preston Hall Sanatorium as he was thought to be suffering from tuberculosis and stayed here till September. The novelist L.H. Myers secretly funded a trip to French Morocco for half a year to avoid English winters and recover his health. So Orwells set out in September 1938 to French Morocco via Gibralatar and Tangier to avoid Spanish Morocco and arrived at Marrakech where they hired a villa on the road to Casablanca and here he wrote coming Up for Air they returned back to England in March 1939.

At the onset of World War II Orwell’s wife Eileen started working in the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information in Central London., staying during the week with her family in Greenwich. Orwell also submitted his name to the Central Register for war work but nothing transpired. Orwell told Geoffrey Gorer “ They won’t have me in the army, at any rate at present because of my lungs”. So he returned to Wallington and in late 1939 wrote material for his first collection of essays Inside the Whale. For the next year he was busy writing reviews for plays, films and books for The Listener, Time and Tide and New Adelphi. On march 29,1940 his long association with Tribune began with a review of a sergeant’s account of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. At the beginning of 1940 the first edition of Connoly’s Horizon appeared and this provided a new outlet for Orwell’s work as well as new literary contacts. At the same time death of Eileen’s brother in France caused her considerable grief and long-term depression. Throughout this time Orwell kept a wartime dairy. Though Orwell was declared medically unfit for any kind of military service by the Medical Board but soon afterwards he joined Home Guards to get involved in war activities. Sergeant Orwell managed to recruit Fredric Warburg to his unit. During the battle of Britain he used to speak weekends with Warburg. At Wallington he worked on his article “ England, Your England”. Early in 1941 he began to write for the american Partisan Review which linked Orwell with the New York Intellectuals who were also anti- Stalinist. In August 1941 he finally obtained war work when he was taken on full time by BBC’s Eastern Service. When interviewed for the job he indicated that he recognised the need for propaganda to be directed by the government and stressed the need of discipline during wartime in the execution of government policy. At the BBC Orwell introduced Voice, a literary programme for his Indian broadcasts, and by now was leading an active social life with literary friends , particularly on the political left. Late in 1942 he started working regularly for the left wing weekly Tribune. In march 1943 his mother died and in the same year In the same year he started working on a new book that turned out to be Animal Farm and at the same time he resigned from BBC that he had served for two years. Though it was said that he resigned out of his fear that few Indians listened to the broadcasts but he was also keen to concentrate on writing Animal Farm. He also resigned from Home Guards on medical grounds. In November 1943 he was appointed literary editor at Tribune where his assistant was his old buddy Jom Kimche. Orwell was on staff till 1945 and on 3 December 1945 he started writing a regular column “As I Please “ usually addressing three or four subjects in each. By April 1944 Animal Farm was ready for publication but Victor Gollancz refused to publish it considering it to be attack on the Soviet regime which was a crucial ally in the War. A similar fate was met from other publishers like Faber and Faber until Jonathan Cape agreed to take it. In May 1945 Orwell’s adopted a child named him Richard Horatio Blair thanks to the contacts of Eileen’s sister. In June a V 1 flying bomb struck Mortimer Crescent and they had to leave that place and seek some other place to live. Another blow was Cape’s reversal of his plan to publish Animal Farm after his visit to Peter Smollett, an official at Ministry of Information who later turned out to be Soviet Agent. In February 1945 David Astor invited Orwell to become a war correspondent for The Observer. He was looking for war action but his failed medical reports prevented him from being allowed near action. He went first to liberated Paris and then to Germany and Austria to the cities like Cologne and Stuttgart. He was never in the front line but he followed the troops closely, sometimes entering a captured town within a day of its fall while dead bodies lay in the streets. Some of his reports were published in the Manchester Evening News. During this time Eileen went intohospital for a hysterectomy and died under anaesthesia on 29 March 1945. Orwell returned home for a while and then returned back to Europe. He returned finally to London to cover 1945 General Elections . Finally Animal Farm was published in Britain on !7 August 1945 and an year later in US.

Animal Farm had particular resonance in the post war climate and its world wide success made Orwell a sought-after figure. For the next four years Orwell mixed journalistic work mainly for Tribune, The Observer and the Manchester news and composing his best known work Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published in 1949. He became a leading figure in the so called Shanghai Club named after a restaurant in Soho that consisted of left leaning and emigre journalist. He employed a housekeeper to look after his son and came to Jura in the Inner Hebrides and saw it as a place to escape from the hassle of literary life of London. He suffered a tubercular haemorrhage in 1946 but disguised his illness. In early 1946 he wrote an article on British Cookery complete with recipes commissioned by the British Council. But looking at the post war shortage of things both parties decided not to publish it. In May 1946 he set off to live on the Isle of Jura at an abandoned farm house called Barnhill. Conditions of the farm house were primitive but the natural history and the challenge of improving place appealed to Orwell. He returned to London in late 1946 to pick up his career in literary journalism again. Now a well known writer he was swamped with work. Again Orwell left London for Jura in April 1947 to work on Nineteen Eighty Four and made a good progress. During this time he had a disastrous boating expedition that nearly took away his life as he was soaked while trying to cross the notorious Gulf of Corryvreckan. This soaking was not good for his health. In December a Chest Specialist was summoned from Glasgow who declared Orwell to be seriously ill. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis and with the help of David Astor, who was now Health Minister Orwell began his course of medication of Streptomycin in 1948. By the end of July 1948 he returned back to Jura to finish the manuscript of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In a very weak condition he set off for a sanatorium at Cranham. His health continued to decline. In mid-1949 he courted Sonia Brownell and they announced their engagement in September shortly after he was admitted to University College Hospital in London. Sonia took charge of Orwell’s affairs and attended him diligently in hospital. Their wedding took place in hospital room in October 1949 in the presence of David Astor. Even the plans to visit Swiss Alps were also made but before that on 21 January 1950 an artery burst in Orwell’s lungs killing him at the age of 46 years and was buried in the Churchyard of All Saints in Oxfordshire.

So all these three authors were joined with each other at some or the other level. Rahul Sankritayan was born, brought up and worked and lived in India through out his life in the first part of twentieth century. Another author under study George Orwell or Eric Blair was born in Mothihari, Bihar India and later on worked in Imperial Police Service in Burma which was part of India at that time and the third author Aldous Huxley on one hand taught Eric Blair or Orwell at Eton while on the other hand he became attached to Indian philosophy and mysticism Influenced by teachings of Swami Prabhvananda he became member of Vedanta Society of Southern California. In 1944 he even wrote Introduction to Bhagvad Gita : The Song of God which was translated by Swami Prabhvananda. From 1941 to 1960 Huxley contributed 48 articles to Vedanta and the West. So that makes the circle complete as Rahul Sankritayan lead life in India while George Orwell though born in India lead most of his life in Europe and England, though he worked in Police force in Burma for some time which was a part of India before 1939 and Aldous Huxley born in England was a teacher of George Orwell for a brief span and worked and lived both in England and in America where he became associated with Swami Prabhavananda and Vedanta Society of Southern California. Coming to the main theme of this work projection of the future world in the selected works of these authors will ensue in the coming chapters followed by inferences and the study of gap between their projections about future world and the reality.

- End of Second Chapter-

Projections of the Future World : Contents and Chapter-I Author: Dr. K. S. Kang

 

Projections of the Future World : A Study of Rahul Sankritayan’s Baaewin Sadi , Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four

Author : Dr. K.S. Kang

Contents

1. Genesis and Milieu 2-6

2. Introduction to Authors 7- 17

3. Future as Imagined by Rahul Sankritayan in his work Baaeswi Sadi 18-31

4. View of Future World in Aldous Huxley’s in Brave New World 32- 42

5. Future as visualised by George Orwell in his work Nineteen Eighty Four 43-48

6. Inferences and Conclusions 49-53

I

Introduction or Genesis

Man is a rational creature that distinguishes him from other creatures of the world. John Donne considers reason as God’s viceroy in human being that is lacking in other creatures. Being a rational creature every man has right to visualise the future or his ideal world or society. But as it often happens that writer being a sensitive being is able to express what he visualises in his mind while the common man can only visualise but rarely expresses it. So everybody is a mute Milton while poets and authors having a comprehensive soul succeed in putting into words, ‘ what often is felt by a common man but seldom expressed.’ As the future world is visualized in fiction or rather science fiction so let this work begin by taking up the term fiction. Oxford Dictionary defines fiction as ‘ literature in the form of prose, specially novels, that describes imaginary events and people.’ Even the term novel has a ‘common attribute of being extended works of prose fiction’ (Abrahms : 110). Taking its origin from the Italian word ‘novella’ that means a little new thing novel with time developed into various forms like sociological novel, regional novel, Historical novel and the like. One another category of the novel or fiction is Science fiction popularly termed as SF or Sci-Fi. It is a genre of speculative fiction that typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. It has also been called as the literature of ideas, and it often explores the potential consequences of scientific, social, and technological innovations. Its roots can be traced back to ancient mythology, and is related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction, and contains many sub genres. Its exact definition has long been an issue of dispute among authors, critics, scholars and readers. According to Issac Asimov, “ Science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology. Many critics consider H.G. Wells one of Science Fiction’s most important or even Shakespeare of of science fiction. His notable science fiction works include The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds. Other prominent authors of this genre are Jules Verne, particularly in his work Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Edgar Allen Poe in his work The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall, published in 1835.

Another term that need to be discussed with regard to authors and works under study is Utopias and Dystopias. Utopia was the title of a book about an imaginary commonwealth written in Latin by the Renaissance humanist, Sir Thomas More. This title plays on two Greek words “outopia” (no place) and “eutopia” (good place). ( Abrahms: 177). The term utopia has come to signify the class of fiction which represents an ideal political state and way of life. The first great instance of this type of writing is Plato’s Republic, which sets forth, in dialogue form, the eternal idea of commonwealth that can only be distantly approximated political organizations in the actual world. Most Utopias since Plato’s beginning with that of Sir Thomas More, represent their ideal place under the fiction of a distant country reached by some venturesome traveller. There have been many more utopias written since More gave impetus to this genre , some as mere Arcadian dream, others as blue prints for social and technological progress. They include Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, William Morris’ News from Nowhere and James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. The term Dystopia (bad place) has come to be applied to works of fiction which represent a very unpleasant imaginary world, in which certain ominous tendencies of the contemporary world are projected in some future culmination. Good examples of this type of writing is two authors and their works under study Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. The history of dystopian literature can be traced back to E.M. Forster’s work The Machine Stops. M. Keith Booker states that The Machine Stops, We and Brave New World “ the great defining texts of the genre of dystopian fiction, both in the vividness of their engagement with real world social and political issues and in the scope of the their critiques of the societies on which they focus.” Another significant figure in dystopian literature is H.G. Wells, whose work The Time Machine is also seen as a prototype of dystopian literature.

One of the basic purpose of this work is not only to trace the elements of Science Fiction in these works under study but also to trace the elements of utopia and dystopia in these works and the extent to which these authors have succeeded in visualising the future world by measuring it with the contemporary world because both the dictum hold water that Fiction is stranger than reality and sometimes reality is also stranger than fiction. This work also aims to trace how much the future world imagined by these authors have been transferred into reality. All these three authors under study lived and wrote in the first half of the twentieth century which was one of the most turbulent and disturbing phase in the human history as the world had witnessed two highly destructive world wars that had nearly eliminated life from this planet. Eminent poets like T.S. Eliot and W.B.Yeats had projected the dismal situation in the world in their works like Eliot’s The Wasteland and W.B. Yeats in his poem The Second Coming. These world wars which were the worst calamity created not by nature but by man himself that nearly ensured the destruction of life from the Earth. Eliot in his work The Waste Land claims that the rising greed and materialism among the mankind and decline in religious, moral and emotional values is the basic reason for this downfall and the only remedy is to follow the tri formula mentioned by Lord Brahma in Vrihadaranayak Upnishad that show mercy to every creature in this world, sacrifice or devote your life for some noble cause as the human civilisation is irrigated by the blood of martyrs who have laid down their lives for some noble cause and overcome the worst enemy of human kind Ego and practise restraint and self control and be sympathetic towards your fellow beings and come out of the shell of pride, ego and self conceit. While Yeats in his work The Second Coming felt that the time of Christ’s promise, mentioned in The Bible has come in which Jesus Christ had promised human beings that when the world will be full of evil he will return in human incarnation to destroy evil and setup the Kingdom of God on the Earth that will ensure peace and harmony for ever. Even in the first part of twentieth century a whole generation of war poets like Wilfred Owen, Stephen Spender, Rupert Brooke had sprung who expressed their anger, frustration and disappointment at the worsening world situation. These authors had an identical milieu that can be defined in Cambridge Dictionary ‘the people, physical and social conditions and events that provide the environment in which somebody acts or lives’. As all these three novelists lived and wrote in the first half of twentieth century as the works under study Rahul Sanskritayan’s Baaeswin Sadi was written in 1924, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was written in 1932 and George Orwell’s work Nineteen Eighty Four was composed in 1948 as the novelist has merely changed the last two digits of the year in which it was written as the title of his novel. As these writers lived and wrote in the first half of twentieth century so there is a need to have a look at the milieu of first half of twentieth century which was marked by significant events like Spanish Flu Pandemic, World War I, Formation of League of Nations and its failure to ensure lasting world peace, The Great Economic Depression of 1929, World War II that came up as the failure of League of Nations, and use of Nuclear weapon by America in Japan that terminated the hostilities of World War II at once, formation of another international body United Nations in 1945 to ensure world peace and beginning of Cold War between western capitalist bloc led by USA and Communist bloc led by Soviet Russia. The deaths from acts of war during the two world wars alone have been estimated between 50 to 80 millions. The Armemian, Syriac and Greek genocide were the systematic destruction, mass murder and explusions of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in the Ottoman Empire during first world war, spearheaded by ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Rising nationalism and increasing national awareness were one of the primary causes of World War i, that involved for the first time in human history all the major world powers like Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia/USSR, British Empire and the United States. This Great War, as it was known prior to Second World War, led to the creation of many new countries, especially in in Eastern Europe. This war, at that time was considered by many as “war to end all wars.” Another significant development of the first part of twentieth century was that women became more independent as they succeeded in acquiring political rights in United States of America and much of Europe. The advent of new birth control techniques also helped in the empowerment of women in this era. Then industrial warfare greatly increased in its scale and complexity during the first half of 20^th century. Notable developments included Chemical Warfare, the introduction of military aviation or air force in Second World War and the widespread use of submarines. The introduction of nuclear warfare in the mid 20^th Century marked the definite transition to modern warfare. This time also saw a number of civil wars in many nations, particularly a violent civil war in Spain in 1936 when General Franco rebelled against the Second Spanish Republic. Many consider this civil strife as testing battle ground of Second World War, as the fascist powers bombed some Spanish territories. Then another important development of this period was the Great Economic Depression of 1929-1930 that led to the rise of Fascism and Nazism in Europe. World War II involved Eastern Asia and the Pacific, in the form of Japanese aggression against China and the United States. Non combatants and civilians also suffered greatly during this war due to aerial bombing of cities on both sides, and the German genocide of the Jews and others , known as The Holocaust. This time also saw the Russian Revolution in 1917 that ended the Romanov reign and Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin set up first communist state of the world. After the involvement of Soviet Russia in World War II communism became a major force in global politics, notably in Eastern Europe, China, Indochina and Cuba, where communist parties gained near absolute power. This period also saw the beginning of Cold War that caused arms race and increasing competition between the two major powers of the world- The USSR and the United States of America. The two world wars led to efforts to increase international cooperation, notably through the founding of League of Nations in 1919 and the United Nations in 1945 after the Second World War. Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolence and Indian independence movement against the British Empire influenced many political movements around the world , including the civil rights movement in the US and freedom movements in South Africa and Burma. Another significant development was the creation of Israel state in 1948 that ended British mandate in Palestine that sprung a number of regional conflicts. After a long period of civil wars and conflicts with western powers, China’s last imperial dynasty ended in 1912 by The Nationalist Party led by Sun Yat Sen. His government was replaced by another civil war in 1949 that gave rise to Communist People’s Republic of China under the leadership Mao-Tse-Tung. So this was the environment and the developments that were taking place in the contemporary world in which these authors lived and worked.

Before proceeding further it is essential to take a glimpse of literary scenario of the first half of 20^th century in which these authors worked. At the dawn of twentieth century H.G. Well’s works aptly titled Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1901) and A Modern Utopia captured and qualified the optimistic mood that gave expression to a common conviction that science and technology would transform the world in a century ahead. It was felt that to achieve such transformation, outmoded institutions and ideals had to be replaced by ones more suited to the growth and liberation of human spirit. The death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and the accession of Edward VII seemed to confirm that a franker, less inhibited period had begun. Many writers of this era drawing widely upon the realistic and naturalistic conventions of 19^th century upon Ibsen in drama and Balzac, Turgenev, Flaubert, Zola , Eliot and Dickens in fiction Oscar Wilde saw their task in the new century to be an unashamedly didactic one. In a series of wittily iconoclastic plays like Man and Superman, published in 1903 and performed in 1905 and Major Barbara performed in 1905 and published in 1907 are the most substantial as the playwright George Bernard Shaw turned the Edwardian theatre into an arena for debate on the key concerns of the day like the question of political organization, the morality of armaments and war, the function of class and of the professions, the validity of the family and of marriage, and the issue of women emancipation. Bernard Shaw was not alone in this crusade as John Galsworthy, another brilliant playwright of the century made use of the theatre in Strife (1909) to explore the conflict between capitalism and labour, and in the play Justice (1910) he lent his support to reform the penal system. Similarly many Edwardian novelists were eager to the shortcomings of English social life. H.G. Wells in his works like Love and Mr. Lewisham, Kipps, Ann Veronica and The History of Mr. Polly captured the frustrations of lower middle class existence. In the same way E.M. Forster in his works like Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Longest Journey portrayed with irony the insensitivity, self repression and philistinism of the English middle classes.

These novelists however wrote more memorably when they allowed themselves a larger perspective. In The Old Wives’ Tale Bennett showed the destructive effects of time on the lives of individuals and communities. Wells showed the ominous consequences of the uncontrolled developments taking place within a British society still relying on the institutions of a long defunct landed aristocracy. Forster in Howards End showed how little the rootless and self important world of contemporary commerce cared for the more rooted world of culture. Most Edwardian novelists like their counterparts in theatre held firmly to their belief that constructive change in some measure could be advanced by their writing. No one captured the sense of an imperial civilization in decline more fully or subtly than the expatriate American novelist Henry James. In his work The Portrait of a Lady he had anatomized the fatal loss of energy of the English ruling class and in The Princess Casamassima he describes more directly the various instabilities that threatened paternalistic rule. Another expatriate novelist Joseph Conrad shares James’s sense of crisis but attributed it less to the decline of a specific civilization than to human failings in his works like Lord Jim, Almayer’s Folly and The Heart of Darkness. According to him man was a solitary, romantic creature of will who at any cost imposed his meaning on the world because he could not endure a world that did not reflect his central place in it.

As one of the author had written in Hindi so it will be appropriate to throw some light on the creation in Hindi, particularly in prose and more particularly in novel. The tradition of writing prose in Hindi began in 19^th century with Bhartendu Harishchandra who had authored several dramas, sketches, and travel accounts besides composing poems. His popular works are Andher Nagri ( City of Darkness), Durlabh Bandhu( Rare Person), Teen Prashna (Three Questions). Writing under the pen name Rasa Harishchandra represented the agonies of the people, the country’s poverty, dependency, inhuman exploitation, the unrest of the middle class and the urge for the progress of the country in his plays. He soon became a director, manager, and playwright and he used theatre as a tool to shape public opinion. Another prominent prose writer was Devkinandan Khatri who wrote a historic fantasy fiction named Chandrakanta Santiti. It became so popular that it is believed that many people learnt Hindi to read it. He spent his life inn Varanasi one of the sacred city of Hindus. His major works besides Chandrakanta are Bhootnath, Kajar ki Kothari, Narendra Mohini, Kusum Kumari, and Birendra Beer. Though Rahul Sansritayan has written in Hindi but considering language merely as a medium thematically as he is at par with other two authors Aldous Huxley and George Orwell as he has also projected his view of the future world like them though his view is not as depressing as the image of future world projected by Orwell and Huxley. Rahul Sanskritayan can be considered as contemporary of prominent prose writer in Hindi of twentieth century Premchand who was first President of Pragatisheel Lekhak Sanngh( Progressive Writers’ Union). He had captured the soul of rural India in his works like Godan( The Gift of a Cow). His real name was Dhanpat Rai Srivastava but he took the pen name Premchand. He also lived in Varanasi and composed novels and short stories both in Hindi as well as in Urdu. Besides Godan his other major works are Karambhoomi( Place of Work), Shatranj ke Khilari ( Players of Chess) and Gaban ( Scam). He has been termed as Upanyas Samrat ( Emperor Among the Novelists). Grandson of a Land revenue Official ( Patwari) and son of Post master clerk Premchand developed fascination for fiction at an early age in his childhood. He sought solace in fiction. He took up the job of selling books for a book seller that gave him opportunity to read many books. He learnt English at a missionary school and studied several works of fiction including George Reynold’s eight volume book The Msteries of the Court of London. His first work was composed at Gorakhpur which was never published and thus is lost. It was a farce on a bachelor, who falls in love with a low caste woman. The character was based on Premchand’s uncle , who used to scold him for reading fiction and it was perhaps his sweet revenge against his uncle. He enrolled at Queen’s College Benares after his father was posted to Jamania. After his father’s death in 1897 Premchand due to financial troubles went to sell his books where he met Headmaster of a missionary school at Chunar, who offered him a job as a teacher at the salary of Rs. 18 a month and he also took up the job of tutoring a student at the monthly fee of Rs. 5. In 1900 he secured the job of Assistant Teacher at the Government District school at the monthly salary of Rs.20. Three months later he was transferred to Pratapgarh where he stayed at the residence of the administrator and tutored his son. Premchand is considered as the first Hindi author whose writings prominently featured realism. His novels depict the problems of the poor and the urban middle class. His novels contain a rationalistic outlook, which views religious values as something that allows the powerful hypocrites to exploit the weak. He used literature for the purpose of arousing public awareness about national and social issues and often wrote on the themes related to corruption, child widowhood, prostitution, feudal system. poverty, colonialism and Indian Independence Movement. Author would have loved to include this mighty literary titan for study in this work but considering the theme of this book to be the projection of future world with a very heavy heart author has to stop writing about Premchand at this juncture.

So these were the contemporaries and social and political conditions in which the authors under study lived and worked. This chapter besides giving the basic framework of this work has explored the major political and social events of the first part of the twentieth century that largely influenced the literature of this period. Authors under study in this work must also have been influenced by these events that led them to imagine the future world and that inspired writers to compose utopias and dystopias. Sensing the positive and negative tendencies of science , technology and human nature these authors have tried to predict the world of the future if the contemporary tendencies move on unhindered. Before coming to the actual works in which these authors have predicted their vision of future world let us have a look at the lives of these authors under study in the next chapter.

- End of Chapter 1-

My Punjab Dairy Author: Dr. K.S. Kang

 

My Punjab Diary

Author: Dr. K.S. Kang

Punjab- land of five rivers- is perhaps as old as the five rivers that flow through it. To me it is a special land as it is also land of my birth and my ancestors. It was only my father who came out of the land of his childhood to serve as a teacher in a military residential school at Chittorgarh in Rajasthan. My all relatives including that of my wife too reside in Punjab. Talking about Punjab it is pertinent to say that it has suffered a lot in the last century. Like a Gangrene patient with diabetic state it has been amputated so much time and again that currently only a dwarf of the original Punjab exists where not five rivers but only two rivers flow across the state. Though there is third River named Ravi also but it only touches the state of Punjab briefly in Gurdaspur district before flowing into Pakistan. In the beginning of twentieth century Punjab used to be one of the largest province of British India ranging from Peshawar and Multan in the west to Shimla in the North and even Delhi in the East. The first amputation of Punjab came in1911 when Britishers decided to shift their capital from Kolkotta to Delhi and so it was separated from Delhi. Then in 1947 accepting the demand of Muslim League Britishers decided to create a new state of Pakistan for the muslims and thus half or rather better half of Punjab went with Pakistan including its cultural capital Lahore. So the second amputation was also done by a Britisher named Lord Radcliffe who was given the charge to draw the frontiers between India and Pakistan. Third amputation of Punjab came in the sixth decade of the twentieth century when the hill districts and Hindi speaking areas of Punjab were carved into two states of Himachal Pradesh and Haryana. As a result of these repeated amputations Punjab that was land of five rivers was reduced to three rivers only and that too a river just touching the tip of the state in Gurdaspur district before flowing into the state of Pakistan.

Punjab is primarily agriculture hub and centre of agro based industries and machinery. One of the dominant forces, atleast in Indian Punjab is the Sikhism which was founded by Guru Nanak Dev ji and the peasantry of the state which is quite a force in the state embraced this faith in seventeenth and eighteenth century under the fourth Guru Ram Das ji and the fifth Guru Arjan Dev ji. With time the economy of Punjab has diversified into the industrial towns of Ludhiana and Jalandhar, and the heritage and spiritual tourism in the places like Amritsar, Patiala and Faridkot. After independence state has emerged as power house of Games and Sports particularly in the arena of Athletics, Wrestling, Kabbadi and the national game Hockey. One of the National Institute of Sports (NIS) is located at Patiala producing a number of illustrious personalities and luminaries in the field of Games and Sports.

Chetan Bhagat composed a novel entitled “Two States” involving two states of Punjab and Tamil Nadu. To one state his parents belonged to that is Punjab and to the other his beloved’s parents and relatives belonged to that is Tamil Nadu. In my life also two states were involved intricately and involved and these two states are Punjab and Rajasthan. As my father belonged to Punjab as he was born, brought up and educated there and then came to teach Physics in a residential school at Chittorgarh in Rajasthan. So mostly our vacations were spent in Punjab and that too in the villages to which my father and my mother belonged to. Hence we spent nearly a month per year in the state of Punjab that had familiarized me with the state of Punjab as well. After passing away of my parents my contact with Punjab continued as my wife’s brothers and parents too settled in their native village in Punjab though they had also spent a greater part of their lives in Rajasthan. Though these two states of Punjab are culturally and linguistically apart but these differences are not so much glaring as between the states of Punjab and Tamil Nadu. Though I was born in a small village Parao Mehna, where my mother’s parents lived, near the town and in district of Moga and my father’s family belonged to another place named Dharamkot which also fell in the district of Moga but due to my father’s job I had spent most of the life in Rajasthan. As I had also got job with the state government of Rajasthan so I had nearly spent 60 years of my life in this colourful state. It is true that I know some of the places in Punjab well like Moga, Ludhiana, Dharamkot, Muketsar, Kotkapura, Ferozepur and like but with that it is also equally true that I know almost ever place in Rajasthan well like the back of my hand. The aim of this diary is to primarily record the experience of my visit to some of the places in Punjab after my visit to the state after my superannuation from Government Service of the State of Rajasthan. As now, after retirement I had no constraint of leaves so I planned to spend a few days in Sonepat, Haryana, where my elder son is teaching Law at reputed international private university, a day or two at Chandigarh and about eight to ten days in Punjab. So I intend to describe the places, including the villages, that I had visited during my stay in Punjab. I also intend to go to Chandigarh to participate in the birthday of my younger niece’s daughter who have come all the way from Canada to celebrate it.

Before coming to my journey to Punjab I would like to dwell a little on the social condition of people living in it, particularly peasant class. Coming of Sikhism, founded by Guru Nanak Dev ji brought respite to the people of Punjab as it guaranteed social equality to everybody, atleast in the matter of praying and going into religious places. Every body had right to pray and go into Gurudwara ( Sikh Temple) without any distinction and discrimination of caste, creed, gender and colour. This popularised this faith in Punjab and a great chunk of peasantry embraced this faith in the times of fourth Guru Ram Das ji, Fifth Guru Arjan Dev ji and the sixth Guru Hargobind Sahib ji .Later on tenth and the last Guru Gobind Singh ji gave it right to take up weapons and struggle not only for existence but also against injustice and exploitation by transforming the peasantry of Punjab into a military outfit, ready to take up weapons at their Guru’s call against oppression. Though Sikhism provided social parity among the people but still the economic condition of the common man, particularly peasants did not improve a lot. They were still suffering poverty as they were forced to pay exorbitant rate of interest on the advances as loans taken from the money lenders. The common saying about Indian farmer that he takes birth in debt, lives in debt and dies in debt was also true for the Punjabi farmers, irrespective of the faith whether he was a Hindu, Muslim or a Sikh. So the marginal farmer was being crushed under the heavy yoke of debt and interest till Unionist Party, under the leadership of Sir Sikander Hyat Khan came to power in United Punjab in 1937 and he made an enterprising young educated legislator Sir Chottu Ram as his Revenue Minister. He gave respite to Indian farmers at large by convincing Britishers to frame a law against the extortion by the money lenders from the poor, resourceless farmers in the form of high rate of interest on the loans leading sometimes more amount paid by the farmer in the form of interest than the Principal amount. So this legislation wrote off the loans whose interest have been paid for more than ten years believing that in ten years the amount of interest paid exceeded much more than the amount taken by a person as a loan. Money lending class termed it as black law and Chottu Ram became chief villain for them, but it was hailed as a great step to by the farming community of Punjab as it released a number of farmer from vicious circle of debt, interest and poverty. And as number of foreigners looted the people of Punjab a number of times in History but still they could not take the fertility of soil of this state as a result of which agriculture is thriving like anything in this state still.

Chandigarh

Though my journey to Punjab commenced on 18^th August 2023 by car as my wife’s mother, who is an old lady of nearly 85 years old had come to meet us at the time of my superannuation function was staying with us and we had to go to leave her to her village in Punjab. As due to her old age she could not walk much on the platforms so we decided to take journey by car. On the evening of 18^th we reached Jaipur and after resting there for a day we proceeded to Sonepat, Harayana where my son is teaching law at a private university. After staying there for a day we proceeded towards Chandigarh to participate in the birthday celebrations of my younger niece’s one year old daughter who had come from Canada to celebrate her birthday.

Chandigarh, the dream city of India’s first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru, was planned by the famous French architecture le Corbusier. Picturesquely situated at the foothills of Shivalik, it is known as one of the best experiments in urban planning and modern architecture in the twentieth century in India. It is a union territory that is common capital for both the states of Punjab and Haryana. It derives its name from the temple of ‘Chandi Mandir’ located in the vicinity of the site selected for the city. In March 1948, the Government of Punjab in consultation with Government of India approved the area of the foothills of the shivaliks as the site for the new capital. The location of the city site was a part of erstwhile Ambala district as per 1892-93 gazetteer of District Ambala. Subsequently at the time of the reorganization of the state on 1-11-1966 into Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, the city assumed the unique distinction of being the capital city of both these two states of Punjab and Haryana. It is famous for Sukhna Lake, Rock Garden , Rose Garden and Pinjore Garden near Panchkula in Haryana.

We proceeded to Chandigarh by car and my son was driving car and by noon we reached the hotel Shivalik Hills, situated in the central position of Sector 17-E in the city. My son decided to drove us to this place by car and we checked into the hotel in the noon and after resting for a few hours we came out of the rooms to join the birthday celebrations in the hotel that last nearly midnight. It was a nice occasion for reunion with friends and relatives who had come to attend the birthday celebrations. As my son had to attend the university next day we got up early in the morning next day and came back to Sonepat by noon. As we had already seen Sukhna Lake, Rose Garden, Rock Garden and Pinjore Garden, so we had no plans to visit these places again.

After coming back to Sonepat and staying there for about a week it was decided to move towards Punjab. Again my son volunteered to drive us to the village where my in-laws lived. So we moved on 3^rd September 2023 to Punjab in the morning and reached there by lunch time.

Sujapur 4-9-2023

Sujapur is a breakaway village from the neighbouring large village of Hans Kalan. In fact it came into existence due to a disgruntled woman who shifted her family to her farms situated outside the village. The name of the revenue official of the village, Patwari, was Surajaram, who helped her to relocate in this place, hence it was named as Surjapura that with time changed to Sujapur. We reached here yesterday and today on 4^th September 2023 my son went back to his work at Sonepat by the same car in which he had brought us here. Today it was decided to meet the local friends and relatives residing in the village. My father-in-law were four brothers and three sisters, though none of them was their real sister. So atleast there were four houses to be visited today. First of all we went to my uncle-in-law’s house who had retired from Indian Air Force from non-commissioned rank of Warrant Officer. Though he had passed away and his surviving son is doing cultivation on his own land. He had a son and a daughter. His son is post graduate in Chemistry and is teaching at a private school in the nearby town. After returning from their house lunch was ready and after taking lunch and post lunch siesta in the evening we went to another uncle-in-law’s house. Whole life he had been a farmer. He had two sons. The elder one is plying a school bus while the younger one is still working with the Electricity Department of the State as a Lineman. Their mother is perhaps the oldest surviving woman of the village- a nongenerian but she is totally deaf though she can speak normally.

Muketsar 5-9-2023

Today morning after breakfast we moved out of the village to meet our relatives. First of all we went to Muketsar to meet Grandson and daughter-in law of of my paternal aunt, my father’s sister. After changing bus at Jagaraon and at Moga we reached Muketsar in the afternoon. After taking some snacks and afternoon siesta we went in the evening to visit the historical gurudwara of this place. This place or rather this historical gurudwara is associated with the tenth and the last Guru of Sikhism Guru Gobind Singh ji. Originally named as Khidran ki Dhab in a semi-arid terrain with a lake. Today it is a district headquarters and a significant historical town of the state. Not much is known about the early history of the present area of the city. It may partly be due to River Sutlej’s known notoriety for changing its course time and again and it is believed that this river flowed to the east of the town in pre historical times. While shifting its course it is said to have levelled down everything that came in its way as a result of which the current area is totally destitute of ancient buildings and contains no place mentioned in early records. Legends connected with Raja Saiban attach to one or two other ruined sites near Muketsar such as that of Sarainaga. However, the city does not date from an earlier period than Akbar’s reign. In the medieval ages this territory was ruled by Parmar Rajputs whose branches of Manj Naipal and Dogra Rajputs came from Jaisalmer in Rajasthan under the leadership of Raja Hel and settled in the south of the present town. They defeated Parmars and firmly established themselves. His son Burar had two sons- Paur and Dhul, the younger of whom held almost the whole of the region of Muketsar region. Many of these Bhati Rajputs followed the Sikh Gurus and embraced Sikhism during the reign of Guru Gobind Singh ji. These Bhatti Rajputs have fought against Mughal Imperial Armies alongside the tenth guru of the Sikhs Guru Gobind Singh ji. After the battle of Chamkaur in 1705, Guru Gobind Singh ji was looking for a suitable place from where he could regroup his forces to resist the Mughals. Assisted by an experienced Brar Sardar Guruji reached this place where he decided to have a final clash with the foe. They got the information that a strong force of ten thousand soldiers led by Subedar of Sirhind Wazir Khan was chasing them. Before that in 1704 when Sikhs had left Anandpur Sahib due to seize by the Mughal forces, forty soldiers from Majha region deserted Guruji. He asked them to give it in writing that they want to leave and he is no longer their Guru or leader and they are no longer his followers. However realising their folly these forty men after being motivated by Mai Bhago returned back to augment the forces of Guruji at this place. As the resistance of the Sikhs grew fierce the foe could not reach the lake to quench their thirst. So due to oppressive heat and the fierce resistance of the Sikhs the enemy was forced to retreat. At the end of the battle badly bruised and injured Mai Bhago told Guruji how these forty deserts had rejoined and sacrificed their lives for him. Guruji was looking for any survival in the battle field till he came to their leader Maha Singh who was still in the last throes of his life. When Guruji asked him about his last wish, his reply was to tear the document in which they had disclaimed him as their Guru. As Guruji tore this document before him his soul was released from his mortal body signifying that Guruji had forgiven their sin. This place became witness to this historical incident where the Gurudwara Tuti Gandi stands today. As the tearing of the document symbolised the liberation of these pious spirits of sin of deserting the Guru, so this place was named as Muketsar after that in which the word Mukti stands for liberation or emancipation and the word Sar means lake or pond. Later on Jassa Singh also took refuge in the forest surrounding this area. And later on the head of Namdhari Sect Baba Ram Singh ji also visited this place though its rulers did not support him. In the evening we went to visit the Gurudwara Complex along with our host. In this complex Minly there is a Gurudwara dedicated to the memory of Mai Bhago who motivated and convinced the forty deserters to rejoin the forces of Guru Gobind Singh ji. She was born at a place Jhabal near Tarantaran. Her father’s name was Bhai Malo Shah and wedded Bhai Nidhan Singh of Patti. Her father was enrolled in the army of Guru Hargobind ji. Her grandfather’s elder brothe rembraced the faith of Sikhism during the times of fifth Guru Arjan Dev ji.

Besides the Gurudwara dedicated to the memory of Mai Bhago there was also a Gurudwara Tamboo Sahib in which the Sikh camp dried their underclothes on a rope to mislead the enemy relating to the number of Sikh troops. Then there was also a Gurudwara Tuti Gandhi Sahib dedicated to the memory of the main event in which Guru Gobind Singh tearing the document at the behest of Bhai Maha Singh, the leader of forty deserters who wanted to rejoin Guru’s forces. Here is also an old tree of berries with which Guru Gobind Singh ji had tied his horse during his stay here. After taking dinner we went to bed and next morning after taking tea we took the bus to Kotakapura and then to Bargari where my paternal aunt had spent her entire life.

Bargari 6-9-2023

We reached Bargari bus stand in the forenoon as it was hardly fifteen minutes run from Kotkapura. From bus stand we took a cycle rickshaw that took us to the house of my relatives. At the doorstep we were greeted by my maternal aunt’s youngest grandson. This village was in news from 2015 due to sacrilege committed by some anti-social elements against the holy book of the Sikhs Guru Granth Sahib ji. Since then there had been a continuous protest going on in the Dana Mandi of the village to get justice by bringing the culprits to law. My paternal aunt’s younger brother was a farmer who owned a piece of agricultural land in the village and a piece of land on which he had built his house. He has two sons. His elder son is involved in agricultural activities as my cousin has now become old and due to joint pain he cannot go to the farm regularly. His younger son has reared cattle at home and opened a dairy selling milk and milk products to the villagers, so my cousin sits at the shop whenever his sons are busy. My cousin is also proud grandfather of a lively girl named Kirat. So after taking lunch and afternoon siesta following it we moved from this village and takaing bus from Bargari to Kotkapura and then from Kotkapura we came to Moga in the evening where we decided to stay overnight at the residence of our former tenant who had lived for many years in the house owned by my father in the town before selling it. This fellow had retired as Principal of Government Senior Secondary School of a nearby village. His son, who is also a Government teacher came to take us in the car from the spot where we had got down from the bus coming from Kotkapura.

Moga 6-9-23

Moga was the place from where both of my parents did first F.A and then B.A from D.M. College Moga way back in the fifth decade of twentieth century. Before that my mother even completed her matriculation too from the Government Girls School of the town. Moga is known for its rich culture. It has several Gurudwaras like Dina Sahib, dedicated to the memory of Shri Gurugobind Singh ji, the tenth guru of Sikhism, Bibi Kahan Kaur’s Gurudwara to name a few. Besides Gurudwara this place is associated with a famous freedom fighter of India Lala Lajpat Rai of the then extremist wing in Congress known as Lal, Bal and Pal, the other two being Bal Gangadhar Tilak of Maharashtra and Vipin Chandra Pal of Bengal. Some illustrious personalities related with the town are Dr. Narendra Singh Kapahi- Indian born Physicist known for his work on fibre optics, S Gurinder, fifth and present guru of Satsang Beas, Dr. Mathura Das, the famous opthalmologist surgeon who holds world record in the cataract operations performed by him and after whose name two leading educational institutions of the town have been named. It also houses the famous outlet of Nestle India which produces coffee, milk, chocolates and Desi Ghee of premium quality. After the night stay at the house of former tenant S.Surjeet Singh who had a son and a daughter. His wife though incapaciated due to some spinal injury was bedridden. His son is also a teacher in the government school while his parents are retired government servants- father retired as Principal of a Government Senior Secondary School and mother retired as a Block level Education Officer from the home district. After staying overnight in their house his son left us to our native town Dharamkot in his own car.

Dharamkot 7-9-2023

It is an old town perhaps founded in 18^th century by a Sikh Chief of Dalewalia Misl S. Tara Singh Kang alias Ghebba conquered the fort of Dharamkot in 1761 and gave it to one of his son perhaps Dasaundha Singh. S. Tara Singh was closely associated with Gulab Singh, chief of Dallewalia Misl and S. Maha Singh, father of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh and he was also Ranjeet’s sword instructor. He had achieved expertise in immobilising the foe by stealing their horses then he would disappear that earned him the title Ghebba. As Gulab Singh had no issue so S. Tara Singh succeeded him as Chief of Dalewallia Misl after his death. Initially he had four forts of Nakodar, Fatehgarh, Shahkot and Dharamkot under him. He actively participated in the seize of Kasur and Sirhind and due to booty of these two campaigns he extended the realm of Dalewallia Misl up to Ambala in South making it an estate worth 17 lacs of rupees revenue annually.

Dharamkot is the town where my father had spent his childhood and studied in its vernacular school and later on in Arjun Dass High School till he completed his matriculation with good marks and on government scholarship. At Dharamkot we go to visit the shrine of Syed Abdulleh Shah, a 19^th century Sufi sage. Just by the side of mausoleum stand the graves of his two devotees who had served at this place throughout their lives- Mata Taja and her life companion. It is believed that both of them were so attached to each other that both of them were found to be dead- natural death- on the same day and perhaps the same moment. After visiting the house where my father was born and spent his childhood and after taking tea and lunch there we boarded the bus and reached Jagaraon by the evening.

Jagaraon 8-9-23

We arrived in the evening at this place by bus and at the place of our relative’s house (my wife’s maternal uncle’s daughter) which was situated on Gulabi Bagh Colony Malik Road. It is a city and a muincipal council, a rural police district and a sub-division of Ludhiana district. It is almost at the centre of the present state of Punjab. It was founded at some time in 18^th century. Famous freedom fighter Lala Lajpat Rai has spent a few days here and his house has been converted into a library. Chiefs of this place was a Chandravanshi Rajput, the last being Rai Inayat Khan of who was custodian of Guru Gobind Singh ji’s Gangasagar at the time of partition of India in 1947. Rai Saheb belonged to Raikot, a small town of this subdivision. His grandson Rai Azizullah Khan is member of Parliament in Pakistan from MNA party. One of the village Jhorran of this subdivision is also native village of Hav. Ishar Singh, who was martyred in the famous Battle of Saragarhi in 1897 in whose memory a film Kesari has been made in which Akshay Kumar has donned the role of Hav. Ishar Singh. There is also a gurudwara in the memory of this battle in Amritsar. This place is known for its annual Roshni Mela which is held at the Mazar of Peer Baba Mokhumdeen. Though we had to go to Sujapur the same day but due to some miscommunication we had to stay for the night at the house of our relatives who have retired from Government Service of the State of Punjab. S. Bhupinder Singh has retired as Accountant, Punjab State Electricity Board and his wife, my wife’s cousin had retired as teacher from a government school. After overnight stay in the morning we took the bus and reached Sujapur in the afternoon before the lunch. Next day we did not go anywhere and went to meet only my wife’s cousin who runs a medical shop inthe nearby town of Raikot.

Parao Mehna 10-9-2023

Today I went to my birth place and the village of my maternal grandparents where my mother had spent her entire childhood. It is a small village named Parao Mehna situated nearly in the vicinity of district headquarters Moga. It also has a railway station on Ludhiana- Ferozepur line. Though our intent was to travel by public transport but a strange and startling fact came to light that on Sunday there was no public transport was available from the village as the major clients of the public transport were either students or workers going to offices and factories and as all of these things remained closed on Sunday so it was not economically viable to run it and give their services to the public on Sunday. So it was one of the major constraint of living in a small village tucked in the corner, away from the major road and rail route of the state. So I requested my brother-in-law to provide his services and he generously provided it that enabled us to visit this village that days as we took his car.

Name of this village came from the word halting place of the troops as they marched from Ludhiana to Ferozepur and beyond. So they used to halt here for some time so it came to known as Parao or a halting place and suffixed by the name of the place Mehna. As my mother was her parent’s only child so she had no real brother and sisters and she made a young man of the village as her brother, who later on joined Army and later on Police Intelligence Wireless Services. His son- who has retired as Live Stock Assistant from the Veterinary Department of the State, his grand son who is working as teacher in government school of a nearby village and his grand children are still living in this village. Though I could not visit the exact place of my birth as it has been turned into a market but we had tea and lunch with them and came to the village Chauki Maan, my mother-in-law’s village, and after having a cup of evening tea with the son of my mother-in-law’s nephew’s son we came back to the village of Sujapur.