Eric Blair ( George Orwell), the BEIC & the class system
If you only knew George Orwell for his '1984' you might enjoy reading this.
George Orwell - true name Eric Arthur Blair- was born in British India on June 25, 1903, in Motihari, Bengal. Like most interesting writer, his work was shaped- to a very large extend- by his inner torments —frustration, mixed up loyalties, guilt, resentment, even self loathing, loneliness and empathy for the underdog.
The reliving - in his writing- of autobiographical moments in search of meaning, redemption or liberation from the past was a big part of his literary output.
His father’s work in Bengal and later his own work as a policeman in Burma ( where - after 5 years he had to accept that he was temperamentally and morally unsuited to be a colonial policeman— as well as various of his autobiographical works such as ‘Burmese Days’ ‘A Hanging’, and ‘Shooting an Elephant’—- bear witness to loneliness and alienation from the British (colonial) class system
Below: eric Blair in Burma as a policeman
Orwell’s first novel, Burmese Days (1934),- for the publication of which Eric Blair consciously adopted the nome de plume / pen name ‘George Orwell’ - presumably to free himself from the baggage of the past—- established the pattern of his subsequent fiction with its portrayal of a sensitive, conscientious, and emotionally isolated individual who is at odds with what he perceives as dishonest and oppressive social environment.
Eric Blair arrived as a trainee policeman in Burma when he was 19 years old, working there from 1922 to1927. He was - probably on the urging of his dad-employed by the Indian Imperial Police (IIP), a British-controlled law enforcement agency responsible for maintaining order in British India and its colonies, including Burma. There is a lot of speculation about why he didn’t go to university.
Orwell - with his reservoir of frustration, torn loyalties and sensitivity for undertones - was a master of irony which seemed to have come easily to him when addressing and expressing hypocrisy and absurdity.
Phrases like "pukka sahib" could have been one such instance ie used sarcastically to highlight the arrogance and out-of-touch nature of many colonial administrators.
George Orwell wrote: "The pukka sahibs are the salt of the earth. Consider the great things they have done – consider the great administrators who have made British India what it is...... And consider how noble a type is the English gentleman! Their glorious loyalty to one another! The public school spirit! Even those of them whose manner is unfortunate – some Englishmen are arrogant, I concede – have the great, sterling qualities that we Orientals lack. Beneath their rough exterior, their hearts are of pure gold."
The above passage is from Orwell’s novel Burmese Days, published in 1934. It is spoken by Dr. Veraswami, an Indian doctor who admires the British colonial officials and hopes to join their exclusive club. He is trying to persuade his friend John Flory, a disillusioned Englishman who hates the imperial system, to support his candidacy. However, Flory is reluctant to do so, as he knows that the other club members despise Veraswami and all natives. The novel can be seen as a satire of the British Empire and its corruption, racism, and hypocrisy.
Orwell's writing about "pukka sahibs" was complex and possibly ironic. While he did admire certain aspects of British culture and governance in India, he was also scathing in his criticism of colonialism's injustices and the hypocrisies of the ruling class. Some of Orwell's works, like "Burmese Days," do depict dedicated and competent British officials working in difficult circumstances. However, this portrays a specific slice of the ruling class, not necessarily endorsing the entire system.
Orwell’s ‘Shooting an Elephant’ is an essay that describes how he was forced to shoot a rogue elephant against his will. The essay explores the themes of imperialism, violence, and the conflict between personal conscience and public duty.
Orwell begins by explaining how he was hated by the Burmese people, who resented the British rule and expressed their hostility in various ways, such as spitting, jeering, and tripping him.
He also reveals his own anti-imperialist views and his sympathy for the oppressed Burmese, but admits that he was torn between his hatred of the empire and his rage against the natives who made his job difficult.
One day, he receives a call that a tame elephant has gone “must”- (heightened aggression and hormonal changes in male elephants, similar to "rut" in deer)—- meaning it has become violent and destructive, and that this elephant has killed a man. He takes a rifle and goes to the scene, followed by a large crowd of curious spectators.
He finds the elephant peacefully eating grass and realizes that it is no longer a threat, but he feels pressured to shoot it anyway, because the crowd expects him to do so and would laugh at him if he backed down.
He shoots the elephant several times, but it does not die quickly or painlessly. He feels guilty and disgusted by his own act, and compares the elephant to a huge and costly piece of machinery that he has destroyed for no good reason.
He later learns that the elephant was owned by a poor man who could not afford to lose it, and that he himself was legally in the wrong for killing it. He also hears conflicting opinions from the Europeans and the natives about his deed. Some praise him for doing his duty, others condemn him for being cruel and cowardly.
He concludes by saying that he was glad that the elephant had killed the man, because it gave him a pretext to shoot it. He also reflects that he was only an instrument of the oppressive system that he despised, and that he had to do what the “natives” expected of him, even if it meant destroying his own freedom.
His line of ancestors- on both sides of his parents- had seen considerable better times: there was a plantation and slave owner on Jamaica and affluent shipbuilder and teak merchant in Burma on his mothers side.
When Eric was born his father Richard Blair was just embarking on his slow, very slow career as an opium administrator in Bengal.
Like thousands of other colonial families, the wife took the children- once they reached school age- home to England while the husband remained in India. Visits to England were rare: In Eric’s case his father only returned once - in 1907. For the entire 8 years- from 1904 to 1912 his mum lived with Eric and his two sisters in London while his distant dad in India was ‘distant’ in more than one way.
Orwell’s father spent his entire working life ( he returned to England age 55) as a minor colonial official. In August 1875, aged 18, the father, Richard Blair had joined the Opium Department of the Indian Government as ‘ASSISTANT SUB DEPUTY OPIUM AGENT, 3rd GRADE’. After sixteen years he was still ASSISTANT SUB DEPUTY OPIUM AGENT- but had risen to 1st GRADE. In 1907, after another 16 years he was no longer Assistant- a promotion that might explain the return to England for a 3 month visit.( Jeffrey Meyers, Orwell, p5)
The Opium Department of the Indian government ( The BEIC by that time had ceased to exist or had evolved into the British Raj with a nominally independent Indian government) regulated the quality, production, collection and transportation of Indian Opium to China.
Most of this valuable commodity came from Benares and Bihar region in the Ganges plains northwest of Calcutta. Richard’s job was it to supervise the poppy growers in his district and ensure it was cultivated in the most efficient way.
Like the Dutch colonies in Indonesia or the French in Vietnam the income derived from the sale of opium was considerable. Jeffrey Meyers mentions that it generated 16% of the total State income.
The Opium Agents managed the production and storage of opium for sale to China, a role Orwell later criticized in his essay "Shooting an Elephant."
How big a business opium was can be gauged by the fact that there were approx 20000 -twenty thousand) British managers- men like Orwell’s father- in the Bengal province overlooking the process from planting, growing, collecting and refining what was finally regarded as the best opium in the world: the opium coming from Patna.
Below: Motihari, birthplace and location of George Orwell museum
He was born into a lower-upper-middle-class family. (‘ Landless Gentry whose pretensions to social status had little relation to their income’ was how Eric Blair/George Orwell-self critically- used to describe his family background.
Orwell was brought up in an atmosphere of impoverished snobbery which surely added to his contractionary personality.. His parents- after hid father’s return to England- had different bedrooms and separate bridge partners. Jeffrey Meyer in his Orwell biography suggests this is how Eric was forced to learned how to ‘disguise feelings and distrust intimacy’.
Being born in India and having a father involved in the opium trade had a significant impact on Orwell’s life and work. Some of the influences are:
He experienced the contrast between the privileged lifestyle of the European elite and the poverty and oppression of the Indian masses4. He later wrote about the plight of the poor and the working class in his books, such as ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ and ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’.
He acquired a familiarity with the Indian culture, language, and religion, which enriched his literary imagination and gave him a cosmopolitan perspective. He later used his knowledge of India and other Asian countries in his works, such as Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.
He inherited a predisposition to tuberculosis, a disease that plagued him throughout his life and eventually caused his death. He later wrote about his struggle with illness and mortality in his essays and novels, such as ‘Homage to Catalonia’ and ‘Coming Up for Air’.
Orwell once said, "I am a person in whom the first three or four years of life ( in India) have been unusually important". This can be taken in both ways-good and bad.
Fact is that Eric Blair consciously took up the alter ego, that went with his pen name George Orwell. George Orwell (the surname is said to derive from the beautiful River Orwell in East Anglia) became so closely attached to his pen name that few people but relatives knew his real name was Eric Blair.
The change in name corresponded to a profound shift in Orwell’s lifestyle, in which he changed from a pillar of the British imperial establishment into a literary and political rebel.
( all these travails of identity and class remind me of the the 1966 ‘class’ sketch with John Cleese and the two Ronnies- an absolute must to better understand the British class system) . If you’ve never watched it- do yourself a favour.
Orwell won scholarships to two of England’s leading schools, Wellington and Eton, the latter was where he stayed longest, from 1917 to 1921.
Aldous Huxley was one of his masters there- for French, and it was at Eton that Orwell published his first writing in college periodicals. The relationship between Eric and Aldous was not very close and they did not keep in touch after Huxley left Eton. They only exchanged a few letters later in their lives, mostly about their respective dystopian novels, Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four2.
Orwell and Huxley are both regarded as influential writers and thinkers of the 20th century, who explored the themes of totalitarianism, alienation, social engineering, loss of identity and human nature in their works.
They also had some similarities in their personal lives, such as their partial blindness, their interest in Buddhism, and their involvement in the Spanish Civil War. However, they also had many differences in their views, styles, and personalities, which are reflected in their contrasting visions of the future5.
Instead of university, Orwell decided to follow ‘colonial overseas’ family tradition and, in 1922, went to Burma as assistant district superintendent in the Indian Imperial Police.
liminality, noun: That temporary state during a rite of passage when the participant lacks social status or rank, is required to follow specified forms of conduct, and is expected to show obedience and humility
John Flory, the central character in George Orwell’s novel “Burmese Days,” bears intriguing parallels to the author himself:
John Flory’s Existential Struggle:
Flory grapples with a sense of homelessness as an expatriate living in 1920s Burma under British colonial rule.
His liminal ( see above) existence mirrors that of many expatriates caught between distinct social worlds. He remains an outsider, unable to fully embrace either his Britishness or his adopted Burmese home.
This struggle for a grounded place to call home resonates with Orwell’s exploration of the expatriate condition of displacement and alienation1.
Failed Attempts at Communitas: While allowing himself to become involved with a Burmese lover and for a time enjoy the corruption she represents as a personification of the moral laxity of tropical environs, Flory believes he can overcome his brief period of “going native” by asserting his Britishness in his refusal to see Ma Hla May as anything other than a sex partner less desirable than the British Elizabeth Lackersteen.
Flory’s tragic incapacity to achieve communitas (a deep sense of community) with either world—British or Burmese—symbolizes his inner conflict.
His desire to marry the British woman Elizabeth Lackersteen reflects his longing for connection, yet it remains unfulfilled.
Just as the British Empire fails to transform the native people of Burma toward Britishness, Flory remains caught in a liminal state, unable to fully belong anywhere.
Orwell after a fascinating and multifaceted life, driven by- what some critics call a desire to find peace& identity by hitting bottom, by living in poverty in Paris and London, and eventually becoming a renowned author and journalist— died on January 21, 1950, in London, England, at the age of 46. His death was attributed to tuberculosis.
some sources& further reading.
“Shooting an Elephant” Summary & Analysis | LitCharts
https://voegelinview.com/john-flory-and-expatriate-liminality-in-orwells-burmese-days/
(99+) Read Ebook [PDF] Burmese Days | klaudiamaier manurisa - Academia.edu
Why Did Orwell Go To Burma? – The Orwell Society
Jeffrey Meyers: Orwell
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pukka-sahib-whats-that-mean/199384