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The writer is a freelancer and a mentor hailing from Kandhkot, Sindh. He can be reached at alihassanb.34@gmail.com
“It’s frightful that people who are so ignorant have so much influence.”
What if George Orwell had foreseen today’s Pakistan? How would he have adjusted his adage to keep it relevant? Orwell is remembered for a dystopian vision that has resonated across the history – and Pakistan’s reality today has rarely escaped its grip. Had he been a commoner in Pakistan, he would have left the words unchanged. However, had he been made part of the power structure, he would have merely substituted the word “frightful” with “delightful” and added “enlightened” before “ignorant”. This way, he would have kept the relevance of his words intact. And perhaps, he wouldn’t have been wrong.
Unlike the influential enlightened ignorant, he would have at least dared to speak sensibly and acknowledge the reality. However, a bitter truth. That is, he would not have been a brute hypocrite and a saint in league with Satan.
Had he been a bureaucrat, he would have danced over his empowered ignorance – the same ignorance that suffocates freedom of expression by branding it a threat to national interests. And he would have cheered people’s failure to realise their powerlessness and naivety. Yet, he would not have posited himself as the servant of the public. Were he one among media-persons and intellectuals, he would have danced to the flute of perks, praising the ‘saviorus’ on prime-time TV shows the same evening these ‘saviours’ were ruthlessly mutilating the laws and stripping the public of their rights.
Had Orwell been a prominent cleric, he would have been a courtier in the corridors of power, posing as a source of both temporal and eternal salvation. Had he but been a dynastic despot, or a tribal or feudal lord, he would have portrayed himself as a guardian while in fact being a savage, a grand architect of chaos, a brute in a suit. Had he been part of the justice system, he would have surrendered the people’s rights, justice, democratic ideals and the Constitution to totalitarianism.
Had Orwell personified civil society – including champions of human, women, and labor rights, nationalists, and other stakeholders – he would have championed the cause of the aggrieved in the morning, only to trade it for a consultancy, a foreign fellowship or an entry into the system by evening, leaving the victims in an even worse plight. Thereafter, he would have sought and celebrated the ignorance of the masses. However, if he had been a man of integrity and intellect, or one who selflessly championed democracy, people’s rights and freedom of expression, he would have been banned or branded a traitor, a foreign agent, a heretic or a national security threat at the exact moment a known plunderer was being celebrated as a stalwart of public prosperity across the airwaves.
Had he been a commoner, a member of the public, he would have been helplessly suffering, invoking with every breath divine justice and retribution against the architects of the brute system and all its tentacles extended to every nook and cranny of the country.
And unlike the influential ignorant, who implicitly and hypocritically censure the ignorant power in action, Orwell would have had the moral courage to be his true self. He would not have posited himself as a sinning saint. An enslaving savior. A brute pious. An ignorant intelligentsia. A sage of sold-out integrity. He would have been an enslaving saviour. A brute justice. A soul-selling seasoned journalist. A Machiavellian benefactor. A courtier clergy. Instead, he would have been a brute without pretence.
If Orwell had truly been a whistleblower or an honest brute, he could never have risen within the system to begin with. Even if he somehow had, he would not have remained the upright Orwell we have imagined. Had he stayed upright, he would have been suppressed. And had he escaped suppression, he would have been branded a traitor and destroyed.
Orwell’s specter would haunt not the blind masses but their anointed betters. Because in our society today, ignorance puts a crown, hypocrisy a halo, and truth an elegy. The frightful turns delightful, and the sensible a seditious. Orwell foresaw this. He simply misconstrued who would inherit power.
