Orwell was tempted to accept the job in India
because Lucknow was only 250 miles west of Motihari.

INDIA, ORWELL, JFK & CHINA

While President Kennedy was busy with the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962
Red Chinese soldiers attacked India's northern territories in the Himalayas.

To Orwell Today,
re: SHRINE TO ORWELL

Hullo Jackie,

Thank you for sharing the Orwell information with me. I sincerely hope the Orwell house is saved and restored. Your name rings a bell. It was in the isle of Jura that Orwell went to write 1984. Any connection?

Some how I find it difficult to believe that Orwell and Jay Dubashi were friends because he is an arch-conservative and Orwell, we all know, although he was friendly with another Indian writer Mulk Raj Anansd. They used to work together in the BBC.

I would like to share with you and the Orwell Society another vignette about Orwell. I belong to a city called Lucknow which is the capital of Oudh, the last province to be added to the Indian empire by the British in 1856. Before Lucknow the capital was a city called Allahabad which is situated on the confluence of the Ganjes and Jamuna. In 1935 Sir Harcourt Butler, the Lt. Governor of Oudh, brought the capital back to Lucknow and with it came the newspaper "The Pioneer" which is more than 120 years old. The Pioneer has the distinction of having two Nobel prize winners writing for it: Sir Winston Churchill, then corporal and Rudyard Kipling. Michael Sheldon, in his biography, tells us Orwell was going to be appointed the editor of the Pioneer but Sir Winston, then Prime Minister, put a stop to it. He did not want Her Majesty's Indian subjects' heads filled with socialistic claptrap. And so Pioneer lost the best editor it never had. It still comes out, but is a pale shadow of its former self. It comes out from a room. The old building opposite the All India Radio was designed by Burley Griffin, an Australian architect who designed Canberra. Burley Griffen is buried in Lucknow.

I have one bone to pick with you. There is no chance of Bihar, or any other Indian state going to China regardless of its proximity.

With warm regards,
Nasir Abid

Hello Nasir,

I've added a baby photo of Orwell to the discussion we had about making Orwell's Motihari house into a shrine. Yes my name is connected to the island of Jura where Orwell wrote 1984 because my website was created to spread the word of what he wrote there.

It doesn't seem surprising to me that Orwell would be a friend of Jay Dubashi. After reading his ORWELL ALWAYS SPOKE THE TRUTH story about his memories of Orwell, he sounds like someone Orwell would have enjoyed talking to about Indian independence, regardless of whether he was liberal or conservative. Orwell went to pubs and restaurants with friends and acquaintances from all walks of life and political affiliations. I visited quite a few of those establishments last summer [2003]. Most of them have pictures of Orwell on the wall.

Thank you for that information about Orwell's job offer at The Pioneer. I've read that Orwell was tempted to accept it because Lucknow is only 250 miles west of Motihari and also he looked at it as a chance to press for Indian independence and provide material for a future book. But it came at the wrong time because Orwell had just finished writing Homage to Catalonia and had spent a great deal of time and energy getting his little house in the village of Wallington, Hertfordshire fixed up and his garden planted. As well, by that time, he was getting quite well known in literary circles in England and was in demand as a writer and reviewer. Then, as you say, The Pioneer changed their mind about Orwell because he was too much of a socialist.

Here's what Gordon Bowher says about it in his biography starting on page 238:

INSIDE GEORGE ORWELL

"In what had come as a complete yet intriquing surprise, in November 1937 he had been invited by Desmond Young, editor of the Lucknow Pioneer in India, and later a distinguished war reporter, to work for him as a leader writer. The idea of returning to the land of his birth as a journalist, and to work for the Pioneer, as Kipling had, must have appealed greatly to the romantic in Orwell, and the chance to write against British imperialism was obviously a great temptation. But when Young approached the India Office in February he was discouraged from pursuing Orwell, who, because of his honesty and strength of character, was thought likely to cause trouble to the authorities."

"In fact he was in no condition to travel to India, or anywhere for that matter. Just before Homage to Catalonia appeared, after a week in bed with bronchitis, he began coughing up blood. It was extremely frightening for Eileen, who told Jack Common, 'The bleeding seemed prepared to go on for ever & on Sunday everyone agreed that Eric must be taken somewhere where really active steps could be taken if necessary - artificial pneumothorax to stop the blood or transfusion to replace it...' Laurence O'Shaughnessy* saw him transferred immediately by ambulance to Preston Hall Village, a British Legion sanatorium, near Maidstone in Kent, where he was consultant thoracic surgeon. He was admitted on 17 March. Since childhood, hospitals had held a peculiar dread for him and he grumbled to Eileen about being sent to 'an institution devised for murder'. But the fact that he was in the care of a doctor he knew clearly helped. Not only that, but he was put in a private room paid for by Laurence."

"Hard work and neglect had taken their toll. Since returning from Spain, in addition to writing his book he had produced four articles, twelve reviews and several letters for publication. He was clearly exhausted, but still refusing to admit his wretched condition. Although no tubercle bacilli were found in his sputum, further tests told a rather different story, as his medical record reveals. The doctors found 'heavy mottling over the lower lobe of the left lung, with nonspecific fibrosis of the Right lung', and he was treated with injections of vitamin D. However, at the conclusion of their tests the doctors drew a darker conclusion, and a postscript to his report reads 'T.B. confirmed'."

"Even though, finally, he had to face up to the bad news, he still tried to play it down, telling Stephen Spender, 'I am afraid from what they say it is TB all right but evidently a very old lesion and not serious.' Two weeks later, writing to Gorer, the old complacent Orwell had returned, denying the cruel reality of his broken health. 'I am much better,' he wrote, 'in fact I really doubt whether there is anything wrong with me.' (Years later, clearly diagnosed as having full-blown tuberculosis, he blamed it on the freezing Spanish winter he had spent shivering and coughing in the trenches on the Aragon front. But he could have acquired it at any time in his life - as a child, out in Burma, among tramps, even in a Paris hospital.)"

"He was ordered to rest and refrain even from 'literary research' for three months. It was particularly galling for Orwell, who already had another novel in mind...He was to remain at the sanatorium for five and a half months, by which time he had gained nine pounds. That summer it was decided that he needed to go abroad, 'somewhere south' to convalesce for the coming winter...Laurence suggested Morocco which, according to a French colleague, would be both equable and dry, the perfect place for a man in his condition..."

~ end quoting from Inside George Orwell ~

So, Nasir, it seems that fate had ordained that Orwell not return to India to take up the job at The Pioneer. He left for Morocco in September 1938 and while there wrote Coming Up For Air which he handed into publishers upon his return to England six months later.

Now, about that bone you want to pick. I am very glad to hear that you have no intentions of losing Bihar or any other part of India to the Chinese. I only mentioned it earlier because things aren't looking too good in Nepal and that is all that now separates you from China, now that Tibet has been taken over. See TIBET & TIANANMEN TYRANT HU

Actually, it was while President Kennedy was busy with the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 that Chinese soldiers attacked India's northern territories in the Himalayas and took over twelve thousand square miles. Nehru asked JFK for help and the United States sent weapons but the territory was never regained, although the Chinese at least stopped at that point.

Here's what Theodore Sorenson says in his biography on page 665:

KENNEDY

"He knew the Chinese would soon threaten again, in India or elsewhere. 'These Chinese are tough,' he remarked in one off-the-record session. 'It isn't just what they say about us but what they say about the Russians. They are in the Stalinist phase, believe in class war and the use of force, and seem prepared to sacrifice 300 milion people if necessary to dominate Asia.' He read all he could about the Chinese (at times enjoying streaks of quoting pertinent and impertinent ancient Chinese maxims). But since the day of his inauguration the Red Chinese - unlike the Soviets - had spewed unremitting vituperation upon him. He saw no way of persuading them to abandon their aggressive design short of a patient, persistent American presence in Asia and the Pacific. Consequently, even if Red China had not become an emotional and political issue in the United States, he said, any American initiative now toward negotiations, diplomatic recognition or UN admission would be regarded as rewarding aggression. He was prepared to use whatever means were available to prevent the seating of Red China in Nationalist China's seat at the UN."

~ end quoting ~

Since Kennedy's death the USA has befriended the Red Chinese and helped empower them to the point where they now encircle North America by controlling all surrounding ports, including USA GAVE CHINA PANAMA CANAL. So it is not just India that is threatened by their proximity. So too is North America. That bone you want to pick doesn't have much meat left on it.

All the best,
Jackie Jura

PS - Here's a link to Orwell's essay REFLECTIONS ON GANDHI, written in 1949

* When I went on my Homage to Orwell last summer I saw the house Orwell was living in when he met his wife Eileen. By one of life's amazing coincidences her brother, Laurence O'Shaughnessy, was one of England's most esteemed tuberculosis doctors. He'd even written text books on the subject. What better brother-in-law could a person with bad lungs get? But sadly he died on the beach at Normandy and so wasn't alive to help keep Orwell's lungs healthy, although probably nobody could have stopped Orwell from doing the things that weren't good for his lungs.


Nepal's 'fierce one' ballot box victor (inspired by Mao's Communist China). AFP, Apr 13, 2008

VISITING ORWELL'S BIRTHPLACE (in Motihari, Bihar, India, on the road to Nepal)

Nepal nationalizes royal palaces (peace pact with Maoists). BBC, Aug 23, 2007

Maoists in Nepal extorting donations (intimidation & recruitment to militia). BBC, May 21, 2006. Go to 35.Brotherhood & 5.Pyramidal NWO

MASSIVE MAO MOUNTS TIBET

Giant Mao statue erected in Tibet (to commemorate 30th anniversary of former leader's death). BBC, Apr 17, 2006

Katmandu a city of chaos (rickshaw driver "just wants peace") & Soldiers ordered to shoot protesters. AP/CBC, Apr 8, 2006. Go to 7.Systems & 6.Super-States & Who Killed Nepal's Royal Family? (like Romanovs by Lenin in 1918)

TIBET & TIANANMEN TYRANT HU

WHO KILLED NEPAL'S ROYAL FAMILY?

USA FACES SURPRISE ATTACK WITH CANAL GIVEAWAY: ANALYST

ORWELL SPOKE TRUTH ALWAYS

Novelist George Orwell Always Spoke the Truth. Samachar.com, Hinudstan Times

NEPAL REMEMBERED (by Jackie Jura on the occasion of assassination of Nepal Royal Family in 2001)

ORWELL'S LONDON PUBS & RESTAURANTS

SHRINE TO ORWELL

Jackie Jura
~ an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events ~

email: orwelltoday@gmail.com
HOME PAGE
website: www.orwelltoday.com