A conventional understanding of George Orwell’s political legacy more often than not begins with a studious appreciation of his classic novels, Animal Farm or 1984 rather than his first-hand detestation and rejection of the British Empire. His tenure serving in the Imperial Police Force in 1920s in a part of British occupied India, that was known as Burma, and now called Myanmar provided him with the unvarnished and ugly truth of Empire. The five years spent here imposing the Empire’s will on a subject people had made him realise the Empire was a grandiose self-deception rooted in brutal fraudulence. This realisation found literary expression in the first novel he wrote, Burmese Days. The main character, Mr. Flory, formulates the raison d’etre of the British Empire as such: Continue reading →