George Orwell – the man whose nightmares we live

Mohammed Hanif and Richard Blair discuss George Orwell and his relevance today

“I don’t know any writer from our times who has been so prophetic,” acclaimed Pakistan author Mohammad Hanif said while leading a discussion on George Orwell during a session on the first day of the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) on Saturday.

“Sometimes we as writers and journalists wake up and curse George Orwell. Often, it seems like we live in a world dreamed off by Orwell,” Hanif said.

The session titled, “Life with my Father” featured discussion by George Orwell’s son Richard Blair and Pakistani journalist and writer Mohammed Hanif. Navid Shehzad moderated the discussion.

Talking about George Orwell and his relevance today, Hanif said that there is no contemporary writer like him.

Referring to Orwell’s take on history and his emphasis on speaking the truth, the session discussed objective reporting, reporting the things as they seem in the contemporary world.

Navid Shehzad said that she finds his quote “Early in life I have noticed that no event has been ever correctly interpreted” relevant to Pakistani media.

While Blair talked about his father it was Hanif that was the life of session.

His satirical comments on the Punjab government and its stance on the security delighted the audience.

“So you have this government which has been here since when I started journalism. There was a Sharif in power then and there is a Sharif here and a Sharif in Islamabad,” Hanif said. “The government says we can’t give you security on Friday but we can do it on Saturday and Sunday,” Hanif said referring to the sudden change of venue and the cutting short of the event by one day by the government.

He criticised the media saying that no newspaper will talk about why the government, which is so secure and so loved by its people, would think that Mr Blair and Navid Shahzad, who has always lived in Lahore, are a security threat on Friday and not on Saturday?”

That, he said, is why you cannot get rid of George Orwell.

Talking about Orwell’s quote that history is written by the winners, Blair said, “In many ways Orwell was an old fashioned socialist. He wanted to expose every lie. He was very ready to knock on ahead to those lies people will tell as their version of history and yes, the victor is the one who will tell those lies and write that history.”

Navid and Hanif pointed out that selective amnesia is also relevant to Pakistan’s history of partition.

“Obviously we write things from our collective memory. Generally partition is called a time of freedom. But I have heard accounts of people who witnessed it. They say that it was a time of looting. Some were killed, others survived while the rest were the ones killing. We read that there were trains coming from Amritsar to Lahore that were strewn with dead bodies, but nobody talks about trains that left from here,” Hanif pointed out.

“I think nations do that to keep themselves together to move on. That’s why Orwell matters as there should be people who stand up, who have the courage to say, ‘Hang on, this is not what happened. There is another side of the story and let me tell you that story.’”