George Orwell wrote his satirical novel ‘1984’ in 1949. It was inspired by his concern for the disintegration of human values that occurs when a political party – right-wing or left-wing – seizes power and forms an intensely oppressive totalitarian government. Totalitarian rule happens when the plague of persecution complex is rampant. Very often it is created and propagated by the big brother who arrives as redeemer from the crisis as a cunning ploy. A society or a community afflicted by collective sense of persecution is angry and fear stricken. Striking terror in the minds of both enemies and betrayers is an essential strategy of totalitarian regimes. Even dissenters who do not comply with the ideology of the big brother is considered betrayers. Once the external enemies are named, the big brother carefully exposes the dissenters who are accused of aiding the enemies. The system creates vigilante groups who act as moral police to deal with the dissenters, handing down exemplary punishment. The redeemer is the religious messiah and the totalitarian system is also religious. The big brother is also the religious redeemer. Fundamentalism arises out of insecurity. There is an outburst of fundamentalism in all religions today, because we have entered an age of a new kind of insecurity. All types of fundamentalism are however birds of the same flock. Any form of fundamentalism proliferating all over the world yearn for the past, are intolerant of dissent and creativity and hides its real intent capturing state power under the garb of religious expansion. Fundamentalism also operates within the confines of its territory through caste, class and other social institutions and organisations. The Truth or certitude is the very foundation of fundamentalist ideology, backed by the charismatic and enlightened one mesmerizing the populace to total submission, backed in turn by the select and special corporate communities. Fundamentalism is characterized by nostalgia for a mythical time of an earlier order. Religious fundamentalism appeals to the literal sense of the scripture. It identifies itself by its aggressive assertion of self-superiority, emphasis on adherence to ritualistic norms and by involuntarily crossing into the province of secular affairs of individuals and collectivities. As Amartya Sen states, “those who foment global confrontations on local sectarian violence try to impose a pre-chosen single and divisive identity on people”

Fundamentalism creates a terrorized society in which both individual character and any sense of personal identity is ruthlessly eliminated. Propaganda replaces factual truth. Personal privacy does not exist. The sole crime of utmost concern is thinking differently. The overall aim of government is to reduce individuals to automatons. Orwell said: ‘A constant war is what we are living in today.’ The Ministry of Truth controls the dissemination of information to the public by doctoring photographs and rewriting public archives. Revisionism has made headlines recently in the furore over ‘right to be forgotten’ legislation that allows people to apply to have information removed from Google. The important question to ask ourselves is therefore why do we still look for these comparisons in a 68 year-old novel?

‘The answer is partly that Nineteen Eighty Four is a vividly written, memorable novel telling a now familiar story. But I think it’s also partly because of a widely felt sense that there are important things which are wrong with our world, and many of the things that we feel are wrong are important themes in the novel.’

Commenting on 1984, Orwell wrote, “I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but I believe that something resembling it could arrive.” What arrives may look different but look closely and we are terrified it is the same. The war is a fact of life. War provides outlet for unwanted emotions such as hate, patriotism, and discontent, keeping the structure of society intact without raising the standard of living. We live in a time of war where hate and lie are justified as moral in the situation of war.

The common habit, therefore, is invincible ignorance: the appearance of orthodoxy without knowing what orthodoxy entails: Ignorance is Strength. We become perpetual liars. The Party’s world-view is impressed most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. Rather than address the plague of ignorance, it is slumber of reason which endangers monsters all around us.