Animal Farm: A Critical Study in the Wake of Indian Politics

Abstract

The society we live in has roughly two factions in terms of the economic status of the people i.e. Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. One is the dominant class while the other is the labouring class. The former is called the parasitical due to their dependence on the produce made available by the latter, the perennial suffering lot. The lowest economic class feels cheated and thugged only when their leader becomes a dictator and endorses capitalism for achieving his high political end. Lord Acton opines, ‘Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ A totalitarian, Joseph Stalin, who is portrayed in the novel as Napoleon, the pig and becomes the voice of the voiceless animals, emerges as the sole leader of the discontented working class, ultimately extends his supporting hands to capitalists against whom the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917. Thus the Revolution lost its sheen very soon. There is no dearth of Stalinism on this planet in the present socio-political phenomenon. The central idea of the novel rests on its concluding lines ‘The creature outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.’  The novel is a departure from the maxim ‘all animals are equal’ to the maxim ‘all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.’ The paper in question is a sincere attempt to critically analyze the dystopian novel ‘Animal Farm’ (1945) by George Orwell, a staunch opponent to pseudo-communalism, in the wake of the existing socio-political scenario of India in particular.